The PUC Building on 525 Golden Gate Ave, home of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, could have been just another government administrative building. But, the City and County of San Francisco, along with KMD Architects, embraced the design challenge of achieving LEED Silver status. Now nearing completion, the building is expected to exceed LEED Platinum requirements and has been dubbed the greenest building of its kind. The architects had humble goals for the architecture as well, which included creating an “urban room” among the civic buildings in the area, creating a healthy and pleasant environment in the interior workplace to promote performance, efficiency and comfort, and represent the best value possible for the city and county of San Francisco.

In The Simpsons last episode, Rem Koolhaas made a brief appearance where he is shown teaching to a group of students.

Taking place May 3, the “Consumed” Architecture + Urbanism Symposium, put on my the University of Manchester’s School of Architecture, the event looks to explore the theme of consumption in the urban built environment through a selection of invited speakers from a variety of locations and professions. Current speakers include; Joseph Grima Editor of Domus Magazine, Mario Minale of Mario Minale Designers, Berndt Jespersen and Mette Skobjerg of Kalundborg Symbiosis, and Gavin Elliott of BDP is to Chair. More speakers are to be confirmed in coming weeks. The event is taking place in Manchester, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. For more information, please visit their website here.

suckerPUNCH recently announced the winners of their Robot Workshop competition. The past few years have seen an exciting rise in the fascination with robotics. Simultaneously, the ability to develop and build robots capable of complex and experimental applications has become easier and more accessible to the general public. From hardware like Arduino to open source programming like Processing, there now exist inexpensive and even free ways to dabble with robotics. With the site located in an open lot in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the Robot Workshop will be a place people can come to work on their projects, utilizing shop facilities while simultaneously interacting with fellow robot enthusiasts. More images and descriptions on the winning proposals after the break.

Modern Atlanta (MA) and Manifesto Architecture is pleased to announce the second annual MA Prize competition. The 2012 MA Prize entries will be carefully selected by a prestigious international jury of practicing designers and scholars and will be displayed at this year’s MA12 “Design in Human Week” in Atlanta. This year the prize calls for designers to submit projects that critically consider today’s notions of sustainability as applied to the modern dwelling. This award aims to highlight projects of all scales, that showcase a critical investigation into sustainable design practices in the home as well as projects that thoughtfully deal with the unique geographical, social, political or cultural conditions. The submission deadline is May 7. More information on the competition after the break.

Drawing inspiration from Geelong’s history and from a future with strong visions of sustainability and independence, the ‘Sea Dragon’, designed by JOH Architects, is a wind driven sculptural sea monster in the heart of Geelong, a bay orientated port city with a history of both farming and industry connections. This industrial machine like creature will guard the Geelong harbour like nothing in this proud city’s history while remaining fearlessly independent drawing energy from the harbor’s natural environment. More images and architects’ description after the break.

An interdisciplinary team of Princeton University students have been awarded top honors, along with 14 other collegiate teams, for their ‘Power in a Box’ invention that converted a standard shipping container into a sustainable source of energy for remote or disaster-torn regions. The 18-month national competition, known as the “P3: People, Prosperity and the Plant Student Design Competition for Sustainability”, began in the fall of 2010 with 165 competitor and culminated April 21 and 22 on the Washington, D.C. Mall. The U.S. Environment Protection Agency has awarded the students with a $90,000 grant to further develop and implement their project.

Continue reading for more information on ‘Power in a Box’.

G: What drew you out here?

M: A bunch of things. One: the desire to be warm in the winter. Two: the desire to live in the strangest city in the western world. Three: to be around an odd artistic and professional environment founded on creativity regardless of the dreck that comes out of here, it’s still creative. Whereas if you go to a party in New York, you meet people who do jobs I don’t understand. They’re in arbitrage, or corporate accounting, or they are hedge fund managers. They don’t make anything. They just sort of figure out how to generate money off of other people’s efforts. You come here and you meet very successful people who make things. There is this sort of roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done attitude that exists here that you don’t find in other places. I also think that one of the defining characteristics of LA is the overwhelming rate of failure.

You know, hedge fund guys…they don’t fail. Wall Street guys? They are born, they grow up in Connecticut or grow up in Bedford and they come from privilege and they’re entitled, and they go to Penn and then Harvard Business School and then they go to work on Wall Street and then it’s all success from day one.

Recently awarded the prestigious Maybeck Award by the AIA California Council (AIACC), Steven Ehrlich (FAIA, RIBA) has earned international recognition for his distinctive architecture and philosophy that has greatly influenced the architectural community. As the Design Principle of Ehrlich Architects, the Los Angeles-based architect is dedicated to the philosophy of Multicultural Modernism – a unique approach to architecture and planning that is centered on architectural anthropology; an idea that strives to identify and celebrate the uniqueness of each individual culture through design.

Marcel Breuer, born in Hungary in 1902, was educated under the Bauhaus manifesto of “total construction”; this is likely why Breuer is well known for both his furniture designs as well as his numerous works of architecture, which ranged from small residences to monumental architecture and governmental buildings. His career flourished during the Modernist period in conjunction with architects and designers such as founder of Bauhaus Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

In 2009, Syracuse University’s Special Collection Research Center recieved a National Endowment for the Humanities grant with which it began creating the Marcel Breuer Digital Archive. The digital archive, available online, is a collaborative effort headed by the library and includes institutions such as the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Harvard University, the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of East Anglia, and the Vitra Design Museum. It is in the first phase, which includes Breuer work up until 1955, of digitzing over 30,000 drawings, photographs, letters and other related material of his work.

More about Marcel Breuer’s career and the archive after the break.

Christensen & Co. Architects + Rørbæk & Møller architects were recently announced as winners of the competition for a 40.000m2 laboratory building at Technical University Denmark. The new research and educational building assembles the three institutes in one clear architectural concept, creating an open building with space for knowledge sharing and collaborations across the various subjects. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Mark your calendars! In less than three weeks, ArchDaily founders David Basulto and David Assael will join Bjarke Ingels of BIG, Toru Hasegawa of Morpholio and Columbia University, and Carlo Aiello of eVolo for a lecture and panel discussion that will explore the impact of social media, technology and device culture on the way we design and practice. Moderated by Ned Cramer, editor-in-chief of Architect, Going Viral is part of the AIANY 2012 Global Dialogues that has been dedicated to “uncovered connections” with the intention to investigate issues that are similarly impacting multiple regions, cultures and individuals. In addition, selected game changing blogs and websites will be exhibited as Voices Going Viral on the evening of the event.

Going Viral will take place at the NY Center for Architecture on May 21st at 6:00 pm. It is free to join, but please RSVP. Continue after the break for more information.

This informative  11″ by 11″ hardcover book presents a curated collection of award-winning residential and master planning work from leading American designers. Meticulously detailed and site-specific, the featured projects focus on sustainability, technology, and the human spirit. They reflect ideologies and philosophies that are rooted in the modernist doctrine or distilled from vernacular precedents.

OPEN Architecture recently created a new kind of school system that provides a balanced and joyful learning environment integrated with farms and gardens. Drawing inspiration from the ancient Chinese philosophy which had always centered on the harmony between people and nature, the architects feel it is urgent to bring the ancient philosophy back to the core of our education, and put it in the context of new challenges ahead. If there is one thing that we have to put above all other issues for the 21st century, it is probably the vulnerability of nature, especially in the decades to come, and amidst all the looming environmental crisis. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The winning proposal for the extension project for the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Troyes (Troyes Management School) by SCAU Architectes provides a new image, thanks to a highly pertinent concept that marries convivial spaces, clear circulation, modern energy and, above all, a great simplicity of architectural style. The extension, necessitated by its exceptional growth, is a real opportunity to confirm the establishment’s image and assert its identity at a national and international level, among the diverse colleges in this field. In this respect, the building’s architectural expression has today become the flagship of the Troyes ESC’s dynamism and energy. More images and architects’ dsescription after the break.

One hundred years have passed since Le Corbusier’s Voyage to the Orient. Although he didn’t venture into the Far East, his influence – and that of Modernism – is recognizable across the world. This conference, hosted by Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University October 18-19, looks at modernism’s significance to architecture and urbanism from Europe to India. It will explore its lasting, or fading, influence on China; and China’s influence on it. Architecture, and indeed the world, has changed massively over the last century, so this conference will explore what contemporary ideas can be drawn from different historical periods and different social circumstances. More information on the conference after the break.

The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture – a non-profit international arts space based in Moscow founded by Daria Zhukova – has unveiled plans for a new building in Gorky Park. Designed by OMA, Garage Gorky Park will renovate the famous 1960s Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) restaurant, a prefabricated concrete structure that has been derelict for more than two decades. Garage is expected to complete and occupy this 5,400-square-meter building sometime next year, with plans to later expand to the nearby Hexagon pavilion (or Machine Pavilion).

Rem Koolhaas: “We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the Soviet wreckage and find new uses and interpretations for them; it also enabled us to avoid the exaggeration of standards and scale that is becoming an aspect of contemporary art spaces.”

Continue after the break for more.

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In this book, C. F. Møller Architects, one of Scandinavia’s most renowned practices, founded in 1924, presents a wide range of their award-winning public design. It includes hospitals, universities and schools, public administration, masterplans, and housing, all conceived with a constant eye to social innovation through architecture.

Chris DeHenzel is one of 2012 lucky recipients of a John K. Branner traveling fellowship, awarded by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Architecture. Throughout the year, Chris will be visiting more than 25 cities in 5 continents to research on alternatives to our resource-intensive industrial food system, represented at retail level by the corporate supermarket.

¿How could an alternative system of physical markets support an alternative food system? Chris will dispatch for ArchDaily from Latvia to Calcuta, in this new series about how to design better ways to sustainable stock hungry global cities. If you want to join him, you are welcome.

Read Chris first dispatch after the break

Metro officials have released six conceptual visions that suggest how the historic Los Angeles Union Station could be transformed by 2050. Preliminary “Vision Boards” were released in a public forum at Union Station last week, and although they are not part of the formal evaluation process, they have ignited an immense amount of public interest in the competition.

In an article posted on The Source, Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Board Chair Antonio Villaraigosa described that this competition is “about preparing for the future.” As plans for the California High-Speed Rail System evolve, it is imperative that Union Station is redeveloped to meet the standards of a 21st century transportation hub.

Continue after the break to view each Vision Board provided by the six well-known practices shortlisted for the competition.

Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes captures London’s hazy skyline in both day and night. Although still under construction, The Shard appears to already dwarf most to the city. The building is designed by Renzo Piano and is slated to become the tallest in Europe. In addition, Norman Foster’s infamous Gherkin, formally known as the Swiss Re Building, is instantly recognizable in nearly every frame as it is a landmark within the dense metropolis.

With architects building globally – often disconnected from their own cultural and political contexts – what is their responsibility toward the workers who construct their buildings? Organized by the Vera List Center in collaboration with Kadambari Baxi (Barnard College), Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia University GSAPP) and curator and writer Beth Stryker, Who Builds Your Architecture?, which takes place May 3 from 6:30pm-8:30pm, examines the links between construction practices and workers’ rights; and provokes broader questions about contemporary forms of globalization where architecture takes central stage. Sociologist Andrew Ross, architects Peggy Deamer and Fred Levrat, and Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher on the Middle East Bill Van Esveld reflect on how architects imagine their role, particularly on how their buildings may transform society—not just through their physical forms, but through the ways in which they are constructed and used. For more information on the event, please visit here.

The video above, produced by ITDP Mexico is a surprisingly fun look at the dire traffic situation in Mexico City. With the help of two Barbie Ken dolls (who else?), the video describes two types of drivers: the Everyday Driver, who drives everywhere no matter what, and the Shadow Driver, who drives only when it’s most convenient.