Architect: Wendell Burnette Architects Location: Ellington, Wisconsin Project Size: 5,000 square feet Photography: Bill Timmerman

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Design: Jason Kelly Johnson & Nataly Gattegno at Future Cities Lab Team: Ripon DeLeon (lead), Osma Dossani, Jonathan Izen, assisted by David Spittler Client: ZERO1, San Jose Public Art Program, National Endowment for the Arts Consultant: Elliot Larson created the Twitter trends [xml link] Technology: Text to Speech Module by TextSpeak, Arduino Mega and Uno, WiFly Shield by Sparkfun, Verizon Mifi, LCD panels by Sparkfun, LEDS by superbrightleds.com, IR sensors by Sharp Photography: Peter Prato

As we announced earlier, Pritzker Prize Laureate Wang Shu of Amateur Architecture (China), Rahul Mehrotra of RMA architects (India) and Francine Houben of Mecanoo (The Netherlands) participated in GREENHOUSE TALK at the 2012 Venice Biennale. The informal discussion focused on the current reality of design culture in the great countries of Eastern Asia and Europe.

The video begins with an introduction (in Italian) by architect and Senior curator of MAXXI Roma, Pippo Ciorra, which then leads into some fascinating commentary (in English, with Italian subtitles) by the highlighted protagonists.

The GREENHOUSE TALK event was promoted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Rome, in collaboration with MAXXI and NAi. 

Architects: Charles Rose Architects Inc. Location: Waltham, MA, USA Project Year: 2009 Project Area: 24,000 sq ft Photographs: John Linden, Peter Vanderwarker

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This week we propose a classic from the ’80s by Terry Gillian. Brazil is a film where he shows his vision of the future generated by societies’ bureaucracy and organisation entities. In many ways, it depicts some, nowadays, facts of rigid urban spaces that do not allow individuality or any kind of freedom.

What do you think about architecture representing or being the result of social organisations? Let us know your ideas about this subject, as always, we’re waiting for your comments and suggestions.

Architects: Atelier Feichang Jianzhu Location: Dayi, Sichuan, China Architect In Charge: Liu Lubin Project Team: Wu Xia, Guo Qingmin, Liang Xiaoning, Feng Bo Project Year: 2009 Project Area: 2114.0 sqm Photographs: Yang Cao

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ArchDaily’s Architecture App Guide will introduce you to web and mobile apps that can help you as an architect: productivity, inspiration, drafting, and more.

Today we introduce you Morpholio Trace, an intuitive drafting tool that brings one of the most frequent tools from our desk to a mobile touch device: the tracing paper. The app, developed by our friends from The Morpholio Project, lets you draw on top of images (imported from your iPad camera or other sources) as if you were using tracing paper. A collapsible menu provides you basic set of tools (add more layers, choose from two colours, three widths, save) that enable you to to draft, sketch and review. No fancy fatures, just what you need. Functional minimalism that is not often found in many apps, related to the architectural background of Trace’s creators.

Trace, essential to any design or creative process, allows users to instantly draw on top of imported images or background templates, layering comments or ideas to generate immediate, intelligent sketches that are easy to circulate.  

I tested the app, which is available at the App Store, and it was very intuitive to use. I used it with both my fingers and with a my Pogo Sketch pen, and it was very easy to grab a photo, put a tracing paper on top of it, start sketching on different layers and send it via email.

The app won’t replace the good old tracing paper we have in our boards, but will rather extend its functions and make it more collaborative.

More info from the creators after the break.

The call for entries was recently announced for the ninth annual Travel + Leisure Design Awards. Honoring the best design in the world across twelve categories completed in the past year, the winners are honored in a feature spread in our March issue as well as online. Winners will be chosen by a panel of outstanding experts in their fields, including architect Deborah Berke, chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson and fashion designer Reed Krakoff. The deadline to apply is Oct. 1. To register and for more information, please visit here.

Architects: Frei + Saarinen Architekten Location: Zurich, Switzerland Design Team: Barbara Frei, Martin Saarinen; Nicolaj Bechtel, Stefan Wülser, Corina Trunz, David Winzeler, Bastien Turpin Client: Roman-Catholic Church Zurich Build Area: 1,200 m2 Usable Area Finishing Material: Floor / Wall / Ceiling Floor: Brushed, Coloured and Sealed Parquet (Oak) Completion: 2010 Photographs: Hannes Henz & Frei + Saarinen Architekten

Vessel is a site-specific response to the theme of Common Ground – a wooden structure, composed of a stacked planks, that works in conversation with the layered brick construction of the Arsenale. Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey have created a contemplative space, hollowed out of solid matter, that is at once a light funnel, a lantern chamber, and a passage.

This past weekend, we were invited to attend The Architectural League’s Beaux Arts Ball 2012: Tender at One Hanson Place. Despite the unforgiving weather forecast, hundreds came to share in an evening of great company set within the beautiful 1929 Halsey, McCormack & Helmer’s landmark Williamsburgh Savings Bank. In typical architectural fashion, the former main banking hall was a complete sea of chic black outfits (okay, okay, there were a few dashes of color), underneath a silver pillow-like floating installation designed by SOFTlab.

More after the break.

Architects: Alarcón + Asociados Location: Avda. Punto Es, 4. 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain Associated Architect: Cristina Álvarez Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Pablo Cruz, Luis García Craus, Courtesy of Alarcón + Asociados

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Architects: Daniel Mòdol Location: Plaza Pere Torrent S/Nº Lloret de Mar‐Girona‐Spain Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Jordi Bernadó

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In November 2010, we announced that Kengo Kuma & Associates was selected over a competitive A-list of international architects to design Scotland’s landmark building, the V&A at Dundee. Well now, the £45 million, waterfront project is moving forward as it has just been approved by the city council!

As reported on BDOnline, Philip Long, director of the V&A at Dundee, stated: “This now allows us to move further with elements of the design and building program, including procurement and tendering, and we will be doing that in due course.”

Continue after the break to learn more about Kengo Kuma’s design for the museum.

To commemorate Chile’s Bicentennial, President Sebastián Piñera Echenique has developed the “Legado Bicentenario” (Bicentennial Legacy) program to create, revitalize and consolidate public spaces/buildings of great urban/cultural importance to Chile. As part of this program, the President has decided to revitalize Santiago’s Civic Quarter, particularly Bulnes Avenue (Paseo Bulnes) and the area around it.

The Housing and Urban Development Ministry has therefore launched the “International Public Competition: Master Plan for the Bulnes Urban Axis” and is calling for urban design / architectural proposals to complete, update and revitalize Bulnes Avenue and its surroundings. The goal of this initiative is to develop a Master Plan for the area, located in the heart of the Municipality of Santiago, and revitalize its public spaces to create a suitable abutment at the southern end of Bulnes Avenue.

The First Prize Winner will receive about USD $50,000.

More info, after the break…

Since it’s founding in 1986, Reiser + Umemoto, RUR Architecture P.C. has become a widely published, internationally recognized practice with a diverse collection of projects ranging in scale. On multiple occasions, the firm has been awarded for their contributions to architectural practice and theory – the most recent being The Cooper Union’s 2008 Presidential Citation and the 2011 John Hejduk Award – as they treat “each project as the continuation of an ongoing inquiry, delving into relationships among architecture, territory and systems of distribution.”

Architects: TYIN Tegnestue Architects Location: Sungai Penuh, Kerinchi, Sumatra, Indonesia Design Team: Gjermund Wibe, Morten Staubo, Therese Jonassen,Kasama Yamtree, Andreas Gjertsen, Yashar Hanstad Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Pasi Aalto, Zifeng Wei, Wenzel Prokosch

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As we’ve reported over the last two months, efforts have been underway in Arizona to preserve the David Wright House, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “ most innovative, unusual and personal works of architecture,” from demolition by developers. No intact Wright building has ever been intentionally demolished, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy (FLWBC) has been hard at work to make sure this one isn’t the first.

A wood-based nanomaterial composed of cellulose nanocrystals and cellulose nanofibrils is being evaluated at the Forest Products Laboratory, in support of a project at the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland. The material, presumably stronger than Kevlar, is being produced to create clear composites as reinforced glass for clear applications. US Forest Services has opened a $1.7 million pilot plant in Wisconsin to develop the wood-based nanomaterial, whose future applications may include windshield and high performance glass.

By Sherin Wing and Guy Horton

Utah’s red rock country is sublime in a Martian Chronicles sort of way. Its geologic folds, wrinkles, bridges, and domes compose a forbidding yet stunningly beautiful world of rock and sky. It’s the sort of landscape John McPhee would lyrically traverse in his book Basin and Range, in what he refers to as a “physiographic province.” It is also the psychological province of vision quests, the kind of vast and mystical space that Jim Morrison might have experienced. These are just some of the images that emerge from this landscape.

The work of Imbue Design, the Salt Lake City-based, three-person firm made up of Hunter Gundersen, Matt Swindel, and Christopher Talvy, is inserted here to form a meditative retreat that rises out of what McPhee would describe as a “silent world of austere beauty” (1). The project is captivating not merely because of its form or material, but because of its program as a meditation retreat for practicing Buddhists or others seeking to enter a silent world. It’s also a home away from home.

Read the interview with the Imbue’s design team after the break

Today the Nederlandse Tuinbouwraad (NTR) announced the City of Almere, along with it’s MVRDV-designed proposal, as winner of the prestigious world horticultural expo, Floriade 2022. The event takes place once every ten years in the Netherlands and is currently ending in Venlo.

The MVRDV plan for Almere is not a temporary expo site but a lasting green Cité Idéale as an extension to the existing city centre. The waterfront site opposite the city centre will be developed as a vibrant new urban neighborhood and also a giant plant library which will remain beyond the expo.

The ambition is to create a 300% greener exhibition than currently standard, both literally green and sustainable: each program on the site will be combined with plants which will create programmatic surprises, innovation and ecology. At the same time the site will be with a vast program such as a university, hotel, marina, offices and homes more urban than any other Floriade has ever been before, it is an exemplary green city. Continue after the break for more!

Featuring more than twenty-five films from eleven countries, public programs, and an architectural driving tour of Lower Manhattan, the fourth season of the Architecture and Design Film Festival is taking place October 18-21. Returning to Tribeca Cinemas, in New York City, the films in this year’s Festival consider a range of topics, including contemporary and historic visionary architects, the creative design process, architecture as cultural emissary, the creation of the High Line, and modernist architecture on the East and West Coasts, among other subjects. The Festival features two world premieres, two U.S. premieres, and numerous films shown in New York City for the first time. Tickets go on sale October 1. More information after the break.

The proposal for the New Harbor Service building by IaN+ aims to define a simple and severe architecture. The project’s construction scheme reflects eastern philosophy; its clean aesthetic and unadorned simplicity, where structure turns into a decorative system clearly defining space. The grandeur of the complex will become the new symbol of the city and at the same time, these openings as large telescopes, frame the view from the city towards the sea and the infinite. More images and architects’ description after the break.