DesCours is a free, public, week-long architecture and art event now in its fourth year, held the second week of December in New Orleans. This event invites internationally renowned architects and artists to create 14 architecture installations within ‘hidden’ locations in the heart of New Orleans, including private courtyards, rooftops, abandoned buildings and walkways, all locations normally unseen, inaccessible or unused by the public.

AIA New Orleans is presenting the event in partnership with the Downtown Development District (DDD), the City of New Orleans, the Louisiana Architecture Foundation and numerous private businesses, organizations, and individuals. AIA New Orleans is proud to present this event free of charge and open to the public.

You can find more information and download the request for proposals details in the official website.

Immuring, a new exhibition by Hong Kong-based architecture firm davidclovers, will be on view from June 4 through July 18, 2010, in the SCI-Arc Gallery at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Immuring invigorates the relationship between architectural graphic and architectural mass through the re-examination of fresco in a contemporary context.

The touch-off point for this installation is the design of a 2,500-square-foot speculative home for Hometta, Inc. (Lunar House), which started in early 2008. This exhibition showcases the culmination of davidclovers’ two-year collaboration with Los Angeles-based artist C.E.B. Reas, DuPont China Ltd., Speed Top (Hong Kong) Limited, and E-Grow (Shanghai) on this project.

An exhibition discussion will take place on June 4 with architects David Erdman and Clover Lee and SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss. More information can be found here.

The Stormwater Infrastructure Matters (S.W.I.M.) Coalition invites you to join in for the first view of Minds in the Gutter, a juried exhibit of stormwater management designs for the public right-of-way. We invite you to view the selected designs and participate in a panel discussion among expert dreamers and do-ers in the field of stormwater management.

Event will take place April 22 at 6:30 pm at The Museum of the City of New York. Tickets can be purchased here. For more information, visit the event’s official website.

ModeLab will be conducting a Parametric Design Workshop in New York City, April 24/25. This workshop will engage the conceptual and technical domain of parametric design by introducing participants to systemic processes capable of registering and responding to a range of diverse ecologic criteria.

Emphasis will be placed on workflows that utilize constraint-based design, associative modeling techniques, and environmental influencers to discover novel and inventive design solutions. For more information and details, click here.

As parametric modeling software and parametric thinking become fully integrated into architectural design, the next phase of digital innovation will come from entirely new techniques and technologies.

Cloud computing, directable simulation, self-modeling buildings, and personal supercomputing will suggest new ways to think and to design. In this panel, experts from research and industry will demo and discuss these innovations, exploring how we might be designing architecture ten years from now.

Post Parametric 2 is the second in a series of events that aim to question, broaden, and re-frame the way we think about computing and design.

Panel:

Jonathan Cohen (Senior Research Scientist, NVIDIA)
Eitan Grinspun (Director of Computer Graphics Group and Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University)
Hod Lipson (Associate Professor of Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering and Computing and Information Science, Cornell University)
Miko Matsumura (VP and Chief Strategist, Software AG)
Makai Smith (Product Manager, GenerativeComponents, Bentley Systems)
Moderated by David Benjamin (GSAPP and The Living) and Michael Reed (Columbia Computer Science and Blue Sky Studios)

Debate is this Monday, April 12, at 6:30pm in Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium, GSAPP, Columbia University.

The Rice Design Alliance, The Rice School of Architecture, The Houston Architecture Foundation, and the American Institute of Architects-Houston presents the 2010 Sally Walsh Lecture Program: Luis Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón.

Luis Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón are professors in the Architectural Design Department of the Architecture School of Madrid, and have been visiting professors at several universities, including Princeton University School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, and the Barcelona International Architecture School, among others.

The event will take place next Wednesday, April 7, 7:00 pm at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Brown Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, click here.

Its clear in 2010 perhaps more than ever that significant shifts in economies and culture can occur extremely rapidly; climatic crisis can devastate enormous populations in seconds. Our architectural response is critical. The architectural recourse of one crisis needs to be more than a temporary fix as it is often the only opportunity to implement further preventative measures for a future occurrence.

This workshop exposes digitally-driven technologies aiding the architectural realm in developing design intentions in accordance with environmental, material & production parameters. Workshop explores how to implement TODAY the utilization of advancing technologies whether a student or design professional. Parametric approaches are not limited to the software one uses but more importantly a shift in thinking of multi-phase aspects of an architectural project. Join LaN in forwarding the relevance of these practices to very real-world scenarios.

The three day workshop will take place at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center between April 12-14. For more information, click here.

Sublime Flesh brings together, for the first time, new designs for contemporary spiritual spaces developed by students at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. A collection of research projects located in international cities including Istanbul, Rome, Turin, Lisbon, Havana and Miami, each explores a unique sense of sacredness and the Sublime.

The complex nature of these themes is articulated in a series of exquisite models that express a new ornamental, spatial and technological approach and also a reconsidered religious and cultural dimension for contemporary architecture design.

The exhibition will continue in London Christ Church till April 11. Also, there will be various events through the exhibition. Among those there will be a symposium on Tuesday April 6 14:30-18:30. Speakers are Sir Peter Cook, Marjan Colletti, Rev Rod Green, Robert Harbison, Ali Mangera, Natasha Sandmeier, Yael Reisner, and Marcos Cruz (chair).

For more information, click here.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design hosts some great lectures featuring some of the world’s most important architects. We will be telling you about their events on a monthly basis, so here are the dates of their April events.

April 1 / Science and Democracy Lecture Series: Can We Leave the Bauxite in the Mountain? / Arundhati Roy
April 2-3 / Critical Ecologies / Colloquium, Keynote Speakers Sanford Kwinter, Piet Oudolf, Richard Wrangham
April 6 / Now? Territories and Territoriality / Martha Rosler in conversation with Mohsen Mostafavi
April 6 / Form / John Portman + Jack Portman with Mack Scogin
April 7 / Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Color is not a Decoration / Claude Cormier
April 8 / On the Future of Landscape History / John Dixon Hunt in conversation with Mark Laird
April 12 / Architectural Agency: The Case of Elemental / Alejandro Aravena with Andres Lepik, Toshiko Mori, Hashim Sarkis
April 13 / The Return of Nature: The Nature of Architecture / Peter Eisenman, Jorge Silvetti, Sarah Whiting
April 14 / Discussions in Architecture / Peter Eisenman with Preston Scott Cohen
April 14 / REAI Lecture / Adolfo Carrion, Director of the White House Office on Urban Affairs
April 15-16 / Inside/Out: Exploring Gender and Space in Life, Culture, and Art / Conference
April 16-17 / Cambridge Talks IV: Design Politics / Symposium
April 20 / Digital Culture in Architecture / Antoine Picon
April 21-23 / Design, Infrastructure Sustainability, and Social Responsability / Conference

You can find more on each event on the GSD official website. Every event is free and open to the public.

A new concept of the city has emerged among contemporary urbanists. Architects and planners now frame the city not as a set of independently regulated functions but as a mesh of landscapes, spaces, and policies. Streets, paths, parks, and infrastructure are elements of a constantly shifting system that joins the particularities of place and overarching social goals.

In this new environment, planning tactics, management techniques, policy goals, and fiscal strategies continuously interact. Building on the Fall 2009 “Rights of Way” symposium, “Moving Toward Utopia” addresses questions of power, health, equity, and ecology that confront and are fueled by new design strategies. “Moving Toward Utopia” will bring together a distinguished group of urban thinkers to examine the implications of new approaches to the design of public spaces. What kind of city lies ahead?

Event will take place April 14, 6:30 PM at James Room, 4th floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, NY.

This workshop will introduce participants to the cultural, technological, and tectonic domain of parametric design and digital fabrication in a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment. Over the course of two days, the workshop will involve iterative prototyping and associative design strategies capable of incorporating and embracing an array of material and fabrication constraints. Participants will explore and construct highly articulated material assemblies through computer-aided manufacturing, mold making, and casting.

This workshop is the result of a collaborative effort between Studio Mode and Point.B Design and will provide participants with direct access to a full suite of manual tools for wood, metal, and plastics fabrication in addition to a 3-Axis CNC Mill. Instruction will be provided in the construction of molds, the proper handling of materials and casting, file preparation for working with the mill, as well as a series of parametric design strategies with supporting content.

For more details on the workshop, please click here.

Since 2006, The Festival des Architectures Vives tries to make people aware to architecture giving them tools to understand it by allowing people who live in town to meet people who draw the town.

This Festival offers young architects to propose, think, investigate and experiment new fields of architectural design in relation with the classic town. The courtyards of private mansion are seen with new eyes and it allows to have a global though about architecture in a urban context.

The Festival allows walking in the centre of the city and take time to discover and re-discover it. The courtyards of private houses are thus connected between them with their particular creation by architects coming from all part of the world.

For this 5th edition, 170 teams composed of architects from all over the world (60% where teams from abroad : Spain, Germany, Italy, United States, Chile, Japan, Canada, Brazil, India…) have registered their submission in order to take part in the FAV. For more information, click here.

Here’s an open invitation to Julien De Smedt (JDS Architects) lectuer and agenda book launch in Tokyo, Japan.

The event will take place on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 from 6:00pm till 9:00 pm at the INAX Ginza.

You can RSVP through Facebook and invite your friends to the event. Just click here.

Whatever the uses and abuses of climate research lately, buildings are still said to cause 40 percent of carbon emissions. As such, architects see themselves at the forefront against global warming. But why do most contemporary solutions involve evermore constraints? Indeed, it is now common to hear the argument that more restrictions aid creativity. Doesn’t more freedom aid creativity?

And what about the bureaucracy of carbon bean-counters? From Bioregional, the Carbon Trust and WWF to Biffa, WRAP and BRE, who are these unelected bodies that dictate environmental standards? What is the cost of prioritising carbon measuring, rationing, trading – carbon navel-gazing – in terms of design freedom and critical-thinking?

This, the first of three mantownhuman debates asks: Should architects not maximise – rather than minimise – their footprint? This event will take place March 25th, 7pm at BDP, Brewhouse Yard, London. Find out more here.

On Friday, April 23, 2010, top UK, European and American industry leaders will gather at the Architectural Association in London for a day-long Think Tank to explore solutions that could change the building industry for the better.

Among the firms that will participate are: Adams Kara Tylor London / Atelier Ten / Grimshaw Architects LLP / Foster and Partners / Johnson Controls / Oldcastle Glass/ Arup / Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners / Turner Construction / Werner Sobek / NG Bailey Off-Site

The Think Tank will consist of three 90 minute sessions of a series of “pecha-kucha” style short presentations followed by roundtable discussions. The C-BIP London Think Tank is the second in a series hosted by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and generously underwritten by Oldcastle Glass®.

For more information on this event, click here.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design hosts some great lectures featuring some of the world’s most important architects. We will be telling you about their events on a monthly basis, so here are the dates of their March events:

March 23 / Unsmooth Work / Homa Farjadi
March 24 / Now? Works and Humanitarian Activities / Shigeru Ban in conversation with Mohsen Mostafavi
March 24 / “Fear in a Handful of Dust”: Topographies of Accumulation, Excess and Waste / Cindi Katz
March 30 / On how difficulties-contingencies improve the work of the architect / Rafael Moneo
March 31 / The Return of Nature: The Nature of Information / Elizabeth Diller, Antoine Picon

You can find more on each event on the GSD official website.

Serpentine Gallery / Olafur Eliasson

Feelings are Facts will showcase the first collaboration between the Danish-Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson, and leading Chinese architect, Ma Yansong (check MAD Architects projects on ArchDaily). Eliasson and Ma will create for UCCA a unique experience through architecture, fog and light. Eliasson is known for his exploration of the human perception, and he often works with light, shadows, color, water, wind, or fog to create a specific environment in order to move us to think about our experience of our surroundings – perceptions we usually take to be self-evident.

Ma’s architecture stands at the forefront of new experimentation in building structures, refashioning form in bold pursuits of perfection. Their collaboration is specifically designed for UCCA’s big hall inviting the Chinese audience to enter an endless space of fog, with color emanating from fluorescent tubes of red, green and blue. By moving through the space, the colors blend, and so the viewers will endlessly create their own color spectrums.

The exhibition will be open on 4th April 2010 and last until 6th June 2010.

Landscapes of Quarantine features new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine.

Landscapes of Quarantine began with an eight-week independent design studio directed by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley of Future Plural. Each Tuesday evening, from October to December 2009, a multi-disciplinary group of studio participants met to discuss the spatial implications of quarantine and develop their own creative response: the resulting work forms the core of the Landscapes of Quarantine exhibition.

Exhibition starts March 10 till April 17 at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. For more information, click here.

Emblematic figure of French architecture, Dominique Perrault gained international recognition after having won the competition for the National French library in 1989 at the age of 36. This project marked the starting point of many other public and private commissions abroad, such as the Velodrome and Olympic Swimming Pool of Berlin in 1992, the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg in 1996, the Olympic Tennis Center in Madrid in 2002, the campus of EWHA Womans University in Seoul.

Since 2009, Dominique Perrault is working on the development of the Thermal Baths in San Pellegrino, the New City Center in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, the new FFS train station district in Locarno, Switzerland, the Grand Theatre in Albi and the Dobrée Museum in Nantes, France.

Dominique Perrault has been appointed by the French President to curate the French Pavilion for the 12th Venice Architecture Bienniale.

Lecture will take place this Friday, February 26 at 6:30pm at the Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium, Columbia GSAPP.

Grand architecture versus right architecture is the topic of this year’s International Convention of Architecture that will be held on March 6 at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Budapest, Hungary.

Highly recognized architects invited from around the globe such as Eduardo Souto de Moura, Tony Fretton, Édouard François, Heinz Tesar and Petra Čeferin will hold lectures to present an overview of trends in architecture in Hungary and abroad. This event has become a tradition over the last seven years, having grown into the most important event for the architect community in Hungary.

For the complete program and more information on the convention, please click here.