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The students of the MA Architecture + Urbanism invite contributors to participate in their forthcoming symposium FRONTIERS OF RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE to be held in summer 2016. If you feel that your Research / Practice responds to the mission statement outlined in previous posts in English / Italian / French / Chinese / Turkish / Arabic we would love to hear about it from you.

Dudoc (Dutch Urban Design Centre) Vancouver in co-operation with the Consulate General of the Netherlands is excited to present the Dutch Design Supermodels travelling exhibit that showcases the ingenuity of design and architecture from the Netherlands. View 3-D printed scale models of a century’s worth of iconic buildings & chairs designed by great Dutch architects.

BORDERS festival, curated by Luca Curci and Andrea Chinellato, will be presented in Venice at Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi, Venice Art House, and other prestigious venues and historical buildings, in the months between May and November 2016, in the same period of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. BORDERS consists of 3 main events, BODIES + CITIES SKIN, FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES, FUTURE LANDSCAPES, the Experimental Festival Exhibitions and the Venice Architecture Academy.
For more information about BORDERS FESTIVAL contact us: lucacurci@lucacurci.com

From the Bird’s Nest to the CCTV headquarters, for the past 100 days Chinese performance artist "Nut Brother" has been wandering the streets of Beijing collecting smog with an industrial vacuum so that he can eventually turn it into bricks. He has now began to form his bricks by mixing a combination of the collected "dust and smog" with clay. As he told Quartz, the project is meant to be a symbol. Read the whole story here.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has appointed Sean Anderson as the new Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design. Under the direction of Chief Curator Martino Stierli, Anderson will be responsible for "overseeing MoMA's Issues in Contemporary Architecture exhibition series, assisting in curatorial supervision of the Young Architects Program (YAP) both at MoMA PS1 and with international partners, and serving as the primary liaison to architecture communities both locally in New York as well as globally." His appointment is now effective.

In an article for the Financial Times, Edwin Heathcote responds to the recent news that OMA, based in Rotterdam, have won the competition to design the British city of Manchester's new "ultra-flexible" arts venue. The Factory, so-named because of city's rich musical heritage, will be one of the largest cultural projects of its kind. Having gained and maintained financial support from Westminster, the building—which must be able to transform from a 2,200-seat theatre into an open 5,000-capacity space—is a flagship project for the British government.

With New York's skyline on the rise, Fast Company says that there will no longer be sunlight on the streets of Manhattan by 2020 (unless you can afford a rooftop penthouse). Thirty-four skyscrapers 700-feet and taller are currently in-progress or being proposed, adding to 41 that already exist. This may seem like a lot, but as Fast Company also points out London has 230 new towers over 20 stories planned. See National Geographic's "The New New York Skyline" illustration for a closer look.

Design Challenge: This design competition is an exploration into the relationship between a physical architectural design, the virtual world, and a tangible site. Investigate the influence of the virtual world blending with physical architecture. A virtual world, built on the framework of the internet, computers, and mobile technology, exchanges information globally. This creates new ways of interacting with the built world. As the virtual and physical worlds become increasingly interconnected, how does this relationship influence physical architecture and its context?

ART & SPACE Gallery is delighted to present new works by the famous British architect and artist WILLIAM ALSOP for the second time in Munich. You are also cordially invited to attend the lecture by Prof. William Alsop "making life better", organized with the support of the Chair of Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Auer, Technical University of Munich (TUM). The lecture takes place on November 26, 16:45-18:15, room No. 0602, Theresianum, TUM

This past February, BIG and Heatherwick Studio unveiled their designs for Google’s new Mountain View Headquarters in California. The project, which will be built by robots, faced sizeable critique, as well as site complications—that have since been resolved—over the past year. Now, as a part of Esquire’s 2015 Breakouts, Bjarke Ingels—founder of BIG—is speaking out about how the firm won the Google bid, and why the headquarters could create a new mold for Silicon Valley urbanism. Ingels goes on to discuss other major BIG projects, like 2 World Trade Center, and an upcoming NFL stadium. Read the full Esquire interview, here.

Is ornament seeing a resurgence in architectural design? Writing for The Financial Times, Edwin Heathcote examines the rising phenomenon of decoration as a growing element of contemporary architectural design. Describing FAT and Grayson Perry's recently completed 'kitsch' abode 'A House for Essex' Heathcote justifies the assimilation of decoration into the central design philosophy, thus creating an entirely new aesthetic category. "The building sits somewhere between outsider art, high culture and the most sophisticated postmodernism," Heathcote explains, adding that its decoration "is not just applied as a layer but subsumed into the architecture."

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)'s Future Trends Survey for October 2015 showed a level of caution among UK architects, reflecting a period of slowing growth in the industry. The Future Trends workload index dropped to +18 from last month's mark of +21, showing a decrease in the number of practices that expect their workload to increase in the coming months. All regions of the UK still reported a positive balance though, with the most optimism coming from Northern Ireland with a balance figure of +25, while the most uncertain figures came from the Midlands and East Anglia, where a balance figure of +12 was reported.

Presented by StorefrontMB and The Forks, Cool Gardens is an exhibit of contemporary garden and art installations that offers a shift of sensation for the summer—cooling—as a general theme for public projects in Winnipeg and Brandon. The 2016 Competition seeks creative proposals from designers, architects, landscape architects, and / or artists who are interested in challenging and celebrating the interface between urbanism, landscape, and design. Engage the urban design culture of Winnipeg or Brandon! Register today!

Writing for Guardian Cities Alejandro Aravena, director of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, discusses what he perceives as the social reality of contemporary architects, the power of design in mobilising people to act, and "how architecture can introduce a broader notion of gain" in the face of ever greedier and evermore powerful development companies the world over.

Any attempt to go beyond business as usual encounters huge resistance in the inertia of reality. Any effort to tackle relevant issues has to overcome the increasing complexity of the world. [...] It's time to rethink the entire role and language of architecture.

Young Architects Competitions (YAC) has launched their latest competition, asking international designers to imagine a new future for an abandoned Italian lighthouse by transforming it into a tourism facility. There is 15.000€ cash prizes for the winning proposals, and awarded proposals will be published on architectural magazines /websites / will be internationally exhibited.

Jakarta Architecture Triennale (JAT) is a tri-annual architecture festival since 2009, organized by Indonesian Institute of Architect Jakarta Chapter (Ikatan Arsitek Indonesia Jakarta).

Join us for another portrayal of one of America’s greatest architects: Richard Neutra. The Oyler House: Richard Neutra’s Desert Retreat explores how Neutra, considered the “father of California Modern architecture,” came to befriend this modest small-town family and how he was inspired by the site’s stunning desert setting, which Neutra compared with the grandness of the mystical Gobi Desert.