Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects’ Glasshouse is Port Macquarie’s newest cultural center. Comprised of a 600-seat performing arts theater, a 600m2 Regional Art Gallery, a studio theatre, conference facilities and a community workshop, the design activates the growing city, encouraging the public to experience or participate in a variety of activities.

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

We all know Chicago is an Architecture “mecca”.

In the center of Berlin, an amazing institution known as the Temporäre Kunsthalle is a great venue for contemporary art as exhibits are housed not only within Adolf Krischanitz’s free plan interior, but also on the exterior. As each new artist brings his own personality to the building’s exterior, the 11 meter high building, which covers a ground surface of 20 by 56.25 meters, becomes the artist’s blank canvas, patiently waiting for its new treatment. The most recent exterior exhibition, autoR by Carsten Nicolai, is the third project to be realized on the façade.

More images and more about the exhibit after the break.

Earlier last week, the City Council of New York City decided to move forward with Rafael Viñoly Architects’ master plan for the New Domino in Brooklyn. While the historic sugar refinery complex, with its familiar yellow signage, has achieved landmark status and will be preserved, the 11.2 acre-site will be outfitted with 2,200 new apartments – 660 of which are affordable housing – and four acres of public park space including a riverfront esplanade along the East River in Brooklyn.

More about the master plan after the break.

Throughout this decade, we’ve experienced and endured quite a few severe natural disasters. Whether it be earthquakes in Chile or Haiti, a hurricane in New Orleans, or a tsunami in Ao Nang, Thailand, these powerful natural forces illustrate the amazing, yet catastrophic, side of nature. Currently, Pakistan is suffering greatly from floods and mudslides that have resulted from monsoons. As CNN reports, an estimated 1,100 people have already been killed and thousands more are stranded on rooftops trying to escape the rising waters. The monsoons have destroyed twenty five bridges, washed away 58 kilometers of road, and damaged thousands of acres of crops. Plus, weather officials predict more monsoon rains today.

When Chile battled the 8.5 quake, the country greatly benefited from strict building codes. Yet, we know that many countries do not implement the same kinds of construction guidelines nor adequate flood control systems, plus the poverty levels in countries leave the less fortunate even more vulnerable. Jackie Craven’s architecture blog for About.com shows different strategies designed by architects and civil engineers to control flood water in their low-lying countries.

Take a look at some of the solutions. Would any of these solutions work in Pakistan?

Earlier this week we presented you an interesting proposal for the Environment Museum Annex Competition and now we received an honorable mention winner, from Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos - Daniel Feldman and Elizabeth Añaños.

The Botanical Garden, one of the oldest institutions in all Brazil, is a space of great relevance for the city of Rio de Janeiro. With around 600 thousand visitants each year, it is an important touristic spot, orientated to environmental and scientific education as well as leisure, and recently also cultural program.

New York will be the recipient of another Steven Holl project – a new library at the Queens West Development at Hunters Point. Envisioned as a contemporary “urban forum”, the project will shape public space and create new connections across the Queens West Development, Hunter Points South, and the existing neighborhood of Hunters Point. Steven Holl states, “We are very pleased with this great commission for an addition to the growing community. We envision a building hovering and porous, open to the public park. A luminous form of opportunity for knowledge, standing on its own reflection in the east river.”

More about Holl’s new project after the break.

Each year UdK Berlin organizes a small competition among the students for the concept of a Bookshop inside the School. This year’s winning proposal for the shop was designed by Dalia Butvidaite, Leonard Steidle, Johannes Drechsler and the all participating students then helped manufacturing the structure.

Cardboard as the main material was chosen because of its flexibility in shape, stability, cheapness, temporary feeling, lightness, mobility and last but not least its recyclability.

Holmes has submitted plans for a new flagship school in Erskine, Scotland. Park Mains High School for Renfrewshire Council will not only provide secondary education for the pupils of Erskine and the surrounding villages of Bishopton, Inchinnan and Langbank, but it’s innovative facilities will also be available, and integral, to the wider community.

The new £33 million school, which is due to start on site in January 2011, will accommodate 1400 pupils and 136 staff, and features teaching spaces arranged across 3 levels, as well as a range of enhanced PE facilities, including a four court Games Hall, Gymnasium, Dance Studio, and Fitness Suite with associated changing areas. A multi-use Assembly Hall with main stage and tiered stadium style seating has also been designed to accommodate local community activities including drama and theatre groups.

Our friends from PIQUE llc shared with us this house located outside the small village of Mormont in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. Designed for a young family of four, the home will start as a summer house and expand into the sunlit basement to ultimately function as a permanent residence.

We’ve seen tons of glitzy and glamorous renderings that immediately attract our attention.   You know the kind we mean – a picturesque snapshot where the weather is absolutely perfect, the sunlight is bursting through the glass facade magnificently, and people are laughing and strolling hand in hand.  And, sometimes, the rendering style speaks louder than the actual architecture – convincing clients and jurors, or perhaps misleading them, to invest in the project.   Of course, we love seeing the variety of presentation styles and how firms market their work, but we also enjoy seeing construction shots and finished photography to see if the realized project lives up to the idealized renderings.

More after the break.

The Boston Society of Architects shared the four winning projects for the 2010 Unbuilt Awards with us. Each year, the BSA sponsors this award program to honor and promote excellent design. Any project typology can be submitted for review, as long as the project is either purely theoretical or an unbuilt client sponsored project. The four winners show the diversity of the award as the projects vary in program, materiality and, of course, their design strategy. The winning projects and teams include: Land of Giants by Choi & Shine Architects, Playcloud by Nameless Architecture, Retreat House by Hutker Architects and Putting the Farm Back in Farmington by University of Arkansas Community Design Center.

More about the four projects after the break.

Austin-Smith: Lord recently came runner up in a high profile bus station competition in Stoke-on-Trent, winning the public vote but not selected by the client.

The Austin Smith Lord team, consisting of JMP Transport Engineers, Curtins Structural Engineers and Hilson Moran on Environmental and M&E were supported in the provision of costs by Gleeds and Project Management input from RLB ,worked closely in the 4 week design period to develop an exciting and innovative scheme which found favor with both the public and their peers.

This clubhouse designed by PAL Design concentrates on a contemporary approach for its ‘Spa-theme’ presentation for the target young group. It speaks to a sense of playful invention and a quirky imagination. It mixes up contemporary suites of privacy, utter luxury, modernism and a sense of being in a universe theme park. Different interestingly material elements are incorporated with sharp and brilliant colours such as yellow, orange, blue and green to create extraordinary visions. There is a very peculiar view from one zone to another. Curve lines expand spatial boundaries look endless. Wavy feature walls and contrasting carpets lend a dramatic and trendiness to the whole.

HOK, along with Beck Group, has designed a new museum to house the works of Salvador Dalí in St. Petersburg, Florida. The architecture, greatly inspired by the great surrealist, “combines elements of the classical and the fantastical,” according to the director of the museum. The design speaks to the essence of Dalí while incorporating functional elements to combat Florida’s tough weather.

More images and more about the museum after the break.

London based architects Anthi Grapsa and Konstantinos Chalaris shared with us their entry for the Piraeus Tower 2010 Competition, for which they gained commendation.

Our friends at Abitare published several works by Italian firm Buratti + Battiston, an architect and engineer, respectively. With a strong grasp of aesthetics as their foundation for creating spaces, their Vetreria Airoldi Office + Showroom works with the characteristics of colored glass to form a contemporary working space.

More images and more about the project after the break.

A special screening of The Spirit in Architecture: John Lautner

Presented by the Society of Architectural Historians/Southern California Chapter The film journeys into Lautner’s world with footage from his apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, extensive documentation of his extraordinary buildings, interviews with historians, critics, collaborators, and clients, and engaging footage of Lautner himself. Following the screening, SCI-Arc hosts a panel discussion with award-winning filmmaker Bette Jane Cohen; architect and film co-writer Tom Marble; co-producer Evelyn Wendell; author, historian, and architect Alan Hess; and Lautner scholar Jon Yoder.

Architecture photographer Michael Schnell shared with us his interior photos of the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, designed by Austrian architects Delugan Meissl. The project was completed in 2008, after being awarded with the 1st prize in a 2-stage competition back in 2005.

The exhibition space we see on these photos in contained by a monolothic volume supported by a steel structure, which spans 5,600sqm to a dramatic effect as you can see on the above photo.

More photos after the break:

Kay e Sante nan Ayiti (Creole for Housing and Health in Haiti), is an international competition launched by the ARCHIVE Institute to build five housing units in the area of St. Marc, Haiti. The housing units are unique in that throughout the entire project, from design, construction, and habitation, HEALTH is a driving factor.

We are asking you to contribute your ideas to this project, whatever your background, to share your knowledge and create a truly interdisciplinary network of interested individuals. The 5 winning proposals will be built in 2011, with habitation commencing July 2011. The winning designs will also be showcased in travelling exhibits to universities worldwide and in a ‘best practice’ design development compendium.

More information after the break.

Studio Shift’s Stadt Krone proposal is one of twelve that offers a conceptual solution for the densification of Milano. The proposals were required to inject 25,000 inhabitants into the existing urban fabric of Milano, and Studio Shift’s proposal addresses the strain that this increase will have on the existing infrastructure and the social and economic well-being of the population. Their comprehensive strategy creates “a self-sustaining community and one that seeks to integrate programmatically and physically with the existing city.”

More images and more about the project after the break.

Brutalism is the term coined to describe the raw architecture often made with concrete during the 1950s and 1960s (with a later resurgence). I’m an architectural photographer and my fascination with these concrete buildings has led to me document a number of them across the UK (an on-going project).

About a year ago, we shared one of our favorite Plasma Studio designs with you – an International Horticultural Fair Complex. The project is a large master plan that blends architecture, landscape and circulation into one system using a network of organic paths. Four major buildings and a range of smaller interventions are scattered within the landscape. The studio has shared recent construction photos with us, and more renderings, that we’ll share more with you after the break.

What do you think of this TED talk by Mitchell Joachim and his discussion about growing homes? The strategy he proposes for creating “green villages”, pleaching – which is where vegetation is fused together to then create desired geometries – makes an architecture that is the landscape. We could potentially “pre-grow” a community, as Joachim puts it, providing homes for millions of people that instead of harming the environment, will just eliminate carbon from the air. Things get even more interesting when Joachim shares how his own studio is growing extracellular matrix from pigs, and can print geometries to make objects. Check out his new wall section idea for a meat house which replaces standard wall construction with fatty cells for insulation and cilia for tackling wind loads. Joachim is doing some interesting things in his studio and we want to know what you think of his ideas.