Taking place tomorrow, January 11th from 2:00-4:30pm EST, modeLab‘s Introduction to Simulation with Kangaroo Webinar will apply physical properties and forces to geometry to offer a fun and interactive way to implement physics-based constraints into your parametric workflows. Through a series of short presentations and “live” exercises, learn essential techniques for setting up and developing simulations with Kangaroo in Grasshopper, ranging from particle systems to spring networks. Over the course of the 2.5 hour webinar, you will learn strategies for working with physical geometry, dynamic relaxation, and funicular shapes. To register, and for more information, please visit here.

As the Atlantic Cities best describes, “Leave it to Japan to turn one of the dirtiest and noisiest processes of the urban lifecycle – the demolition of highrises – into a neat, quiet and almost cute affair.”

Japanese construction company Taisei Corporation has discovered a new, more efficient way to disassemble, rather than demolish, a tall building over 100 meters. The process, known as Taisei’s Ecological Reproduction System or Tecorep, begins by transforming the structure’s top floors into an enclosed “cap”, which is then supported by temporary columns and powerful jacks. As demolition workers begin to disassemble the building from within, they use interior cranes to lower materials. After dismantling an entire floor, the jacks quietly lower the “cap” and the process is repeated.

“It’s kind of like having a disassembly factory on top of the building and putting a big hat there, and then the building shrinks,” says one Taisei engineer, according to this report in the Japan Times.

Learn about the advantages of this process after the break.

During the 2012 World Architecture Festival held in Singapore, we had the opportunity to interview Richard Hassell, one of the founders of the highly acclaimed practice WOHA.

New York’s Garment District, consisting of 18 blocks in the west side of midtown, was the city’s most well known industries in the boom of the 1920s through the early 50s. The influx of immigrants and the geography of New York City made it a natural hub for manufacturing and trading activity. The work began in small workshops and at home in crowded tenements and eventually grew out of these crammed space into factories and warehouses. The industry inadvertently transformed Seventh Avenue into rows of skyscraper factories that faithfully abided to New York City’s zoning regulations. The 125 loft buildings all shared the pyramidal forms due to step-back laws governing design.

Now, The Skyscraper Museum in New York City is celebrating this neighborhood and its influential development of business, industry and architecture and the mark that it left on the city with an exhibition called URBAN FABRIC. It is curated by Andrew S Dolkart, the Director of the Historic Preservation Program, and will be running through February 17th.

Learn more and watch the curator’s lecture after the break.

Located in the old plot of the Olympic stadium of Sofia, Bulgaria, the proposal for the new soccer stadium by Gras Arquitectos aims to create a new mixed complex, keeping as much as possible the green and central qualities of the plot. Designed to seat around 15,000, the plot itself works as a central park of the neighborhood. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The “’Open Exchang’ proposal, for the Green Square Library and Plaza competition, creates a space of public engagement by challenging the role of the library in the contemporary city of Sydney. Designed by MODU , in collaboration with Future Green Studio landscape architects, their project becomes a social and public space made possible by new technology, with the potential to transcend the traditional definition of learning spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) have developed the Building Research Information Knowledgebase (BRIK), an interactive portal offering free online access to peer-reviewed research projects and case studies in all facets of the built environment, from pre-design through occupancy and reuse.

“By providing a portal to comprehensive research and data, this initiative is intended to help better educate the entire real estate marketplace on how design strategies and innovations can have a profound impact on building performance,” said AIA Chief Executive Officer, Robert Ivy, FAIA. “The BRIK offering is an entry-way to show quantifiable proof of evidence-based design approaches.”

Assemblage has succeeded against a prestigious shortlist – which included Zaha Hadid Architects, Capita Symonds, Fevre Gaucher and ADPI – in an international competition for the new Iraqi parliament complex in Baghdad. The $1Bn USD project challenged contestants to design a new, large scale complex amidst the remnants of a partially built super mosque planned by Saddam Hussein (photos of the existing site here).

The London-based practice will be awarded $250,000 USD and asked to produce a master plan for the surrounding city, as well as additional government buildings, a new hotel and public parks. The anonymous jury plans to exhibit the submitted projects, along with the judging committee’s decision. However, a date has yet to be announced.

Continue after the break for more images and the architects’ description.

Quickly rising on the corner of 14th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, this new, multipurpose facility will soon become the “heart” of The New School – an avant-garde university in New York City. The University Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), combines all aspects of a traditional campus into a single, 16-story building, offering 200,000 square feet of academic space on the first seven floors and 150,000 square feet for a 600-bed dormitory on the levels above.

The brass-and-glass structure, which is the largest construction project in the university’s 91-year history in Greenwich Village, is scheduled for completion in 2014.

In progress images and more information after the break.

Designed by Irad Shomroni and Josef Shushan, the proposal for the Yad Le’Banim Building – Cultural and Memorial Center seeks to emphasize the duality between everyday life activities and commemoration. In a center that houses both cultural communal facilities that open daily and annual memorial ceremonies for casualties of war, the center is designed as a linear path. It gradually rises from Ramat Yishay’s main street, hovers above its surrounding garden, and eventually reaches a viewpoint towards the historical buildings of Ramat Yishay. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Taking advantage of solid timber’s unique benefits, the Timber Café by BAKOKO, an emerging Tokyo architecture practice, is a proposal for a sustainable pop-up restaurant. The temporary building can be flat packed into a standard 40′ shipping container and erected with a crane in a mere day. Once assembled, this wooden box is remarkably self-stable. It does not need a permanent foundation, making it suitable almost anywhere. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Richard Meier & Partners Architects is pleased to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Richard Meier’s prolific architecture career. In recognition of his contributions to architecture and in collaboration with very distinguished institutions, Richard Meier & Partners will be organizing several projects and events to honor this very significant anniversary. Currently on display at the Arp Museum Richard Meier: Building as Art is open to the general public, and the exhibition illustrates Meier’s complex design process using prominent buildings and projects from his entire work history.

In addition to the exhibition in Germany, and later in the summer, Richard Meier will be giving a series of lectures in Los Angeles, New York City and in Italy talking about some of the iconic, recent and current projects.

More on Richard Meier’s prolific career after the break.

Following the conclusion of David Chipperfield’s 2012 Venice Biennale, the British Pavilion has brought its investigations back to the UK to expand upon ten exceptional research projects that illustrate how architecture has shaped the culture and economy of countries around the world.

Should Amsterdam-style floating homes be built in London’s Docklands? Could the UK learn from Brazil’s successful identikit school-building program? Could Belfast be redeveloped by following a Berlin model? These are just some of the fascinating questions that will be addressed in a series of lectures, debates and events hosted by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in collaboration with the British Council and the Architectural Association.

Mark your calendars for the following special events, which will run from February 26 through April 27, 2013.

When plans for the High Line were first revealed it made quite an impression on the design community. The converted elevated rail line, long abandoned by New York City, was threatened by demolition until a group of activists fought for its revival and helped transform it into one of the most renowned public spaces in Manhattan. Now Queens, a borough with its own abandoned infrastructure is on its way to redeveloping the land for its own version of the High Line, to be known as the Queensway Cultural Gateway.

In late December, the Trust for Public Land announced that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has awarded a $467,000 grant to the organization to begin a feasibility study on the 3.5 mile Long Island rail line. Early proposals reveal a new pedestrian and bike path, public green space and a cultural gateway that will celebrate Queens’ diversity in art, sculpture and food, serving the 250,000 residents that live in the neighborhoods along the route, which include Rego Park, Forest Hills, Richmond Hill, Ozone Park and Forest Park.

Join us after the break for more.

Celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Harry Seidler, the leading Australian architect of the twentieth century, the ‘Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design’ traveling exhibition will take place January 10-February 10 in Sofia, Bulgaria at the VIVACOM Art Hall. The exhibition traces Austrian-born Seidler’s key role in bringing Bauhaus principles to Australia and identifies his distinctive place and hand within and beyond modernist design methodology. The exhibition was developed by curator Vladimir Belogolovsky of Intercontinental Curatorial Project in New York with Penelope Seidler and Harry Seidler & Associates in Sydney and sponsored by Seidler Architectural Foundation. More information on the exhibition after the break.

It seems the rumors were true. The Venice Biennale’s board has just confirmed that Rem Koolhaas will be the Director for the next Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014 (to take place June 7th to November 23rd).

Organized by AIA Utah Young Architects Forum and the Downtown Alliance, in collaboration with Utah Heritage Foundation, Sixty-Nine Seventy invites design teams from around the world to re-envision the circulation areas and passages of two blocks in Salt Lake City’s downtown. The entrants will prepare comprehensive ideas for these in-between spaces, developing them into the connective tissue linking the area’s cultural amenities. SixtyNine-Seventy, The Spaces Between: An Urban Ideas Competition launches on January 10, 2013 with a party at 7:00 PM at Squatters Pub. The competition and launch party are open to everyone. For those not able to attend the opening night presentations will be posted on the web immediately following the event. For more information, please visit here.

Ada Louise Huxtable (1921-2013), known as “the dean of American architectural criticism”, has passed away at the age of 91 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Huxtable began her legendary career when she was appointed as The New York Times’ first architecture critic in 1963. Her sharp mind and straightforward critiques paved the way for contemporary architectural journalism and called for public attention to the significance of architecture.

Marking the “continuance of Belgrade’s signature ‘Modernist’ movement”, which produced a number of iconic buildings throughout the mid-twentieth century, the Serbian capital is proud to unveil Zaha Hadid Architect’s (ZHA) contemporary masterplan for Beko. This all-inclusive, mixed use project embeds itself within the undulating topography of the abandoned Beko textile factory in a style that directly reflects Zaha’s distinct style of Parametricism.

Focused on urban regeneration, the project will join forces with Sou Fujimoto’s proposed ‘Cloud’ on the adjoining Sava waterfront to revitalize Belgrade’s cultural axis.

Learn more after the break.

WE Architecture is a young firm based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Started by partners Marc Jay and Julie Schmidt-Nielsen in 2009, the practice is focused on public competitions and consultancy, along with teaching at the Royal Danish Academy. The partners studied in Denmark, but shaped their professional career working abroad in New York and Barcelona.

Designed by CVDB Arquitectos, with Tiago Filipe Santos, the proposal for the Refurbishment of the Old Railway Station of Mora, Portugal is focused in the pragmatic definition of uses. These aim to bring to life the existing buildings, activate their use, clarify the functional and distributive relations between spaces, and promote new built areas that incorporate a contemporary presence through the iconographic approach of the facades.More images and architects’ description after the break.

At a time when government resources dedicated to housing production and preservation are rapidly shrinking and the cost to develop affordable housing is increasing, there is significant space and demand for innovation when it comes to lowering building and operating costs. Therefore, the ‘Lowering the Cost of Housing‘ competition is seeking to provide a new model for conceiving, siting, financing, building and sustaining, affordable housing. Selected teams will work on a specific site, proposing designs for multi-unit dwellings which present new methods for designing, building and financing housing affordable to individuals or families below 100% of Area Median Income. Submissions are due no later than January 15, with final proposals due in March. For more information, please visit their official website here.