The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) recently launched their 2013 call for entries for their biannual competition which celebrates urban places that are distinguished by quality design and their social and economic contributions to our nation’s cities. The program has continuously served as a catalyst for its winners, advancing their work on both the local and national levels. Excellence exists in every city. It can be found in downtowns, in neighborhoods, in small cities and large ones. These places often transcend the boundaries between architecture, urban design, and planning. They are born through processes of transformation – the renewal of something old, or the creation of something new that resonates in the history of community life. The deadline for submissions is December 10. For more information, please visit here.

Taking place October 18th at 5:00pm, Chad Oppenheim will deliver his ‘Enhance Life’ lecture at Florida International University where he will be showing projects of various scales that his firm, Oppenheim Office, is completing around the world that serve the main goal of his mission which is to enhance life. Through a deep respect for place, the architecture of Chad Oppenheim serves to enrich its surroundings, the lives of its inhabitants, and its patrons. For more information, please visit here.

A simple gesture like opening the pages of a book became the inspiration for Ghirardelli Architetti in their design proposal for the Daegu Gosan Public Library Competition. By interacting with their intellectual awareness, art, science and history, this can transform into a different state of being, separated from what is happening around us in where we discover leisure, tranquility and food for thought with infinite horizons to explore inside and outside ourselves. Their library design contains this knowledge and makes it available through intriguing spaces and activities, providing at the same time, individual detachment from the daily ritual. More images and architects’ description after the break.

It wasn’t hard for us to get sucked into the slightly addictive world of Pinterest… and we are not complaining. For architects, Pinterest has created an online community of endless inspiration that allows you to easily share your ideas with the world.

This past week we surpassed 10,000 followers on Pinterest! In celebration, we have complied a list of a few of our most popular pins. Let’s start with the stunning aerial of the Dubai Marina, seen above. This mesmerizing image has been repined well over 300 times! For more, check out the official ArchDaily Pinterest and continue after the break for a selection of our top pins. Happy pinning!

Janice E. Perlman, author, researcher and CEO of The Mega-Cities Project, discusses her work in this lecture at the Harvard GSD for the “Urbanization Seminar Series”. This in-depth lecture, titled “Mega-Cities, the Urban Poor and the Place of Planning” covers Perlman’s research and observation in India’s slums, noting the way people upgrade the status of the slum and their own opportunities through minor reforms on small-scales.

RIBA Competitions recently awarded Hall McKnight Architects as the winner in the competition to redevelop the Quadrangle at King’s College London’s historic Strand Campus, which was considered to be unique in playing to the strengths of the historic buildings surrounding the Quad. Ian Caldwell, Director of Estates & Facilities at King’s, said ‘Hall McKnight had undertaken an impressive analysis of the site and presented a clear philosophy. By uncovering layers of the past, the architects showed a real engagement with the history of the buildings surrounding the Quad. The competition jury panel was impressed with Hall McKnight’s passion, intelligence, strategic sense and communicative ability.’ More images and information after the break.

Henning Larsen Architects and Tomoon Architects recently won the third prize in the international competition for designing the new opera in Busan, South Korea. Connecting the citizens of Busan to the waterfront, their design takes it’s inspiration from the particular location in Busan. The clear shape of the grand roof creates a magnificent icon in the vertical context of high-rises and mountains. At the same time it creates a subtle unity with the ocean and the horizon. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Organized by the University of Belgrade and the Center for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (CELAP), the ‘Architecture of Deconstruction: The Specter of Jacques Derrida’ is a three-day, international scientific conference which will be held in Belgrade October 25-27. The conference aims to bring attention to the questions of the relation between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy. Distinguished guests include Bernard Tschumi, Catherine Ingraham, Chris Younes, Francesco Vitale, Jeffrey Kipnis, Ljiljana Blagojević, Mark Cousins, Mark Wigley, Peter Eisenman, and more. For more information, please visit here.

Architects: BB Arquitectes Location: Manacor, Mallorca, Spain Design Team: Antoni Barceló iI Baeza, Bàrbara Balanzó Moral Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Jaime Sicilia

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A partnership of five Danish architectural firms – Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects, Christensen & Co Architects a/s, COBE, NORD Architects and Effekt – won the competition to build the largest private development in Denmark, including Denmark’s highest residential tower. The setting is the former industrial compound of Danish brewery giant Carlsberg in central Copenhagen. This historic context frames one of the most important urban developments in creating the future Copenhagen. The new city is to be developed over the next 25 years and will host a program of education, housing, culture business and recreational areas. More images and architects’ description after the break.

RIBA President Angela Brady has awarded Stanton Williams the 2012 RIBA Stirling Prize for their Sainsbury Laboratory. The Stirling Prize – the UK’s most prestigious architecture award – is presented annually to the “building that has made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture in the past year”. Sainsbury Laboratory was selected over five other shortlisted candidates, including the London Olympic Stadium which was awarded the “People Choice” in Observers’ Stirling Prize online poll.

Beautifully integrated within the University of Cambridge’s Botanic Garden, the Sainsbury Laboratory provides world-leading scientists engaging in plant science research a working environment of the highest quality that is capable of continuously adapting to the ever-evolving needs of the scientific world. Despite high energy demands, the buildings has achieved a BREEAM excellent rating with the aid of 1,000 square meters of photovoltaic panels and extensive natural lighting.

Learn more with our comprehensive overview of the Stirling Prize-winning project, here on ArchDaily.

Watch as JA+U takes a close look at the Jun Aoki House at Hanegi Park designed by Japanese architects Shigeru Ban Architects. The short video tours viewers through this intimate and minimalist home, revealing the nuances and features of the design. The house has a number of unique features, the most prominent of which is the semi-arched roof vault on the second level, which also gives a penetrating view through the length of the house. The openness of the architecture is emphasized by the austerity of the material choices. Stark white walls are set against the lush trees and vegetation of Hangei Park, highlighting the contrast between the natural and man-made.

Click here for images via JA+U. Check out other work by Shigeru Ban Architects on ArchDaily, like the Metal Shutter House in New York City.

Architects: Charles Rose Architects Location: Greenfield, MA, USA Project Year: 2012 Project Area: 24,000 sqm Photographs: Peter Vanderwarker

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Peel, one of the leading infrastructure, real estate and investment enterprises in the UK, recently awarded Allies & Morrison as the winner of their RIBA Competition for a new world class luxury hotel. Allies & Morrison fought off strong competition from Edward Cullinan Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley, Henning Larsen Architects, Hopkins and Ian Simpson Architects but were selected unanimously by the Panel. Bob Allies, Partner at Allies & Morrison commented: “Allies and Morrison are really delighted to have been selected for this project, an ambitious building on a very important site, an opportunity to integrate a modern hotel into the surviving fragments of a significant Victorian landscape.” More images and information after the break.

Architects: Grupa 5 Architekci (Dziedziejko, Kadłubowski, Leszczyński, Mycielski, Zelent) Location: Podkowa Leśna, Poland Architect In Charge: Marcin Zatoński Project Year: 2011 Project Area: 3500.0 sqm Photographs: Marcin Czechowicz

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Covering a full city block in the center of downtown Vancouver, Canada, Pop Rocks is a temporary installation fabricated entirely from post-consumer and post-industrial waste from the metropolitan Vancouver region. A collaboration between Matthew Soules Architecture and AFJD Studio (Amber Frid-Jimenez & Joe Dahmen), the project engages tactically with these materials to produce soft forms that extend the typical range of active and passive social activities, fostering unexpected social encounters and new perspectives on the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Groundbreaking Ceremony for ÖBB Corporate Headquarters recently took place to mark the start of construction for a new high-rise building in Vienna. Designed by Zechner & Zechner, their proposal was selected as the winner of an EU-wide competition in 2009. The building, which is located right by Vienna Central Station, will now allow several ÖBB companies to work at the same location as part of bringing together company sites. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Taking place now until October 25, the Slocum Gallery at Syracuse University School of Architecture is displaying “Investigations,” an exhibition of the work of Syracuse visiting critic Stephan Jaklitsch and Marc Gardner, Principals of the New York-based firm Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects. The exhibit includes the work and design process of the firm through sketches, models, renderings, construction drawings and photographs of six projects. The work addresses specific conditions of site, use, the psychology of experience, sustainability, techniques of construction, craft in detail, and materiality of building. For more information, please visit here.

The newly constructed Astrup Fearnley Museet, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Narud-Stokke-Wiig, has opened on a stunning waterfront site in the Tjuvholmen neighborhood of Oslo. The €90 million, 7000 square meter structure provides space for the museum’s collection, temporary exhibitions, a gift shop and cafe. Slender steel columns support the sail-form, glass roof that provides shelter to the weathered timber cladding, while illuminating the interior’s extensive collection of contemporary art with a soft, natural light.

The museum has launched with To Be With Art Is All We Ask, an exhibition of selected works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection by some of the world’s most innovative contemporary artists. Continue after the break to learn more.

The critically acclaimed documentary Unfinished Spaces will premiere on PBS today at 10pm (ET). The film reveals the turbulent past of Fidel Castro’s Cuba and tells the story of his utopian dream to construct the Cuban National Arts Schools.

While in Arizona developers threaten to split a unique Frank Lloyd Wright Home in two, in Wisconsin, preservationists just can’t get enough Wright.

Henning Larsen Architects just won the competition for a new research building for the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research in Stuttgart. The Center is one of Germany’s leading research institutions and conducts research on renewable energy. Carefully integrated into the surrounding context, the building features various heights that relate to the city and adjacent buildings. The building will create a new, distinctive entrance to Stuttgarter Engineering Park and provide an insight into the ongoing research. More images and architects’ description after the break.

From a park in a forgotten metro station to a human-sized “LEGO” bridge (see our post: The 4 Coolest “High Line” Inspired Projects), the massive success of New York City‘s High Line continues to inspire citizens across the globe to see their city’s forgotten spaces with new eyes – as opportunities for action.