Late last month the AIA announced that it is in support of the International Green Construction Code (lgCC) which will be a guide and model that helps architects and builders design buildings that conserve energy and move to a sustainable design strategy. The AIA is part of a long list of supporters which include ASHRAE, the US Green Building Council and the Illuminating Engineering Society. For architecture and engineering, this is a step in the right direction. This provides designers with a tool that makes responsible design less cryptic by offering solutions for energy saving strategies.

More on this after the break.

15:15 Raincatcher by YS Groundwork is the result of a competition entry for the contemporary design of one of Hong Kong’s oldest urban traditions: the Hawker Stall – Dai Pai Dong. A Hawker Stall is a kitchen, a dining room and a living room – a space for passersby to enjoy public space, interact with strangers, and grab a bite to eat on their way to their next destination. Initially exhibited at the 2009 Hong Kong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, YSGroundwork has won the opportunity to realize their design and prove that their twist on tradition will add vitality and innovation to the Hong Kong’s streetlife.

More on the project after the break!

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The New York office of top international architecture and design firm Perkins Eastman shared with us their design for the Lekhwiya Sports Complex—a mixed-use sports venue that will be the home stadium for Qatar’s premier football team, Lekhwiya Club. The 19,529 sm (210,210 sf) complex also will be used as a training site and home base for a guest team participating in the 2022 World Cup. More architects’ description after the break.

Upon finishing their second film, Waterline: Chicago’s Urban River Corridor, Adam Gross from Spirit Of Space shared with us the third and final film of the series on the Phil Enquist Harvard Studio. As a walk through the students’ final designs, 12 DESIGNERS, 12 VISIONS presents the culmination of an intense research-based design project for this eclectic group of students.

Denton Corker Marshall recently won an international design competition to design the new Australian pavilion in Venice’s Giardini della Biennale, the heart of the prestigious Venice Biennale events. The new pavilion will be the first of the 21st century contributions to the Giardini, which is undergoing revitalisation by the Venice Biennale. It will replace Australia’s current pavilion, designed as a temporary structure by Philip Cox in 1988. Within a footprint of approximately 320m2, the two-level pavilion will provide a new flexible and adaptable exhibition space to showcase Australian visual arts and architecture to international audiences at annual biennales. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Taking place at the University of Oregon from August 11-20, the ‘Marking the Forest’ design workshop will be run by Satellite Architects for the Architectural Association as they will explore the inner workings of the forest, investigating the biodiversity of the woodland and the commodification of the tree. They will skim the surface of the politics of the forest and conceptualize this information into a design that will be realized in the forest. The workshop will be divided into research (studio and woodland lectures), experience (raft trip and mill visits), design (studio design and crits with prototype building in the workshop) and assembly (assembly in the woodland). The project will also be documented and presented as a book from AA Publications. The deadline for applications is July 28, 2012. More information after the break.

Known as an architect, artist and cartoonist, Jimenez Lai has lectured on and exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He is known for his imaginative cartoon narratives and architectural installations. He is the founder of Bureau Spectacular and currently an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. His graphic novel, Citizens of No Place, will be published by the Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation this year.

Deborah Berke & Partners Architects have released their plans for the expansion and renovation of I.M. Pei’s 1969 Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center (RAC). Located at Fredonia’s State University College in New York, the visual and performing arts complex has served as a major cultural center for western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. Continue reading after the break for more.

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The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) recently launched a design competition to deliver one of the first landmark buildings for the West Kowloon Cultural District, the Xiqu Center. The Chinese opera venue will provide a world-class facility for the preservation and development of the art form in Hong Kong and will be designed to host and produce the finest examples of Cantonese and other Chinese opera performances.The Xiqu Center, scheduled for completion around the end of 2015, will be the first of 17 core arts and cultural venues to be opened within the District and one of 15 proposed performing arts venues. The deadline for submissions in April 10, 2012. More information on the competition after the break.

The Slant Awards Spring 2012 competition, which is open to all, challenges participants to design a concept plan for a city sector which is undergoing urban renewal. The city in question is not a real city, it has been designed solely for this competition, and its location is not being specified. It is a generic city that could be almost anywhere in the world and participants are free to choose the country in which you would like this imaginary city to be located. This is a worldwide competition open to all those who have an interest in landscape design and urban planning, and students are especially encouraged to enter. The deadline for submissions is June 11, 2012. For more information, please visit their official website here.

Among the guests, there will be architects and structure designers, winners of 9 important awards, such as Residential Property Award 2011, The Emirates Leaf Glass Awards 2011, World Architecture Festival 2011 and European Steel Design Awards 2011. Alongside these experts, there are also going to be present world leaders in glass field – Saint-Gobain Glass, Guardian and AGC – and leaders in curtain walls – Permasteelisa. We invite you to INGLASS to meet those who will create tomorrow’s architecture. More after the break.

We recently received a book we wished we had earlier, Writing About Architecture. Lange’s book pulls from “lessons learned from her courses at New York University and the School of Visual Arts.”  ”The book offers works by some of the best architecture critics of the twentieth century including Ada Louise Huxtable, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Sorkin, Charles Moore, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Jane Jacobs to explains some of the most successful methods with which to approach architectural criticism.” The book “could serve as the primary text for a course on criticism for undergraduates or architecture and design majors.” We here at ArchDaily are now using it as a resource. We have a feeling the pages will be worn through pretty quickly.

Designed for the Boral Brick Awards 2011-2012, ‘The Urban Cloak’ proposal by Jonathan Gibb is an addition to an existing inner city 2 storey brick building, to adapt and add a multi-levelled apartment building. A cloaked figure; standing amongst the debris of style, industry and waste: veiled by a multiplicity of individual bricks, reading as one. At once a sun and rain screen, and veiling against on-lookers sight. The existing building is left, but affected by the new. Its old roof is discarded and the paint of the facade shed, revealing the identity of the brick. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Memory Cloud is the winning commission awarded to RE:site (Norman Lee and Shane Allbritton, Artists website: www.resitestudio.com) and METALAB (Andrew Vrana, Joe Meppelink and Michael Gonzales, Architecture + Fabrication) by Texas A&M University for the new Memorial Student Center 12th Man Hall. Through a competition and short-list interview process the team demonstrated the ability to harness the potential of programmable LEDs, remote sensing, parametric design and digital fabrication to create an open ended narrative of the story of the University through animated silhouette imagery of past and real-time present student life on the campus.

Memory Cloud will be installed in December of 2012. Continue after the break for more images, video and the designer’s project description.

If you are in the Bay Area this weekend, we recommend you stop in at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and check out their current exhibit The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area. This exhibition is the first of its kind, featuring Buckminster Fuller’s most iconic projects as well a focus on his local design legacy in the Bay Area. Though he was never a resident, Fuller’s ideas inspired many local experiments in the realms of technology, engineering and sustainability. Continue reading for more information.

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As you may have heard,The New Yorker’s Architect Critic, Paul Goldberger, is leaving for Vanity Fair.

If this registers no reaction from you, let me explain why it should. Paul Goldberger is the crowned prince of criticism. He began his career at The New York Times in 1972, where he worked under Ada Louise Huxtable, our reigning critical queen, and where he won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1997, he switched media empires:

“I thought it was as perfect a life as you could have,” Goldberger told The Observer, “to spend half your career at The Times, half at The New Yorker.”

But, after years of “fighting for adequate space” in an increasingly shrinking column, Goldberger won’t be finishing his writing days as Architect Critic of The New Yorker, but as Contributing Editor of Vanity Fair.

Many will conclude that this is a death knell for architecture; that if architecture cannot justify its own column at The New Yorker, one of the most influential publications in the world, then it must no longer be deemed relevant. This is what happened when Michael Kimmelman, an Arts reporter with no architectural training was appointed to cover architecture at The Times. Critics tweeted: “NYT to Architecture of NYC: Drop Dead” and “Architecture: you’ve been demoted.”

I too will add a cry to the din: “The Architecture Critic is Dead!” But you know what? Good riddance. Because criticism hasn’t died the way you think. It’s just been changed beyond recognition. And frankly, for the better.

Read more on the transformation of architecture & its criticism after the break…

The Aliah Project, a hotel for a green World Cup, designed by Hiperstudio + Arkiz has been awarded as the winner of a competition organized by Aliah, a company which promotes sustainable development through practices and businesses that are profitable with a positive socio-environmental impact. A sustainable luxury hotel complex for the 2014 World Cup, their design serves as a model of sustainable architecture by disseminating innovative concepts that promote a green lifestyle. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The proposal for the new church in Våler by We Are You plays an important role in the landscape marking a new chapter in the history of Våler and presenting itself as a public meeting place for the people. This is demonstrated through its archetypal form and somewhat enigmatic exterior which create these expectations. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Three companies demonstrated their commitment to the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. by recreating significant works in LEGO® bricks in the spirit of the Museum’s current and landmark exhibition LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition. These three new models, containing more than 77,000 LEGO® bricks join the gallery already showcasing LEGO® models of 15 of the world’s most iconic buildings.

The original 15 were created by LEGO® certified professional Adam Reed Tucker, one of only 11 LEGO® certified professionals in the world. The Museum’s LEGO® Architecture exhibition is among the most popular in Museum history and has had more than 214,000 visitors since it opened in July 2010 and will be exhibited until September 3, 2012. More information on the exhibition after the break.