Featured: The Latest Architecture and News

Architects: Morphosis Architects Location: 1638 Tennessee St, New Orleans, LA 70117, USA Project Year: 2009 Project Area: 88.0 sqm Photographs: Iwan Baan

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Architects: Make Architects Location: Weihai, Shandong, China Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Shu He

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Architects: Framework Architects, Studio Prototype Location: Gabriël Metsustraat, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Design Team: Maarten ter Stege, Jeroen Spee, Jeroen Steenvoorden, Thomas Geerlings Project Year: 2011 Project Area: 250.0 sqm Photographs: Jeroen Musch

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The London 2012 Olympics start today, and once again architecture is on the spotlight. With a big focus on reusable and adaptable structures, the lineup includes renowned architecture firms such as Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Hopkins Architects, Populous and Zaha Hadid Architects.

On this infographic we introduce you the iconic buildings of the Olympics since 776 B.C. until today! Follow our London 2012 Olympics coverage in its dedicated page.

There is no other comic saga more influenced by architecture than Batman. Gotham, and the fictional architects that built the city, have been main characters since the first plots. Writer and architect Jimmy Stamp describes in these essay the fascinating architectural references and metaphors that have filled Batman stories for the last 60 years.

Batman, Gotham City, and an Overzealous Architecture Historian With a Working Knowledge of Explosives

By Jimmy Stamp

New York, Dubai, Tokyo, Moscow, Gotham. Every city in every atlas—real and fictional— has a unique character shaped by history and geography. More than a mere sense of place derived from architecture and planning, cities have a feeling that pervades the consciousness of those who live there until themselves become a a piece of the urban fabric, a fractional embodiment of the city itself. Perhaps more than any other person—real or fictional—Batman is integrally linked to his city, the city he has sworn to protect. In every sense of the word, he is a true avatar of Gotham. And Gotham City itself is an avatar, not only of the dreams of its fictional architects, but of our collective urban paranoia.

Read the full post after the break

Journey through the flawless space of the Daeyang Gallery & House in South Korea and learn about the ideas behind the design from the legendary architect himself, Steven Holl.

Created by the architectural filmmakers from Spirit of Space, the first video takes you on a tour through the “miniature utopia” of the Daeyang Gallery & House. Although the notion of music plays as an underlining theme throughout the design, Holl encourages visitors to focus on the feelings that arise as the body moves through the space. He believes that “architecture can change the way you feel, like music… it can bring you into another world.”

Back in 2010, we featured the Aquatic Centre for the Southamerican Games designed by LCLAOFFICE + Edgar Mazo + Sebastián Mejia (former Paisajes Emergentes). Today, we have an amazing video of the Aquatic Centre that Cristobal Palma shared with us.

You can check some more videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

(Watch our full interview with Michael Graves here)

Matthias Kisch from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Amy Linford from Newcastle University have won first and special awards respectively in this year’s Troldtekt Award just announced. Architectural and design students from 23 countries entered the concept competition, submitting an extensive array of creative and original ideas about how Troldtekt’s traditional acoustic panels can be used. More information on the winners, images and videos after the break.

Columbia University has been at the forefront of medical education for more than two centuries, as it was the first medical school in the United States to award the M.D. degree in 1770. Now, the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has announced plans for a new, state-of-the-art medical and graduate education building that reflects how they believe medicine is and should be taught, learned and practiced in the 21st century.

Located on the CUMC campus in the Washington Heights community of Northern Manhattan, the 14-story facility will aim to achieve LEED Gold certification and incorporate technologically advanced classrooms, collaboration spaces, and a modern simulation center. The design is led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with Gensler as executive architect.

Continue after the break for more details!

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Usually, architecture photographers are architects themselves, but today we want to show the work of Israeli photographer Erieta Attali, an actual photographer who started working related to archeology and science, and then got involved with architecture after working throughout Japan covering this country's Contemporary Glass Architecture.

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1. When and how did you start photographing architecture?

In a call for a Sustainable New York City, Mayor Bloomberg stated: “Given that buildings account for more than 80 percent of all municipal greenhouse gas emissions, constructing buildings with energy-efficient features is essential to reducing those emissions, and DDC plays a critically important role in that work.”

This is a great idea for new construction, but what about the existing, aging buildings? Most older buildings were built in a time when energy costs were low and the exterior walls were used less for energy performance and more for structural integrity. Knocking these buildings down to start over would cause a greater environmental impact due to the tons of waste material that would need to be discarded. So, what is the solution? REskin. DesignByMany‘s challenges you to cleverly reskin a decaying urban building on the corner of Broadway and Reade St in New York City. Submissions can range from a focused investigation to an entire reskinning of the building.

The REskin challenge is sponsored by Autodesk and media partners ArchDaily. Winners will receive a full license of Autodesk Revit Architecture 2013. Check out the building and learn more after the break!

Yesterday afternoon, inside the playground of MoMA PS 1, we met Wendy - HWKN’s temporary summer installation for the 2012 Young Architects Program. As an experiment in pushing the boundaries of what architecture can do in an urban environment, Wendy certainly makes an impression. Her blue spiky arms shoot passed the confines of PS 1′s courtyard walls, immediately attracting the attention and piquing the curiosity of those meandering along Jackson Street. Conceptualized as a storm, Wendy intends to challenge the public’s notion of what architecture should be, as the structure’s ecological function will actually clean the air. ”Wendy does not play the typical architecture game of ecological apology – instead she is pro-active,” explained HWKN.

More about Wendy after the break.

After his architecture studies at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), Cristobal Palma worked as an assistant in London for a couple years, a time where he honed his photography skills. After this experience he took a more independent route working for some of the best architects in Chile and most renowned publications in the world.

As you may have noticed, since last year we’ve featured a series of Architecture Videos by Palma, the latest of his artistic endeavours that enable us to experience the projects in a different way. Considering this type of media offers a completely new range of opportunities for both architects and publications, we think it’s worth getting to know Palma and his professional journey incorporating audio-visual elements to the representation of architectural projects. The video above, Cristobal’s first completed video and now published online for the first time, presents the España Library in Medellin-Colombia, one of the most iconic buildings of this city’s renovation.

You can read an interview with Palma after the break.

LAVA, the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, and Designsport collaborated with local Ethiopian firm JDAW to win the international architecture competition for a national stadium and sports village, held by the Federal Sport Commission, Ethiopia. Now, football and athletics-loving Ethiopians will have a new FIFA and Olympic-standard 60,000 seat stadium in Addis Ababa thanks to a design that combines local identity with new technology. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Here is our interview with Kevin Alter, founder of Austin-based firm Alter Studio architects. Not only is the Harvard graduate an internationally recognized architect, but he has also been a visiting critic, reviewer, lecturer and visiting professor for a number of institutions worldwide.

Have you ever dreamed of customizing you own house and transforming it into… maybe an indoor skatepark? In collaboration with Redbull, that’s exactly what Philipp Schuster did in an old house in Slazburg, Austria. It’s an inspiring DIY project with a good deal of concrete bags and a few hard working friends. You can watch the construction process video after the break.

Public Interest Design is the next frontier of the sustainability movement. Taking a triple bottom line approach, it positions design to more tconsider economic, environmental, and social factors - creating better places, products, and systems for people to live their best lives. Inherently human-centered and participatory, public interest design seeks to improve the quality of life for all people, regardless of their socio-economic background.