This concrete, clover leaf-shaped structure, which was built in 1975, will likely suffer a fate common to many vacant and disused buildings. After approximately four years of vacancy, this Bertrand Goldberg-designed building will likely be demolished when ownership will revert to Northwestern University this year. Although Goldberg’s organic architectural designs – such as this one – were widely influential, none of his major Chicago works are protected by local landmark designation. Prentice Women’s Hospital was considered groundbreaking for its cutting-edge architecture, advanced engineering, and its progressive design approach to organizing medical departments and services. It received international press coverage and an award from Engineering News Record for its innovative tower and open floor-plate layout that eliminated the need for structural support columns. “You will not find the structural solution to Prentice, which is an exterior shell cantilevered off a core, anywhere else in the world” notes Geoffrey Goldberg, an architect and Bertrand Goldberg’s son. “Prentice was the only one in which this was achieved.”

Roll It, a cool experimental house, resulted from the collaboration among different institutes within the University of Karlsruhe. This cyclindrical design is a modular protype that provides flexible space within a minimum housing unit. Three different sections are dedicated to different functional needs: there’s a bed and table in section, an exercise cylinder, and a kitchen with a sink.

More images and more about the prototype after the break.

Designed by Istanbul and New York based company, GAD Architecture in collaboration with Dara Kirmizitoprak, NLF is a high-rise luxury residential project, located in the Nilüfer district of Bursa, one of the largest and most developed cities in Turkey. The project site is on the main road serving as an axis connecting Bursa and Nilufer to the east and west. This corridor also accommodates the railway system, and is characterized by a number of other shopping centers in the vicinity. More images and architects’ description after the break.

You will understand: *What is intellectual property *Keys to managing your creative knowledge *Ways to re-imagine control for long term success!

With China’s high level of exports and booming real estate market, it is predicted that the country is on its way to becoming the world leader in economic performance. As a result, the Chinese government has been taking steps to show the world its growing economy and the newfound modernity that has come with it. China’s largest cities have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on new development and infrastructure projects, ranging all the way from from roads, bridges and buildings to new financial districts. In fact, the country is expected to lay down a total of 4.7 billion square feet of construction in this year alone. More information after the break.

[AC-CA] has shared the results of the London Olympic Games Information Pavilion International Competition. This idea’s competition was hosted to generate progressive contemporary design solutions and promote architecture experimentation, specuation and discussion. The site of the competition was Trafalgar Square in the heart of London. The ten winning entries were selected out of a total of 164 proposals that were submitted from all over the world.

Read on for a closer look at the selected entries after the break.

Balmond Studio has been exploring educational ideas through art installations as part of a series of research studies. The interactive art proposal, which will be installed in Casper College, a school in Wyoming, USA, transforms the forgotten spaces of hallways, corridors and lobbies into thriving community and learning zones, celebrating the students’ daily experience. The designs are based on advanced geometric thinking developed by Cecil Balmond, founder of Balmond Studio.

Three museums and two large projects are part of the best from last week that you may have missed! Check them all after the break.

Teshima Art Museum / Ryue Nishizawa The Teshima Art Museum designed by Tokyo-based architect Ryue Nishizawa and Japanese artist Rei Naito opened in 2010 for the Setouchi International Art Festival that was held in the Takamatsu Port area of Japan. The open gallery space features 25cm thick concrete shell with two elliptical openings that are open to elements (read more…)

DesignByMany is a challenge based design technology community sponsored by HP and ArchDaily. Users post challenges to the community along with their design source files. The community can then post responses with their own source files to solve the challenge. They can also comment on the challenge and interact with other designers throughout the process.

Being that it’s summer time (at least for half of us) they decided to propose a more seasonal challenge. Whether you’re at the beach or in the desert, providing shade is an integral component of basic shelter and comfort. Traditional means of portable shading include umbrellas and beach tents, but they think there is an opportunity for a more contemporary design solution. A rapidly-deployable sun shade can provide quick, inexpensive, and temporary protection.

This challenge is to design a rapidly-deployable shade structure that could just as easily be deployed during a day at the beach or park, or while in a desert environment. More information and details after the break.

Editor’s note: Design + Build is a new series by Steve Lazar, owner and operator of Lazar Design/Build, focusing on aspects of the profession usually left unsaid.

Look up the word ARCHITECT in the dictionary and there is the typical Latin root of the word and other roots of the word, but essentially it says nothing more than MASTER BUILDER. Your architect or master builder will head your process in the proper direction. Let’s call the “point man”, the “go to guy”, or the “solution.” Whatever he is referred as, it is imperative that your chain of communication is with one and only one person to eliminate confusions today, tomorrow, and in the future. There is an inherent challenge to the standard relationship between the homeowner, the architect, and the builder. There are three different entities, all with possibly different goals or objectives.

Home owner:         budget

Architect:                creation

Builder:                   conflicted

Who is the client? Is the home owner? Is the architect?  If the builder is hired by the home owner than of course the home owner is the client.  Typically, this is the standard relationship. However, the builder also has some allegiance to the architect, and this is where things can start to get conflicted.  The builder is caught in a pickle between two different entities with possibly two different goals.  If budget is not a consideration than there is no conflict.  In 20 years of designing and constructing custom homes, I have never been bound by some sort of budget.

Atrium’s recent design move from modern furniture supply to fine lighting was celebrated and explained through a carefully choreographed space designed by Studio RHE. The result was an interactive open space with central reception that could easily be transformed into a darkened showroom – with a little twist.

Read on for more after the break.

Architects: James Law Cybertecture International Location: Mumbai, India Project Area: 66,347 sqm Photographs: Courtesy of James Law Cybertecture International

Cybertecture is the ultimate expression of innovative art married with functional needs in consideration of the environment and humanity. The new commercial complex located in Mumbai, India ”The Capital” deliberately reveals her calmness, gracefulness and elegance. It is an extremely challenging work to develop a revolutionary design concept for an office with AAA- grading and achieving over 80% efficiency simultaneously. It integrated the sustainable concept, form and functionality that inspire the office building design and urban context in India like never before.

The University of Queensland’s (UQ) School of Architecture has proven again that the creative skills developed in its design studios are truly award winning. Graduating from UQ’s Master of Architecture program in 2010, Rick Hill and Josh Spillane, along with 3D graphic artist Leon McBride, recently submitted one of three winning designs in an international competition to redesign the Parramatta foreshore in New South Wales. Mr Hill said that the Ideas on Edge competition coordinated by the Parramatta City Council provided the perfect opportunity to put the skills they learnt in the masters design studio to the test.

Gt_2P, a parametric design and digital fabrication studio shared with us their project ‘Til Til D.F.’, the result of a private licitation ordered by Dimanche Industrial Group. The main instruction was to develop a project with diverse uses in an open space, having as special consideration the mimecking between the buildings and its surroundings.

More images and complete architect’s description after the break.

The purpose of this architecture contest is to “equip the city of Trois-Rivières with an open-air amphitheater capable of seating 10,000.” Trois-Rivières is a small Canadian city (population 130,407) once known as the pulp and paper industry capital of the world. Located halfway between Montreal and Quebec City, Trois-Rivières was looking to build its own venue for hosting high-volume summer festivals and internationally renowned bands, and housing its symphony orchestra during the summer. “In the early 2000s, the city of Trois-Rivières began work on a re-qualification project. The site in question (a former paper mill) is situated along the St. Lawrence River, adjacent to the harbourfront park, the city centre, the St. Lawrence River and St. Quentin Island (for outdoor activities). Such a location calls for an extraordinary construction,” explains Philippe Drolet, architect, in an excerpt from the contest catalogue. For the first phase of the contest, Sid Lee Architecture and Régis Côté et Associés banked on the project’s historical roots and awed the jury with a vision that reflects the site’s industrial past. Their competition entry was awarded as a finalist.

The Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop by Junya Ishigami is an elegant rectangular box with with floor-to-ceiling glass, enclosing an interesting interior space with 305 columns of various sizes supporting the stripped roof of skylights. The columns, although seemingly random, are specifically placed to create the sensation of zoned spaces, but their nonrestrictive quality provides a flexible layout to suit the changing needs of students.

KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten were awarded first place in the international competition for the Qingdao Science and Technology City the company’s design for the approx. 600-hectare site in the north of the port city of China. The primary objective of the project was to create a sustainable urban living space for the 100.000 inhabitants, in which a high quality of life with ecological equilibrium is achieved. Come back after the break for more about this project.

Most design and building processes relay on pre-determination and accuracy, plus an efficient coordination of data input leading to a physical realization representing previously conceived ideas as closely as possible. Parametric and generative design add an extra element of “objective” formulae playing role of legitimizations of designer’s intentional design, while the choice of data pools, algorithms or auto-generative formulae is in fact another intentional element.

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Architect: Centrala Location: Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany Designer: Jakub Szczęsny Assistant: Helmut Dietz Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Rolf Wohrle, Hagen Betzwieser and Jakub Szczęsny

Designed by Marc Fornes (THEVERYMANY), nonLin/Lin Pavilion is a prototype which engages in a series of architectural experiments referred to as text based morphologies. Part of the FRAC Centre permanent collection in Orleans, France the prototypes, beyond their visual perception of sculptural and formal qualities, are built forms developed through custom computational protocols. The parameters of these protocols are based on form finding (surface relaxation), form description (composition of developable linear elements), information modeling (re-assembly data), generational hierarchy (distributed networks), and digital fabrication (logistic of production).

A complete project description, photographs and drawings following the break.

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Synarchitects has shared with us their forward thinking design for Ningbo Digital in Ningbo, China. A skew of images can be seen after the jump in addition to a brief description from the designers.

The Mobile Hospital by Kukil Han is designed to provide immediate aid in hard hit disaster stricken areas. Conceptualizing a modularized container medical treatment center, Han’s Mobil Hospital can either function individually or as a larger modular unit. Deliverability of the units by ground or via helicopter if the situation calls for it, provides a shorter response time to emergency areas.

More renderings of the Mobile Hospital following the break.

“The Canopy”, a collaborative project between NEXT Architects, Amsterdam and MASS Studies, Seoul for the invited competition for a student pavilion at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Additional images of the proposal and a narrative from the designers after the break.

Cecil Balmond of Balmond Studio and Charles Jencks have developed the winning design, Star of Caledonia, for the border crossing between England and Scotland at Gretna. Aiming for a 2014 completion date (just in time for the Commonwealth Games hosted in Glasgow) the design of this contemporary landmark sculpture will draw inspiration from Scotland’s scientific heritage and will feature a series of S-curves marking the cross of St. Andrew.