Cushman & Wakefield, in collaboration with the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance’s BetterBricks Initiative, recently released its second annual Green Building Opportunity Index and three New York City submarkets cracked the top ten. Midtown, Midtown South, and Downtown placed second, fourth, and seventh, respectively in the Index. One of the goals of this initiative is to assist urban planners and policymakers in examining data to understand what new policies and incentives may be useful in accelerating green building practices at the local level.

RecoveryPark is a collaborative effort of neighborhoods, policymakers and designers that will include urban farming, education, commercial and housing development in Detroit, Michigan. SHAR, Inc. (Self Help Addiction Rehabilitation) teamed up with the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture to create a community design process to develop land-use proposals and speculate on what a resuscitated urban environment might look like.

Read on for more after the break.

Genre De Vie, “Way of Life”, by filmakers Sven Prince and Jorrit Spoelstra researches the effects that bicycling, as a popularized form of transport, has had in transforming our cities, and by extension the lifestyles attached to it. This video takes on a global perspective on the initiatives taken in the revitalization of the bicycle and its socio-cultural impacts. It focuses mainly on city’s that already promote a pro bicycle lifestyle. This coming from a viewpoint, that the bicycle is a positive development on the social and environmental structure and hence of profound effect on the living quality of its inhabitance. The documentary concentrates on individuals that plan yearly races in the post-industrial landscape of the city, and the sociological processes in which the bike plays a pivotal role. It also focuses on the more general role of the bicycle with regards to personal experience and use of space.

This video features the architecture firm Build LLC, as they discuss the beauty in developing designs through different means: visiting other places, eating good food, meeting new people. It discusses the value in learning from the environment around us and developing one’s own designs based on one’s everyday experiences. They discuss the psychology of our environment and what it means to design interior space for various climates, particularly areas like the North American Northwest were six months out of the year people are indoors because of the cold and rainy seasons.

Parsons The New School for Design has joined with NYC Parks & Recreation via the Design Workshop, its innovative design-build studio led by graduate architecture students, to create a new pool pavilion for the Highbridge Pool and Recreation Center, a WPA–era bathhouse in Washington Heights.

Join us after the break to learn more about The Splash House.

In this two part video film maker John Thornton, a.k.a Rusty Scupperton, reconsiders what post-modernism is all about, as made popular by Robert Venturi. Through a series of interview of Venturi’s colleagues and excerpts from the architect himself, Thornton gets a better understanding of the architect’s influence and sense of humor in regards to architecture.

Catch part two after the break!

Although often criticized for being especially liberal in its approach to crime and punishment, Norway focuses intensely on ensuring that ”doing time” is done in a dignified way, and inmates’ sentence should be a dress rehearsal for living a life without crime once they have completed their sentence. The Halden Prison in Halden, Norway by HLM arkitektur in collaboration with Erik Møller Arkitekter is considered to be the world’s most humae prison and it will be the new home for Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing extremist responsible for the deaths of 76 people last week.

More after the break.

For the 2011 Xi’an International Horticultural Exposition, the Berlin-based landscape architecture office Topotek1 “dug” a hole to the other side of the world. From its edges visitors to this garden in China can peer into a real or imagined world at the end of the tunnel. Whether these are the cows from the pampas of Argentinas, commuters rushing among transit through New York City, the maritime life of Stockholm, and layers of history so audible among the streets of Berlin. These soundtracks pique the imagination of the visitors, transferring them away from China, away from the garden,” and into a far-off place.

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.”

[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.

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.

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.

NEEDS-Architecture in Developing Countries, edited by Salvatore Spataro with GGAF (Young Architects of Florence). The book points out the real NEEDS of users, particularly the necessity to make structures which could satisfy them, facing up to lack of economic and technological resources. The sixteen works collected in this volume express a clear idea about the developing project of that belongs within the community within which it is situated. Each project is a reflection of architecture that does not impose organizing models extraneous to the local culture and does not flatten itself on the existent reality.

Scroll through images from the exhibition after the break!

The CITYVISION competition is an international ideas competition, which challenges architects, engineers, designers, students and creative individuals to develop visionary urban proposals with the intention of stimulating and supporting the contemporary city. Through innovative ideas and methodologies, which can improve the connection between the historical, present and future city, CITYVISION aims to foster a critical evolution of architectural historiography. The host city for this round of entries was Venice, Italy. Browse through the winning entries after the break.

This proposal for a Hotel and Spa was designed by Igor Brożyn. Located in an open landscape in Gdynia, Poland, this project has the advantage of the seclusion of a natural setting for its visitors.

On June 23, 2001, in the residential neighborhood of Fužine in Slovenia, Ljubljana, Trimo officially handed over a public architectural installation “Life Stand” – the winning project of the Trimo Urban Crash competition for students of architecture and design which was created by Polish students, Wojciech Nowak from an architectural faculty in Gliwice, and Martynika Bielawska, from an art and design academy in Wroclaw.

“Life Stand” is the result of the Trimo Urban Crash competition, which encourages a creative transformation of the urban environment with the help of advanced building materials and technologies. The creative workshop was held by Professor Cyril Shing from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of Arts, London who also served as the mentor for the finalists. The event was opened by the General Manager of Trimo, Tatjana Fink, and the Deputy Mayor of Ljubljana prof. Janez Koželj.

Read on for more after the break.

The new office building of The Korea Teachers Pension Head Office was established to bring the unification of three bodies for the stability and efficiency of educational pursuits: Teachers, The Korean Teachers Pension Head Office and the country. Tomoon Architects and Engineers have designed this facility with these three organizations in mind to achieve this goal in Naju, South Korea. Read on for more on this project after the break.

Maxwan Architects + Urbanists shared with ArchDaily their winning proposal for the Machelen-Diegem masterplan. This urban area is located in Brussels, Belgium and is filled with historic value. The site, located between the arteries of the capital of Europe (surrounded by airport, road and rail infrastructure), in the vicinity of strategic economic development, near a large city, yet affordable living in a green environment, Machelen and Diegem is a very interesting area. The nature of the site poses a variety of challenges for the designers.

Read on for more on the resolutions of this urban plan after the break.