We share with you another stunning video by visual artist Luis Urculo. Since the opening of his studio in 2006, Urculo’s videos have become well known and highly respected throughout the architecture industry. His newest video, Covers, is an original piece that assembles a variety of objects to physically represent modern architectural icons.

Construction of Richard Meier’s Shenzhen Clubhouse is nearing completion. Unique geometry fully clad in white metal panels play with overlays of solid and void, unmistakably consistent with the Richard Meier signature style. Being located on an island in the center of OCT Bay, the facility is surrounded by large bodies of water and lush gardens. The Shenzhen Clubhouse is scheduled to be completed early next year.

Continue reading for the architects project description, photographs, renderings and drawings.

Architects: Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP Location: Shenzhen, China Project Area: 11,000 sqm Completion: 2012 Photographs: Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP

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SFMOMA reveals the design for the museums new expansion, designed by the Norway-based architecture firm Snøhetta. The expansion transforms the current Mario Botta-designed building into a scale that “meets the museum’s mission.” Increased public circulation, flexible gallery space and intuitive navigation are a few of the projects main goals.

Continue after the break for more information, images and video.

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Architect: KMD Architects Location: Seattle, Washington Project area: 5,225 sqf Construction cost: $930,000 (est.) Project Year: 2011 Owner/Tenant: The Bertschi School Photographs: Benjamin Benschneider

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This month, UNStudio’s Ponte Parodi, a waterfront design for Genoa, Italy, will be presented at the MAPIC in Cannes as one of the most iconic waterfront developments currently being realized. The harbor project is part of a larger vision to revitalize the entire waterfront area, and merge the local urban and economic fabric to create a point of interest for Genoa’s varied waterfront users. The juxtaposition of varied circulation typologies creates an innovative extension for the city center which not only organizes the position of the program, but also optimizes pedestrian flows within and atop the building.

More about the waterfront after the break.

The proposal by Capella Garcia Arquitectura is designed for a music-themed upscale Hotel Competition in Jurmala. The resort town, located on the Latvian coast of the Baltic Sea, in the Gulf of Riga, can be described as a polycentric, linear city between the Gulf of Riga and river Lielupe, formed of several historical fishing villages. From the 19th century onwards, the city has transformed into seaside resorts, but Jurmala is also well known for its musical heritage, so they believed the surrounding environment must not be ignored.

Jurmala’s main focus nowadays is on leisure and its related programs and the greatest environmental advantage is the proximity to the Baltic sea. What do music and the sea have in common? How can it be related to architecture? How can the new building fit in Jurmala’s cityscape? Their concept was guided by these questions. More images and architects’ description after the break.

CollectiveArchitects shared with us their proposal for the Istanbul Disaster Prevention and Education Center. Their building design is articulated according to the four natural elements – earth, fire, air and water. A main atrium is dedicated to each element. These atriums are also orientation points, which makes going around the building easier and more clear. Furthermore, well illuminated by natural light, the atriums provide visitors places where they can relax after what they have experienced in the adjoining rooms. There are no particular actions pre-determined in those spaces. There can be projections on the walls, exhibition of drawings and sculptures or light and sound experiences. These can be changed periodically and attract also the people that have already visited the center. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The intention of Design Initiatives in the ThyssenKrupp Elevator Istanbul Disaster Prevention and Education Center Competition is to organize a joyful, integral space where man reconciles with nature. In addition to animate forms, they have manipulated the movement in order to induce the production of new urban opportunities. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architects: Ricardo Uson, ACXT Arquitectos / Antonio Lorén Collado, Eduardo Aragüés Rioja Location: Zaragoza, Spain Project Director: Antonio Lorén Collado Assistants: Olatz Maestre, Jose Angel Ruiz, Raimundo Bambo Project Management: Antonio Lorén Collado Civil Engineer: Fernando Lopez, Cristina Salavera Project Year: 2009 Project Area: 44.000 sqm Photographs: Antonio Ceruelo & Aitor Ortiz

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In a three-level peer review process that resulted in two first-prize winners, an urban planning concept was developed by J. MAYER H. Architects for the area of what was once the post office on Erkrather Strasse. The so-called “Quartier M” is to serve as the future link between the Hauptbahnhof central station and Tanzhaus NRW/Capitol, becoming a lively city quarter for living and working. In addition to offices and a hotel, the trend-setting urban design also provides for both privately financed and government subsidized public housing. Other plans include space for a day care center for children and service providers for the quarter. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Help choose which architectural masterpiece will become the next LEGO® Architecture model. The top nominees include Moshe Safdie’s prefabricated Montreal residential complex Habitat 67, London’s second tallest building known as ‘The Gherkin‘ by Foster & Partners and the famous Taiwanese high-rise Taipei 101. Cast your votes HERE and tell us which building is your favorite!

As the Highline has everyone looking up, James Ramsey and Dan Barasch are asking people to start looking down. James Ramsey’s vision to transform the abandoned Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal into a subterranean park filled with sunlight and lush vegetation is gaining international attention and support. The satellite engineer turned architect has developed a skylight using fiber-optic technology that will naturally light and bring life to this forgotten, graffiti-covered cavity below the streets of New York City.

Continue reading for more information, video and exclusive statements from Ramsey and Barasch.

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Schmidt Hammer Lassen architects has recently won the international architectural competition to design a 188 meter office tower in the financial district of central Warsaw, Poland. The 60,000 m2 high-rise building is to replace the existing ‘Ilmet’ building and will stand out as a modern landmark clearly identifiable in the Warsaw skyline by its unique elegant shape and appearance. The Jury was impressed by the high quality and innovation evident in the urban, architectural and technical concepts of the winning design. The future building will offer a number of attractive public areas and serve to complement the project’s prominent setting, as well as the entire neighborhood.

Sustainability was an important issue as the building is designed to reduce energy consumption with the goal of qualifying for the highest levels of sustainability certifications as BREEAM Excellent or LEED Gold status. More images and project description after the break.

Joao Pereira de Sousa, Architect & founder of BRAVDESIGN, recently shared with us an interview he did with Architect/Illustrator Philipp Schaerer.

As an ETH-trained Architect, Philipp Schaerer (1972) currently works as a freelance image designer. He is specialised in digital montage techniques and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). After graduating from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) as an architect in 2000, Philipp Schaerer worked as an Architect, knowledge manager and image creator in the field of digital image editing for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel during six years (2000-2006). He created many well known architectural visualisations for this office and has substantially influenced the visual language of today’s established architectural visualizations. During his four years working as a research assistant at the chair of Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) at the Faculty of Architecture (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) under Prof. Dr. Ludger Hovestadt, he was able to continuously develop his knowledge in the area of digital image techniques. He gives lectures and conducts workshops at several universities in Switzerland.

Floating Baths, designed by Ondrej Lipensky and Andrea Kubna, on the Vltava River in Prague is conceived as a closed rounded space, floating on the water surface. Since the waterfront of the river is a problematic issue here in the city, the architects thought about a function that would get local people into the center again. The floating object is accessible by boat and is not connected to the banks of the river. It is an island and in close distance to Strelecky and Slovansky Island, many small harbors with boats and treadles, but also streets overloaded with cars, is a place to take a rest during the busy day for meeting friends. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Piran Days of Architecture (PDA) is an international architectural conference with one of the oldest traditions in the world. First presented in 1983 it is held every year at the end of November in the charming, medieval Slovene town Piran. The aim of the conference is to asses current trends in architecture and to present the most progressive and innovative ideas of architectural and spatial production. The conference is traditionally accompanied by several architectural exhibitions. The most important is the international architectural exhibition of recent works by Central European architects which compete for the distinguished international Piranesi Award, which went to Marte.Marte Architekten this year. More images and information on the winners after the break.

Architects: Ren Tian, Gu Lik Hang, Patchara Wongboonsin Location: Cambridge, MA, USA Project Area: 144 sqf Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Ren Tian, Patchara Wongboonsin

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Navy Pier officials listed the five design teams selected to compete in the final phase of the Navy Pier competition. Each international design team, consisting of architects, urban designers, landscape architects and many other design professionals, is required to submit design proposals for the Chicago Pierscape and undergo an oral interview with officials. The schematic designs will be exhibited to the public in early February and the winning proposal will be announced later that month.

The five teams selected are lead by AECOM, Aedas Architects, James Corner Field Operations, !melk and the Xavier Vendrell Studio – the only team lead by a Chicagoan. Continue reading after the break for the complete list of the teams.

As the SCI-Arc students finalize their thesis projects each September, they join the faculty in an annual ritual of constructing a temporary pavilion that will host that year’s graduation ceremony. Produced by Them Too Productions, this video documents the development and fabrication of Netscape, the 2011 SCI-Arc Graduation Pavilion by Oyler Wu Collaborative and the students of SCI-Arc. View ArchDaily’s detailed coverage of the 2011 pavilion HERE.

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The Asia Pacific winners of the Holcim Awards for sustainable construction were recently announced in Singapore. The Holcim Awards is an international competition that recognizes innovative projects and future-oriented concepts on regional and global levels. The competition is designed to encourage architects, planners, engineers and project owners to go beyond conventional notions of sustainable construction in their work and to harmonize ecological, social and economic concerns. Projects and concepts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and related fields are eligible for entry in the competition. More images and information on the winning competition proposals after the break.

Our friends from Weiss/Manfredi have shared their Portal to the Point Design Ideas Exploration proposal, a project exploring the connection between city and the environment for Point State Park in the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Currently, Point State Park, which is located at the geographic epicenter of Pittsburgh, does not take advantage of its potential to bridge the city, which is built on industrial accomplishments, with the river banks of the Allegheny and the Monogahela, both of which have granted Pittsburgh a prosperous ecological history. Weiss/Manfredi’s proposal attempts to stitch the city and its river banks together with a new brigde typology, a Mobius Pathway that is “not about the singular act of connecting two disparate parts, but about the comprehensive connectivity of a larger network.”

More about the Mobius Pathway after the break.

AWP, a Paris-based architecture firm, was named in July the general contractor for the landscaping of the public spaces and follies situated at the foot of the Grande Arche. The site, located near the future Arena 92 in the Jardins de l’Arche neighborhood, serves as a space for genuine interchange between La Défense and Seine-Arche. The urbanists at AWP are equally responsible for a guide plan for Defacto that will enhance the urban space of La Défense’s business district. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Above is a video for the Research Centre of the University of Jussieu, the competition winning design by BIG and OFF architects. The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open green park of the Jussieu Campus will become a significant addition to the campus, strengthening the international appeal and openness of the leading French University for Science and Medicine.