The June ABI has proven that we still have not been able to shake the weak activity of May - the score capped out at 45.9 from 45.8, marking the third month in negative territory. The market continues to show a drop in demand across all design services, in all regions. The poor conditions suggest upcoming weakness in spending on nonresidential construction projects, as each sector of construction shows negative growth commercial/industrial 46.9, institutional 46.0, and mixed practice 45.9. “The downturn in design activity that began in April and accelerated in May has continued into June, likely extending the weak market conditions we’ve seen in nonresidential building activity ,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “While not all firms are experiencing negative conditions, a large share is still coping with a sluggish and erratic marketplace.”

This summer, New York artist Kurt Perschke brought his celebrated art project RedBall to the UK. Co-produced by Torbay Council and The Dartington Hall Trust, it arrived on the streets of the English Riviera in Torbay in June before touring to Plymouth, Exeter, Weymouth & Portland and London, finishing the tour at Dartington Hall and popping up in a total of 20 sites. The project engaged thousands of people on its tour of alleyways, underpasses, high streets, town squares, heritage sites and bridge arches across the country. Alongside the tour, the RedBall UK education project worked with hundreds of young people and staff in 5 schools to raise the aspirations and achievements of Year 6 pupils. Text Courtesy of Danny Cooke. For more information on RedBall UK, please visit here.

Raimund Abraham (1933-2010), who would have turned 79 today, was far from your typical architect. A striking figure – usually sporting a black fedora, thick moustache, and cigar – Abraham was a radical thinker who believed passionately in the sacred importance of architecture.

For Abraham, architecture existed just as legitimately in the mind as on the ground; as he put it: “I don’t need a building to validate my ideas.” In fact, many of his visionary drawings were exhibited as art, including in the MOMA. Although most of his designs were never actually built, those that were gained critical acclaim.

He was best known for the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City, a 24-story, “guillotine-like” building curiously squeezed onto a plot only 25 feet wide. Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton called it “the most significant modern piece of architecture to be realized in Manhattan since the Seagram Building and the Guggenheim Musuem of 1959.”

To celebrate this great mind, we present you his final work, Musikerhaus (House for Music or Musician’s House), as photographed by Thomas Mayer. The House, a former NATO missile base turned artists’ residence/exhibition gallery (you can see the latest exhibition “The Reality of the Unbuilt” in the photos below), will be completed next year.

More photos & quotes, after the break…

As we’ve discussed at length here at ArchDaily, an Olympic Bid is no thing to take on lightly. Our 3-part series on the subject, “How NOT To Host the Olympics,” made very clear that this mega-event is a major urban project with long-term economic, social, and environmental consequences. So, it’s no surprise that Olympic bidders research and strategize well in advance – consider London 2012‘s “Sustainable Olympics” bid or OMA’s perhaps premature interest in Turkey- to ensure, first, that they get the bid and, second, that the Games leave renewal (rather than destruction) in their wake. Architecture, Research, and Urbanism practice, XML, are already taking on the task of preparing its home country, the Netherlands, for its 2028 bid. Their just-released report compares Olympic City bids across the globe – from the 2020 contenders of Madrid, Istanbul, Dohan, and Tokyo to a 2024 contender, South Africa. Interestingly, they’ve noted a cyclical nature of the Games’ socio-economic significance and have thus come up with a 3-prong strategy that will position the Netherlands to spearhead a new Olympic paradigm. You can check out XML’s full Report, well worth a look, after the break...

Koppert + Koenis Architects were recently announced as winner of the competition by the Flemish Government with their contribution for a double sports accommodation in Oudenaarde, Belgium. The sports complex will facilitate the sports education of the local primary and secondary schools during the day and local sports clubs during the evening hours. The jury was charmed by the clear setup and the optimal sports and teaching facilitating design resulting in simplicity and a realistic integration with its surroundings. More images and architects’ description after the break.

This was an unprecedented year for Tsinghua University’s Non-Linear Parametric Workshop with close to 200 students attending. Students of the Advanced Design Unit taught by Daniel Gillen, Xu Feng with assistance by Andrew Haas investigated parametric software, thought processes and strategy with a specific focus on versioning.

The tutors’ sequenced information provided to students to encourage a scientific level of variable testing and analysis.  The nine-day workshop was organized into three parts, beginning with abstract versioning, followed by a pavilion, and concluding with a product.

Designed by Fabiano Ravaglia, Liebert Rodrigues, Vinícius Philot, Fernanda Marx, Tiago Mendonça, and Karen Novaes, the DAF: Designing for Adaptable Futures competition proposal focuses on expansion and flexibility to create a new way of thinking about Brazilian social housing. Based on practices developed by the low-income residents of the social housings of Rio, the team objective is to formulate a set of strategies that could enable and encourage the expansion of housing but in a neatly way. By taking advantage of the existing structure and implantation and inside the constructive knowledge of the population, this will allow the enlargement when it suits them. More images and architects’ description after the break.

ANDO | Andalucía Office, composed by five young architects from the University of Seville, shared with us their 2nd prize winning proposal in the Fourth edition of the “International Mock Firms Skyscraper Competition” organized by Chicago Architecture Today. Their concept, which focused on versatility, let to their NODO project, a tower over 550 meters in Beijing. The most innovative architectural idea of the project is based on the possibility of a constantly changing skyscraper. It is all about developing a mutant vertical city building possibility, which answers to its time, place and inhabitants requirements. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The “Line, surface, space“ installation, by Kawahara Krause Architects, is displayed as part of the architectural triennale in Hamburg this summer. Erected on the plan of three interlocking twisted squares of different sizes, the threads of the outer square suggest the edges of an imaginary space, while the more densely arranged threads towards the middle seem to create surfaces. A fragile structure of threads stretching from floor to ceiling seems to dissolve in space and recompose to ever new appearances. Varying between transparent and closed surfaces, the spatial perception changes with each step taken through the installation. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Share your creative responses in the comment section below:

According to a local Arizona news channel, a home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his son, David S. Wright, is on the chopping block.

In his architectural review of the Ronald McDonald House, a home for families with children at the nearby Children’s Hospital, Blair Kamin came up against a moral dilemna:

Designed by J. MAYER H., the ‘Schaustelle’ or ‘show site’ will be a temporary pavilion and platform for the four collections housed at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany. The temporary closure has been seen as an opportunity that will give rise to a makeshift exhibition building – the Schaustelle. Set up to hold exhibitions, workshops, talks, performances, film screenings and video installations, and much more, the scheme has been initiated by the Pinakothek der Moderne Foundation. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Welcome back and congratulations for having made it to the final installation of the Olympic City Guide.

So far, in parts I and II, we’ve learned how to design for your post-Games legacy (No White Elephants please) and to revitalize -not demolish- your city’s most deprived “eye-sores” (Don’t Hate, Rejuvenate).

So what’s left? Well, in this post-Recession era of austerity, a huge part of your Olympic Strategy will be justifying the spending – the colossal spending – to your more than skeptical constituents. As I said in the last post, a good starting point is targeting urban renewal and being as transparent as possible, but another big element is how you market the Games – not just to the International Olympics Committee (IOC), but to your own city-dwellers.

So how can you get them both on your side? Simple - Go Green.

If you remember nothing else from Part I of our Olympic City Guide, Your Very Own Guide to Successfully Hosting the Olympic Games, make it the GOLDEN RULE: “The best thing to do if you’re bidding for the Olympics, Is to Not Get the Olympics.”

As we explained in Part I, this take-it-or-leave-it mentality is key to Olympic success. See the Olympics as the Games, and, come autumn, you’ll find your city littered with resource-guzzling, empty stadiums. See the Olympics as an excuse to get your plans for Urban Renewal into hyper-drive, and you’ll get the gold: a publicity-hogging, urban makeover that will continue to make you profit years after the Olympic circus has packed up and gone home.

But Olympic legacy doesn’t just come down to dollars and cents. It often means making a very real socio-cultural impact. Which leads us to our second set of Dos and Donts, starting with DON’T: Be Shady. And yes, we’re looking at you Beijing…

Keep reading for the Dos and Donts of Olympic Hostdom, after the break…

In the second part of our popular series “How 3D Printing Will Change Our World,” we took a look at the work of Neri Oxman, an MIT professor 3D Printing fantastic, nature-inspired designs that actually respond to their environment.

But an MIT colleague and fellow architect, Skylar Tibbits, and his partner Arthur Olson of the Scripps Research Institute, are taking Oxman’s thesis one step further. Similarly inspired by natural properties that allow for interaction with the environment, these two are trying to figure out: ”Could buildings one day build themselves?”

The two recently exhibited the Autodesk-sponsored BioMolecular Self-Assembly at TED Global 2012 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The project? Take the basic ingredients for molecular assembly, put them in individual flasks, and shake well. The result? The independent parts actually find each other and self-assemble various structures themselves.

So – you want to be an Olympic City do you? Well let’s hope you’re going for gold.

First of all, the Olympic bid is no child’s play. You can spend millions just to prove (often unsuccessfully) your worthiness. And, if you do get the bid, who’s to say that your Olympic Dreams won’t be dashed by elephantine debts, colossal inefficiencies, and your own citizenry’s open animosity?

Everyone may think the Olympics is all guts and glory, but frankly, the truth is far more complex. Which is why we’ve come up with a User’s Guide – the Do’s and Dont’s to Hosting Your Very Own Olympics.

We’ll begin with the GOLDEN RULE: “The best thing to do if you’re bidding for the Olympics, Is to Not Get the Olympics.”

Want to know the Cardinal Sins of Olympic Hostdom? Keep reading after the break…

Two years ago, we featured David Adjaye’s affordable housing project for Harlem which was designed as a way to integrate urban and cultural offerings alongside 120+ units of affordable housing. Construction began on the building yesterday, and was celebrated by a ceremony attended by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “Sugar Hill represents a new social engagement, which is at the heart of my practice. It is a symbol of regeneration for the community of Harlem that will integrate housing with a cultural and educational element – this is a real reinvention of the traditional model and I am thrilled to see the project break ground,” explained Adjaye.

More about the project after the break.

Taking place at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute (SPSI), from July 25 to August 25, the ‘Foster + Partners: the Art of Architecture’ exhibition is the first major survey of the studio’s work to be held in China. It reveals details of a number of new projects underway in the region, including headquarters for Citic Bank in Hangzhou, a new tower in Nanjing and the Vantone development in Shanghai. It is also an opportunity to see the original models and sketches for high-profile completed buildings, such as Beijing International Airport, the Millau Viaduct in France, Hearst Tower in New York and the Swiss Re headquarters in London. More architects’ description after the break.

With this year’s theme being “Big Tree Paradigm” Akihisa Hirata, Shelter Corporation of Japan is inviting under-graduate or post-graduate students at universities or at tertiary institutions (including: junior colleges, colleges of technology, and other relevant vocational schools) as of November 17, 2012, to participate in their annual Student Architectural design Competition. Participants are challenged to design a house that has an attractive quality that is somehow similar to the attractiveness of big trees. It is not necessary that the house imitates the shape of trees. Rather, it is good if the idea starts from the attractiveness of big trees and develops into an unpredictable outcome – the form does not need to look like a tree at all. Submissions are due no later than September 28. To register and for more information, please visit here.

Ground was broken early this month in Singapore for the new Yale-NUS College campus, designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects in collaboration with Forum Architects of Singapore. Jointly created by Yale University and the National University of Singapore, Yale-NUS College is the first college campus established by Yale outside of New Haven, Connecticut. The campus opens in 2015 and is designed to achieve the highest rating under the Green Mark, Singapore’s benchmark for sustainable design Comprising three residential colleges for 1,000 students, the campus balances the traditions of Yale with the cultural and climatic influences of Southeast Asia. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Only hours have passed since Governor Jerry Brown signed the controversial bill providing initial funding for California’s $68 billion High-Speed Rail project, which will connect Sacramento to San Francisco to Los Angeles, but already another plan has emerged that could blow all of California’s efforts out of the water.