In the Spring 2010 academic semester, Wiel Arets and Robert McCarter co-taught “A Wonderful World,” an advanced architectural design studio at Washington University in St. Louis. The students were asked to consider the following:

To understand the world we are living in at this moment, we have to redefine the “Map of the World,” a mental construct which at least since 1492 has undergone many reinterpretations. We could read the world anno 2020 as a collective living space for all of us, in which all the continents are in reach within 288 minutes, and the maximum travel distance at each continent will be 72 minutes, the time in which every city on each continent will be able to be reached. During the studio research, the world will be our territory, the continents are our daily living space, and the metropolitan three-dimensional city our home, surrounded by an untouched green/blue environment. The basic question we should put forward is: How will the city develop within our extremely exciting, complex, but “shrinking” world?

Washington University in St. Louis shared with us work from the studio. Follow the break for a description and drawings.

Students Featured: Andrew Buck, Shaun Dodson, Stephen Kim, Meredith Klein, Wai Yu Man, James Morgan, Aaron Plewke Images: Courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis

We also suggest you look at how students responded to the same questions proposed by Wiel Arets at the Berlage Institute Postgraduate Research Laboratory “A Wonderful World” class.

Our friends at goodweather are working on a documentary and an exhibition about the Vancouver-based architect Daniel Evan White. His work will be featured in a major retrospective upcoming at the Museum of Vancouver on February 2012. There’s a trailer for the documentary now that we want to share with you. See more about Dan White right here.

Producing an image between the real and the virtual, the Emile Rassam Building, by architect Paul Kaloustian, becomes a statement of identity in Dekwaneh, Beirut, Lebanon. Through its materiality, a sense of disappearance is generated by the envelope which becomes an active instrument that reflects the changes in weather and light conditions. More images and architect’s description after the break.

Foster + Partners’ City Park proposal has recently been selected for the 40-hectare masterplan for West Kowloon Cultural District. Since this past August, we have been sharing the three competing shortlisted projects – OMA’s Three Villages, Rocco Design Architects’ Cultural Connect, and Foster’s City Park – and your comments have sparked great discussion concerning the advantages and disadvantages of each. The selection process for the cultural district was quite unique as the three projects, that were selected from 12 proposals, then entered a public consultation exercise. For three months, the people of the West Kowloon district had the opportunity to review and comment on the projects, which then had a strong impact on the panel’s final decision.

“From the point of view of Physycs, right now we don’t know what energy really is. We have no evidence that energy comes in small quantities, like drops. What we do know is that all matter is energy in repose and that energy is manifested in lots of forms that are interrelated by numerous mechanisms of conservation.”

Richard P. Feynman, Feynman lectures on physics

We are all concerned about energy. But when trying to understand all the implications of the energy in our daily life, we rarely go beyond our spending on electricity bills. If you are an architect or engineer it is possible that you pay special attention to this subject while adapting your projects to current standards.

Imagine a vibrant, connected and green Kansas City region. Highlighting local communities, Imagine KC discuses how members of the community are working together to provide a more sustainable and vibrant place to live, work and play. Episode 2: Energy Efficiency and Conservation aired in January and is the latest of the 12 part series from Kansas City Public Television.

Tune in March 24th at 7:30 p.m. for Episode Three: Quality Places and Vibrant Centers. More information about Imagine KC following the break.

Four amazing kindergartens from Europe and one from South America. Check our sixth selection of previously featured kindergartens after the break.

Monthey Kindergarden / Bonnard Woeffray Architectes Monthey’s new kindergarten is located in the town’s Cinquantoux Park and replaces the former villa that had become obsolete. Conceived as a large house for children, the venue assumes an almost organic shape that merges with the wooded park and offers a range of interior spaces. Following the same logic is its composition of volumes topped by a roof composed of gently slanting sections (read more…)

The CCA is launching new curatorial opportunities: the Young Curators Program and the Power Corporation of Canada Curatorial Internships Program.

Here is a submission for the Spiretec 2011 Competition in Greater Noida, Delhi, India by young architect, Adham Selim and his team. Spiretec is a 62,750 square meter mixed use area that is part of an IT office complex, spread across approx 85,000 square meters of land; with a built potential of approx 1,75,000 square meters. The project is in Greater Noida in Delhi, India.

More on this project after the break.

The Lighthouse Christian School (LCS) was a beacon of goodwill even after a deluge washed away its pre-school in May 2010. Although few had lost more than the school community, LCS leaders hung a banner amid the ruins that read, “Southeast Nashville Recovery. How can we help?”

“At their time of greatest need, the LCS community was helping other flood victims rebuild their homes, so it was an easy decision, an honor actually, for us to give them a hand,” says architect John Abernathy, founding partner at DA|AD of Nashville. Abernathy and his firm were recruited to design and oversee the pre-school building’s resurrection, featured on the popular US TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

We are sharing this with you in response to the Japan earthquake earlier today. Building earthquake resistant structures is an ongoing challenge and Japan is continually designing for and sensitive to its earthquake prone location. Their research includes the E-Defense Shake Table in Japan which is one of the most prominent shaking tables associated with earthquake engineering research.

For more information on the workshop, you can contact Eyad Jumaa at i.abdaljawad@ajman.ac.ae. You can check some of the projects we’ve featured by Eric Owen Moss right here, and don’t miss the great interview he gave us in his office!



The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is hosting an exhibition of Palladio’s drawings, giving new insight into the use of drawings as a tool to record, develop and disseminate his ideas. Curated by Guido Beltramini, in collaboration with Charles Hind, Palladio at Work will be on view in the museum’s Octogonal Gallery from March 3 to May 22, 2011.

More on the exihibition and on Andrea Palladio after the break.

Where does your State rank among the USGBC’s Top 10? Comparing LEED-certified commercial and institutional green buildings per capita within the United States the District of Columbia turned in the highest per capita/per person ratio of 25.15 square feet. Commercial office type and for-profit organization owner type where the most common, as was Chicago and Washington DC for the most represented cities on the list.

Designed as collaboration between Oyler Wu Collaborative and Michael Kalish, this traveling installation is built as a tribute to the life and cultural significance of Muhammad Ali. The project is aimed at exposing a new generation to this larger than life character by building an appreciation for the nuanced emotional, aesthetic, and technical principles that collectively form experience – a concept that holds true as much for human persona as it does for architecture.

Conceived of as an experiential 2-D image, the core of the project is a seemingly random field of 1300 boxing speed bags that, when viewed from a single vantage point, form a pixilated image of the face of Muhammad Ali. The structure is designed with the intention of simultaneously supporting the clarity and focus from that vantage point, while enriching the experience of the piece from all others, through a combination of dense structural bundles, material effects, and geometrical repetition.

Oyler Wu Collaborative Project Team: Dwayne Oyler, Jenny Wu, Mike Piscitello, Jacques Lesec, Vincent Yeh, Paul Cambon, Huy Le, Nathan Meyers, Han Zhang, Scott Starr, Jake Henry, Vincent Yeh, Ehab Ghali, Sanjay Sukie, Chris Eskew, and Matt Evans Michael Kalish Project Team: Michael Kalish, Robert Lepiz Engineering: Buro Happold Engineers Photography: Dwayne Oyler

Follow the break for further description and images.

We’re over 42,000 photos in our Flickr Pool now, so if you haven’t seen it in a while, you have a lot to catch up! 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 naoyafujii in Tokyo, Japan. Check the other four after the break.

We in the profession all understand architecture can mean many different things, both types of knowledge, and ways of thinking. But to the general public, architecture means expensive, “designer” buildings. The qualifier “expensive” must be added because this is how the non-architectural population perceives it. From that narrow perspective, it requires the mobilization of equal amounts of three elements to have a building designed and built capital, a willingness to assume risk, and a generous measure of psychological instability. Maybe the latter comes after the project is complete.

More after the break.

BLOXAS + Chian Quah’s entry, A Place to Catch (SEA) Breeze, for the 2011 Brisbane Ideas Competition has made it to the stage of finalist and has been shared for your review. Additional images and a description after the break.

The show was curated by architecture students as part of a seminar on the Bauhaus architect taught by visiting professor Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, with Jonathan Massey, Syracuse Architecture associate professor and undergraduate chair. The exhibition is the outcome of their work in the extensive Breuer archive at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center (SCRC). Hours M-F, 9-5. Closing reception March 22 at 5 pm.

As a part of MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration, a student competition was held for a installation to become part of the festivities. Yushiro Okamoto‘s winning proposal, ICEWALL, has recently been completed and has been submitted to share with us here at ArchDaily. Follow after the break to browse through a large collection of photographs of the project.

Last Wednesday we told you we were giving away two copies of Yes is More, the world’s 1st architectural monograph in an eBook edition tailored to the Apple iPad. Now, thanks to BIG and Taschen, two happy reigstered users will enjoy this great eBook. The winners are Danny Taft and Maryanne Friend, and will be contacted at their e-mails. Congratulations, and remember you can register right here and enjoy the benefits!

The Saucier + Perrotte Architectes and Hughes Condon Marler Architects with SNC Lavalin team won the architecture competition for the future sports complex in Saint-Laurent, a former city on the island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. The winning team’s proposal distinguished itself from the others by the quality of its architectural gesture, the simplicity of the concept, the creation of a distinctively urban branding image and wayfinding strategy, its adherence to the surface areas of the facilities, the effectiveness of its sustainable development strategies and its potential for change. More images and project description after the break.

This 26,800 sqf home, designed by Shubin+Donaldson Architects, not only merges with its remarkable environment, but virtually disappears. Except for a few deft lines and angles – such as the ordered rows of the surrounding vineyard – there is very little perceivable ‘built’ presence. The entrance is marked by a single low wall, delicately cut into the land while sheltering a stairway that immediately begins the descent into the home.

Project description, images, and drawings after the break. Architect: Shubin+Donaldson Architects Location: Los Angeles, California, USA Partners in Charge: Russell Shubin and Robin Donaldson Project Designer: Bradford Kelley Project Area: 26,800 sqf Project Year: In development Renderings: Mike Amaya

For this week the Architecture City Guide series headed to the city of Austin, Texas. Already our third stop in the Lone State, it is easy to see why Texans take such pride in their state, even when the Cowboys go 6 and 10. Both the capital of Texas and Live Music, Austin is a vibrant city that takes pride in being far from ordinary. Austin also plays host to South By Southwest (SXSW) which is being held this week, March 11th – 20th. Its eclectic and liberal lifestyle have led many Austinites to adopt the slogan “Keep Austin Weird.” In this context its architecture is as diverse as its people. This short exposé of a few contemporary and modern buildings hardly tells the story of Austin, so we ask you, the readers, to add to the list. Please share your favorites with us in the comment section below.

The Architecture City Guide: Austin list and corresponding map after the break!