We spotted this new super green city development model over on Inhabitat that will support 350,000 residents in Tianjin. The model places a strong emphasis on landscaping as residential towers rise amidst the parks, promenades and valleys that create the plan’s primary network. Designed by Surbana Urban Planning Group, the scheme divides the city into seven sectors which vary in terms of landscape and programmatic offerings.

More images and more about the plan after the break.

Five great projects you missed last week! Check our selection of the best after the break.

Ananti Club, Seoul / SKM Architects The Ritz Carlton Country Club, which used to boast a classical European style clubhouse, decided to change its name to the Ananti Club Seoul, taking up the challenge of completely rebuilding and redeveloping its courses and clubhouse in order to reflect the city’s latest lifestyles. This effort has created a place of leisure worth exploring (read more…)

Surface Deposit is an exhibition of fragmented sculptural assemblages based on the analysis and research of digital data collected by a 3-dimensional laser over several months during the summer of 2010. Incorporating various materials, including remnants from Tyler School of Art’s former campus in Elkins Park, PA, Lead Pencil Studio will explore notions of accumulation through elements of architecture that are not inherent to a structure’s original design. Their practice is self-described as “architecture in reverse…our projects are everything about architecture with none of its function…spaces with no greater purpose than to be perceived and question the certainty posited by the man-made world.”

Shane Neufeld and Kevin Kunstadt have worked together to create Kissing Booth, a progressive warming hut for the Assiniboine River and Winnipeg. Follow after the break for additional rendering, diagrams and a quick description from the designer.

In recognition of his contributions to architecture in both theory and practice Fumihiko Maki was recently named the 2011 AIA Gold Medal Winner. Maki, arguably one of Japan’s most distinguished living architects, will be honored with the award in New Orleans at the AIA National Convention.

Copenhagen-based WE architecture, in collaboration with Sophus Søbye Arkitekter, received first prize in an invited competition to design a cultural center in the city of Holte, Denmark. More images and architect’s description after the break.

As part of his series dealing with forgotten monuments from the communist era in Bulgaria, Nikola Mihov has shared with us his story and photos of the many iconic communist era monuments in Bulgaria that were dismantled after the fall of the totalitarian regime in 1989. Nevertheless, more than one hundred important monuments built between 1945 and 1989 remain standing. The majority of these sites are not recognized by the state and they remain ownerless. Their exact number is unknown and it is difficult to find information about their authors and their history. More images and his story after the break.

Since the 1950s, Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House has rested peacefully in a cornfield in Plano, Illinois. Now, the house will be getting a new neighbor – VirginiaTech’s winning Solar Decathlon residence, Lumenhaus (be sure to check out our previous coverage of the house here). As the name suggests, the residence focuses on maximizing the exposure to natural light (Lumen meaning power of light), and in terms of aesthetics, the house also pays homage to the BauHaus movement.

More about the Lumenhaus after the break.

Architects: FREAKS freearchitects Location: Saint-Ouen 93, Paris, France Project area: 94 sqm Project year: 2009 Photographs: FREAKS freearchitects

MAD Architects

Beijing-based MAD Architects have just shared their design for a Wood Sculpture Museum in Harbin, China with us. Harbin is currently experiencing a period of rapid expansion and the new museum will allow the growing city to define itself as a regional hub for the arts. Inspired by the unique local winter landscapes, the museum is a contrast between the elegance of nature and the speed of daily life. Its 200 meter long body is shaped as a frozen fluid that reflects and explores the relation between the building and the environment.

More about the museum, including more images after the break.

Site A/S Architects has recently completed a project proposal, Aqua P, which looks to form a solution for the flooding and parking problems in Copenhagen. For more renderings, process diagrams and a description from Site A/S continue after the break.

“The University of Leicester Engineering Building, the History Faculty and Library at Cambridge, and the residential Florey Building at Queen’s College are much praised by architects, yet hated by the members of the universities that use them. Here Alan Berman has drawn together essays that put the buildings in their historical context while exploring both their radical features and their technical failings. In addition, 22 of today’s most famous architects — including Will Alsop, Norman Foster, Richard MacCormac, and Richard Rogers — explain and partly seek to defend the importance of these radical and controversial buildings. With top contributors and newly commissioned photography, as well as stunning drawings taken from the Jim Stirling archives, this book attempts a serious reengagement with the continuing debate between modern architects and the public.”

London-based studio octopi shared with us their proposal for A Room for London Competition for the 2012 London Olympics. More images and architect’s description after the break.

The intervention proposed by architects António Miguel Gonçalves, based in London, Antoine Pascal, based in London and Anthony Thevenon, based in Lisbon is an idea for “A Room for London,” one which latches onto the roofs of existing buildings to provide views at London’s historic skyline. Its unconventional site and form is a result of the desire to be noticed, and to provoke potential users to explore the potential of the program.

More information and images on this project after the break.

Edited: Bryan Bell, Katie Wakeford First Edition: 2008 Language: English ISBN: 1933045787

“This is the Barack Obama of books. It tells a story about the change we need in the fields of architecture and urban design, professions that have lost their way, easily seduced by wealthy clients. And much like the presidential Democrat, this book of slightly radical ideas is attractively packaged in a way that can’t be easily dismissed. Editors Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford have compiled 30 essays by leading architects and designers across the U.S. – all accompanied by gorgeous photography. Each focuses on issues of social justice and design, and most succeed in making a compelling case for architects, urban planners and landscape designers to stop whatever they’re doing and begin working for the greater public good…The authors’ earnest and passionate voices come through in almost every paragraph, making this book a heartfelt journey as much as an educational one.”

- Matthew Blackett, AZURE Magazine –AZURE Magazine November/December 2008

Full contents index and more photos after the break.

Architects: Edwards Moore Location: Fitzroy, Melbourne Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Peter Bennetts

The french team of FREAK freearchitects have shared with us their recent international competition entry for a Russian Orthodox Church and Cultural Center in Paris. Additional images and a brief description after the jump.

The Longview Gallery in Washington DC invited David Jameson Architect to design an installation that investigates the relationship of art and architecture. The gallery space is housed next to the DC Convention Center in the shell of a 1930’s auto repair garage. Conceived as a spatial armature, Stalling Detritus, as the installation is called, creates a gallery within the gallery by weaving steel beam scraps through space that react to the topography of the concrete structure.

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Architects: David Jameson Architect, Inc. Location: 1234 9th St NW Washington, DC, USA Principal: David Jameson Project Architect: Ron Southwick Contractor: Rockville Iron Works Inc Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Alan Karchmer Photography

Croatian design team, AVP_arhitekti, has submitted to ArchDaily their latest project, Marine Research Center Bali. Their proposal seeks to align the center with the elemental characteristics of Bali itself. Follow after the jump for additional images and a thorough description from the architects.

Back in August we featured some photographs of Frank Gehry‘s Beekman Tower in New York. Now, there’s a video of this fantastic skyscraper, which starts with Gehry sketching the building’s shape. You can see the video right here. More information can be found at Curbed. See some screenshots of the video after the break.

The German magazine AIT invited 100 selected architecture and interior design offices across Europe to redesign the ‘ONO’ chair produced by the Dietiker company. The newly designed chairs will be exhibited in the context of a road show in the AIT-Architektur Salons Hamburg, Munich, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Stuttgart. The main auction of the chairs will talk place in spring 2010. The revenues generated through this auction will support the Langa Township in Cape Town, South Africa. Hofman Dujardin shared with us their entry into the competition, their OYES chair, as an urban charity for city. More images and architect’s description after the break.

Back in 1993, professors Dennis K. Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee created Auburn University’s design-build program with the intention of bringing architecture to some of Alabama’s poorest areas. Rural Studio quickly gained international attention as the students responded to the needs of the less fortunate with innovative and thoughtful designs. The students participating in the studio not only benefit from the hands-on experiences of physically constructing their ideas, but also from fulfilling our profession’s social responsibility by providing a person’s most basic need, shelter.

With the passing of Mockbee, Andrew Freear became director of the studio and began to shift the program from the design and construction of small homes to larger community projects.  Currently, the studio is in their fourth year of an ongoing project which, when finished, will be the largest public park in Hale County.  The project, which began with building baseball fields, basketball courts, etc., quickly showed the potential for becoming a fully realized master plan.  And now, the Lions Club, the City of Greensboro, Hale County, and the Greensboro Baseball Association formed a joint committee to manage and care for the future of Lions Park.

More about Lions Park after the break.

Since December 14 we’ve featured some great interviews in ArchDaily! So we decided we to put them all together in our fifth interviews Round Up. Check them all after the break.

AD Interviews: Hani Rashid, Asymptote Architecture We visited Asymptote’s new offices in Brooklyn to interview Hani Rashid. Hani co-founded the firm back in 1989 with Lise Anne Couture, becoming pioneers of the digital revolution. One of their first projects, the NYSE Advanced Trading Floor (2001), explored the relation between virtual and physical worlds starting the debate on the new digital tools in architecture (read more…)

This week, we present the first of a special series called “Post-Occupancy” in which we feature the experience of the owner-dweller in different types of architectural spaces. Our goal is to present architecture by letting the users narrate for themselves what it means to them, how they experience it, how it has transformed them. We pose the questions. What do owners want? What do they need? How do they experience their homes after they’ve lived in them for a while?

Often, architectural discourse begins and ends with the designer. Here, the owners come first. They provide the answers in their own words, without the dialect of the discipline mediating what they say.

In this first installment, the goal was to examine the experience of domestic space from the point of view of a globe-trotting intellectual couple. James Massengale and Tracey Sands are both scholars. And as is the way of many academics, they have more than one residence: one in the United States and one abroad, located in the region of their studies. In this case, that is Scandinavia. And this is what they had to say.

More after the break.