The 2013 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship has recently been launched and is inviting applications from schools of architecture around the world. Proposals for research might include: learning from the past to inform the future; the future of society; the density of settlements; sustainability; the use of resources; the quality of urban life; and transport. A £6,000 grant will be awarded to one student by a panel of judges which includes Lord Foster and the President of the RIBA. The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 26. For more information, please visit here.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced a five-point legislative agenda for the 113th Congress, targeting job creation for small businesses as a top priority. The agenda is the product of months of collaboration and dialogue with AIA members and leaders. More than 3,400 AIA members offered their views about what policies the AIA should advance through the annual Call for Issues last fall.

According to Mickey Jacob, FAIA, 2013 AIA President, the AIA’s agenda “reflects the interests of our members, which not so coincidentally reflects the priorities of the American people. These five priorities for the next two years have the creation of jobs as their centerpiece while also seeking to shore up our aging infrastructure, make our communities more resilient and assure we invest in the next generation of architects.”

The five priorities are:

The formal strategy in the design for the Innovative Bioclimatic European School by Atelier3AM, which won the third prize in the international competition, is based on the strong contrast of materials, and propelled by the duality of opaque/transparent. Inspired by the courtyard typology, their design creates a cluster of three separate courtyard buildings defining each educational unit, and connected by a central square. This objective was confronted by the physical site constraints, as well as by opportunities presented by sensible solar orientation and the channeling of the predominant winds. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Monash University Department of Architecture, in collaboration with architecture and engineering practices, Rintala Eggertsson, Grimshaw, and Felicetti, shared with us their Sealight Pavilion project which can be found at the Melbourne Docklands in Australia. The aim of the project is to amplify the natural phenomena of sea and sky, while offering a place to meet, to escape the elements, or simply to witness the passage of time, which it has been doing for about a year now. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by Dissing & Weitling, WE Architecture and TOPOS landscape architects, the starting point of their design process was the contrast between the buildings along the avenue and the outlying ones. The new 20,000 m2 housing typologies range from the linear residential development on the Ratzeburg Avenue through town house villas with communities to row houses. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Unique among architecture prizes with its focus on early-career architects, the Wheelwright Prize, recently launched by Harvard Graduate School of Design, is a $100,000 traveling fellowship awarded annually for exceptional itineraries in research and discovery. Recognizing the importance of field research to professional development, the prize reinforces the school’s dedication to fostering investigative approaches to contemporary design. Applications are currently being accepted until February 28. For more information, please visit here.

Jonas Eliasson, Director of the Centre for Transport Studies at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), takes a stab at one of the largest problems in big cities: traffic congestion. In this TEDx, Eliasson discusses techniques that urban planners and policy makers can use to help mediate the problems caused by rush hour commutes by car. Contrary to most other suggestions we see, Eliasson’s solution does not involve any plans to widen sidewalks, encourage public transportation and create bike lanes; rather, this suggestion is more policy oriented.

With plans to become the world’s tallest building at about 3645 feet, the Azerbaijan Tower is being built on a series of artificial islands, the Khazar Islands, in the Caspian Sea 16 miles south of Baku, Azerbaijan. Avesta Group, the company behind the project, is expecting to have the skyscraper completed by 2019 at an estimated cost of $2 billion. With 189 floors, it is expected to surpass the the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai and Saudi Arabia’s proposed 3280 foot Kingdom Tower. More images can be viewed after the break.

Located on the former site on an old outdoor amphitheatre in Bratislava, Slovakia, the proposal for the housing and mixed use development, which won the first prize in the Parkhill competition, offers spectacular views and close proximity to one of the city’s oldest parks. Designed by Nice Architects, their challenge on the 52,000 m2 site was to create intensive residential development with public services located in the lower part of the site. The final composition of the buildings becomes a small reminiscence of the former amphitheatre. More images and architects’ description after the break.

CEBRA has gained the support of The Danish Foundation for Culture and Sport Facilities (LOA) for the realization of a new home for Denmark’s Sport Fishing Association in Vingsted, Denmark. The 5,489 sq.ft. project will accommodate the association’s administration as well as an activity center for sports fishermen and other visitors to the beautiful surroundings in the Vejle brook valley. More images and architects’ description after the break.

With the city of Zhangjiagang, China lacking their own identity, Gras Arquitectos aims to create a presence and scale with their Tangram Theatre, which won the second prize in the international competition. This mutual need can enable the creation of a new urban icon, an item that addresses a new identity to the city. Historically, the icon of Chinese cities is the pagoda: from the forbidden city to the unknown monument in rural China. The architects intend to create a theatre that becomes a sort of pagoda, icon for the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Situ Studio has been selected from eight competitors as winner of the fifth annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design, cosponsored by Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, along with Design Trust for Public Space. The young, Brooklyn-based practice won the jury over with their Heartwalk proposal made of New York and New Jersey boardwalk boards that were salvaged from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

The installation will be unveiled on Tuesday, February 12, 2013, and remain on view until March 8, 2013.

Learn more about Situ Studio’s winning proposal after the break.

After a intensive, 14-year preservation battle, the fate of Richard Neutra‘s mid-century Cyclorama Center in Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg National Military Park has been sealed. Yesterday, the National Park Service confirmed their plans to demolish the modernist structure and restore the site to its original 1863 appearance just in time for the 150th anniversary commemoration of the battle. It is a victory for Civil War purists and a loss for 20th century architecture advocates.

As we announced last September, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia directed the park service to conduct an environmental analysis on the demolition and to consider “non-demolition alternatives” such as moving the structure or leaving part of it intact. Following the release of a 200-page analysis, the park confirmed that the service had “no need for the continued use of the building” and that it “conflicted with the overall goals of the park.”

More after the break…

The Graham Foundation of Chicago will host a book presentation and signing of Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References, a new book edited by Robert McCarter and designed by Irma Boom exploring the notion of ‘A Wonderful World’. The event will take place Friday, February 1st at 6:00pmCST. The evening will begin with a discussion and debate between Arets and McCarter, introducing the book’s origins as well as the work of Wiel Arets Architects, after which signed copies of the publication will be available for purchase. More information after the break.

Architects, Urban Planners, Engineers, and Activists with projects in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines are invited to send their proposals for an exhibition titled ‘SMART CITY: The Next Generation’. Organized by Aedes Architecture Forum, with the Goethe Institut/South-East Asia, under the guidance of curator Ulla Giesler, the exhibition will be held in Berlin at the their Architecture Forum between May and July 2013 within the framework of the Asia-Pacific-Week Berlin 2013. More information after the break.

Taking place February 1-2 at Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium, Milstein Hall at Cornell University, the Design for Biodiversity Symposium will focus on the extended threshold between building and environment. Since its emergence in the 1970s, the field of Urban Ecology has investigated relations between living organisms and their urban environments, and has primarily addressed the city at the scale of urban planning. Within this framework, architecture, at the building scale, has thus far not been extensively tackled. How might architecture actively support multi-species habitats? Can these habitats help us replace existing, fossil fuel dependent, mechanistic systems with low impact, ecologically integrated systems that leverage natural sources? How does reimagining the city in this way change how we think about urban form and phenomenology? And finally, what are the appropriate models to study? These questions will be answered at the event and more. For more information, please visit here.

Taking place tomorrow, January 11th from 2:00-4:30pm EST, modeLab‘s Introduction to Simulation with Kangaroo Webinar will apply physical properties and forces to geometry to offer a fun and interactive way to implement physics-based constraints into your parametric workflows. Through a series of short presentations and “live” exercises, learn essential techniques for setting up and developing simulations with Kangaroo in Grasshopper, ranging from particle systems to spring networks. Over the course of the 2.5 hour webinar, you will learn strategies for working with physical geometry, dynamic relaxation, and funicular shapes. To register, and for more information, please visit here.

As the Atlantic Cities best describes, “Leave it to Japan to turn one of the dirtiest and noisiest processes of the urban lifecycle – the demolition of highrises – into a neat, quiet and almost cute affair.”

Japanese construction company Taisei Corporation has discovered a new, more efficient way to disassemble, rather than demolish, a tall building over 100 meters. The process, known as Taisei’s Ecological Reproduction System or Tecorep, begins by transforming the structure’s top floors into an enclosed “cap”, which is then supported by temporary columns and powerful jacks. As demolition workers begin to disassemble the building from within, they use interior cranes to lower materials. After dismantling an entire floor, the jacks quietly lower the “cap” and the process is repeated.

“It’s kind of like having a disassembly factory on top of the building and putting a big hat there, and then the building shrinks,” says one Taisei engineer, according to this report in the Japan Times.

Learn about the advantages of this process after the break.

During the 2012 World Architecture Festival held in Singapore, we had the opportunity to interview Richard Hassell, one of the founders of the highly acclaimed practice WOHA.

New York’s Garment District, consisting of 18 blocks in the west side of midtown, was the city’s most well known industries in the boom of the 1920s through the early 50s. The influx of immigrants and the geography of New York City made it a natural hub for manufacturing and trading activity. The work began in small workshops and at home in crowded tenements and eventually grew out of these crammed space into factories and warehouses. The industry inadvertently transformed Seventh Avenue into rows of skyscraper factories that faithfully abided to New York City’s zoning regulations. The 125 loft buildings all shared the pyramidal forms due to step-back laws governing design.

Now, The Skyscraper Museum in New York City is celebrating this neighborhood and its influential development of business, industry and architecture and the mark that it left on the city with an exhibition called URBAN FABRIC. It is curated by Andrew S Dolkart, the Director of the Historic Preservation Program, and will be running through February 17th.

Learn more and watch the curator’s lecture after the break.

Located in the old plot of the Olympic stadium of Sofia, Bulgaria, the proposal for the new soccer stadium by Gras Arquitectos aims to create a new mixed complex, keeping as much as possible the green and central qualities of the plot. Designed to seat around 15,000, the plot itself works as a central park of the neighborhood. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The “’Open Exchang’ proposal, for the Green Square Library and Plaza competition, creates a space of public engagement by challenging the role of the library in the contemporary city of Sydney. Designed by MODU , in collaboration with Future Green Studio landscape architects, their project becomes a social and public space made possible by new technology, with the potential to transcend the traditional definition of learning spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.