The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected 18 recipients for the 2014 AIA Young Architects Award. Defined as professionals who have been licensed ten years or fewer, regardless of their age, the “young architects” will be honored for making significant contributions to the profession and providing exceptional leadership early in their careers. All recipients will be presented the award at the AIA 2014 National Convention and Design Exposition in Chicago.

The City of Tampere, the Finnish Transport Agency, the VR-Group and Senate Properties are organizing an international design contest for the Tampere Travel and Service Centre and its environs. The design contest for the travel and service centre is looking for a shared vision for the area’s development as well as shared view on the guidelines for future measures.

On the twentieth anniversary of South Africa’s re-birth, the UIA Congress will celebrate the African profession as a meaningful contributor to world architecture and thought leadership in city development; as well as the continent’s contribution in the affairs and evolution of architecture globally.

The 2014 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship has launched and is inviting applications from schools of architecture around the world. A £6,000 grant will be awarded to one student by a panel of judges which includes Lord Foster and the President of the RIBA.

TEX-FAB extends its reach to Austin, this year adding the University of Texas School of Architecture as a member organization. In doing so, the UT SOA is supporting the largest and most complete event to date with Michel Rojkind as our Keynote lecture with 6 speakers and 4 moderators. Moderators will delve into techniques to highlight the differences between working methods, while within the workshops, session leaders will further develop those topics as functional methods for the production of design solutions.

The Apple Store's iconic 5th Avenue Store, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, came into unfortunate contact with a snowblower yesterday, reports Buzzfeed. The incident has left one panel of glass shattered; it's estimated that fixing it will cost about $445,000. More images, after the break...

Architecture for Humanity New York (AfHny) is accepting submissions for construction, interior design, landscape, and other design-related projects for the AfHny Community Design Competition 2014. AfHny will select one winning project that will be judged based on its alignment with AfHny’s mission, its perceived impact on the New York community, the submitting organization’s ability to fund the project, and proof of the organization’s ability to impact New York City’s neighborhoods based on past results. The winning project will receive a design competition hosted by AfHny that will result in several schematic design solutions developed by our membership base, which represents some of the top talent in the New York City design community. At the end of the design competition process, the winning organization will select their favored schematic design.

d3 has unveiled the 2013 winners of Unbuilt Visions, a competition designed to “promote critical debate about architecture and design by acknowledging excellence in unbuilt projects.” Get a glimpse of the four grand prize projects, which were awarded $750 each for their winning contributions, and the eleven special mentions after the break.

The British Government will showcase Britain’s distinctive qualities of creativity and enterprise to millions of international visitors through the UK Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015.

In this article on the Atlantic Cities, Richard Florida delves into recent research by Edward Glaeser, the author of Triumph of the City, which investigates the emergence in recent decades of mega-cities in developing nations. Though cities have long been connected to prosperity he points out that in these new cities, residents remain poor. The answer it seems is linked to our globalized economy, as well as the under prepared governments in these countries. However Glaeser and Florida don't see this as a reason for panic, or to abandon urbanization, but rather to ensure that urbanization is supported more effectively by government. You can read the full article here.

UPDATE: This year's jury for the Wheelwright Prize will be: Mohsen Mostafavi, Iñaki Ábalos, Sílvia Benedito, Pedro Gadanho, K. Michael Hays, Linda Pollak, Shohei Shigematsu, and Jorge Silvetti.

Shenzhen is located in the south of Guangdong, China, facing Hong Kong across the river. In 2012, it had a permanent population of 10.54 million and its GDP, standing at RMB 1,295 billion, ranked the fourth amongst cities in Mainland China for years. After more than thirty years of reform and opening up, it has developed from a small town in the southern coast of China to a modern metropolis, becoming a miniature of China’s reform, opening-up and modern construction.

Videos

“A New Online Marketplace for Mobility,” an innovative proposal by city planner Philip Parsons and mobility expert Federico Parolotto that aims to optimize mobility in megacities, has been named the first participant in the Audi Urban Future Award 2014. Selected from a shortlist of three, the winners will now assemble a team of urban designers in order to pursue their visionary idea. Read more about their winning proposal, here.

The Lisbon Architecture Triennale has announced that its 2016 Curatorial Board will be made up of André Tavares and Diogo Seixas Lopes, architects and directors of the magazine Jornal Arquitectos. José Mateus will serve as the Triennale's Executive President. More info, after the break...

Third Natures presents 15 years of speculations, projects and built proposals by the Madrid- based duo of Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda and their collaborators, ranging from the beginnings of the practice in 1997 to their latest works, completed in 2013. In total, 26 projects are shown through drawings, models, objects and photographs. All this material is organised according to laws of affinity and connection, in an attempt to convey the vast range of the projects and their main field of operation – the space of mediation between people, objects, natural species and built environments.

In response to the death of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week, Eyal Weizman has written an interesting investigation into how the controversial politician used architecture and urban planning as a tool in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, deploying settlements like military tactics rather than simply as housing strategy. The piece is an insightful examination of how power and even violence can be manifest in design, as evidenced by Sharon's "architecture of occupation". You can read the full article here.

STUDIO Magazine have just released their new issue: IMPORT-EXPORT. In the contemporary age, in which markets, productions, consumptions, lifestyles and mindsets are connected on a global scale, in a continuous flux of exchanges generating interdependency among them, architecture keeps being contamined by external factors which renovate this discipline's principles.

The Glenn Murcutt Architecture Master Class in Australia has become an major annual event on the international architecture calendar. Started in 2001, architects and senior students from sixty-five nations around the world have now traveled to Australia to participate in the two-week residential studio based program.