AIA New York celebrated their 30th year of the annual design awards program which recognizes projects located in New York City or design by architects practicing in New York City. Three projects received “Best in Show”: the Hypar Pavilion Lawn and Restaurant by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with FXFOWLE, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects’ David Rubenstein Atrium, and another collaboration by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with FXFOWLE and Beyer Blinder Belle’s Public Spaces.

A special exhibition featuring all of the winning projects will be on view through June 25th at the NYC Center for Architecture. The complete list of AIA New York 2011 Design Award Winners following the break.

Looking back at the Easter Pilgrimage 2011 at Ruta del Peregrino, the most important event of the year, we are pleased to announce the final step of the second construction phase (you can check the complete project over here).

This year, for the first time, the pilgrims were able to use the finished viewpoint by HHF Architects, offering a new way to experience the site.

The sanctuary by Tatiana Bilbao and the viewpoint by Christ&Gantenbein are under construction; their presence will mark the completion of the entire Ruta within a few months.

All images by Iwan Baan and you can check his website for the full coverage.

Melvin and Bren Simon Director and CEO Maxwell Anderson holds a conversation with 100 Acres Project Manager Dave Hunt and Architect Marlon Blackwell about the Indianapolis Museum of Art Visitors Pavilion. This Director’s Journal from Art Babble discusses the structure, site, geothermal, and the program of the pavilion.

Almost 47,000 photos of the most amazing architecture photography from our readers in 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 aspheric.org in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Check the other four after the break.

In 1933, the eminent, genre-bending Japanese novelist, Junichiro Tanizaki, composed a landmark essay on aesthetics entitled, In Praise of Shadows. It is more stream of consciousness than formal essay, part epic poem, part cultural theory. It revealed something different about the obvious; something deeper about the overlooked qualities of space and light. It led us by the hand back into the value of darkness.

Wendy Heldmann’s paintings also explore the obvious and seemingly unimportant, leading us into the abandoned, post-production, end-of-term architecture studio. This world is heaped with the artifacts of architectural exploration: scraps of paper, foamcore, laser-cut acrylic sheets, cardboard coffee containers, plastic bottles still partially filled with colorful liquids, dusty respirators, demolished models, battered, smudged monitors, chairs overturned onto tool trolleys, the spidery arms of darkened desk lamps. All of this becomes worth looking over again.

More after the break.

The Cielo Resort by De Bartolo + Rimanic Design Studio is designed to provide the ultimate exclusive & luxurious resort experience on the Baja California coastline in Mexico. It is built into a cliff edge to provide views of the Pacific Ocean and Isla Coronado.

For more on this project read on after the break.

The Open Call encourages the research on cutting-edge architecture, innovative technologies and solutions, as well as on the relationship between architectural space and the other artistic areas presented at the Festival, Electronic Sound and Music, Audiovisual Mapping, Interactive and Digital Art.

The IPOST Headquarters Building by Daniele Durante_studiobv36 begins with a strong relation with the urbanization of the area, and its adjacency to a highly density block including Telecom building in Rome, Italy. These relations have pushed the project idea towards a dialogue with the urban scale, making the building like a “perspective block”, with a strong plastic impact.

Read on for more after the break.

We received this tragic news from reader, Johan Nordstedt, concerning Stockholm’s School of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology. Early Wednesday morning, the roof of the lecture hall situated on Östermalmsgatan quickly filled with smoke. From 7.10 in the morning until 7.30 in the evening, fire fighters worked to contain the flames and prevent the building from collapse. More than 80 fire fighters were on call to put out the flames, yet due to the building’s old construction, the fire spread quickly.

Get your architecturally inclined taste buds ready for this! Coolhaus – a creative gourmet ice cream sandwich line served from a vintage mail truck – is currently roaming the streets of Manhattan. After beginning in LA and moving to Austin, the truck is now on the East Coast satisfying architecture lovers with their delicious all-natural creations such as the Mies Vanilla Rohe (Vanilla ice cream + Chocolate Chip Cookie) and the Frank Berry (Strawberry ice cream + Snickerdoodle cookie). The brain child of two women who share a love of architecture and of course, ice cream, this funky business is a triple entendre and a play on three factors: the Bauhaus as an influential modernist design movement of the 1920′s and 30′s, Rem Koolhaas who challenged the mantra “Form follows function”, and “Cool house” – an ice cream sandwich deconstructed into a cookie roof and floor slab with ice cream walls.

MIT’s Festival for Art Science and Technology will culminate this weekend May 7th and 8th with FAST Light, a series of innovative site specific installations around the MIT campus and along the Charles River. Installations by MIT Department of Architecture Head, Nader Tehrani (founder and principal of Office dA and of the newly formed NADAAA), Professor Sheila Kennedy (Principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture), and Professor Meejin Yoon (Principal of Höweler + Yoon Architecture and MY Studio) are among the final river front projects that will light up the night along the river this Saturday and Sunday in front of Killian Court at MIT.

More information, photographs, and videos following the break

Running through May 17th at the Northwest Labs, the much anticipated Harvard University Graduate School of Design exhibition, The Divine Comedy, features major works including Ai Weiwei’s ‘Untitled’. The Divine Comedy exhibition is an “exploration of the emerging domain of experimental spatial practice where the concerns of art, design, and activism are powerfully converging today.”

BIG, Martha Schwartz Landscape, Buro Happold, Speirs & Major, Lutzenberger & Lutzenberger, and Global Cultural Asset Management are today announced as the winning team of the international design competition for a new 27.000 m2 cultural complex in Albania, consisting of a Mosque, an Islamic Centre, and a Museum of Religious Harmony.

More images and complete press release after the break.

The Rio 2016 Olympic and Para-Olympic games, together with other large events scheduled for upcoming years, such as the 2014 World Cup and the 2011 Military Games, generate enormous opportunities for the development of Rio de Janeiro. The Rio 2016 Olympic and Para-Olympic Games represent a celebration of sports and will be a source of transformation for the city, promoting an environmental, architectural, cultural and sustainable economy legacy, benefiting the urban environment and the quality of life of citizens.

Israel’s government, with the agreement of the Russian government has proposed erecting a monument to mark the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany. Taking on the design challenge, TheHeder Partnership draws your eyes to the horizon as you are overcome with openness and freedom and the spirit of the moment of victory. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The AIA New Orleans chapter will also be providing a variety of educational tours that explore the soulful flavor of the city’s architecture. There is still time to register for the convention, more information can be found here.

Last week we told you about our interview with Richard Meier, and his opinion on the importance of white for contemporary architecture. We invited you to give us your opinion for the chance to win one of three signed copies of Meier’s book Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. The deadline is now over, and among the more than 200 comments we randomly selected the three winners! Congratulations to Madeeha Merchant, Sarah Hall, and Terry Williams! You are the winners of the three signed copies of the book! Check your emails as we will contact you to send you the books.

Live life for every moment, outreach sensations, inhale fully, and go forward with speed. There can only be one place where people can be aware of this transience, and New York is just that! Life, it lives the speed of light and brilliance, always new and undiscovered, requires constant innovation. This complex project, by Ivan Filipovic, is just this: Forms that heighten one’s sensations, where lights and functionality can only be understood by someone who lives a prestigious blend of pragmatism and lasting gratification. The combination of profitable operation and enjoyment of consumption is clearly targeted and a focused effort that leaves no doubts as to the meaning of zeal and pleasure. More images and architect’s description after the break.

The AIA New Orleans welcomed a record number of entries for the 2011 Design Awards, 100 Years of Excellence in Design. The categories included Interior Architecture, Master Planning, Divine Detail, Project, Architecture, Adaptive Reuse, and Juror Favorite. A complete list of the 2011 AIA New Orleans Design Awards and jurors comments following the break.

Thursday, May 5th the Ogden Museum of Southern Art will host the AIA New Orleans Member Preview Event for two architecture exhibitions, Elemental and New Orleans Architecture Now. Both exhibitions will open to the public on Saturday, May 7, and remain on display through Friday, May 13 during the 2011 AIA National Convention. To register and for more details of the event can be found here.

We’ve published so many amazing educational projects, that in our seventh selection, we’re still showing you posts from 2009. Check them all after the break!

UCSD Price Center East / Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design The plan of the University of California at San Diego’s existing student center, the Price Center, was developed with an “introverted” configuration – a central courtyard bordered on three sides by all of the building’s program elements facing inward – that established a powerful sense of place and a hub for dining, socializing, and events (read more…)

Marc Koehler Architects and their team have won the competition for the extension and renovation of Campus Vesalius at Hogeschool Gent. The project is part of Open Call 19, organized by the Vlaams Bouwmeester in 2010 and developed with Delva Landscape Architects, Import Export Architecture, Daidalos, STBViaene and Less is More engineering. More images and complete press release after the break.

by Steve Sanderson

This is the first in Practice 2.0, a regular series of posts guest authored by our friends at CASE (@case_inc), focusing on technology and innovation in the building industry. While we all share tremendous enthusiasm for the opportunities afforded by technology, my particular interests are on gaining better, more timely access to information and improving building performance through informed decision making. Given the proximity to Earth Day (better late than never), I’m going to start things off with a related post. You can expect future posts to focus on building simulation and evidence-based design, with an emphasis on energy, validation and standards. You can also expect to hear a lot about Passive House.

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of seeing Ed Mazria of Architecture 2030 speak at Cooper Union. For those that don’t know, Mazria and his organization have been instrumental in raising awareness of the enormous impact of buildings on climate change. His initiative, The 2030 Challenge, has been adopted (in varying degrees) by the most influential organizations on the built environment in the United States, including: the Federal Government, US Army, State of California, AIA and ASHRAE, among others. What does that mean? It means these organizations will require (or encourage) all new construction and major renovations to be carbon neutral by the year 2030.

Sounds good right? Frankly, it sounds awesome, but when you dig deeper into how this is received by the industry, you come away with a different perspective. As a building technology consulting firm, we interact with a diverse group of stakeholders from across the industry, representing all of the organizations noted above. In conversations with these individuals about the goals set out by The 2030 Challenge, you can basically group nearly everyone into one of two groups: The Blissfully Ignorant or The Fearfully Aware.

The city of Dijon and Teletech International have chosen MVRDV to transform a disused Dijon Mustard laboratory completed in 2004 into an innovative call centre with an education centre, incubator and social program. Transformation through reuse is one of the contemporary issues in European architecture since the current crisis. Completion of the 6000m2 refurbishment is planned for 2012. More images and complete press release after the break.