Just this past Thursday, schmidt hammer lassen architects, East China Architecture and Design Institute, and Shanghai Expo Construction Development Company celebrated the ground breaking for, and start of construction of, the new Green Valley project on the site of the former 2010 Shanghai Expo. Located immediately next to the iconic Chinese pavilion, the architects won the international competition to design this 50,000-square-meter project last year. This project aims to become a new central urban development in Shanghai, integrating new sustainable solutions in both the urban design and the individual buildings on the site. More images and architects' description after the break.

In this proposal for a new Australian Prime Ministers lodge, the core concept focused around the question; 'What if the British had embraced Indigenous culture in 1788?' Designed by Stephen Collier Architects, they propose to reconfigure and redefine this boundary of the lodge as a ring of landscape that is retained for public use. This land would be defined by a cluster of deciduous trees while public access to Lake Burley Griffin for all Australians will remain in perpetuity. More images and architects' description after the break.

Westminster City Council has just announced Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, urban designers and architects and Grant Associates, UK landscape architects, as part of a multidisciplinary team to devise a twenty-year infrastructure and public realm plan for Church Street, London, to support the council’s housing renewal strategy. Residents have just voted in favor of proceeding with the first phase of regeneration plans for Church Street in a ward-wide referendum. More images and architects' description after the break.

Designed by Henry Stephens, Nick Roberts, and Jack Davies, the winning proposal for The Lodge on the Lake returns to the issues bound up in Australian identity and issues of modernity. The lodge is both a development and a critique of the Australian relationship of landscape and dwelling, through an intersection of public assembly, intimate domesticity, and ground plane. From the composed house atop a plinth, to the slippages and interpolations that unravel down toward the lake, the lodge on the lake is a democratic marriage of land and architectural typology, introspective private dwelling, and public assembly. More images and architects' description after the break.

Located in the Pacific Ocean, in close proximity to the Canadian coastline, Margot Krasojevic's proposal for the Hydroelectric Waterfall Prison acts as a sustainable, hydroelectric power station. Constructed of reinforced concrete, it's vertical structure consists of a floating tension-leg platform tethered to the seabed eliminating most vertical movement, with depths up to 2,000m. The concrete support is connected to 4-column semi-submersibles further stabilized by a structural ring of floating Tyson turbines. More images and architects' description after the break.