Yan ZhenQing Museum, designed by Serie Architects, displays works from the important calligrapher of the same name who lived in Shandong Province in China during the 8th century. His work introduced an element of vertical rhythm into the calligraphic script, and set up a style that was simpler and bolder. Situated in the beautiful landscape near the city of Linyi, the museum also strikes a bold stance in relation to its landscape. Rather than merge into the landscape the museum is placed on a series of three terraces that rise slightly above the topography. On these plateaus the museum takes on the qualities of a type of traditional Chinese garden known as the scholars’ garden. More images and architects’ description after the break.

After patiently evolving the design of 837 Washington Street, the Meatpacking District’s newest addition, New York-based Morris Adjmi Architects are happy to announce the project’s recent approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The new office and retail building, which will rise from a 1930s warehouse, will be Adjmi’s fourth building in the Meatpacking District. The project has been struggling to gain approval, primarily due to its height, as the building was originally conceived to stand 100 feet tall; however, the most recent design scheme shows the building measuring just below 80 feet, allowing it to blend more graciously with its surroundings.

More about the project after the break.

Supported by Architects Southwest, the 2011 Zombie Safe House Competition is an annual design competition focused on creating the best safe house for a zombie apocalypse.

Architect Piero Ceratti shared with us his concept design, titled ‘Eagle Nest Hut’, for a mountain hut/shelter powered by wind turbines. This alpine hut can be installed in very extreme sites while minimizing the point of contact with the rocky ground. More images and architects’ description after the break.

WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC, in collaboration with XP& Architecture, shared with us their proposal for a sustainable mixed-use development project, aimed to be a developmental landmark, using reconfigured traces of shipping containers. They will do so through diligently reconnecting, revitalising, and humanizing the accessibility of the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Blvd and the Broadway Area. More images and a brief description after the break.

Lamar Advertising Headquarters, as designed by Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, is a reaction against the standard office environment; it is a collaborative administrative center, a proposal planned to strengthen a culture of openness. This refurbishment of a 1970’s office building reinvented a segmented office plan into a communal arena to connect colleges and contribute to the communicating whole.

More of Lamar Advertising Headquarters after the break.

Performance Architecture shared with us their design for the University of Miami’s Frost College of Music Center for Experiential Music. The performance building is foreseen as a “jewel” on Lake Osceola, and its design is a pure reflection of the University’s innovative teaching philosophy. Collaborative teaching and learning are fully facilitated by this proposed structure, which allows multiple facets of interaction among its inhabitants.

Learn more about The University of Miami Frost College of Music Center for Experiential Music after the break.

RecoveryPark is a collaborative effort of neighborhoods, policymakers and designers that will include urban farming, education, commercial and housing development in Detroit, Michigan. SHAR, Inc. (Self Help Addiction Rehabilitation) teamed up with the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture to create a community design process to develop land-use proposals and speculate on what a resuscitated urban environment might look like.

Read on for more after the break.

This week, with the help of our readers, our Architecture City Guide is headed to Madrid. As the third largest city in the European Union, Madrid is the economic and political capital of Spain. The streets and neighborhoods for the most part remains historic, but the city is punctuated with moments of engaging and interesting contemporary architecture. For those who have followed our city guides, you will have noticed that this is our second stop in Spain. That said, Madrid is distinctly different from Barcelona. The differences between the two are manifested in their architecture, both old and new. Our lists only cover relatively recent projects, but a quick glance at the two will give you a sense of the differing cultures and lifestyles (Barcelona’s City Guide). Both lists are far from complete and we are looking to add to them in the near future. In the meantime add more of your favorites to the comment section below.

To check out other cities visit our world map or our Architecture City Guide page.

The Architecture City Guide: Madrid list and corresponding map after the break.

Le Corbusier’s politics are a divisive issue for architects and rightly so: his work is still highly influential, in both adoration and enmity, and his expressed political views are at odds with contemporary western democratic values.

It’s easy for the discussion of those views to lapse into a sort of ethical debate by-proxy, devolving into a discussion about whether or not Le Corbusier should continue to be included in the canon of twentieth century architects considering his apparent anti-Semetism and sympathy for the Nazi party. Such narrow and moralistic inquiry negates other issues pertinent to Le Corbusier’s place in history. It is possible to both be aware of Le Corbusier’s political affiliations and to discuss his work as an architect, urbanist, and designer for its own merits. By way of explanation, I would like to revisit a recent controversy concerning Le Corbusier.

The Antelope Valley Reflecting Wall is a proposal by architecture office Min | Day to alter the face of an existing retaining wall in Lincoln, Nebraska and enliven the adjoining land. Min | Day describes the Antelope Valley Reflecting Wall as a new horizon in Lincoln, Nebraska. Although an 18 foot by 1000 foot retaining wall, the structural base of the project, already exists, the area is unimpressive and underused. Min | Day’s additions to the structure and to the space would transform the floodwall and its surroundings into a fresh new urban space for the city and the neighborhood.

Designed by Studio BONNER & Stayner Architects, Eight Thousand Two Hundred Fifteen is a proposal for an entrance plaza and children’s play area for Zoo Miami and Miami-Dade Art in Public Places. Emerging from the uncontrollability of hydrology and urbanism, the 80,000 ft2 paving system is comprised of thousands of pre-cast and cast-in-place concrete surfaces that mutate from horizontal to vertical at key points, both adaptive and constantly changing. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The work of Wendy W Fok (WE-DESIGNS, LLC) & CUHK students (Summer 2011 – Relational Modularity Studio) will be exhibited at the DigitalFUTURE Exhibition in Shanghai, China alongside other pioneering international design practices, including but not limited to: Zaha Hadid Architects, UNStudio, Greg Lynn FORM, SPAN, Evan Douglis Studio, Aranda/Lasch, among many others.

Next week we will be taking our Architecture City Guide to Rome and we need your help. To make the City Guides more engaging we are asking for your input on which designs should comprise our weekly list of 12-24. In order for this to work we will need you, our readers, to suggest a few of your favorite modern/contemporary buildings for the upcoming city guide in the comment section below. Along with your suggestions we ask that you provide a link to an image you took of the building that we can use, the address of the building, and the architect. (The image must be from a site that has a Creative Common License cache like Flickr or Wikimedia. We cannot use images that are copyrighted unless they are yours and you give us permission.) From that we will select the top 12-24 most recommended buildings. Hopefully this method will help bring to our attention smaller well done projects that only locals truly know. With that in mind we do not showcase private single-family residences for obvious reasons. Additionally, we try to only show completed projects.

The architectural profession has been greatly influenced by the recession that began over three years ago.    With hundreds of projects, on a variety of scales, being stalled or completely canceled, and firms forced to lay off extreme numbers of employees, many estimate that our profession has taken one of the hardest hits of this economic downturn.

We are constantly, and optimistically, seeking that metaphorical silver lining to get back on our feet hoping our industry will revive itself. Yet, back in March of this year, the Chief economist for the AIA, Kermit Baker, warned, “We’ve been preaching patience and cautious optimism for a full recovery because there continues to be a wide range of business conditions for architecture firms that are also influenced by firm size, practice specialties and regional location. We still expect the road to recovery to move at a slow, but steady pace.”

More after the break.

Architects: William O’Brien Jr. LLC Location: Upstate New York Design Principal: William O’Brien Jr Project Team: Bhujon Kang Project Year: 2009-2011 Visualization: Peter Guthrie

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Director Christopher Nolan is preparing to shoot his third and final Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” which promises to bring the events of its blockbuster predecessors full circle. The filmmaker will experience new ground with the conclusion to his trilogy by shooting a portion of the film in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Shooting locations for Nolan’s Batman installments are shot all over the world, in places such as, India, Iceland, Romania, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and now Pittsburgh. Each location offers unique elements of architecture to create the look and feel of Gotham City and Batman’s world. More information after the break.

As we reported last week, WORKac provided the winning entry for the invitation-only competition New Ideas for New Holland. The proposed city within a city concept is an exciting redevelopment and design of New Holland Island in St. Petersburg, Russia which takes shape in this video by Eric Lane with music by Darkstar.

AGER Group’s Boston Studio won an Excellence Award winning first prize for the Kaohsiung Port Station Urban Design competition initiated by the Urban Development Bureau of the Kaohsiung City Government in Taiwan. The 15.42 hectare site is located between the Hamasen and Yenchen historic commercial centers of the 1920’s and 40’s and at the intersection of three of Kaohsiung’s thriving neighborhoods home of the recent Maritime Music Center and Port Terminal competitions. The competition aimed at transforming the historic rail yard and port station into a new city destination, creating a progressive model for local urban renewal. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Perspective provides us the vision to see our work and how we shape our surroundings with increasing clarity as we aspire to evolve and seek ever better answers to the challenges of our world. Our perspective begins with the most personal of the individual, to ever expanding rings of reference and community. This year’s 2011 AIA Honor Awards for Washington Architecture recognizes the transformative potential of vision in shaping our work and our communities.

The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and the A10 new European architecture magazine are launching the Bakema Fellowship 2011/2012. This fellowship is a grant of €10,000 for research, through design, at the cutting-edge of architecture, technology and society. The deadline for applications is 16 October 2011. Application criteria and other fellowship information after the break.

Studio Mode/modeLab is pleased to announce the upcoming modeLab Parametric Design Workshop in New York City over the weekend of August 20/21, 2011. In response to the overwhelming interest and success of last month’s workshop, modeLab will conduct one last Parametric Design Workshop this summer. The workshop will include a newly redeveloped curriculum and series of supporting lectures as a means to engage both the conceptual, as well as technical domains of applied parametric design.

The award winning sustainable German architecture firm, Ingenhoven Architects, has been hired by Google Inc to design their new headquarters in Mountain View, California. Expected to begin construction in 2012, Ingenhoven approached the design with the idea that ‘the architecture should be an expression of the „corporate culture” and at the same time a model for sustainable architecture in the broadest sense surpassing the LEED-Platinum-Standards with its holistic concept’. Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman shared about Ingenhoven, “we’ve asked them to build the most green, sustainable building possible.”

Google’s offices in Milan, previously featured on ArchDaily can be viewed here. More about this exciting news from the architects following the break.

There really is no way around the time tested adage; You get what you pay for.  Good things cost money and better things cost more money.  Where does one draw the line on good enough?  Cars, clothes, watches, diamonds, food, vacations… the list goes on and on.  However, when it comes to our home, do we really give it enough consideration?  Our home is where we spend a great deal of our time.  Our home is also our most personal possession.  It may very well reflect almost everything we do in our most personal times.  The quality of our homes could very easily parallel the quality of our lives. Simply stated, “if you don’t like going home, how happy can you possibly be?” However, if home is a place where you would rather stay, then you really have something.  Shouldn’t your home be your favorite place to be?

If you don’t like how much something cost, what are you supposed to do?

A- Change your taste so something cheaper will suffice. B- Save your money so you can afford what it is that you really want C- Squeeze your master builder to the point that you can afford to get what you want at the expense of him or someone else….