Upon finishing their second film, Waterline: Chicago’s Urban River Corridor, Adam Gross from Spirit Of Space shared with us the third and final film of the series on the Phil Enquist Harvard Studio. As a walk through the students’ final designs, 12 DESIGNERS, 12 VISIONS presents the culmination of an intense research-based design project for this eclectic group of students.

Denton Corker Marshall recently won an international design competition to design the new Australian pavilion in Venice’s Giardini della Biennale, the heart of the prestigious Venice Biennale events. The new pavilion will be the first of the 21st century contributions to the Giardini, which is undergoing revitalisation by the Venice Biennale. It will replace Australia’s current pavilion, designed as a temporary structure by Philip Cox in 1988. Within a footprint of approximately 320m2, the two-level pavilion will provide a new flexible and adaptable exhibition space to showcase Australian visual arts and architecture to international audiences at annual biennales. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Taking place at the University of Oregon from August 11-20, the ‘Marking the Forest’ design workshop will be run by Satellite Architects for the Architectural Association as they will explore the inner workings of the forest, investigating the biodiversity of the woodland and the commodification of the tree. They will skim the surface of the politics of the forest and conceptualize this information into a design that will be realized in the forest. The workshop will be divided into research (studio and woodland lectures), experience (raft trip and mill visits), design (studio design and crits with prototype building in the workshop) and assembly (assembly in the woodland). The project will also be documented and presented as a book from AA Publications. The deadline for applications is July 28, 2012. More information after the break.

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) recently launched a design competition to deliver one of the first landmark buildings for the West Kowloon Cultural District, the Xiqu Center. The Chinese opera venue will provide a world-class facility for the preservation and development of the art form in Hong Kong and will be designed to host and produce the finest examples of Cantonese and other Chinese opera performances.The Xiqu Center, scheduled for completion around the end of 2015, will be the first of 17 core arts and cultural venues to be opened within the District and one of 15 proposed performing arts venues. The deadline for submissions in April 10, 2012. More information on the competition after the break.

The Slant Awards Spring 2012 competition, which is open to all, challenges participants to design a concept plan for a city sector which is undergoing urban renewal. The city in question is not a real city, it has been designed solely for this competition, and its location is not being specified. It is a generic city that could be almost anywhere in the world and participants are free to choose the country in which you would like this imaginary city to be located. This is a worldwide competition open to all those who have an interest in landscape design and urban planning, and students are especially encouraged to enter. The deadline for submissions is June 11, 2012. For more information, please visit their official website here.

Designed for the Boral Brick Awards 2011-2012, ‘The Urban Cloak’ proposal by Jonathan Gibb is an addition to an existing inner city 2 storey brick building, to adapt and add a multi-levelled apartment building. A cloaked figure; standing amongst the debris of style, industry and waste: veiled by a multiplicity of individual bricks, reading as one. At once a sun and rain screen, and veiling against on-lookers sight. The existing building is left, but affected by the new. Its old roof is discarded and the paint of the facade shed, revealing the identity of the brick. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Aliah Project, a hotel for a green World Cup, designed by Hiperstudio + Arkiz has been awarded as the winner of a competition organized by Aliah, a company which promotes sustainable development through practices and businesses that are profitable with a positive socio-environmental impact. A sustainable luxury hotel complex for the 2014 World Cup, their design serves as a model of sustainable architecture by disseminating innovative concepts that promote a green lifestyle. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The proposal for the new church in Våler by We Are You plays an important role in the landscape marking a new chapter in the history of Våler and presenting itself as a public meeting place for the people. This is demonstrated through its archetypal form and somewhat enigmatic exterior which create these expectations. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Three companies demonstrated their commitment to the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. by recreating significant works in LEGO® bricks in the spirit of the Museum’s current and landmark exhibition LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition. These three new models, containing more than 77,000 LEGO® bricks join the gallery already showcasing LEGO® models of 15 of the world’s most iconic buildings.

The original 15 were created by LEGO® certified professional Adam Reed Tucker, one of only 11 LEGO® certified professionals in the world. The Museum’s LEGO® Architecture exhibition is among the most popular in Museum history and has had more than 214,000 visitors since it opened in July 2010 and will be exhibited until September 3, 2012. More information on the exhibition after the break.

New Finnish Architecture – The New Generation, taking place April 20-21 in New York, will include two events on young architects & architecture practices by Newly Dawn – Emerging Finnish Architects. The events introduce the most interesting young, up-and-coming Finnish architects and their latest projects, visions and ways of working. Social interaction, pleasant user experience and transparency have appeared as key elements in emerging Finnish architectural offices. The architects Janne Teräsvirta (ALA Architects), Anu Puustinen (Avanto Architects), Mikko Summanen (K2S Architects) and Tuomas Toivonen (NOW for Architecture and Urbanism) will offer a fresh look into some of their upcoming projects and the latest developments in Finnish architecture. More information on the events after the break.

theCharrette, an architecture and design publication written and produced by students at the Tulane School of Architecture, focuses on the power of journalism to expose and investigate themes, trends, and subtleties in an interdisciplinary context both within the city of New Orleans and at a larger international scale. You can check out their publication here, and look forward to a larger complimentary issue coming in May as well.

The Skanska: Bridging Prague International Design Competition, announced by reSITE Festival, ARCHIP (Architectural Institute in Prague) and Skanska, seeks to find new conceptions and proposals for the River Vltava, in Prague, Czech Republic. The scope of the competition is the Vltava riverbank and its immediate context from Libensky Most (Bridge) to the north to Zeleznicni most (Railway Bridge) to the south. This section of the river has really various character and quality on both riverbanks, which gives competitors a chance to select and work on a wide scope of places and areas. The proposals should use existing potential of the Vltava river, define its connection with the city – and lead to creation of attractive public spaces of adequate scale, living by a variety of activities. More information on the competition after the break.

gmp Architekten was recently awarded the first prize in the international competition to build the Culture Center in the newly created Changzhou city center. With a total floor area of 365,000 square meters, the building in this city of three million, between Wuxi and Nanjing, is six times the size of the Louvre in Paris. Reflecting elements of Changzhou’s southern Chinese culture and the city’s prominent water features, their design includes a number of museums such as an arts museum, a science and technology museum and a library, together with service facilities supporting the center for culture in the Xinbei district of the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Devoid Tower, designed by Daniel Caven at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and featured in eVolo magazine, explores the passive systems that can be incorporated into high-rise design. Composed of a central volume that is pierced by a void, the tower’s design is influenced by a set of design rules, and tested using parametric and environmental analysis. More images and project description after the break.

“White”, a gallery installation produced by the 20 students of Studio 400, a fifth-year architectural design studio at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, served to present each of the student’s research books. The installation was designed, developed, fabricated, and installed by the studio in a collaborative effort. The students developed the design over a period of about a month, with fabrication and installation occurring over a five day period. 80,000 square feet of plastic sheeting was sliced, loomed, woven, stapled, taped and tied to provide a climbable and malleable surface in the 4,500 square foot gallery. “White” supported a variety of interactive experiences above and below this dynamic surface, opening and exploring the relationships between book, user, material, space, and collective group. More images and the studio’s description after the break.

The winners of the Global Holcim Awards 2012 were recently announced which asked participants to design a project for a school in Gando, Burkina Faso, a community center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a plan for urban renewal in Berlin, Germany. These outstanding sustainable construction projects were selected from 15 finalists by a panel of independent experts led by Enrique Norten. More images and information on the winning designs after the break.

The semiannual journal SOILED, published by CARTOGRAM Architecture + Urban Design, has released its third issue, entitled Platescrapers, which probes edible encounters at the intersection of inhabited spaces and the processes of cultivating, peddling, and devouring. It posits that foodstuffs can become extensions of physical places. Platescrapers is at once a narrative and a rallying cry, commingling food culture with established power structures and political agendas. Along this trajectory, Platescrapers navigates itinerant fare, comestible politics, and gastro-ritual to purvey stories about social issues and exaggerated realities; each story illustrates food as a monument to galvanize the public. More images and information on the issue after the break.

Janine Benyus, president of the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute in Missoula, MT, will be giving a lecture at MIT on the theme of ‘Evolved to Fit: Biomimicry in the Built Word’. Janine Benyus is a natural sciences writer, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including her latest − Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves, agriculture that models a prairie, businesses that run like redwood forests). The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place Thursday, April 5th at 6:30pm at MIT Building 10, room 250. For more information, please visit here.