Next week we will be taking our Architecture City Guide to Barcelona 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 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.

Orange Architects, a partnership between Dutch architecture firms JSA, CIMKA and HofmanDujardin, shared with us their design of a luxury apartment block on Plot 941 in Sin el Fil, an eastern district of Beirut. The design was commissioned by the Lebanese development corporation Masharii. The 50-metre-tall block will contain 19 apartments ranging in size from 90 to 180 m2.

Follow us after the break for more on this project.

Co-founder of Friends of the High Line, Robert Hammond shares on TED the transformation from abandoned elevated railroad line to one of the hottest spots in New York City. The High Line recently opened Section 2 of the park, which continues to provide a break from the chaotic city streets. The users have an opportunity to experience an elevated space with uninterrupted views of the Hudson River and the city skyline.

By: David Fano

Have you ever had the experience of sitting through a graphics standards committee meeting? It’s where happy and ambitious thoughts go to die. What starts as a good cause for your firm quickly devolves into very long and highly subjective arguments about things such as title blocks, line weights, line styles, fonts, font sizes, tags, symbols, and of course… naming conventions!

I’m not in any way trying to devalue documentation standards or the importance of title blocks. What I am saying is: We spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, architects held about 141,200 jobs in 2008 (source). Hypothetically, if each architect in the U.S. spends 30 minutes a year on average working on standards, as a profession we spend 70,600 hours on standards every year. Just for reference there are 2,080 hours per year in a standard full-time work week (52 weeks x 40 hours). That’s like a firm of 34 full time architects working on nothing but standards every year.

Young architecture office, MACA Estudio, based in Madrid, Spain, shared with us their proposal for the Serlachius Museum Gösta Extension design competition. Their proposal plans to solve all the functional requirements of a museum, making the most of the circulations, the sustainability and integration of the building in its environment and at the same time creating a recognizable icon, a representative building worthy of the importance of this museum located in Mäntäa, Finland. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The existing five-story concrete Delancey and Essex Municipal Parking Garage is getting a face lift. The downtown Manhattan parking garage, nearly 40 years old, is a NYC Department of Transportation project that will receive a $4 million renovation including an impressive cable facade. Michielli + Wyetzner Architects designed a two layer 1/14″ diameter cable weave like pattern to create a three-dimensional open facade for the second to fifth floors of the garage.

Winner of a 2011 NYC Design Commission Awards, the garage is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s Design + Construction Excellence Program which has been led by the New York City Department of Design and Construction since 2004.

The Cultural Center of the Philippines’ masterplan states that ”The CCP Complex shall be a center for arts and culture in Asia. Primarily, it shall be the centerpiece of artistic expression of the Filipino soul and spirit, created for the Filipino artist and all sectors of Philippine society. The CCP Complex shall be the major cultural, ecological and tourism landmark of the Philippines. It shall be a home for the Filipino artist and an urban oasis for the Filipino people.” In relation to this vision, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, recently held a design competition for two new iconic buildings within it’s complex –a New Performing Arts Theatre, and an Artists’ Center, located within the Arts Sanctuary Cluster of the 62 hectare property. Buensalido Architects recently shared with us their entry for this competition.

This week, with the help of our readers, our Architecture City Guide is headed to Paris. For centuries Paris has been the laboratory where innovative architects and artists have come to test their ideas. This has created a city that has bit of everything. Where the architecture of some cities seems to undergo phases of punctuated equilibrium, Paris’s architectural fossil record gives an impression of gradualism; all the missing links are there. This makes it easy to trace the origins of the most contemporary ideas throughout history. Nothing seems to come out of nowhere. If you look around you kind find the design’s inspiration running through the city’s Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Rocco, Neo-Classical, Empire, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern, Post-Modern, and Contemporary Architecture. Seen in another context, many of Paris’s buildings might seem out of place, but the bones of this city support the newest iterations on the oldest and most profound questions. The 24 contemporary designs that comprise our list probably should not be viewed outside of this context, even though that is the stated goal of some of the designs.

As the most visited city in the world and arguably the capital of culture, it is impossible to capture the essence of Paris in 24 modern/contemporary designs. Our readers supplied us with great suggestions, and we really appreciate the help and use of their photographs. The list is far from complete and we realize that many iconic buildings are not yet on the list. We will be adding to it in the near feature, so please add more in the comments section below.

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

A year ago we told you about the Strelka Institute, a postgrad school for media, architecture and design in Moscow. The school focuses on a series of themes aimed to reshape Russia’s current role in the world: from the preservation of the urban environment and migration to the future of energy and the role of virtual space.

The Office for Non Fiction Storytelling recently shared with us the first of an exclusive film series for Wallpaper* Visionaries. Beginning with none other than AMO, OMA’s research counterpart, Reinier de Graaf director of AMO and architect Laura Baird share their ideas of creating a world driven by a 100% renewable energy by 2050. The ambitious WWF project experiments with scale ranging from the North Sea and an energy grid for Europe to a much larger scale presenting the world as one utilizing a united energy grid. Throughout the process the AMO team has learned to represent things that don’t yet exist, traveling the world sharing their ideas.

The project presented here – Green Building: Madan Technology Center – was planned by the Forward architectural firm following a commission by the Association of the Almada / Setúbal Science and Technology Park – Madan Parque. The site is located in Portugal, on a site near the Faculty of Sciences and Technology – Nova University and is designed to host the Company Innovation program and a Data Centre serving the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region. Given its characteristics, the infrastructure shall serve as a pole of attraction for high technology companies in the context of an architectural proposal that is moving towards innovative solutions to the environmental issues of today.

More details on this project after the break.

Architects: Rojkind Arquitectos / Michel Rojkind, Gerardo Salinas Location: México D.F., México Project Area: 20,188 sqm Renders: Rojkind Arquitectos, render by Axel Fridman

The Yademan tower in Ardebil, Iran is a residential building which was designed by Iranian based, Architecture Atelier as an entry for the Ofogh Tarh and Andishe architecture competition and is currently a candidate for construction. They combined the role of the Iranian central courtyard buildings with the formal structure of irregular skyscrapers to reach an innovative concept. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Writers’ Theatre recently announced the hiring of Studio Gang Architects to design a new home in Glencoe, Illinois. The award-winning Chicago firm (architects of the impressive Aqua Tower) will provide research and development concepts for the theatre’s current site located in downtown Glencoe. A Writers’ Theatre committee comprised of artists, board and staff conducted a thorough search for an architect, including local, national and international firms, for the project.

“After a rigorous process, we found in Jeanne an architect who embraces, understands and celebrates Writers’ Theatre. We look forward to working with Jeanne and her team to develop ideas of what Writers’ Theatre could be. We are confident that working with Studio Gang is the right match for the organization and for our community,” said Artistic Director Michael Halberstam. “Jeanne has a vision of architecture that is derived from her own equivalent of the word and artist: the material and the environment. It is my belief that Studio Gang offers the opportunity for people to arrive encountering a world class piece of architecture and leave having experienced a world class evening of theatre.”

What turns a residential space into a home? Its decoration? Its objects? The people sharing that space? All the memories stored in it? Estudio Guto Requena asks the participants to answer this question until July 17th by twitter @umacasaumlar and help them to construct their interactive wallpaper at Hyundai Mostra Black Exhibition in Sao Paulo. The interactive ambient “What turns a house into a home?” seeks to instigate the visitors to thinking about the significances and subjectivities associated with our houses.

The LIA Passenger Terminal Building for Hong Kong, China by Edit! was developed to respond the surrounding urban structure, and to create a visually striking landmark that will act as a gate point for the city. It is designed with the intention to become an iconic character for the city while becoming an environmentally-efficient structure.

Read on for more on this project after the break.

SPEDstudio has won second place for the Casa della Memoria Design Competition in Milan, Italy. Casa della Memoria, with an area of 185.80 sqm, will house the headquarters of some of the associations involved in the preservation and dissemination of “memory” of the conquest of freedom and democracy in Italy, as well as multi-purpose areas and exhibitions.

DATA proposal for the extension of the Serlachius Museum Gösta consists of a building characterized by its sober and quiet aesthetics compatible with its unique cultural environment, a peaceful and preserved bank of a lake. This new construction with the tonality associating the wood lights fairness with glass and the white concrete thus offers a serene architecture which proposes sights tallied on the 360 degrees of the horizon. Installed tangentially with the northern frontage of the manor, it is relatively low and without salient angles. The effort is related to the construction of a unit architectural object in dialogue with its close environment.

The Japan Art Association recently named the 2011 Praemium Imperiale Laureates. One of the recipients of this prestigious award included Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta of LEGORRETA + LEGORRETA.

Created in 1988 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Japan Art Association and to honor the late Prince Takamatsu, the Praemium Imperiale awards recognize lifetime achievement in the arts in categories not covered by the Nobel Prizes.

A complete list of the 2011 Praemium Imperiale Laureates can be found after the break.

Young German design team, studioBÄNG, shared with us their wooden piled up proposal for the Serlachius Museum Gösta extension competition in Finland on a small island adjacent to the site. More images and architects‘ description after the break.

The FGMF architects office, under the command of the young architects Fernando Forte, Lourenço Gimenes and Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz and placed in São Paulo, Brazil, has just won one more international award: “The international award Dedalo Minosse”-“Prêmio Internazionale Dedalo Minosse”, delivered in Vicenza, Italy, on June 24th 2011, at CISA (Andrea Palladio Centro Internacional de Estudos de Arquitetura – Andrea Palladio International Center for architecture studies). This is one of many awards received by FGMF, being the most awarded architecture Office in Brazil in the year of 2010. More information on their award after the break.

The design of the Museum of Troy at Çanakkale has been carried out by the atelier RTA-Office, led by Santiago Parramón with offices in Barcelona and Shanghai, in collaboration with the Turkish atelier DOME Partners (Istanbul). The aim is that the building rises in the Turkish area of Çanakkale but aspires to be a global focus through its expression and display of the culture of a civilization. A project that will act as a generator for social activity, research and culture.

The key concept of this project was to create not only a building but also a new meaningful city space connecting the people, the place, its history and their music. The building delimits the boundaries of the plot, enclosing an expanse of green at its core: a garden that is urban yet isolated from the hubbub of the city.

c. Colomès + f. Nomdedeu architectes with Michael Rousseau architecte and Adrian Maston have studied the evolution of cities and urban environments and have produced this research as to how one might design and create a sustainable urban development. This concept is based on a living condition that balances the urban environment with an agricultural environment.

Read on for more on this research after the break.