Just announced last night, the INDEX: Award winners for 2011 were unveiled highlighting five categories: Body, Home, Work, Play and Community. The award ceremony was held in the Copenhagen Opera with a diverse audience from 48 countries.

The winners of the awards propose designs that focus on vastly improving the lives of people all over the world.  The non-profit Danish design organization received nearly 1,000 nominations from 78 countries, which were narrowed down to 60 finalist designs with the five award winners announced last evening.

Receiving the INDEX: Award HOME Category was Chilean architecture firm ELEMENTAL for their project Monterrey, a revolutionary new model for social housing in Mexico. ELEMENTAL’s social housing design for Mexican citizens, provides residents with the opportunity to construct part of the home themselves. By only building half the house residents, when time, effort and resources permit, personalize the home reflecting the needs and wishes of each individual family.

The Gowanus Canal is one of America’s most polluted waterways, and its location in the New York Harbor made it one of the many places that were effected by flooding as a result of Hurricane Irene. If that isn’t enough to think about, last year the EPA declared the Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site, “As a result of years of discharges, storm water runoff, sewer outflows and industrial pollutants, the Gowanus Canal has become one of the nation’s most extensively contaminated water bodies. Contaminants include PCBs, coal tar wastes, heavy metals and volatile organics. The contamination poses a threat to the nearby residents who use the canal for fishing and recreation.”

Rising Currents, an exhibit that was featured at the MoMA just last year, was a cohesive showcase of five projects tackling the lingering truth that within a few years, the waterfront of the New York harbor will drastically change. We highlighted Zone 0 earlier this week, comprised of ARO and dlandstudio, they specifically took a look at the lower Manhattan landscape, proposing to develop a new soft and hard infrastructure solution paved with a mesh of cast concrete and engineered soil and salt tolerant plants.

Zone 4, or Oyster-Tecture by Kate Orff, dealt directly with the highly polluted Gowanus Canal. We shared with you Orff’s TEDTalk on Oyster-Tecture back in Februrary, and feel like it is a subject worth revisiting. Eastern oysters being her focus, she shares how the oyster can improve water quality as a natural bio filter. Blending urbanism and ecology she proposes an oyster reef for the Gowanus Canal and Governors Island, an accessible idea that can be implemented immediately. A further description about Zone 4 Oyster-Tecture following the break.

On September 1st LEGO® Architecture series will now include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. The 10th addition to the popular series, which also includes Wright’s Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Robie House was one of the first properties to be declared a National Historic Landmark because of its architectural merit. The American Institute of Architects also listed the Chicago home as one of the 10 most significant structures of the 20th century.

Stay tuned to ArchDaily as we are going to have an exclusive surprise about the LEGO® Architecture Robie House just for our readers. More images of LEGO® Architecture’s Robie House, designed by architectural artist Adam Reed Tucker, following the break.

You can find it on Amazon for $199.

We reported last month that community pressure swayed the owners of Richard Neutra’s Kronish House to temporarily postpone plans to flatten the iconic home. However the looming October demolition date is quickly approaching. With the slogan ‘A Solution may be at Hand’ the Neutra Institute has started a National Fund Raising Campaign in hopes of converting the Kronish House into the Neutra Library.

In the wake of Hurricane Irene it only seemed appropriate to take a second look at Rising Current, an exhibit that was featured at the MoMA just last year. To give you a refresher, the exhibit was a cohesive showcase of five projects tackling the lingering truth that within a few years, the waterfront of the New York harbor will drastically change.

Team Zero, comprised of ARO and dlandstudio, specifically took a look at the lower Manhattan landscape, proposing to develop a new soft and hard infrastructure solution paved with a mesh of cast concrete and engineered soil and salt tolerant plants. This would create greenways that act as absorptive sponges for rainwater. The porous green streets address daily tidal flows and storm surges with 3 interrelated high performance systems (network of parks, wetlands and tidal salt marshes). These systems stop sewage overflow, block higher sea levels and mitigate storm surge.

Rising Current provided an emphasis on how to re-think the city, relevant before, and even more pressing now after the flooding from the hurricane. Let’s hope that the ideas for solutions that were generated from the exhibit can now be considered for implementation. More about Rising Currents and Team Zero’s solution following the break.

For the passing fan or the honorary Jedi that knows ever detail of the series, Star Wars: The Blueprints offers an amazing (in fact never before seen!) opportunity to discover how an entire galaxy was engineered.

Compiling over 200 of the original production, highly detailed architectural drawings created for all six films of the STAR WARS Saga, the book provides an in-depth look into the universe that was painstakingly pieced together down to the most minute detail. Complimenting the blueprints are over 500 photographs (which even highlight the construction process) and illustrations.

You can pre-order at Amazon.

Stay tuned as ArchDaily will have an exclusive surprise about Star Wars: The Blueprints in the coming days. Take note that only a total of 5,000 English language collector’s volumes will be printed.  For more about this exciting new book follow the break.

The U.S.G.S. recently reported that an earthquake struck the Washington, D.C. area with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8 (later updated to 5.9). Initial reports of damage are minor however the National Cathedral’s central tower sustained some damage. “It looks like three of the pinnacles have broken off the central tower,” spokesman Richard Weinberg said of the tower, the highest point in Washington, D.C.

Update: The Cathedral has sustained some substantial damage due to the earthquake, and experts are currently assessing the structural and aesthetic damage. For a video of the Cathedral damage, or to help join the efforts of preserving the Cathedral click here.

Update: You can also see the effects of the earthquake on a building in Virginia here.

Felt in Philadelphia, North Carolina, Boston, New York City, Martha’s Vineyard, and even Wheeling, West Virginia, the tremor raises questions of the importance of seismic considerations particularly in New York City.

Although earthquakes are not something a typical New Yorker would have cross their mind in comparison to other parts of the world such as Japan (8.9 magnitude in 2011) and Chile (8.8 magnitude in 2010), the overal size and density of NYC puts it at a high risk for extensive damage.

More photographs of the Washington National Cathedral and discussion regarding seismic considerations following the break.

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We reported earlier this week that AECOM will be designing the Olympic Park Masterplan for the 2016 Olympics that will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The international competition winning entry’s concept of operation, separate access for athletes and the audience, logistics for the transport system, the viability of implementation and unique access for parking, made it stand out amongst the other submissions.

Which design would you choose for the Royal Alberta Museum? That is the question being posed to Albertans until the end of the day today. Providing citizens with access to view and comment on the four proposals for the new museum the Alberta Infrastructure website, where the submissions can be viewed, even suggests that the public consider the following:

1. Does the design inspire you? Does it inspire you to want to visit, explore and learn more? Do you see it as a gathering space and a place that you would return to again and again? 2. Will the design appeal to Albertans of all ages? Will it engage our young people and students; will they see it as a place they want to visit and feel welcome in? 3. How do you think the design reflects the story of Albertans: our spirit, our culture, our landscape? 4. Does the design reflect who we are now and also provide a glimpse into the future of who we will become?

The comments provided by the public will be considered during the selection process.  All four proposals and their descriptions following the break.

The NASDAQ equivalent Shenzhen Stock Exchange by OMA, continues to progress forward nearing completion. The latest photographs of the new building, which poses a strong representation of capitalism in China, highlight the robust exoskeletal grid and the and complexity of construction.

“For millennia, the solid building stands on a solid base; it is an image that has survived modernity. Typically, the base anchors a structure and connects it emphatically to the ground. The essence of the stock market is speculation: it is based on capital, not gravity. In the case of Shenzhen’s almost virtual stock market, the role of symbolism exceeds that of the program – it is a building that has to represent the stock market, more than physically accommodate it. It is not a trading arena with offices, but an office with virtual organs that suggest and illustrate the process of the market.”

- OMA

More construction photographs of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange after the break.

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AECOM has just been announced as the winning firm for the international competition held for the master plan design of Rio 2016 Olympic Park. The first international architecture competition held in the country, the English firm is quite experienced in master plan’s for the Olympics as they were responsible for London’s 2012 Olympic Park Master Plan. The jury chose the winning project by AECOM with chief architect Bill Hanway and Brazilian project author Daniel Gusmão, because of its unique concept of operation, separate access for athletes and the audience, logistics for the transport system, the viability of implementation and access for parking. In the legacy that the project will leave to the city, the highlights were environmental preservation and the viability of maintaining and preserving the lagoon.

More about the winning project and the competition along with plans following the break.

The SOM Foundation has announced the 2011 SOM Prize Winner and Runner-up.   Brandon Clifford, a recent graduate of the Master of Architecture’s program at Princeton University, was selected as the winner of the prestigious SOM Prize, a $50,000 Research and Travel Fellowship.  Clifford will visit multiple countries on four continents in carrying out his research topic, “Volume: Researching Past Methods of Stereotomy.”

SOM, one of the first major modern American architectural firms to promote a corporate face, has continued to be a ‘massive and dynamically creative commercial force’ designing the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa in Dubai, their commission for a new green district, Green Tech City, in Hanoi, Vietnam, and SOM was selected to design New York City’s (and the State’s) first Net Zero Energy school building, PS 62 located in Staten Island.

In 2009 SOM was recognized for just that when they were included in Fast Company’s annual list of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” ranked (the only AEC company on the ranking), amongst companies such as Google and Apple. And they were also rated (by Fast Company) as number one on its list of the 10 most innovative architecture firms.

In this 30th year of Foundation Awards, the Fellowships continue to offer recent graduates the rare opportunity to travel in connection with carrying out in-depth research, collaborate with other professionals and pursue independent study outside the realm of established patterns. To date, the Foundation has awarded more than $1,000,000 to architecture, design and engineering students who have gone on to distinguish themselves in professional and academic careers.  It has been said that,”the SOM Prize is one of the primary tools that our profession has to bridge the gap between the academy and the real world.”

The official press release from SOM following the break.

As we reported on Wednesday, rumors were circulating about a new Apple retail store at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Wednesday evening the proposal, a transparent glass ceiling commercial building by an unnamed retailer, went before the Santa Monica Planning Commission. Peggy Clifford of the Santa Monica Dispatch reported that the ‘Apple Glass House’ was approved without even a second thought.

We’ve reported two Apple stories this week so why not a third! Rumors have surfaced that tonight the proposal for a transparent glass ceiling commercial building on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica by an unnamed retailer could be the newest Apple Store. According to the Santa Monica Planning Commission report, “The proposed one-story, 34-foot high commercial building will feature an expansive floor-to-ceiling height accentuated by a transparent glass ceiling. The front façade will consist entirely of transparent glass panels that will project five feet from stone paneled side walls.”

We would like to introduce you to a new weekly series we will be featuring here on ArchDaily.  This exciting new set of posts will pull projects from our ArchDaily archives, highlighting projects that were featured this week but in previous years.

Today’s selection includes an unconventional museum design in Germany, an educational recycling concrete center in Korea, three well-crafted projects from Finland that pay careful attention to material choices, and a re-imagined 1950s German “Siedlungshaus”.  We hope you enjoy taking a look at these projects that deserve a revisit!

This summer design/build program for architecture students aims to get their hands dirty with both design and construction experience. Relocating from their Brooklyn studio home at Direct Design Institute students and professorers participated in a one week building work shop at the Five Sisters Farm in Perrysville, New York. Funded by Kickstarter (today is the last day to donate!) +FARM provides students with the opportunity to learn about “direct design” by observation and the physical act of making a movable Chicken Coop and restoring an old farm house to be later used as an artist colony and hunter’s house.

Architects: William O’Brien Jr. LLC Location: Upstate New York Design Principal: William O’Brien Jr Project Team: Bhujon Kang Project Year: 2009-2011 Visualization: Peter Guthrie

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