Documenting Richard Meier’s career this video starts at the beginning with Meier’s acceptance to Cornell along with his earliest projects. Included within the documentary is a description by Meier and fellow alumni Peter Eisenman about The New York Five, video footage of Meier’s Getty Center along with a lecture by Meier in ’92 describing his architecture.

The building authority of the canton Graubünden set up a competition for an extension of the local school complex in Chur, including a new media centre (‘Mediothek’), a cafeteria and an additional building for new lecture halls.

In order to comply with the given space allocation plan this design, by Marc Anton Dahmen & Studio DMTW, allots two separate parts of the envisaged structure. All functions of the cafeteria and ‘Mediothek’ are combined in a single building which is located directly at the assemblage point between the already existing lecture facilities (Cleric & Bio Cleric), the sports facilities Badi Sand, and the planned new connection with the institutions sitting (among others Kanti Halde). The second building hosts the new lecture halls and complements the presently existing ensemble consisting of the Cleric and Bio-Cleric enhancing the schoolyard’s fourth spatial edge. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Australian architects and designers Studio 505 are currently completing a series of iconic projects in a new cultural precinct in Victoria’s ‘sister state’ Jiangsu Province in China.

Located in Wujin in the Changzhou precinct, the 3.5 hectare Lotus Park has been designed to be occupied throughout the year with festivals and functions throughout the day and night. The design establishes a clear and active programme of functions and includes the W Gallery, a new museum of contemporary art and many new entertainment and restaurant venues. The themes of environmental sustainability, education, recreation and community focused arts programmes are key to the establishment and success of the park programme. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The New Taipei City Museum of Art (NCArt) should propose a new paradigm for celebrating art in Taipei, one that brings lifestyle, art, recreation and education together to celebrate the vibrant cultural identity of the community. The fusion of art with all aspects of one’s daily experience is driven by ideas about the intrinsic relationship between art and life relevant in Taiwan’s popular contemporary culture. The new museum seeks to embody these ideas and provide an iconic venue for the spontaneous unfolding of contemporary life.

Here’s the proposal Zerafa Architecture Studio presented for this project.

Adrian Lo, a budding architect, shared with us his first prize winning proposal for the Tropical Architecture Design Competition for Institutes of Higher Learning. His concept, “Architoptoe,” is defined as any architecture that is designed to fit a specific “social-urban-environmental biotope”. i.e. a design through understanding a city or a macro-area as a ecological system (a natural system evolved through a set of cultural, social, economical, historical and environmental rules.) Each archi-biotope is a small-scale zone with unique events and programs that are mixed and hybridized. More images and project description after the break.

Through the Gresham Smith Competition (an annual program sponsored by Gresham Smith and Partners), the Ball State University, College of Architecture and Planning, Department of Architecture, with support from the College of Architecture and Planning, Indianapolis Center (CAP: IC) has offered to assist the Julia Carson Legacy of Love Foundation in consolidating the objectives of its mission to realize the Julia Carson Community Center by facilitating community participatory engagement through a programmatic and conceptual design competition. More about the project and competition winners after the break.

Opened on July 19th the new Museum of Liverpool by 3XN serves as a meeting point for history, the people of Liverpool, and visitors from around the globe. Featured on ArchDaily in July (see the full project feature here) photographer José Campos recently shared with us his photographs of this impressive museum.

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The well established and nationally recognized architecture firm Brooks + Scarpa (2010 AIA National Firm of the Year) recently decided to shake things up a bit. “Our office has turned more into a conventional office over the years, and I was just really looking for something that could become a glorified cabinet shop where we could actually work and make things, have the space to do that, and have some outdoor space to build bigger things,” shares Larry Scarpa.

KKA (Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture) presents three architectural dreams consisting of stories and images. In a time when architecture has become increasingly obsessed with shape and surface, they wanted to explore other fields of the profession. KKA wanted to envision alternative futures and societies, to fantasize and write their stories, proposing the unexpected. More project description after the break.

On view at the CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture) from 22 September to 8 January 2012, Modernism in Miniature: Points of View explores the encounter between photography and architectural model-making between c.1920 -1960.

Curated by Davide Deriu, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Westminster, London, the exhibition focuses on model photography as a distinctive genre. It proposes an inextricable link with the so-called ‘model boom’ and the explosion of mass media, where miniatures reached out to a wide public and, in some cases, acquired a cult status that has endured to this day. More information on the event after the break.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music has received a generous $9.2 million gift from Bard alumnus László Z. Bitó, class of 1960, for the construction of The László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building. This state-of-the-art teaching and performance facility addresses the growing needs of the Conservatory, brought on by its fivefold growth since its founding in 2005. With an anticipated completion date of January 2013, the building is scheduled to begin construction in October. The design of the building, by Deborah Berke & Partners Architects, supports the Conservatory’s dedication to providing top-level musical training in the context of a liberal arts education. More project description after the break.

The Zagreb Society of Architects is launching the fourth and the last competition for this year’s Think Space cycle – Moral Borders. For this year’s annual cycle, the main theme connecting all four competitions is Borders

Next week we will be taking our Architecture City Guide to Lisbon and we need your help. To make the City Guides more engaging we are asking for your input on which designs should comprise our weekly list of 12. In order for this to work we will need you, our readers, to suggest a few of your favorite modern/contemporary buildings for the upcoming city guide in the comment section below. Along with your suggestions we ask that you provide a link to an image you took of the building that we can use, the address of the building, and the architect. (The image must be from a site that has a Creative Common License cache like Flickr or Wikimedia. We cannot use images that are copyrighted unless they are yours and you give us permission.) From that we will select the top 12 most recommended buildings. Hopefully this method will help bring to our attention smaller well done projects that only locals truly know. With that in mind we do not showcase private single-family residences for obvious reasons. Additionally, we try to only show completed projects.

Yesterday we showed you a preview, and here it is the full interview with one of the most influential contemporary architects.

Architect, educator, and theorist, internationally recognized Peter Eisenman was a part of an important generation of architects and popularized amongst the general public when he was exhibited at the MoMA in 1969 as one of the New York Five. Eisenman, along with Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, and Richard Meier (Eisenman’s second cousin) made up the ‘group of architects whose work, represented a return to the formalism of early modern rationalist architecture’.

Eisenman earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University, a Master of Science in Architecture degree from Columbia University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University (U.K). He founded an international think tank for architecture, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), serving as director until 1982 and simultaneously established his own architecture firm.

As an educator, Eisenman has taught at some of the most prestigious architecture programs including the Yale School of Architecture, Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard, and Ohio State universities.

Peter Eisenman’s work ranges from large-scale housing and urban design to educational institutions and private houses. Often labeled as a deconstructivist Eisenman is also known for his intricate drawings. He has been recognized for his design abilities receiving the Medal of Honor from the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2001, the Smithsonian Institution’s 2001 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, and he was also awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale.

In 2006 Eisenman’s design for the University of Phoenix Stadium for the Arizona Cardinals earned him the label as one of the top five innovators of 2006 according to Popular Science.

Eisenman’s most recent book Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-2000 revisits some of the most important buildings of the past century with a critical view, a must read for every architect.

Projects by Eisenman previously featured at ArchDaily:

• The City of Culture
• House VI

“I can hear with my knee better than with my calves.” This statement made by Bernhard Leitner, which initially seems absurd, can be explained in light of an interest that he still pursues today with unbroken passion and meticulousness: the study of the relationship between sound, space, and body. Since the late 1960s, Bernhard Leitner has been working in the realm between architecture, sculpture, and music, conceiving of sounds as constructive material, as architectural elements that allow a space to emerge. Sounds move with various speeds through a space, they rise and fall, resonate back and forth, and bridge dynamic, constantly changing spatial bodies within the static limits of the architectural framework. Idiosyncratic spaces emerge that cannot be fixed visually and are impossible to survey from the outside, audible spaces that can be felt with the entire body. Leitner speaks of “corporeal” hearing, whereby acoustic perception not only takes place by way of the ears, but through the entire body, and each part of the body can hear differently.

- George Kargl, Fine Arts Vienna

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With a new firm name and a unique offer, Design Farm announced their new offer: Free Schematic Design Services to Individuals, Non-profits, Small Businesses and Developers. This is the essence of what makes this competition so unique. You submit the building project while you get to ride along through the design process from a licensed architecture firm.

The exciting competition titled “On the House” allows three lucky nominees to be chosen to work with a licensed architect to develop a complete schematic design package including preliminary floor plans, elevations, and 3D renderings of the selected project . If you like what Design Farm designs for your project, you can hire them to take it through the completion of the project. If you do not like what they put together for you, it is still on the house although they will retain the copyright. More information on the competition after the break.

Our friends over at OFIS Arhitekti recently sent us a copy of their latest book that showcases their work, which includes a foreword from David Basulto, Founder & Editor of ArchDaily. We have featured a good deal of the projects featured in this book. If you would like a preview of what book offers check out our features, including a short interview and the Farewell Chapel, ArchDaily’s viewers’ choice for the 2009 building of the year in the religious category. Also check out part of David Basulto’s forward to this book after the break.

On the occasion to the 7th Festival of the Lively Architectures in Montpelier, Champ Libre association throws a call for applications to realize 10 interventions.

The Festival is part of the city heart of Montpellier; it will take place in the heart of Montpellier and more specifically in the courtyards of certain town house. At the same time it will be proposed a course to the visitors, goes out of architectural discovery in the city heart. Deadline for all submissions is December 15th. More information after the break.

The proposal for the Saint-Laurent’s Sports Complex by DATA Architects finds its balance between the partial restructuring of the existing gymnasium and the construction of a new figure to the simple geometry and resolved, a quadrilateral with sides slightly curved, which refers to the site while inspired by the dominant archetype of this type of sports equipment. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Malta Design Week‘s primary purpose is to provide a platform for the expanding local design talent to interact and experience work and designers from a broad international scene, right at home. Fashioned to promote and celebrate good design, this seven-day event, from October 1st-8th, will be spread across cultural and commercial venues around Malta.

Having its base in the capital – Valletta, but also spilling and spreading across several satellite-event hosting venues – MDW aims to place various design disciplines on the same platform. It will host exhibitions, talks, workshops and launches bringing together local and foreign designers, architects, artists, artisans, journalists, critics, academics and entrepreneurs.

More information on the event after the break.

The 2011 MIPIM Asia Awards recently announced that Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) garnered five awards out of the 29 awarded, the largest number of awards won by a single architectural firm. Recognized for the Inernational Commerce Centre in HongKong, Wheelock Square in Shanghai, the Abu Dhabi International Midfield Complex, the Xintiandi Hotels, and Singapore’s Marina Bay Financial Centre, KPF will receive their prizes at the prestigious Awards Gala Dinner on November 16.

KPF was one of the first US architecture firms to start working in China, and has had a strong presence there for over 20 years, including growing offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong. These five awards serve as an affirmation of KPF’s unmatched experience and leadership in the region.

ArchDaily sat down with Eugen Kohn and Bill Pedersen back in February. The AD interview with KPF can be viewed here.

What was first apparent was that the trailers floated on little orange steel jacks, precariously sitting up on pins. Fat grey bodies on insect feet. They looked like they could have been knocked over by bullies in the night. Whomsoever wished to disturb these foreign elements could have penetrated their thin paneling and blown them apart, or burned them down. An angry mob could have scattered them over the city or put them in shopping carts and carted them away to underpasses and bus shelters. Such was the confidence and audacity of the academy, that it could abandon all shelter and camp out in this empty heart.

A failing, ragged chainlink fence ringed the perimeter of the dirt lot. There were tumbleweeds picking up little bits of indescribable trash and continuing along until they hit the fence where they formed sculpted dunes of tangled, dangerous-looking junk. This was ground zero of the new Green Zone in the bad backyard of Rayner Banham’s city—the fifth ecology, Darwinian drifter, evolved and sampled from the other four and distributed across the late-capitalist grid. This was the future. But other parts of the city had been promised similar futures in the past. Joan Didion would remember that. The school was counting on it. The kids would come. They would come with their student loans and their trust funds, their hair, Puma’s and hope.

It’s our 8th selection of previously featured educational projects and we’re still featuring great posts from 2009! Check them all after the break.

Erika Mann Elementary School / Die Baupiloten Following the successful modernization of the Erika-Mann Elementary School in the Utrechter Strasse 25/27 – 13347 Berlin, the Baupiloten have now designed the building’s interior for all-day use. With new seating-landscapes and worlds of recreation, the Baupiloten – together with the schoolchildren – expanded upon the concept of a comfortable learning environment to include the school’s hallways and classrooms (read more…)

Jeanne Gang, principal and founder of Studio Gang Architects, has been named as one of this years prestigious MacArthur Fellows. The second female recipient in architecture selected for the grant (Elizabeth Diller from Diller Scofidio + Renfro was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999), Gang is among a total of 22 recipients who will receive $500,000 in no-strings-attached support over the next five years. The recipients fields are quite broad ranging anywhere from biologist to radio producer, but regardless of their chosen profession all were selected for their ‘creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future’.

“This has been a year of great change and extraordinary challenge, and we are once again reminded of the potential individuals have to make a difference in the world and shape our future,” said Robert Gallucci, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “The MacArthur Fellows exemplify how individual creativity and talent can spark new insights and ideas in every imaginable field of human endeavor.”