Architects: Thomas Balsley Associates with Jim McKnight Location: Cleveland, OH, USA Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Scott Pease

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A small group of diverse students participating in the inaugural AA Visiting School Eugene were given the responsibility to design and build something that would enhance and reflect the forest, within a ten-day timeframe.

More on the Camera Obscura after the break.

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MAS Context, a quarterly journal created by MAS Studio, recently released their fifteenth issue: VISIBILITY. Making visible the invisible. That was the title of their interview with interactive designer George Legrady. Conceived for the Seattle Public Library, it visualizes the circulation of books going in and out of the library’s collection. This issue continues to make visible the invisible conditions present around us that inform the way we engage with the city. At the same time, they are bringing forgotten landscapes, hidden away systems and lost environments back to the forefront of the discussion, all of them significant in our history and waiting to be reexamined. To download the journal, please visit here. More information after the break.

Architects: Note Design Studio Location: Stockholm, Sweden Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Mathias Nero

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OMA has shared with us their proposal for the 425 Park Avenue competition, organized by New York City developer L&L Holding Co to replace the existing, ageing tower with a new state-of-the-art, LEED-certified skyscraper. The competition was awarded to Foster + Partners, as reported earlier.

The competition also included Atelier Christian de Portzamparc, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, KPF, Maki and Associates, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Richard Meier, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects; and all the projects will be presented today at the MAS NY Summit.

OMA’s project was led by partners Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas. Shohei is in charge of the NY office, where he has been researching strategies for towers in NY and other areas, including a skyscraper in Madison Park, a mixed-use project in Jersey and the Bicentennial Tower in Mexico.

More information after the break:

Constructed for Beijing Design Week 2012, the ‘Ban’ pavilion draws inspiration from floral petals in the way the shape of the flower is created by its bent petals. Designed by Orproject, Ban is constructed from bent polymer sheets which form a self-supporting structure and create shapes and volume from a multitude of leaves. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Scheidt Kasprusch Architekten shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the competition for the new building of depot and workshops for the regional authorities for culture and preservation of historical monuments and state museum in Schwerin, Germany. Located on the former barrack ground on the Johannes‐Stelling Street, the proposed concept completes the former military base in the southern part. Records and documents from over 60 different sites are combined in the central repository and its associated workshops while a connecting structure combines three different depots to the workshop building in the South. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Snøhetta was recently selected as the winner of the Busan Opera House Competition in South Korea with their ‘Unpacking the Box’ concept. Their proposal is conceived not as frozen music but rather as an instrument, upon which we can play. This instrument is neither a white cube nor a black box, empty devoid of expression; this Opera building outward expresses the values and ethos of the place and content. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The design proposal for a new tramway line in the city of Luxembourg by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands aims to revive the city’s original tram system which was installed in 1859 and ceased in the 1960s. The project will provide enormous strategic improvement in public transport in Luxembourg and hopes to achieve a new standard of urban space for Europe. The new tram line is a central element in the Government of Luxembourg’s sustainable mobility or “MoDu” strategy, which sets out to improve transport connections across the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architects: Box Architecture Location: Rathfarnham, Dublin, Ireland Principal Designer: Gary Mongey Design Team: Gary Mongey, Ashlene Ross, Terry Murphy Project Year: 2008 Project Area: 450 sqm Photographs: Paul Tierney

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Mayor Vincent C. Gray has announced Davis Brody Bond, KADCON and Robert Silman Associates as the winning team to design the new St. Elizabeths East Gateway Pavilion on the St. Elizabeths Hospital east campus in Washington D.C. Designed by Davis Brody Bond, the $5 million Gateway Pavilion will transform an existing “weedy, fenced-in plaza fronting Martin Luther King Avenue SE in Congress Heights” into a sustainable, multi-purpose structure that will provide “a venue for casual dining, a farmers’ market and other weekend and after-hours community, cultural and arts events”.

Continue after the break to learn more.

We are near to the 95, ooo photos in our Flickr Pool, so keep them coming! 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 Я. Garcia in Avilés, Spain. Check the other four after the break.

If you’ve never heard of a Data Center before, there’s a reason. Despite the fact that data centers are “Giant, whirring, power-guzzling behemoths of data storage – made of cables, servers, routers, tubes, coolers, and wires,” they’re often hidden far away, where their energy-guzzling is more efficient (and way less less obvious).

Indeed, largely because of their gargantuan energy requirements and high-tech secrets, Data Centers have been shrouded in mystery since their beginnings. This is particularly true in Google’s case. When Andrew Blum, author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, visited Google’s Data Center in The Dalles, Oregon, he said it was like “ a prison,” and couldn’t even get past the cafeteria. Nary a peek has been seen of a Google Data Center.

Until now, that is. Google just launched a new website, Where the Internet Lives, which features never-before-seen images of eight of Google’s 9 data centers, the places the “physical internet” calls home.

Check out the images of these never-before-seen Data Centers, after the break…

Now in it’s sixth year, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) 2012 Lubetkin Prize has been awarded to Wilkinson Eyre Architects for their Guangzhou International Finance Centre in China. This annual award is presented to the “best new building outside the European Union”.

RIBA President and judge, Angela Brady commented: “With exceptional vision and skill, Wilkinson Eyre Architects have given their clients and the city of Guangzhou an outstanding new 103 storey landmark. The tower’s diamond shaped structure, exposed throughout the offices, atrium and hotel, looks simple but is the hugely complex key to the success of this building. It not only allows the dramatic tapering atrium and raked floors but brings environmental benefits by using 20% less steel than similar buildings. Guangzhou International Finance Centre is a worthy winner of this important prize.”

German-born, New York-based architect Ulrich Franzen (1921-2012) was one of the most creative American architects in the second half of the twentieth century. As reported by the New York Times, Franzen died in his Sante Fe, New Mexico, home on October 6 at the age of 91.

A graduate of Williams College and the Harvard GSD (MArch’48), Franzen entered the world of architecture first as an understudy for I.M. Pei. In 1955, he established his own practice – Ulrich Franzen and Associates – in New York City and has since created distinguished contributions to to architecture, urban design and the theoretical and critical literature of design.

The Municipal Art Society of New York is preparing for their third annual Summit which will feature nearly 100 talks pertaining to architecture and urbanism. Beginning October 18th, the two day event at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall will bring together elected officials, designers and innovators to share their thoughts on how New York can maintain its global-leadership position while remaining a livable environment for all its inhabitants.

More after the break. 

From September 29th to December 8th, the exhibition dedicated to the work of Toni Cumella will be open. His works in ceramic have been utilised by architects such as Enric Miralles, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, or Jean Nouvel. These collaborations made his material became part of the image of Barcelona, being part of the construction of La Sagrada Familia, and the restoration of Casa Batlló and Parc Güell.

Focusing on the 4 main fabrication processes in use at Ceramica Cumella – extruding, casting, pressing and revolving – Shaping Ideas presents the work of Toni Cumella and the application of his ceramics in some of contemporary architecture’s most significant projects.

In early September, Zaha Hadid gave the official order to begin construction work on Port House, the new headquarters for Antwerp Port Authority on the Kattendijk dock. The new Antwerp Port Authority headquarters will house approximately 500 staff in a single new location that comprises both a former fi re station and a new extension. Together, these two entities form an impressive new landmark as the headquarters of the Antwerp Port Authority, overlooking both the city and the harbor. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Andrew McGregor, Robert Miller, Raymond Bourraine, and Teresa Cacho were recently named as the second prize winner in the Sukkahville Design Competition in Toronto. Organized by the Kehilla Residential Programme, five finalists were given the opportunity to build their designs for an exhibition with the challenge to design a temporary structure constructed for use annually during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. Representing many conceptual themes surrounding the essential nature of dwelling, this proposal for an innovative Sukkah design delicately balances the inherent dichotomies of new/old, open/closed, and temporary/permanent. More images can be viewed after the break.

“Holistic Housing: Concepts, Design Strategies and Processes” is a fundamental reference work on housing construction. The book deals with the issue of sustainability in a planning context but also analyses a building’s usage and ageing over its ‘life cycle’. A system of criteria specially developed in an accompanying research project can be used to compare and evaluate buildings. It can also be used as a tool for optimising the sustainability of buildings in development during the planning process. By contrast, most existing sustainability systems are conceived not as design and planning tools, but as instruments for evaluating finished buildings and completed planning.

Taking place Wednesday, October 24th, at Cooper Union in New York, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will be delivering their ‘Head/hand’ lecture highlighting their current work. Co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union as part of the program put on by the Architectural League, the body of work presented ranges from large cultural institutions to new skating rinks for Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, and the recently awarded commission to design the New Embassy Compound in Mexico City. “To see architecture as profound optimism” is the foundational principle behind the work of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. The husband-and-wife firm began working together in New York in 1977, establishing their firm nine years later in the same Central Park South studio where they work today. For more information, please visit here.

Architects: Khosla Associates Location: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India Design Team: Sandeep Khosla, Amaresh Anand, Praveena A. and Aditi S Photographs: Bharath Ramamrutham

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