© Iwan Baan

Maybe last week some of you took some days off to prepare for the Super Bowl! So just in case you haven’t been around ArchDaily, here we have our selection of the best from last week. Main image belongs to Selgas Cano’s Auditorium in Cartagena. You may remember this guys from one of the coolest offices ever. Also from last week: a spectacular kindergarten in China, our latest In Progress in Mexico, or the latest from Foster + Partners in Vancouver. Last but not least… our AD Classics are back.

© Shu He

Projects from China, UK, The Netherlands and Czech Republic, as well as our special inforgraphic on the Serpentine Gallery Pavillion’s 11 years. Check the best of last week after the break.

Administration Building of the North Shanghai Gas Company in Jiading / Atelier Deshaus
This is the administration building of the North Shanghai Gas Company in Jiading. The needs of the function of this building are generally simple. With surrounding the undeveloped constructional land, the site is small, and the only feature of the site is the river landscape close to the northern side. The final form of the building completely responds to the landscape in the northern side (read more…) read more »

© Chen Jun Wei

Took some time off after New Year’s? Haven’t visited us since 2011? Don’t worry… here’s our brief selection of the best of last week. Check them all after the break.

COFCO Tianjin Showroom / L&A Design Group
On 2009 COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation) Tianjin Group organized a competition for its Tianjin showroom. The brief called for facilities of a real estate sale house and a wine display club, offering a wine taste room for COFCO’s own brand -The Great Wall red wine (read more…) read more »

Courtesy of Architects 49

Two nice houses, two big scale projects and the latest update on Herzog and de Meuron’s Elbe Philarmonic Hall. Check them all after the break.

BU Landmark Complex / Architects 49
The Bangkok University Landmark Complex is initiated on the necessities that are to reorganize the frontal area of the campus and to create an outstanding approach for the campus’s entrance. In addition to the mentioned requirements, the School of Business Management also required some supplementary facilities, for example, classrooms, seminar rooms, lecturers’ office, lecture halls. Then, the new complex is emerged from the particular architectural form evoking the symbol of the university, a diamond (read more…) read more »

© Bitter Bredt Courtesy of Studio Daniel Libeskind

Here are five really interesting projects you may have missed from last week. Check them all and join the discussion in their comments after the break.

Dresden’s Military History Museum / Daniel Libeskind
A decade after Daniel Libeskind’s iconic Jewish Museum opened in Berlin another Libeskind-designed German museum will open – Dresden’s Military History Museum. The projects are more alike than they appear. Both juxtapose aggressively avant-garde design and decidedly pre-modernist structures. Both demand a renewed emotional and intellectual focus on history. Both attempt to make sense of the seemingly senseless – of war, violence, destruction and hatred (read more…) read more »

Courtesy of BIAD UFo

Didn’t check ArchDaily last week? Don’t worry, we have the best from 7 days for you. Check them all after the break.

In Progress: Phoenix International Media Center / BIAD UFo
Phoenix International Media Center locates in the southwest corner of Chaoyang Park; the site area is 1.8 hectares. The total floor area of the building is 65,000m2 with a height of 55m. Apart from the media office, the broadcasting studios and the production offices, the building provides abundant of open spaces for the public to get interactive experiences, which expresses the unique operation concept of Phoenix Media (read more…) read more »

© Iwan Baan

Three museums and two large projects are part of the best from last week that you may have missed! Check them all after the break.

Teshima Art Museum / Ryue Nishizawa
The Teshima Art Museum designed by Tokyo-based architect Ryue Nishizawa and Japanese artist Rei Naito opened in 2010 for the Setouchi International Art Festival that was held in the Takamatsu Port area of Japan. The open gallery space features 25cm thick concrete shell with two elliptical openings that are open to elements (read more…) read more »

© KWK Promes

Two beautiful houses, a museum, a cultural project and the offices of AOL. Check the best form last week after the break.

Safe House / KWK Promes
The clients’ top priority was to gain the feeling of maximum security in their future house, which determined the building’s outlook and performance. The house took the form of a cuboid in which parts of the exterior walls are movable. When the house opens up to the garden, eastern and western side walls move towards the exterior fence creating a courtyard (read more…) read more »

© Adrià Goula

Great projects from Europe, Canada, and Colombia you may have missed from last week. Check our selection of the best after the break.

Barceloneta Market / MiAS Arquitectes
When I was a student at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB), the maritime neighborhood, Barceloneta, was the subject of much conversation. Restaurants on the beach which later disappeared with its narrow streets, cramped flats, the clothes hanging out on the balconies, the shops, the artisans’ workshops and its people, who talked, and still talk, fast and loud (read more…) read more »

© Iwan Baan

If you didn’t visit us this past week, you missed our coverage of the Pritzker Prize Ceremony! Check that and four amazing projects after the break.

House on the Flight of Birds / Bernardo Rodrigues
The house is located in the north side of S. Michael Island in the Azores. Since the microclimate of this farmland offers frequent wind and showers, the first design strategy was to block these winds with a wall and offer diverse patios and covered courtyards to protect against rain. These patios and courtyards also open all living spaces to the natural green by glass walls which receded from the exterior (read more…) read more »

© Thomas Lenden

Don’t miss our latest selection of best projects featured from last week! Check them all after the break.

Pavilion for an Artist / DHL Architecture
The brief for the Atelier Malkovich ideas competition asked for the design of an innovative and functional studio for the contemporary artist. It should address the changing of both their role in society and their working methods. Eight winning designs were built as small pavilions to the peculiar scale of 1:2 – neither building nor model, half symbol and half piece of art. The installations were constructed at the artist’s centre Nieuw en Meer (read more…) read more »

© Bitter Bredt

Three of last week’s best posts were museums! Did you see them? Check them all after the break.

Felix Nussbaum Museum / Daniel Libeskind
The Felix Nussbaum Museum is an extension to the Cultural History Museum in Osnabrück and is dedicated to the work of Felix Nussbaum, the Jewish artist born in Osnabrück in 1904. The Museum displays Nussbaum’s graphics and paintings done prior to his extermination in Auschwitz, and houses a temporary exhibition space focusing on the themes of racism and intolerance (read more…) read more »

© Fernando Alda

One theatre, two houses, a classic motel and a mikve! All great posts you may have missed from last week. Check them all after the break.

Almonte Theatre in Huelva / Donaire Arquitectos
The building is located on the site of an old winery. It has the challenge of integrate the existing old buildings, declared as cultural interest, and being part of a cultural complex of a total of three buildings and a common space. This space turns into the main place of the town and an important meeting area (read more…) read more »

© Iwan Baan

Houses, museums and forgotten Yugoslavian monuments. All part of our selection of the best from last week. Check them all after the break.

Concrete Slit House / AZL architects
Concrete Slit House is a contemporary concrete residence enmeshed within a quiet Kuomingtang-era neighborhood in central Nanjing. The entire structure and roof are made from concrete pressed into a custom mould, handmade from five-centimeter horizontal wood strips to remain in scale with the adjacent century-old brick buildings (read more…) read more »

© Jordi Surroca

A housing project, two chapels, a museum and a house. Don’t miss our selection of the best from last week. Check them all after the break!

Social Housing Tower Of 75 Units In Europa Square / Roldán + Berengué
The tower E.I.O.5 is a project of social housing promoted by INCASOL and it is located in a new central zone known as Plaça Europa (Europa Square). The Europa Square, according to Albert Viaplana’s Project, it is shaped as the last nude in Llobregat’s direction of the squares se- quence that, approximately each kilometer, marking the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes (read more…) read more »

© Chris Cooper

Have you been away lately? Check our selection of the best from last week! Five posts after the break.

Container Guest House / Poteet Architects
The Container Guest House is the first of several projects by Poteet Architects we will be featuring. As a national award-winning firm, Poteet Architects is best known for their sensitive adaptive reuse of existing buildings and a fresh, rigorous approach to modern interior design. This project originated from Poteet Architects’s client’s wish to experiment with shipping containers (read more…) read more »

Eduardo Souto de Moura, 2011 Pritzker laureate, in front of the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego. Photo by Francisco Nogueira

We have just had a really intense week in ArchDaily. Along with many great projects, Eduardo Souto de Moura was announced as the new Pritzker Prize winner and Lebbeus Woods refused to work in China until Ai Weiwei is released from prison. Check all the news and best projects from last week after the break.

2011 Pritzker Prize: Eduardo Souto de Moura
The 58-year-old architect based in Porto worked on his earlier years at Alvaro Siza’s office, another Pritzker Laureate (1992), and opened his own practice in 1980. Since then he has completed over sixty buildings, most of them in Portugal, and also in Spain, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and Switzerland (read more…) read more »

© FG+SG – Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra

Didn’t get to visit us last week? Don’t worry! Here’s a great selection from last week’s projects. Check them all after the break.

Building In Lagoa das Furnas / Aires Mateus
The project intends to evoke the architectural landscape of the Azores, drawing upon the form and material that embed the collective memory of this island and archipelago, that have become, with time, a second nature of this place. Therefore the buildings are archetypal volumes, simple and compact, clad with the local basaltic stone (read more…) read more »

© FG+SG

Five great projects you may have missed from last week! Check them all after the break.

Santa Ana’s Chapel / e|348 arquitectura
Visiting the site, we noticed that the given location of the Chapel was in the intersection of five streets/roads, and at the bottom corner of an ascending topography. We noticed also that this topographic condition was the perfect “stage” for celebrating Santa Ana’s festivities, occurring in July 26th every year, as locals already do (read more…) read more »

© diephotodesigner.de

A lot of great projects were featured last week. Like the MTV Headquarters in Berlin. Or Mies’ IBM Building in our AD Classics section. An Eco Resort in Tasmania, an amazing house in Portugal and Alibaba Headquarters in China to complete our selection. Check them all after the break.

MTV Networks Headquarters / Dan Pearlman
MTV Networks’ personnel can rejoice: with the redesigned and newly organized reception, meeting and break room areas at MTV Headquarters, a long-held wish of employees becomes a reality and a once gloomy office complex on the Spree can finally function as the head offices (read more…) read more »