The lecture will take place at the Art Institute of Chicago on Wednesday, June 29 at 6:30 p.m. Their talk, organized by the museum’s Architecture & Design Society, will be given in the museum’s Rubloff Auditorium. The cost is $15 for the general public, $10 for society members, and $5 for students with a valid ID. For more information, please click here.

Young Greek architects Dimos Moysiadis and Xaris Tsitsikas, have just shared their latest project, an architecture competition entry for the redesign of the central square in Kozani, Greece. The proposal is focusing on a redesign of the public space for hosting various social activities while composing an attractive pole for gathering people of all ages 24 hours a day. The proposed design philosophy was developed by considering the square as the kernel of social everyday life. For additional images and a brief description, follow after the break.

The Brooklyn architecture team Popular Architecture has recently had their proposal for Cinema Pushinsky shortlisted in DuPont’s 2011 Changing the Face competition. Further images of their proposed restoration and a brief narrative after the jump.

This week, with the help of our readers, we visited Indianapolis for our Architecture City Guide. Our readers suggested a lot of really nice buildings and we greatly appreciate their help. Indianapolis’s numerous sporting events and conventions continually draw crowds to this industrious state capital throughout the year. It is only fitting that there is an architecture city guide for its various contemporary buildings. As a seat of government and industry, Indianapolis also boasts a nice variety of historic architecture that is worth seeing. Take a look at the list our readers help put together and add your favorites to the comment section below.

The Architecture City Guide: Indianapolis list and corresponding map after the break.

Check out this crazy project we found headed by Armin Blasbichler with 21 students from the School of Design and Crafts at the University of Innsbruck. The task challenged the students (known as Blasbichlers Twentyone) to analyze a local bank and exploit the bank’s weaknesses by planning a robbery. According to Blasbichler, planning this robbery builds upon key aspects of an architectural mind such as the ability to constantly re-imagine and re-think. In a broader scope, the project questions the value of this kind of immaterial architecture to see whether “architecture itself of any monetary value.”

In an interview from We Make Money Not Art more about the project is revealed.

Back in February we shared with you that part of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address focused on highlighting future plans for making American businesses more energy efficient. The Better Buildings Initiative (BBI) that the President proposed would invest in innovative clean energy technologies, aiming to increase energy efficiency in commercial by 20 percent in the next ten years.

Two churches, two chapels, and one temple. Check our seventh selection of previously featured religious architecture after the break.

Kuokkala Church / Lassila Hirvilammi The wish of the Parish of Jyväskylä was to build “a church that looks like a church”. Our proposal was a simple, sculptural form within which all of the church’s different functions could be contained. The design is “of our time”, yet permeated with nods to and re-interpretations of church-building tradition (read more…)

In September 2008, HKSARG and SMPG jointly announced the implementation of a new BCP at Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai in the north-eastern New Territories of Hong Kong and Luohu in Shenzhen to serve the cross-boundary goods vehicles and passengers travelling between Hong Kong (HK) and Shenzhen (SZ) East. The new BCP will connect with the Shenzhen Eastern Corridor and provide an efficient access across the boundary to the SZ East, Huizhou, various cities in Guangdong East, and the adjacent provinces such as Fujian and Jiangxi.

Directed with respect for all views and spatial elements of the incredible energized given space, the concept for the Beton Hala Waterfront by Pero Vukovic, in collaboration with Branka Vukovic, becomes a zone of overlap of the two natural barriers, park/forest (Kalemegdan) and the rivers Sava and Danube, where a huge value of the area belongs to their confluence. More images and architects’ description after the break.

If you happen to be in San Francisco this evening, June 21st, you might want to attend SPUR’s Pecha Kucha Night. Starting at 6:30 you can hear and see designers, thinkers and doers cover a range of topics around population growth and its effects on building, open space, transit and you in Pecha Kucha’s world-famous, rapid-fire format. Speakers will present 20 slides (20 seconds per slide), making for a fast, furious and fun celebration of urbanism. This event is generously sponsored by the Koret Foundation. Cosponsored by the SFAIA, SFHAC, and Pecha Kucha San Francisco. For more information click here: Pecha Kucha Night

BIG

With the modeLab Parametric Design Workshop quickly approaching, we are pleased to announce that there are only a few seats remaining. In order to expand upon previous introductory-level workshops, as well as provide more in-depth exercises, we have restructured this workshop to include a series of presentation documents, lectures, and a fully revised parametric design curriculum.

The Wangfujing Center in Beijing, China is a mixed-use space designed by Latitude Studio. The intention of the proposal is to design an architectural solution that provides a container for an endless possibility of experiences. To achieve this, Latitude Studio considered the role of the atrium in Roman architecture, which injects the space with light and air.

Read on for more on this project after the break.

Architects: Mias Arquitectes / Josep Miàs Location: Barcelona, Spain Project leader: Adriana Porta Project team: Silvia Brandi, Daniel Montes, Mario Blanco, Diogo Herniques Structural Consultants: BOMA Technical Architect: Carles Bou Project Area Size: 7,600 sqm Photographs: MiAS Arquitectes, Adrià Goula

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Today the AIA New York Chapter will award Daniel Libeskind, AIA, with the 2011 Medal of Honor. The 144th Annual Meeting, which is open to the public, will take place at the Center for Architecture. The Medal of Honor has been given to a member or firm for distinguished work and high professional standing. Beginning in 1917 this award is the highest honor and past recipients include Louis Skidmore (1949), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1958), Toshikio Mori (2005) and David Childs (2010).

For more information or to attend click here.

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…)

The Finnish capital Helsinki is undergoing the busiest phase of development in the city’s history. Whole new districts are emerging in sites vacated from harbours and other industrial uses. As a key part of the development, the City of Helsinki envisions landmark bridges – Kruunusillat (“crown bridges”) – for trams, cyclists and pedestrians. These bridges will connect a new maritime residential district with the inner city. The City invites the best architectural and engineering experts from all around the world for the task.

Tête de Pont is a winning competition entry by Josep Lluís Mateo of Mateo Arquitectura that is a remodeling of the river Adour in Bayonne, France. The solution of the design marks a new threshold for the approach to the old town that begins the process of urban renewal on the banks of Adour between the city center and the estuary.

Read on for more on this project after the break.

Published in 2008 this book details the SOM’s design of the International Terminal at the San Francisco International Airport. The mid-rise terminal is a case study in light and lightness. It has plans, sections, elevations, models, text by Anne-Catrin Schultz, and photographs by Timothy Joseph Hursley.

Several hundred guests joined Daniel Libeskind in a ceremony last Friday as he laid the foundation stone of the Kö-Bogen building along with Dusseldorf’s Lord Mayor Dirk Elbers, investor Kurt Zech of Zech Group, and project developer Stefan H. Muehling. The stainless steel foundation stone, designed by Libeskind, will be visibly integrated into the facade of the building.

The new 432,300 sqf mixed use building is scheduled for completion in 2013 will house both office and retail space in downtown Dusseldorf. The design of Kö-Bogen intends to naturally blend landscape into the building space through geometry, permeated cuts in the facade, the green courtyards, and green roof system. All of these elements are ‘part of a new environment that bridges urban space with park space’.

Our friends at Phaidon Press recently informed us of a short profile video they put up about Roger Diener of Diener & Diener Architekten. In the video Diener talks about how he got into architecture and what he strives for in architecture, namely creating rich spaces in which one feels really comfortable in and are not strictly driven by the gesture of the designing architect. Check it out.

Pond Press proudly announces the publication of MonoVisioN, noted photographer Scott Frances’s first monograph. The book includes an introduction by renowned architect Richard Meier.

The University of Paris-Descartes wishes to replace its two IUT amphitheaters that stand in the interior courtyard of 143, avenue de Versailles, in the 16th arrondissement. The physical location of the two buildings, constructed in the heart of an urban islet, and resting atop the university parking lots, confronted Atelier Zündel & Cristea with a complex exercise in conceiving and planning their operation. They decided the new edifice should faithfully superimpose itself over the layout of the existing parking lot, while clearing around itself a smooth space, manageable and comprehensible by its users. More images and architects’ description after the break.

We invite you to watch an intriguing lecture Rem Koolhaas recently gave at the Berlage Institute. The lecture covers three interrelated topics: the growth of Preservation, and its blind spots; architecture and democracy; and the ongoing development of the office itself. The video has become extremely popular since it was posted 3 days ago on OMA’s vimeo channel (more views in the first 24 hours than any other of their videos). Check it out.