Close to the Port of Rotterdam docks, MVRDV has completed the Spijkenisse Book Mountain, a public library in Spijkenisse’s market square. It features a 480 meter route, lined with bookshelves, that wraps around a stacked, pyramidal form as it is showcased through the library’s glass structure. The “mountain of books” illuminates from within and serves as both an advertisement and an invitation to reading. The adjacent Library Quarter consisting of 42 social housing units, parking and public space is also a project by MVRDV. Together, with the Book Mountain, it strives to form an “exemplary eco-neighborhood”.

Continue after the break for the architects’ description.

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The New York-based branding and creative agency dbox has won an Emmy for its CGI and Branding work on the Discovery Channel’s six part mini-series Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero. From executive producer by Steven Spielberg, the series chronicles the activity of the Ground Zero site and the personal stories of the construction workers, engineers and architects who have made the rebuilding vision a reality.

The recently launched FuturArc Green Leadership Award 2013 competition is calling for projects that are new, restored, rehabilitated or converted, and must have been completed before December 31, 2012 in Asia or Australia. The jury seeks to understand how the project delivers specific, measurable outcomes. Entrants are encouraged to make a case for the building against the following criteria: Efficacy, Wellness, Embeddedness, Advocacy, Integration, and Adaptation. The Jury will nominate up to three projects in each category. The deadline for submissions is December 17. For more information, please visit here.

The project proposal for the new Santa Maria Parish Center in Bonavista offers a specific solution to the needs of the program and the liturgy. By focusing on the two premises recurrent throughout the history of the Catholic Church, monumentality and mystery, the design becomes a singular and transcendent space. Designed by Gimeno Guitart Architects, they believe the church, as a collective and community space, must be vindicated as a social and urban event as well as a place for prayer and retreat. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by Ana Cecília Tourinho, Analu Brandão, Gabriel Kozlowski, and Beni Barzellai, their competition entry for the City Hall Várzea Paulista creates a unity among all the planned projects for the downtown of Várzea Paulista. By proposing an infrastructural ring, the project functions as a public connector to embrace the existing green space and north and south. Connected to the public transportation system, it distributes and negotiates the confluence and flow of pedestrians while building a coherent image of the city’s entry. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Using state-of-the-art parametric design tools and digital fabrication, KREOD brings together some of the most talented designers, engineers and innovative materials to challenge current thinking and showcase sustainable and forward-thinking building methods. Designed by Chun Qing Li of Pavilion Architecture, KREOD will be located next to Peninsula Square, between Emirates Air Line and The O2 at Greenwich Peninsula now until January 2013 . More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts will be hosting an exhibition on Russian Modernist Architecture starting October 11 through February 16, 2013. Featuring a wealth of rarely published material on architecture that spanned the empire of the Soviet Union, the 80+ large-scale photographs – documented by British photographer Richard Pare – provide unique insight into the movements of the Soviet revolutionary period. More photos and information after the break.

All Hale, a new film written by Anita Banerji, follows the story of college student Alice Walker who finds herself in a small town in Hale County, Alabama building a home for a family that is going through personal and financial hardship. The movie is filmed on location, with a variety of unique Hale County architecture serving as the backdrop for a story that rekindles a love for “home-grown architecture”. At a time when so much emphasis is focused on “starchitects” and the “Bilbao effect”, the story of this movie has a social agenda that highlights the backlash to this phenomena: the rising trend of design/build architecture.

Join us after the break for more on the underlying social inspiration of this film and a sneak peek at the trailer.

Designed for the ‘Mobilicity: Tirana Multimodal Station’ competition, the second prize winning proposal consists in giving back an identity to the area. Designed by Morfearch, the masterplan is not only a project of a railway station: it is a project about Tirana. The chaotic and informal feature of the city asks for the tracking of a simple and clear sign that would restore order and a hierarchy between the urban parts. The system is configured as a flexible solution in different urban situations: depending on space availability and willingness of densification, the layout of the project can change and respond to city needs. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965) will forever be known as an icon of Modernism, but did you know that the man who changed the face of architecture led quite the colorful personal life?

In honor of his 125th birthday, take a moment to check out some Corbu classics (perhaps Convent of La Tourette, Ronchamp, Villa Savoye, Unite d’Habitation, or Villa Roche) and read on to learn more about the man behind the myth – Charles-Édouard Jeanneret.

Fun Facts About Le Corbusier (including what Salvador Dalí had to say about him. It isn’t pretty) after the break!

Taking place October 18-23 at Ajman University of Science & Technology, UAE, Japanese Architect, Satoshi Okada, will be putting on an architectural workshop titled, ‘Thinking of Shadow’. As the founder of Satoshi Okada Architects, Okada is known for his simplicity with sublimity even in warmhearted spaces for human activities and even spirituality in rich materiality and delicate details. He believes that “…building activities, on one hand, are nothing but destruction of whatever exists; nevertheless, all the more because of it, they have to compensate it by a beautiful gift of artifice more than before”. For more information on the event, please visit here.

Originating from the ‘pure plate’ structure occurring in natural structures such as sea urchins, and based on a hexagonal geometry, the Spaceplates Greenhouse is being used for the first time this term by horticultural staff and students at City of Bristol College’s South Bristol Skills Academy in Hengrove Park, Bristol. Designed by N55, with Architect, Anne Romme, the project is constructed using an innovative building system based on aluminum and polycarbonate and accommodates work, growing and teaching space. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In addition to yesterday’s announcement of the World Building of the Year Award, two further awards have also been awarded at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore:

Kallang River Bishan Park, Singapore, designed by Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl, has won the ‘Landscape of the Year’ Award and Msheireb – Heart of Doha, Qatar, designed by AECOM, has won the ‘Future Project of the Year’ Award.

Find out more about the awarded projects after the break.

Cooled Conservatories at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, has won the World Building of the Year Award at the prestigious World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2012. The project, designed by Wilkinson Eyre, Grant Associates, Atelier One and Atelier Ten, was chosen from over 500 entries. More information and images after the break.

A cultural and educational space for creative industries, such as movie, TV, web design, fashion and performing arts, the first prize winning proposal for the CASA FIRJAN da Indústria Criativa unifies the educational, cultural and corporate segments. Designed by Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos, the project, located in Rio de Janeiro, creates a hub for producers, consumers, and investors of these disciplines to provide interaction, networking and business opportunities. More images and architects’ description after the break.

How to think about today’s architecture, captured in the pragmatic flows of changing society? Can architecture once more be captivating, romantic, humanistic, visionary, and everyday at the same time? It appears that today’s architecture is becoming increasingly complex and ambiguous, and thus increasingly manipulative. It is lost in the cloud of the everyday. But how can architecture be seen again in its elementary correlations, geometry, form, use? To be derived from the specific, idiosyncratic, everyday, and face the timeless, resistant level. How to find the vertical of the everyday? The everyday that makes sense only if it is reflected in the sublime.

More from exhibitor Metamak – Architectural Collective after the break.

Architects: gmp Architekten Location: Frankfurt, Germany Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Jürgen Hillmer Design Team: Klaus Lenz, Sebastian Flatau, Ingo Beckmann, Kai Beckmann, Markus Carlsen, Christian Dahle, Henning Fritsch, Ben Joscha Grope, Markus Helmin, Matthias Holtschmidt, Silke Jessen, Eduard Kaiser, Raimund Kinski, Prisca Marschner, Rouven Oberdieck Project Leaders Susanne: Winter, Reiner Schröder Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Marcus Bredt

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Yes, it could begin this way, right here, just like that, in a rather slow and ponderous way, in this neutral place that belongs to all and to none, where people pass by almost without seeing each other, where the life of building regularly and distantly resounds. What happens behind the flats’ heavy doors can most often be perceived only through those fragmented echoes, those splinters, remnants, shadows, those first moves or incidents or accidents that happen in what are called “common areas,” soft little sounds damped by the red woolen carpet, embryos of communal life which never go further than the landing. The inhabitants of a single building live a few inches from each other, they are separated by a mere partition wall, they share the same spaces repeated along each corridor, they perform the same movements at the same times, turning on a tap, flushing the water closet, switching on a light, laying the table, a few dozen simultaneous existences repeated from storey to storey, from building to building, from street to street. They entrench themselves in their domestic dwelling space—since that is what it is called—and they would prefer nothing to emerge from it; but the little that they do let out…

- Georges Perec

The Ministry of Information and Culture of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, in collaboration and sponsorship with the Government of the United States of America and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, has awarded AV62 Arquitectos first prize for the National Museum of Afghanistan Competition. The Spanish team was selected over 72 other design proposals from 31 countries.

A second and third prize winner, along with three honorable mentions, were also recognized at the awards ceremony in Kabul. More details after the break.

Architects: Nendo Location: London, UK Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Daici Ano

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ARCHITECT Magazine has released their fourth annual ranking of the most “powerful, philanthropic, talented and profitable” architecture firms in the United States. Don’t be fooled, this doesn’t necessarily mean the biggest firms, as the survey uses the broadest possible criteria to allow practices, both small and large, the opportunity to compete and be recognized.

Firms are ranked by profitability, sustainability and design quality. For the first time this year, the survey included pro bono work and water modeling in response to the challenging realities of the economy, natural disasters and drought.

Additionally, the survey revealed that 66% of the firms reported an increase in their net revenue from 2010 to 2011. No surprise there, when considering the slow, overall improvement of the ABI (check out the latest ABI report here).

Architects: Elías Rizo Arquitectos Location: Tapalpa, Jalisco, México Architects: Elías Rizo Suárez, Alejandro Rizo Suárez Collaborators: Rigo González and Gabriela Chávez Project Year: 2008 Photographs: Marcos García

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