While we keep showing you the 100 houses designed by 100 architects in ORDOS 100, we might as well remember the ones we published quite some time ago. You can also check Part I here.

Resting on the outskirts of Naples, Renzo Piano latest Volcano Buono is a mixed use center that aims to become integrated into the landscape, rather than just occupying it. The central piazza of the Volcano includes a 150 meter-wide space that holds an outdoor theater and market, while a series of concentric rings form the center’s commercial areas. Piano explained that the Volcano is “a contemporary take on a Greek marketplace, a void as a place for events, meetings, dialogue and the gathering of people”.

More about the Volcano and more images after the break.

The Turkey Pavilion unveiled its design this week and its theme “The Cradle of Civilization” was inspired by one of the first known settlements in the world, said Sencar Ozsoy, commissioner general of Turkey.

The main inspiration for the exterior of the 2,000-square-meter rented pavilion was also derived from settlements called “Catalhoyuk” in Turkish, which were the center of advanced culture in the Neolithic period.

The pavilion looks like an amazing red and beige box with an animal sculpture, inviting visitors to explore a maze of dreams. The first section of the pavilion will take visitors through a journey of time to learn about Turkey’s historical firsts. A map indicating the ancient sites of Turkey, the world’s first mirror and the world’s first man-built dam will be featured here. Istanbul’s infrastructure will also be introduced.

In the middle section, a 360-degree movie will display scenes from the streets of Istanbul to reflect the pride of the city as the European Capital of Culture. Visitors will then encounter the future in the final section, which is represented by a symbolic figure of the phoenix, a mythical bird which dies in flames and is reborn from the ashes, to embody aspirations for the future.

At the beginning of the summer we visited SYNTHe, a urban rooftop garden designed and built by professor Alexis Rocha (I/O Platform founder) with SCI-Arc students.

The SYNTHe project is a 3,000sqf structure located on the top of The Flat, a mid rise residential building in downtown Los Angeles, and its the first green garden approved by city official. The idea of this “green blanket” over at the top of the building is to reduce the building heat gain, reduce storm water waste (80% is captured and used for irrigation) and to establish a sustainable plant ecosystem that collaborated with air pollutants filtering. It also reclaims the rooftop area from HVAC, ventilation and fire control systems, giving a new terrace for the users of the building.

Inside this blanket, 1,500sqf are dedicated to the production of edible plant species, and we had the chance to taste them at the restaurant during lunch, very good. The species planted include:

Our friends from kadawittfeldarchitektur sent us their latest project, the new Adidas administration building “LACES”, located in the city of Herzogenaurach, Germany. The roofing ceremony was yesterday, and the shell of the new building will be finished in the 2nd quarter of 2011.

“Laces“ forms a bright white counterpart to the horizontal black volume of the adjacent adidas Brand Center. The clearly contoured building fits into the existing “World of Sports” campus, with the campus park floating in the interior space, yielding a tempered atrium. This plaza forms the heart of the new building – a forum and meeting space. The office floors organized around this central space provide views into the surrounding landscape of the Herzo-Base. Catwalks above the plaza link the departments, offering a high degree of interaction. Like laces, they tie the building together, forming a multilayer workspace and conveying an atmosphere of creativity.

More images after the break.

Designed and built by second year students of the Alice Studio at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Evolver is a wooden alpine structure that “provides a more interactive way to take in the views of the glorious mountains – especially the Matterhorn.”

More about the project after the break.

Hometta is an international collective of designers, architects, builders, writers and editors who have banded together to improve the way residential architecture is designed and delivered today.

The company was founded by Mark Johnson, a Houston-based green home builder, and his frequent collaborator Andrew McFarland.

Launched earlier this past summer, Hometta.com features 24 small modern houses designed by 24 studios. A third of the home plans are available for viewing and purchase. Hometta offers a variety of completely modern home plans designed by renowned, award-winning and/or published studios from around the world. Each house is under 2,500 square feet and utilizes smart, sustainable materials and design methods.

You can see the house plans after the break. For more information, visit Hometta.com.

Lara Calder Architects’ prefab parasite project is meant populate the unused spaces found in urban landscapes. Fittingly, the parasite will cling to old facades, rock faces and even bridges as a way to “achieve sustainable densification.” Designed using a parametric 3d modelling software, the form is a flexible entity as all components, such as the structural system, facade, cladding, floor levels and stairs are integrated into a sole parametric model. The integration of the design system increases efficiency and accuracy of the construction process.

More about the parasite after the break.

Check out our first Round Up of Restaurants right here. Because today, we bring you five more places where you can have a nice dinner.

The International Association for Humane Habitat (IAHH) is pleased to announce its Eighth International Student Design Competition on the theme of “Affordable Housing in Sustainable Humane Habitats”. The competition is open to students of architecture, housing, planning, urban design, landscape architecture and related disciplines of anthropology, sociology, engineering, economics, geography, social work etc. However, the design team must be led by a student of architecture.

This morning Google announced Google SketchUp 7.1. This new version will be a free upgrade for existing Pro users, and has emphasis on three important aspects of this easy-to-use (yet powerful and extensible) software: performance, an improved version of LayOut (2.1) and collaboration.

As for performance, the engine has been improved and you will notice that orbiting, zooming and drawing can be quicker and smoother in 7.1, for both PC and Mac editions.

LayOut 2.1, the SU componente that enables you to create presentation boards and design documents straight from your model, has now the ability to apply dimensions to scaled SU models and vector graphics. Based on my personal experience, LayOut is very good to deliver quick construction documents and has helped me a lot working with furniture manufacturers. The new dimension tool is something I was waiting for.

LayOut 2.1 also includes snap to the model, an improveed Freehand tool, lists (bullet or numbered, very useful) in the text area, improved grids and improved copy/paste, making it easier to work with other design softwares. You can see more on the video and images below.

Located in Niihama in Ehime, Japan, the Café la Miell lacked the space needed to accommodate the number of daily customers. To combat this shortcoming, the client wished to open a new café across the street that would be able to hold 80 customers. To create the new Café la Miell, Suppose Design Office utilized the one meter drop of the site so that instead of having a standard two story café, as the client requested, the café would become a split level space with one floor at the building’s base level, and one at street level.

More about the cafe after the break.

The Pakistan Pavillion will be a replica of the Lahorte Fort, an iconic symbol of the city of Lahorte. The fort dates back to the year 1025 AD and is the cultural capital of modern-day Pakistan.

The 2,000 square meter pavillion is themed “harmony in diversity”, and will show various aspects of the best of Pakistan’s cities, merged into one showcase of tradition, culture, modernity and history.

In the pavilion, visitors will be able to experience the life of a typical Pakistani citizen through detailed visual and multimedia presentations. More images, after the break.

A few days ago, Thom Mayne unveiled his $185 million museum design for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science at Victory Park in Dallas, which is set for groundbreaking later this fall. ”As instruments of education and social change, museums have the potential to shape our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live…As our global environment faces ever more critical challenges, a broader understanding of the interdependence of natural systems is becoming more essential to our survival and evolution. Museums dedicated to nature and science play a key role in expanding our understanding of these complex systems,” explained Mayne.

More about the museum after the break.

Yesterday, after a very long flight, we arrived to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, one of the most important cities in the region. Why? We are attending the opening of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, an international, graduate-level research institution. The mission if this academic institution is to dedicated to advancing science and technology of regional and global impact, with a fellowship program that provides full tuition to graduate students pursuing the M.S., M.S. to Ph.D., or Ph.D. degrees (more info here).

The University is located on a new campus designed by HOK, 80km north of Jeddah (aerial view of the site). The campus is part of a larger master plan, also designed by HOK: A new town of 10,000 to 12,000 people, surrounding and supporting the University, living in over 6.5 million sqf on a 3,200 acre site along the Red Sea.

The project started in fall 2006, and it was finished in just 3 years. To achieve this, the HOK Planning Group accelerated the process with a “Racing the Sun” design charrette in which planners from 10 offices across multiple time zones contributed to the plan over one 24-hour period. Each HOK office had a two-hour window to create its ideas and post them on a server. In the end, each contributed an idea that ultimately found its way into the final plan.

Architecture/Landscape/Interiors presents the 2009 Donghia Designer-in-Residence Lecture by David J. Lewis and Marc Tsurumaki, Principals of Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis (LTL). LTL is an innovative, award-winning architecture partnership founded in 1997 by Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki and David J. Lewis, located in New York City.

With the exhibition “COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: Beyond the Blue” being recently closed at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, USA another single exhibition will be opened on September 18, 2009 at NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, Japan.

Designed by Matsys Designs, Sietch Nevada is a response to the idea of a water-poor world becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest. With so much of the press focused on wars over oil, the world is often unaware of the slowly depleting water sources, which are indeed exponentially more valuable than oil. This futuristic urban prototype addresses the water situation as a complex underground network of tunnels and canals offers protection and the “storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life.”

More about Sietch Nevada after the break.

Our Flickr pool keeps growing at a very fast pace, and you can see many fantastic photos taken by people all over the world. Once a month, we’ll show you our selection of the best pictures we get, as you can see on Part I and Part II. You can also add yours, just click here and learn how! Also, remember you can follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page.

The picture of the London Metropolitan University in London, UK was taken by jmhdezhdez. Check the other four after the break.

Design, innovation and capacity are just some of the key elements when building a stadium. We have been featuring some great stadiums in ArchDaily like Herzog & de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest, for the Beijing Olympics.

However, as impressive as it may be, the Bird’s Nest cost was ‘just’ 500 millions dollars, a lot less than the ones who made Forbes top 10 list of most expensive stadiums.

Check the complete list, after the break.

Quick video friday, Bjarke Ingels at TED talks. You can download an iPhone/iPod friendly version here.

EXP Architects and teammates Studiomustard Architecture, Sempervirens Landscape Designers and Even Conseil have won the design for the Ecodistrict “Heudelet 26” in Dijon, France. Located in proximity to the city center, the new urban design will be the first of Dijon’s Ecodistricts and serve as a model for later developments. The district will enhance “the neighborhood’s identity and density by favouring mixed income and mixed generational housing, thus testifying to a new way of conceiving urban development.”

More about the Ecodistrict after the break.

Construction for the Malaysia Pavilion for Shanghai World Expo began a couple of weeks ago. The 3,000-square-meter pavilion will be like a traditional and high Malaysian hut. The facade of the pavilion will be made from a combination of palm oil and plastic, which will be recycled for other constructions after Expo.

The country will showcase its natural landscape and the solidarity of its different ethnic groups with the theme “One Malaysia — City Harmonious Living.” Malaysia has 47 ethnic groups, who live comfortably together in urban and rural areas. The country would highlight the harmonious conditions and interactivity between cities and villages, Malaysian Tourism Minister Ng Yen Yen said.

Visitors will be able to pitch and putt at an indoor golf area in the two-story pavilion. The pavilion would hold lucky draws on key days during the Expo, such as August 31, Malaysia’s national day, and May 31 when China and Malaysia set up diplomatic relationships, Ng said.

More images and a video after the break.

OFF Architecture , along with Duncan Lewis Scape Architecture and Jean de Giacinto, has completed the design for the reconstruction of Lycee Jean Moulin in Revin, France. The new college is perfectly integrated into the existing site conditions, creating a dynamic educational facility. The new building seeks to become a part of the terrain as the form follows the protruding and receding nature of the undulating hills. The form creates a ripple-like effect across the site and provides a sense of movement to the surrounding region. When the college is completed in 2012, users will find themselves benefiting from the natural qualities of their immediate environment and enjoying a learning environment unlike any other.

More images after the break.