In this TEDx sponsored talk, Rachel Armstrong - co-director of AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) in Architecture and Synthetic Biology at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL) – speaks about the dangerous relationship that we have developed with machines since the industrial revolution and ways we can break that habit. Along with her research on “living materials” and “synthetic biology”, Armstrong is looking for ways to rebuild the relationship between our reliance on machines and the systems of nature and our ecologies that are often neglected.

More on this talk after the break.

The Kimball Art Center design proposal by Will Bruder+PARTNERS focuses on the nature of “exhibition” in the context of history. Taking a cue from the “colorful prehistoric petroglyphs and pictographs” of Utah’s canyons along with its abundance of formally expressive Victorian architecture, the proposal takes on the role of expression and education through color and craft. This sensitivity to the history and propogation of exhibition is instantly understood with the facade walls of Main and Heber Streets.

Follow us after the break for more…

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The Metro Station 20 proposal by Peter Ruge Architekten on Metro Line 1 in Sofia, Bulgaria acts as a primary metro connection between Sofia’s city center and the airport, and the hub of a major commercial redevelopment plan. Their design seeks to establish clear pathways, form active connections and harmonize architecture and landscape. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Studio Twenty Seven Architecture, along with joint venture partner Leo A Daly, are continuing to develop their design for the District-owned “La Casa” supportive housing project. The project is an important milestone for the District in their efforts to redefine the concept of housing for the homeless community in Washington D.C. More images and architects’ description after the break.

HORIZONTE, a journal for architectural discourse just announced its latest Call for Papers for their 5th issue dealing with the topic “Fetish”. The journal is an interdisciplinary and collaborative effort of students from the School of Architecture, the School of Design and the School of Media Studies and is an independent student organization at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany. For more information, please visit their website here.

Studio Mode / modeLab is pleased to announce the modeLab 2012 Spring Workshop Series. The series starts off with the Agent Forms, a two-day intensive design and programming workshop to be held in Brooklyn during the weekend of February 04-05.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat is announcing its second annual student competition for “Reimagining Tall”. The competition will be held in conjunction with CTBUH 9th World Congress Shanghai 2012. Competition chair William Pedersen of Kohn Pedersen Fox noted that the competition hopes to give new meaning to “the tall building” and move it “away from just an instrument of financial exploitation and toward a development highly concerned with its impact on the city, the environment, and the urban habitat”. The competition is seeking proposals that address the building’s relationship with the urban fabric, integrate existing street life and reflect their environment in a productive way. This should be an interesting competition considering we are entering the era of the megatall.

More details on the competition after the break.

The Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah is hosting a competition for a transformation of the “non-profit center for the arts in the heart of Park City’s historic and vibrant art community”. The list of architects competing to transform this cultural space is selective. Among them is Sparano + Mooney Architecture, an internationally recognized firm with offices in Park City, Utah and Los Angeles, California. The competition submissions for Stage II will be presented on February 2nd, but until then here is a preview of Sporano + Mooney’s Proposal!

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The origin of Songlines can be traced to Australian indigenous systems for navigation and caretaking of land achieved by mapping space through the creation of music based on the topography of land. For 007_Urban_Songline, the artist, Allard van Hoorn, creates a series of Dreaming Tracks utilizing the changing morphology of Storefront’s façade and the sounds that emerge from the urban sonic context of the gallery. The exhibition is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York taking place at Storefront for Art and Architecture from January 18-February 18. More information on the exhibition after the break.

As part of a season of events celebrating British design, the V&A presents the first major solo exhibition of the work of one of the most inventive and experimental British design studios practicing today.

The vision of Pitupong Chaowakul, Wattikon Kosolkit and Yupadee Sutvisith for the future Thai house is an architecture that is composed of different levels of resilient segments. This includes 100% resistance with facility space that allows water to flood on the entire area without causing damages. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Anemone is an art/architectural installation by Oyler Wu Collaborative aimed at weaving together aesthetic experience and tactile engagement, a combination generally considered off limits within the world of contemporary art. All too often, art installations are considered precious, almost sacred objects; while they are meant to be appreciated for their aesthetic beauty, they offer little in terms of human interaction. In other words, they are meant to be seen, not felt. Recognizing that human engagement is one of the key factors in creating a rich experience, Anemone has been designed with the idea of interaction as one of its key design objectives. More images and project description after the break.

American architect Peter Bohlin, FAIA discusses his life work and design philosophy at the 2011 September AIA Chapter Meeting, held in the Cartwright Auditorium at Kent State University. Bohlin founded Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in 1965 and has since gained a reputation for creating exceptional designs that are committed to the individuality of place and user. Bohlin has been awarded over 500 regional, national and international awards for design. In 2010, he received the national AIA Gold Medal, the highest award given by the institute. Enjoy the lecture and view ArchDaily’s exclusive interview with Peter Bohlin here.

First Flickr Round Up of 2012, and we have some amazing photos from our Flickr Pool, which now has over 67,000 photos! As always, remember you can submit your own photo here, and don’t forget to follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page to find many more features.

The photo above was taken by jotKa26 mostly away in Berlin, Germany. Check the other four after the break.

We began the week with the destruction of Houston’s historic Prudential Building and now end with a time-lapse documenting a 30-story, five-star Chinese hotel constructed in only 15 days. The Chinese construction company, Broad Group, is gaining international attention for their efficient construction methods made possible by through prefab construction techniques, as ninety-three percent of the high-rise was quickly pieced together with pre-made components.

The psychology behind what we consider or value to be our homes presents some interesting concepts. While it is easy to answer the question “Where are you from?” when someone is asked “Where is home for you?” the resulting answer may be influenced by a variety of perceptions of what home really is. A recent article entitled The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much discusses such implications. Read more after the break.

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What do we call a gathering of Architects?

When animals gather in groups, we refer to them by an array of elegant terms: a Flock of Birds, a Herd of Sheep, a Swarm of Bees, a Smack of Jellyfish, an Array of Hedgehogs, a Pack of Elephants, a Clan of Bears, a Troop of Chimpanzees, an Exultation of Lark, an Unkindness of Raven, a Murmuration of Starlings, a Building of Rooks, a Fling of Sandpipers, a Wreck of Seagulls, a Gulp of Swallows, a Mutation of Thrush, a Brace of Ducks, a Piteousness of Doves… Piteousness? damn, the birds get the really good ones…

But, what do we call a collection of Architects? I think we need a name for it….

{some suggestions from coffee with an architect after the break}

In the island of Lanzarote two ways of volcanic landscape transformation converge: the rhythm of the earth and the rhythm of human life. The project, by CUAC Arquitectura, Serrano y Baquero Arquitectos, and Luis Miguel Ruiz Avilés which was a winning entry in the Europan 11 competition, takes the idea of accumulation and overlapping of layers in the landscape construction. We take the reference of a geological section from a site adjacent to our sector for the development of the proposal, planning a ‘perforated basement’ and an architecture that has the ability of recognizing the strata in which it is inserted. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Opening tomorrow at the AA, Critical Territories will share the work of Groundlab and Plasma Studio -two interdisciplinary firms pushing the envelope of the relationship between and the expression of landscape design and architecture. The installation will share the firms’ top projects, such as the Xian International Horticultural Expo which we having been covering extensively on AD, by way of a site-specific grid arrangement of light boxes covered with technical drawings. The organization of the installation will showcase the underlying themes of the practices, namely their systemic approach and preoccupation with grids, ground and context. The exhibit will be run through February 11.

The south of Warsaw is a chaotic neighborhood with different architecture styles, varying building heights and a big amount of green areas that spread between them without any clearly defined shape and order. At some point, it stopped being a dormitory and more people started to settle there for good. Therefore, a necessity for a new city center with office spaces and retail areas appeared. The proposed form of the design by MJZ | Maciej Jakub Zawadzki organizes all these factors to bring some order into this chaos. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In the design proposal for the Asian Culture Complex, UnSangDong Architects + Kim Woo II constitutes a stage that acts as a new container for the culture and everyday events. If the new stage for the city is creating an empty open space out of penetrations pathways and plazas, making the new ‘city stage’ is the same as to conduct an enormous mapping operation with penetrating programs and landscape. They propose the Asian Culture Complex as the earth in between creation and disappearance. The earth that is transformed into fragmented pieces and become urban landscape filled with memories of the site and historical evolution of various spectrums of relationships. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Now’s your chance to learn all about the wonderful world of Charles and Ray Eames at A+D Museum‘s ARkidECTURE + design workshop at The Eames Office Saturday, January 14th from 10AM – 1PM.

A chapel, a church, a mosque, a center for jewish life and and a classic from Le Corbusier. What else would you want for our 8th selection of previously featured religious architecture? Check them all after the break.

De la Piedra Chapel / Nomena Arquitectos + Ximena Alvarez The de la Piedra Chapel is located at the margin of the Lurín river and beside the Lomas de Castilla hill, in the district of Cieneguilla, east of the city of Lima. The area is characterized for a natural context of desert vegetation, in contact with the foothills of the Andes mountain chain (read more…)

The AIA Honor Award recipients for 2012 were announced this week and will be honored at the AIA 2012 National Convention and Design Exposition in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes works that exemplify excellence in architecture, interior architecture and urban design. Twenty-seven recipients were selected from over seven-hundred submissions.

Continue after the break to view the awarded buildings.