The Waldorf Astoria New York has released plans for a top to bottom restoration and revitalization of the building’s historically landmarked exterior and interior space, to be carried out by architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon (PYR). If approved by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, the restoration will be among the most complex and intensive landmark preservation efforts in New York City history.

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Few sounds in this world are quite as satisfying as that of fresh rainwater falling on a tin roof. However, this soothing sensation is just one element of the Cloud House, a unique, interactive rainwater-harvesting system created by designer Matthew Mazzotta in Springfield, Missouri. From the comfort of a wooden rocking chair, the user is immersed in a rural farm experience, offering passers-by a moment to slow down, enjoy fresh edible plants and, as promised, bask in the sound of rain striking a tin roof.

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New renderings and information have been revealed for SHoP and West 8’s Schuylkill Yards masterplan envisioned for University City in Philadelphia. Announced last March, the project comprises 14 new buildings on a 14-acre site off the Schuylkill River and around 30th Street Station, the country’s third busiest Amtrak station.

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The Norwegian Coastal Administration has revealed visualizations of the world’s first full-scale ship tunnel that would link two fjords on either side of the Stad Peninsula in Norway, allowing ships to bypass the “most exposed, most dangerous” waters on the Norwegian coast. With the project now in the feasibility stage, architecture studio Snøhetta has produced a series of rendered design concepts to help the project gain traction within the Norwegian government.

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Gensler New York has revealed designs for a 200,000-square-foot renovation of the recently landmarked 601 Lexington Avenue, commonly known by its former title, Citicorp Center. The plans will update the entry plaza as well as add a new atrium space housing a range of dining and retail options, giving the site a rejuvenated space for the entire neighborhood to utilize.

The project will be the biggest change to the unique building since its construction in 1977 and famed engineering crisis the following year.

The Ross Development Trust, in collaboration with the City of Edinburgh Council and Malcolm Reading Consultants, has announced the seven finalists teams that will compete for the design of the new Ross Pavilion in the heart of Edinburgh, Scotland. Located in West Princes Street Gardens below Edinburgh Castle and at the intersection of the UNESCO World Heritage recognized Old and New Towns, the £25 million project will feature a landmark pavilion to replace an existing bandstand, a visitors center with cafe, and a subtle reimagination of the surrounding landscape. The new pavilion will host a range of cultural arts programming.

From an entry pool of 125 teams, the following seven were unanimously selected to continue on to the second stage of the competition:

In this fifth episode of GSAPP Conversations, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Director of Columbia GSAPP’s Historic Preservation Program, speaks with Carlos Bayod Lucini and Adam Lowe (Factum Arte). Based between Madrid, London and Milan, the practice was founded by Lowe and has become internationally renowned for setting new standards in digital documentation and redefining the relationship between originality and authenticity. Here they discuss Factum Arte’s work, including the creation of the first high resolution digital record of the Tomb of Seti I in Luxor, Egypt, the importance of teaching students not only practical skills but also a conceptual understanding of how new technologies can be applied, and the importance of recording of artefacts during times of peace.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the completion of the Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen, China, according to CTBUH tall building criteria. At 599 meters (1965 feet), it is now officially the second tallest building in China and the fourth tallest in the world, behind only the Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower and Makkah Royal Clock Tower.

Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), the Ping An Finance Center is located in the heart of Shenzhen’s Fuitan District. The building contains over 100 floors of office space located above a large public podium, with a multi-story atrium providing retail, restaurants and transit options to the city and greater Pearl River delta region.

Construction on Heatherwick Studio’s undulating Pier 55 in New York has come to a screeching halt, following a ruling by a United States District Court judge last week that will require the project to undergo an intense wildlife impact review.

Last April, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave the project, located on the Hudson River in West Chelsea, the go-ahead, allowing initial construction to begin. But the district judge found that the Army Corps of Engineers had failed to properly consider the wide effects of the projects on the river wildlife.

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With their design approach treating the site as a work of art, GroupGSA’s proposal for a new hotel in Shanghai’s Fengxian District has been awarded 2nd prize in a recent competition. Located in the predominantly undeveloped Nangiao New City and part of the Yangtze River delta in south Shanghai, the Wanda Jinhai Lake Hotel aims to garner new interest in the region through the creation of a new social, cultural, and economic landmark.

At the center of the Jinhai Lake, the new hotel integrates into the site and provides scenic vistas of the surrounding waterscape. “Inspiration stemmed from the concept of Chinese Calligraphy, the stroke of a brush with its ink dripping in the water,” say the architects. “Our site is merely a piece of art and we plan to leave our mark via our architecture which is painted on the site following the lines and the movement of the surrounding context.”

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Elijah Equities, LLC has unveiled plans for the redevelopment of The Warehouse in New York City, a property currently occupied by car parking and art galleries, which will be transformed into 100,000 square feet of rentable office and retail space designed by Morris Adjmi.

Situated next to the High Line, the building currently at the site is a four-story, 65,000-square-foot former apparel-manufacturing warehouse. The redevelopment will add a three-story, steel-framed, cantilevered addition, resulting in a seven-story building with over 18,000 square feet of rooftop and outdoor amenity space.

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Bee Breeders has released the results of their Blue Clay Country Spa competition, which asked participants to design a non-urban ecotourism facility in Latvia. The competition invited students and professionals to “interrogate the inherent tensions between subject and object, [and] building and site,” as well as to “engage the agency of typological form—including, for instance, the courtyard, shed, garden, and pavilion.”

The winners of the Blue Clay Country Spa competition are:

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A team of architects and engineers at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy have unveiled Atropos, a six-axis robotic arm capable of printing continuous fiber composites. The one of a kind robot was developed by +Lab, the 3D printing laboratory at the Politecnico, who have taken inspiration from fibres found in the natural world. Through a technology known as Continuous Fiber Composites Smart Manufacturing, Atropos has the potential to create large, complex structures to aid the design and construction process.

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Utrecht University’s Urban Futures Studio have announced the 10 finalists for their Post-Fossil City Contest, judged by a jury which included MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas. Each of the successful submissions responded to the contest’s call for the design of a sustainable city no longer reliant on non-renewable energy sources. Designers and makers were invited to envision this new future, which “will reshape our cities and everyday lives so radically that it is hard to imagine what it might feel, taste, smell, and look like.”

Out of the 250 total entries, below are the 10 selected finalists along with a snippet of their proposed futures as described by the competition website.

With the ever-expanding global population, cities around the world today are caught in the midst of mass urbanization; the resultant problems are the topic of much of the current architectural discourse. From these trends stems the challenges of providing adequate amounts of both housing and urban green space, and by extension, providing adequate food production. In order to address this divide, Toronto will soon be home to The Plant – a mixed-use community revolving around sustainable residential urban farming and social responsibility in the Queen Street West neighborhood.

“It might seem extreme, but we orientated this entire project around our connection to food,” says Curated Properties partner Gary Eisen, one of the developers involved in the project. “It’s our guiding principle and the result is a building that lives and breathes and offers a better quality of life to the people who will live and work here. The Plant is a community that fits with the foodie culture that has come to define Queen West.”

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Russian designer Konstantin Kolesov has created a collection of finely-crafted souvenirs celebrating iconic architectural landmarks from around the globe. The Jsouv Collection consists of 15 pieces, depicting landmarks from New York, London, Tokyo, Dubai and more. Crafted from solid aluminum, the souvenirs are accompanied by a natural walnut base engraved with a 2D emblem of the city in question. With the souvenirs currently being crowdfunded on Indiegogo, Jsouv is also offering a t-shirt collection with unique prints of each city and landmark.

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In the recently concluded Bandirma Park competition, TARI-Architects in collaboration with Derek Pirozzi Design Workshop LLC, were awarded third prize for their proposed revitalisation of the Turkish city’s ecological core. In light of the competition’s vision of Bandirma as a new innovative hub, the proposal by the two practices combines the central Design Institute with excavated public spaces to minimize the architecture’s footprint on the park and its context.

Under the acronym B.R.E.A.K., or "Bandirma Regeneration As Knowledge," the project’s focal point is the Design Institute – “an operation that will attract a large number of academic gatherings from the Turkish region for hosting exhibitions and research conferences” from its vantage point overlooking the city and harbor.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced via Twitter that his company’s fully-integrated solar roof system is nearly ready to be released to the public, and will begin taking orders on the shingles starting next month.

The solar roof project was announced this past October after acquiring energy services provider SolarCity for $2.1 billion. Offered in four different styles – smooth glass, textured glass, French slate and Tuscan glass – the shingles would allow homeowners to make the switch to solar without having to change their aesthetic tastes. Though exact costs have yet to be released, Musk believes the system could be more affordable than a traditional roof.

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Adrenaline junkies rejoice: the Willis Tower has announced plans for $20 million dollars of improvements to their popular glass-bottom SkyDeck observation attractions. Among the additions will be a series of new all-glass protrusions from the building, as well as a chance to rappel down a glass shaft suspended from the building’s 103rd floor.

The City of Chicago and the Chicago Housing Authority have announced the selection of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Perkins + Will and John Ronan Architects to lead in the design of three new “co-located” affordable housing and library developments in the Chicago neighborhoods of Little Italy, West Ridge, and Irving Park.

Selected from a shortlist of nine firms, the three Chicago-based teams were chosen for their “innovative ideas that will ensure that each community will have a design that best reflects its needs.” The practices will work intimately with their respective communities to develop their designs.

Swedish architecture firm Kjellander Sjöberg has released images of their proposed new city block to enrich the Swedish city of Uppsala. The four competition-winning residential buildings, known collectively as the Tunet, will feature cross-laminated timber construction and wood detailing, creating an environmentally-friendly addition to the city.

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IFC has announced the release of their latest documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, which will dive into “the enduring legacies of one of the most prominent figures of modern urban planning, Jane Jacobs, and talks about her David-Goliath fight to save NYC.”

MVRDV and developer Provast has revealed plans for a two new mixed-use residential towers in The Hague that will add over 500 new apartments to the city’s Central Business District. Located on Grotiusplaats adjacent to the National Library and near the city’s Central Station, the “Grotius Towers” will offer 61,800 square meters of residential and commercial space to service the needs of The Hague’s growing downtown core.

The towers’ design reacts to the typical tower typology found in the Hague by focusing on high-quality details, a subtle facade, a ‘soft’ landing on the street and a ‘crown’ of large outdoor spaces. Inside, a mix of social housing and private accommodations will ensure the buildings are inhabited by a diverse community, while their ground-floor commercial plinths will make the complex a destination for shopping, dining and socializing.