Paul Kaloustian Architect shared with us his project Y Buildings, two separates buildings in the District of Ashrafieh, Beirut, Lebanon. See more images and architect’s description after the break.

For our fourth selection of previously featured sports architecture we have five amazing projects from Europe. Check them all after the break.

RELAXX sport and leisure center / AK2 Einsteinova Road is probably the most frequented artery in Bratislava, situated misfortunately, like a big cut through Petržalka town quarter. But some architects show us it is possible to refine such a busy enviroment. The new RELAXX Sport Centre enters the rush locality, harmonizes and directs the noise and chaos. This house is like a sculpture symbolizing the beauty of restlessness and the poetics of velocity (read more…)

The New York Office of Architecture for Humanity just announced the dates for FlyNY 2010, the second annual international kite design competition and showcase co-hosted by the City of New York Parks & Recreation. On the wings of a successful 2009 event, FlyNY 2010 will take place on August 21 from 10:30AM – 4PM on Pier I at 70th Street in Riverside Park South in New York City. FlyNY is one part design competition and one part Fly Day, with the overall aim of engaging design professionals and novices alike in a dynamic conversation about design.

Set on Manhattan’s West Side, participation in the August 21 Fly Day is free, open to the public and does not require a submission into the competition. The event will include kitemaking activities for kids and families, live entertainment and kite flying.

Designers, architects, artists and others are also encouraged to participate in the FlyNY Design Dialogue taking place Friday, August 20 6-8pm EST on Twitter. It will be a dynamic conversation which merges the FlyNY competition jury panel discussion with a broader, international design/architecture audience. Just log onto Twitter, follow @_FlyNY and tweet using the FlyNY will be posing design related questions and following along during the jury panel discussion.

For more information on the event, visit http://flyny.org/ or view the event page on Facebook. See images of last year’s event after the break.

We took a few shots of Foster + Partners’ latest addition to the Bowery – a new gallery to house the Sperone Westwater’s growing collection from prominent artists of different nationalities and ages. Sitting a few steps away from SANAA’s musuem, this new gallery’s CNC milled glass facade elegantly responds to its neighboring art museum. According to Foster, the gallery is “both a response to the dynamic urban character of New York’s Bowery and a desire to rethink the way in which the public engages with art in the setting of a gallery.”

Check out some photos after the break.

Birmingham-based Sjölander da Cruz Architects shared with us their latest project, a dynamic shelter for the young people of Amington near Tamworth, UK. You can see more images and architect’s description after the break.

Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times recently reported that Raj Ahuja, an Indian-born architect who joined Philip Johnson’s firm back in 1971 and became a partner in 1984, will be selling the architect’s archive of sketches. And, this isn’t any ordinary sketchbook. Johnson’s collection includes over 25,000 design sketches, working drawings, renderings and photographs that cover more than 120 projects from 1968 to 1992. After a bankruptcy claim left the work in Ahuja’s possession, he has been waiting to “transfer it to respectful hands” with the hope that a single institution will acquire the entire collection so as not to break up the archive.

More about the collection after the break.

Check out Chris Lovett’s video we spotted about the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s proposed guidelines for development around the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Greenway has the potential to become a highly activated public realm fusing commercial entities with cultural institutes, both on and off the Greenway. The interview features Mike Davis’, the Commissioner of Public Policy for the Boston Society of Architects and VP and principal with Bergmeyer, thoughts on guidelines, such as height restrictions but more importantly, Davis stresses the importance of connectivity and form. Although several proposed ideas have met challenges and will not be realized, the BSA is trying to push the planning for the Greenway forward. By developing these empty parcels, the Greenway will transform to become a completely viable component to the Boston area.

While designing a house for their friends, Huttunen + Lipasti + Pakkanen Architects’ residence enhances a simplistic form with an acute attention to material selection and detailing. Situated in the rocky island terrain of Naantali, Finland, Villa Mecklin was built at a leisurely pace with the architects working through construction details on site. “Villa Mecklin has mainly been a self-build project. Contract documents or complete working drawings were not necessary because any problems were resolved on site,” explained the architects.

More photographs and more about the residence after the break.

First prize of £2000, runner-up of £1000 and highly commended places will be presented as part of CIRIA’s bi-annual World Green Roof Congress at 6.00pm on Wednesday 15th September with the top three finalists also receiving a free ticket to the 2-day congress which is run in partnership with livingroofs.org. The eight finalist proposals will be published online and will also be showcased at the 5 week IHDC Exhibition will will open on Monday 13th September.

Based on a similar competition organised by the City of Portland in 2007, the IHDC emphasises the importance of biodiversity in the built environment. The competition invited holistic designs that integrate biodiversity, emphasising the value of good quality design that puts nature at its heart. Complete list of finalists after the break.

You woke up today and realized that you haven’t visit us in a week? Don’t worry, here’s our selection of the best from last week for you to have a quick look. Check them all after the break.

Camping Bois-noir Guest Facilities / Bonnard Woeffray Architectes The reception building emerges from pine trees at the centre of the campsite. It accommodates all the communal functions – reception, catering and showers/toilets – as well as the services essential to the campsite’s operations. The building’s materiality helps it blend with its surroundings, and its composition of volumes is in keeping with the elements of the site (read more…)

For the 10th anniversary of the pavilion programme and the 40th anniversary of the famous London gallery, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, Jean Nouvel has created a temporary building that is entirely red. This ephemeral architecture plays with light by filtering, shifting, reflecting it…

In this choice of complimentary contrast between the red and the green of the garden PICT® participates in this wish to see natural movement through 16 photographic red tinted lenses. Red PICT® is a real wall, sensitive to variations of light and movement created by man and nature. Following the request from Jean Nouvel’s Workshop FRED & FRED® developed a procedure to colour the PICT® module red by enamelling the internal surface of module thus rendering it bright, deep and eternal. A red PICT® wall measuring 2m x 3m has been placed in the entrance to the pavilion opposite one of the biggest trees in the park

A limited series of 100 red PICT® will be signed by Jean Nouvel and sold by the Serpentine Gallery. The pavilion will be open to the public from 10th July to 17th October in Kensington Gardens in London. More images after the break.

Studio Shift’s proposal for the World Sustainability Center in Afsluitdijk, Netherlands offers flexible environments to accommodate an educational conservation facility for both students and researchers, as well as the general public. The strong geometric complex emphasizes different connections on the macro scale, by relating to other major metropolises, infrastructures, educational facilities and park systems, and the micro scale by fusing its own new “sphere of influence” with its immediate community.

More images, diagrams, drawings and information after the break.

Parabol Studio shared with us their project Perceptual Twist, an art gallery for a Single Stage Architectural Ideas Competition for the city of Maribor, Slovenia. More images and architect’s description after the break.

As the long days of summer are sadly coming to an end, architecture students across the world will be heading back to their universities and preparing for their next studio projects. While the upcoming semester will allow students to master the latest digital modeling programs and perfect their physical modeling skills, the value of reading architectural books (whether they be reference, theory, etc.) should not be overlooked. We found a few lists of books that are categorized as “the essentials” for any architecture student. For instance, Amazon.com’s list includes: Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, 2nd Edition, Norman Potter’s What is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages and Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essay on Architecture.ArchiNinja’s list includes Matthew Frederick’s 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, 10×10 by Editors of Phaidon Press and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series) by the Center for Environmental Structure Series. And, About.com Architecture’s reference list includes Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, Willem Van Vliet’s The Encyclopedia of Housing and James P. Cramer’s Almanac of Architecture & Design 2005, Sixth Edition (Almanac of Architecture and Design).

A new solution to blank and boring walls: concrete wallpapers. Check out this ingenious product, via @Nordic_Design. The wallpaper can be applied with regular wall glue. Various looks -and online store- available at ConcreteWall.

More photos after the break:

What: Ivorypress Art + Books is to stage an exhibition of the work of Buckminster Fuller Where: Madrid, Spain When: From September 1st to October 30th

In just a few short weeks, the 12th International Architecture Exhibition directed by Kazuyo Sejima, will commence in Venice. Sejima has a long history with the Venice exhibition as she, paired with Ryue Nishizawa, organized the Japanese Pavilion, City of Girls, for the 7th International Architecture Exhibition in 2000 and won the Golden Lion in 2004 for the most significant work of the 9th International Architecture Exhibition. Now, she will be the first woman to direct the Architecture Sector of the Biennale. “The twenty-first century has just started. Many radical changes are taking place. In such a rapid-changing context, can architecture clarify new values and a new lifestyle for the present? Hopefully, this show will be a chance to experience the manifold possibilities of architecture, as well as to account for its plurality of approaches, each one of them being a different way of living,” explained Sejima.

More about the Biennale, including a video of Sejima’s introduction, after the break.

The Young Architects Forum of Kansas City invites all young designers to submit their work for the 2010 Monsters of Design Competition. Projects of all types and scales (architecture, interiors, products, furniture, lighting, graphics and anything else) are welcome.

The experimental pavilion BOXEL was designed and realized by students of the architecture department during the last summer semester on the campus of the University of Applied Sciences in Detmold. The expressive design by Henri Schweynoch, which succeeded in an impromptu competition, creates a generous spatial scenery for presentations, concerts, events and gatherings on the campus. More images and information after the break.

Architects: 100Landschaftsarchitektur Location: Quebec, Canada Directors in Charge: Thilo Folkerts, Rodney LaTourelle Collaborators: Laura Strandt, Maike Jungvogel Realization on site: Johanna Ballhaus, Elisabeth and Jessica Charbonneau, Sandrine Perrault Project Area: 250 sqm Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Rodney LaTourelle, Thilo Folkerts

NBBJ, along with Norwegian architects LINK signatur AS and Multiconsult won a design competition for the Valerenga Football Club’s new stadium in Oslo, Norway. You can see more images and architect’s description after the break.

Architect Adrian Lo shared with us his proposal for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Boundary Crossing Facilities Competition. See more images and architect’s description after the break.

Architect: SADAR + VUGA Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia Consultant: KSS – London Structural engineers: Atelier One – London, Gradis, Elea iC Mechanical engineers: Lenassi, Jelen & Završnik Electrical services: Elprojekt, Utris, Genera Fire engineers: EKOsystem Traffic & Site engineers: LUZ Building area: 14,100 sqm Total floor area: 35,500 sqm Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Ziga Cebasek, Barbara Jakse Jersic

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Turkish architects Onat Öktem and Ziya Imren shared with us their proposal for the Student Center & Public Square Architectural Competition at the Middle East Technical University, for which they received an honorable mention. See more images and architect’s description after the break.