For the redevelopment strategy for South Kilburn, Alison Brooks Architects have collaborated with Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands to design better homes, in a more sustainable environment, for the existing and future residents. About a year ago, we shared the firms’ vision for Ely Court, a collection of three varied typologies that line a ‘spine’ of shared surfaces – play areas, gardens and public and private spaces – along Cambridge Avenue. Now, the duo has been granted approval for a new residential quarter of Mansion blocks which frame private communal gardens in the spirit of neighboring Maida Vale. ”We are really pleased that we are continuing to help Brent transform South Kilburn from an isolated Estate into a familiar and desirable residential neighbourhood. Our team’s scheme is as much about re-creating great streets as providing great family homes,” explained Brooks.

More about the project after the break. 

Above is a short film created by Ludvig Holtenäs, an architecture student, as part of a school project at Lund University’s School of Architecture. The video captures “how light can describe and connect different rooms with the same moving atmosphere, with a perspective of old and new”.

It happens just four times a year (two full suns, and two half-suns) but you can bet New Yorkers make the most of it…Manhattanhenge, that is. Coined by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the merge of Manhattan and Stone Henge is used described the phenomen when the sun perfectly aligns with the east-west streets of Manhattan. “Manhattanhenge comes about because the Sun’s arc has not yet reached these limits (of the solstice), and is on route to them, as we catch a brief glimpse of the setting Sun along the canyons of our narrow streets,” explained Tyson.

Standing far to the east side, the ArchDaily team stood shoulder to shoulder with dozens of anxious observers in Tudor City, an elevated niche that offers a clear shot down 42nd Street and is graced with the beautiful profiles of the Chrysler Building and the Bank of America Tower.   Although the cloudy skies of Thursday only allowed a few red rays to run across the sides of the buildings, Wednesday’s crystal clear evening showed the red fireball in all its glory sitting between the grided streets.

More about Manhattanhenge after the break. 

assemblageSTUDIO recently won the AIA Nevada unbuilt Award for their project, Qlab. A communal atmosphere of open collaboration and interaction has replaced the typical open cubicle office to create a new generation, which has energized downtown Las Vegas. The desire to be all consumed and surrounded by likeminded organizations with a rekindled attitude towards downtown. This spirit is captured in the project by combining a café, lounge, residential and open bay modular office spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by Libor Šenekel, Vaclav Havel´s Monument is a symbol of human determination, legacy, and that even one person can change the course of history. Vaclav Havel became unforgettable for many as a symbol of defiance and human determination, which reminds us that even one person is capable of great deeds. Just as today the monument stands against the enormous power of water, that is trying to devour it, stood Vaclav Havel and many others against the oppressive power of communism. The memorial is supposed to fascinate being watched from the waterfront, to inspire fear as well as courage being entered into the masses of water, to lure to step into the unknown. More images and architects‘ description after the break.

The ‘New Nordic – Architecture & Identity’ exhibition, which opened this past Thursday and is on view until October 21, is the first exhibition in a new series at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit explores the relationship of architecture to culture and identity. The series deals with architecture as a field where collective memories and narratives are reflected materially and spatially. It attempts to reveal whether certain special ‘Nordic’ features recur in architecture, and whether this involves a fundamental formal idiom that is regularly reinterpreted. Five Nordic architects - Studio Granda, Iceland, Johan Celsing, Sweden, Jarmund/Vigsnæs (JVA), Norway, Lassila Hirvilammi, Finland and Lundgaard & Tranberg, Denmark – have been invited to build a house that serves as an expression of the regional identity and experience from which the individual architect comes.

More images and information on the exhibition after the break.

Great architecture photography from our Flickr Pool. 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 kwikzilver at Floriade 2012 in Netherlands. Don’t miss the other four after the break.

At least since Leonardo Da Vinci’s first attempts to describe turbulence, architects have been fascinated by the dynamics of flow – perhaps seeking an escape from the solid, stable nature of buildings. Beginning in the 1990′s, architects have used digital software to imbue structures and spaces with some of the same qualities as Da Vinci’s meticulous drawings: fluidity, undulation, instability and temporality. But while software has allowed architects to create novel, dynamic forms digitally, they have struggled to translate these qualities to the physicality of the material world. Slipstream is a physical structure that confronts that leap directly, translating a 2-dimensional digital line drawing into 3-dimensional space.

Alluding to Lebbeus Woods’ 2010 ‘Slipstreaming’ drawings of flow, the installation is a single drawing extruded through the gallery space and cut away to produce a set of interconnected spaces. The linear extrusion acts as both structure and dynamic visual filter, shifting views through the installation and between the spaces it defines. It’s integrity as a structure is masked by both its redundancy and bright coloration. Employing gradients that diffuse and coalesce along its length, color amplifies the undulating lines, establishing cross currents that intensify as visual eddies. Irreducible to form, structure, or graphic, Slipstream is a combined phenomenon of the three.

Don’t miss SLIPSTREAM’s opening tonight, July 12th, from 7-9pm at New York’s Bridge Gallery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Find more details here on the bridgegallery official website. The exhibit will remain on view until August 24th.

First, American art dealer Kenny Schachter commissioned Zaha Hadid to design the futuristic, three wheeled Z-Car in 2005. Now, he has asked the Pritzker Prize winning Dame to create the limited edition Z Boat – an all black, 7.5-meter-long vessel that comfortably seats eight and is powered by an 1×220 HP Mercruiser. Only 12 boats and four prototypes will by built and completed in early 2013 by the French manufacturer Shoreteam.

Continue after the break for more.

Currently under construction, SOM’s Busan Lotte Town Tower in Busan, South Korea stands over its adjacent waterfront as the new gateway to East Asia. Rising 510 meters, this mixed-use tower will add 6.3 million square feet to this bustling port city. A unique setback language defines its massing that is derived from numerous influences including the compact site, complex program, and optimization of views. The tower will incorporate numerous sustainable features and an efficient concrete structural system that maximizes the efficiency of the 107 floors. More details after the break.

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That’s the claim of Sam Lubell, in his Editorial “The Intern Catch-22” for The Architect’s Newspaper. Lubell puts it this way:

The winning design in the Re-thinking Shanghai competition for SuZhou Creek by ohm architekti proposes a city that changes in time and place, and is always perceived differently. They have created a new and unique neighborhood that is always changing, where you can set up a shop or a house and still have access to the full spectrum of surroundings. Traditional long-lasting connections are broken and new temporal connections are created – such that form only when they are convenient. A new flexible neighborhood is born with a city structure that is in motion. More images and architects’ description after the break.

When the kids at NOTLabs first got their hands on a MakerBot Replicator, the ingenious 3D printer that can make just about anything you want, they quickly got down to business – making LEGO and Kinex connectors, that is. As inconsequential as their decision may seem, it got us thinking: today, building blocks, but tomorrow? Buildings themselves.

The future isn’t as far as you may think. In the next two articles, I’ll introduce you to three visionaries who are already applying 3D printing technology to revolutionary effect: an engineer hoping to improve the human condition, a robotics expert with the goal of completing the Sagrada Familia (or at least putting a structure on the moon), and an architect at MIT using nature-inspired materials to turn the design world on its head.

If these three examples are anything to go by, 3D Printing will revolutionize the world as we know it. But it begs the question: at what price? Will it offer architects the freedom to design without the pesky limitations of built reality? Or, like the scribes made redundant by Gutenberg’s printing press, will 3D printing make the architect go extinct?

Situated in south of the city of Vigneux-sur-Seine near Paris, the school project by AR+TE Architectes consists of the restructuring and a future extension in grouping the classrooms of maternal and elementary class in a single entity. The operation includes the restructuring of all the premises of education (classrooms and extracurricular premises) and the extension by the creation of the educational and psychomotor premises (library, computing and motricity classroom). More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by modostudio, the proposal for the Piazza d’Armi Urban Park aims to create a thematic interaction between the competition area and the adjacent existing urban tissue. The architects accomplish this by means of creating a park for this city that is decontextualized from the neighboring urban space and, at the same time, directly related to the skyline of the nearby mountains. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by Gabriela Gomes, Shelter ByGG” brings out to public space a sculptural object that can be used as a living space. She proposes the creation of an habitable module, inviting you to rest inside a sculpture installed on a public space. Photographed by Joao Morgado, this project is an artistic manifestation that provides an innovative and unexpected experience as an accommodation space, associated with eco-­‐sustainable solutions and mobility. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The city of Sydney has launched an international design competition as part of the the Green Square Development Project for a new Library Centre and Plaza at the heart of a 278 hectare area south of the city centre. The Green Square Development project is an initiative to redevelop a 278 hectare area south of the city centre of Sydney, Australia by bringing in diverse functions of housing, open spaces, offices and facilities that contribute to a vibrant, sustainable community. The library will be designed as a community centre and hub and used as an educational and creative resource, as well as a lounge. The project is allotting $40 million for the design and construction of the new facility and should be an integrated whole between the library and plaza which will also be a host to public arts, community events and markets. Stage one entries close on August 21st. Visit the official Green Square Library website to learn more.

More details on the competition and the project after the break.

L&L Holding Company, LLC, today announced that four of the world’s most acclaimed architecture firms – Foster + Partners (Lord Norman Foster), Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (Lord Richard Rogers), OMA (Rem Koolhaas) and Zaha Hadid Architects – are participating this week in the conceptual design phase of its architectural competition for a new office tower to be constructed at 425 Park Avenue in Manhattan.

In April of this year, L&L Holding invited 11 of the world’s most accomplished architects to express their interest in competing for the commission to design a new tower at 425 Park Avenue. Of those invited, nine firms chose to enter the competition. After careful deliberations, L&L Holding narrowed its list to the four selected firms, each of which is led by a Pritzker Prize-winning architect with extensive international experience and proven expertise in office tower design.

The architects and their teams have prepared and are presenting their conceptual designs this week for a 650,000 square foot tower that will be designed to high L.E.E.D. sustainability standards.

It has been confirmed by Studio Wim Wenders and Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partners that the news of Wim Wenders devoting his new 3D documentary film on architecture to Peter Zumthor was in fact a rumor. Although Wenders will be conducting an artistic interview film with Zumthor for the upcoming 2012 Venice Biennale, it has nothing to do with his feature documentary. The Biennale interview film and the 3D documentary on architecture are two separate projects that were mistakenly combined by the source article. We apologize for the confusion.

OMA has released their 60-hectare master plan proposal for Floriade 2022 – the next occurrence of Europe’s largest horticultural expo that attracts an average of two million international visitors every ten years since it was established in 1960, which is currently open in Venlo. As part of a team that includes the province of South Holland, eight local municipalities and ARCADIS, OMA is helping Holland Central compete against three other cities within the Netherlands to become the next Floriade host.

Continue after the break to learn more.

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The 2012 results for the DAF (Designing Adaptable Futures) International Student Design Competition are in! A joint first prize, a third prize and five honorable mentions were awarded among 150 submission from 26 countries. The competition asked students to present an architectural proposal that had a transformable quality that could make the physical or experiential space change over any given span of time. The prompt embraces what Adaptable Futures is about. The organization looks at the value of longevity in architecture through the adaptability of the built environment. It challenges notions of monumental architecture and architecture as a symbol of its time. It asks, instead to design with the context – the present – and its “temporal reality” – the changing and evolving future – in mind. After the break, take a look at the projects that were selected for best embodying the ability for architecture to adapt.

The design proposal by Najjar-Najjar Architects for the Zaarour Club Project intends to combine a year-round destination for mountain lovers in Lebanon with the requirements for a sustainable development in Zaarour. In this regard, the architects believe that it is most important to balance the development of real estate with attractions and activities in a healthy environment. The concept considers different functions and facilities in order to attract diverse users groups of all ages during the year. More images and architects’ description after the break.