The Lisbon Triennale has announced the panel of judges for this year's projects. The panel will be composed of important architects like Bjarke Ingels of BIG, Minsuk Cho of Mass Studies, Phillippe Rahm of Philippe Rahm Architects and Luis Santiago Baptista of the journal Arqa.

The theme of the triennale this year is “Close, Closer” and it intends to initiate a discussion regarding the changing role of the contemporary architect. There will be three exhibitions, a lecture program, a series of electronic publications, student awards, a Debut Award for young architects and a career achievement award.

The thirteenth annual Structures for Inclusion conference (SFI-13) will be held March 23-24 at the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis Campus. The conference is preceded by the Public Interest Design Institute, a training program sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, that will be held at the same location on March 21-22. These are two major events that help compose the inaugural Public Interest Design Week, March 19-24.

It's that time of year again: the 2013 AIA National Convention is gearing up to provide architects with the latest technological, conceptual and design innovations over the course of a three-day conference in Denver, Colorado. This year's theme: Building Leaders, is an opportunity for architects to see leading achievements in the profession as well as build upon their own knowledge.

Organized by International Art Consultants (IAC) and supported by The Royal Photographic Society, the Architect’s Eye competition has been celebrating and encouraging architects’ passion for photography since 2007. Now, in its fourth edition, UK architects are challenged to submit photos into two distinct categories: Architecture and Place and Architecture and People. The former focuses solely on the aesthetics of the architecture and places it creates, while the latter explores and celebrates the interaction of people with the environments created by architects. There are no restrictions on which buildings qualify for the competition.

The winner in each category will receive a weekend break for two anywhere in the EU. There will also be Special Commendation prizes awarded at the judges' discretion.

Daniel Libeskind is among three semi-finalists competing to design the Ohio Statehouse Holocaust Memorial in Columbus. The privately funded memorial will be built south of the Ohio Statehouse on the grassy 10 acre Capitol Square, just east of the Scioto River.

As stated in the competition brief, “The memorial itself must help everyone who visits and works in the Statehouse understand not just the history of the Holocaust, but also the fact that today we must continue to stand against evil. Artists are asked to create a piece that will serve as a permanent memorial in remembrance of all victims of the Holocaust (1933-1945) and those Ohioans who participated in the liberation of the death camps during World War II. The memorial should provide enlightenment on man's inhumanity to man and inspire people to think and act differently in the face of discrimination, hatred, antiSemitism and genocide.”

The three semi-finalists are: 

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected fifteen recipients to receive the 2013 AIA Young Architects Award. Defined as professionals who have been licensed ten years or fewer, the Young Architects will be honored for making significant contributions to the profession and providing exceptional leadership. The recipients will be presented the award at the AIA 2013 National Convention and Design Exposition in Denver, Colorado.

The complete list of the 2013 Young Architects:

Mayeul Akpovi shared with us a timelapse video he made, which goes through a sequence of experiences and places in the big city, which highlights the day and night life of Paris. 'Paris in Motion' includes about 3500 photos as he successfully creates a video, accompanied by music, which draws you in and fast forwards through time.

David Chipperfield, the curator of the Architecture Exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale, Common Ground (which wraps up this weekend), will be chatting live this Friday to offer his final two cents on the Exhibition's legacy. 

According to the global affairs magazine Monocle, Britain's cultural cache is at an all-time high.

The magazine's latest annual Soft Power Survey (which measures the "Soft Power" of a country, or "the ways in which a nation can shape the world without relying on financial muscle and overwhelming force") placed the UK as the world's greatest cultural influencer, dethroning the US for the first time.

The magazine cites the UK's action-packed year, which included the Queen's Jubilee, the success of pop-culture phenomena (like Adele and James Bond), and the Summer Olympic Games, as the catalyst which put them on top.

But let's not underestimate the role that architecture has played as a symbol of Britain's cultural import. Despite financial difficulties (which have put London's burgeoning skyline in doubt), the year was nevertheless a good one for Britain's architecture and architects - Renzo Piano's controversial Shard hogged the spotlight in London's Olympic coverage; Dame Zaha Hadid, Glamour's Woman of the Year, has been non-stop in the media thanks to her Aquatics Centre and Galaxy Soho; and, to top it off, British megafirm Foster + Partners will soon be responsible for many of New York's latest skyscrapers. Talk about the Empire striking back.

Find out who else made the list of most influential countries, after the break...

From October 22-26, Cannon Design will host a prominent and diverse group of speakers to present at the Chicago firm’s 11th Annual Environmental Awareness Week.

"Great architects build structures that can make us feel enclosed, liberated or suspended. They lead us through space, make us slow down, speed up or stop to contemplate. Great writers, in devising their literary structures, do exactly the same." A recent post by Matteo Pericoli of The New York Times describes what happens when writers, students in Pericoli's creative writing course, team up with architects in order to "physically build the architecture of a text." The resulting models are physical representations of the emotions, relationships, and narrative-styles of stories by authors as varied as David Foster Wallace, Ayn Rand, and Virginia Woolf. Check out all the models, and their accompanying descriptions, at the NYT.

Catherine Opie has photographed people and architecture in and around Los Angeles, California for over twenty-five years. She has successfully captured the interplay between architecture and urban life by photographing the subcultures and castaways of Los Angeles, from the undersides of freeways to lonely Beverly Hills mansions. These works create a portrait of Los Angeles as a singular built environment.