The Lavance Shade Screen, a project designed and built by Benjamin Hall & Michael Lavance, was created out of appreciation for the desert climate and its harsh effects on specific materials. This inspiration and architectural concept led to this unique and regionally specific approach in providing much needed shade to a custom residential outdoor barbecue and bar near the downtown of Scottsdale, Arizona. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The public space proposal for the Urban Intervention competition creates a new way of creating a dialog between the park and the city. Designed by PRAUD, each solid and void creates its own topography, and thus the topography of the solid provides different experiences for pedestrians and joggers, while topography of the voids provide different types of functions and landscape fields. More images and architects’ description after the break.

A short while ago we received Pamphlet Architecture 11-20, the second volume that accumulates the continually growing series. Steven Holl and William Stout started the Pamphlet series back in 1978. They wanted to create a venue “for publishing the works, thoughts, and theory of a new generation of architects.” The resulting publications are graphically pleasing and theoretically engaging. Interestingly, as Steven Holl points out, many of these once theoretical ideas are be realized in contemporary ideas. For example, Steven Holl says his “Horizontal Skyscraper” in Shenzhen, China “could be considered an outgrowth of experiments began in 1996′s Edge of a City (PA 13).

Due to the popularity of last weekends video exploring Little Big Berlin, we present to you this stop-motion video capturing a Spring day in the city of Kiev. Created by Tel Aviv-based artists Efim Graboy & Daria Turetski, MiniLook Kiev highlights the movement of the colorful city. Over a course of five days and two nights, the artist captured 25,000 images only to select 4,500 frames for the final edit.

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University will be holding the Interpretations: Promiscuous Encounters Syposium taking place Friday, March 23rd from 12:00pm – 8:30pm. Promiscuous Encounters, which is free and open to the public, has two main ambitions: first, to examine the fascinating blurriness and productive interplay between the critical, curatorial and conceptual capacities of architecture, including how and where they intersect and overlap and, second, to expand the definitions of what these terms mean in relation to theory and practice by reexamining the sites of criticality and their modes of operation. More information on the event after the break.

Hallway House, a radical residential project designed by NL Architects, has been conceived within the framework of a ‘match making’ program set up by the Dutch Architecture institute (NAi), together with Housing Corporation VANKE. As a Sino-Dutch collaboration in social housing, NL Architects has created a new concept for high-quality affordable housing on a site in Huilongguan, Beijing. More images and architects’ description after the break.

TEX-FAB Digital Fabrication Alliance is seeking research proposals that actively connect academia, the profession and the fabrication industry in the Continuing Research category and in the Speculative Proposal category new start-up projects. As this is a “design to fabricate” competition, TEX-FAB will match the network of fabricators and consultants with the projects that best manifest research through computational fabrication and apply it toward more intelligent integers of materiality and construction. Submissions are due no later than June 2nd. More information on the competition can be found here.

Studio E Architects faced a compelling challenge when designing the first phase UC Davis West Village, which opened last October in California’s upper Central Valley. Experiencing moderate winters, warm summers, prevailing winds and moderate rainfall within the heart of former agricultural fields, the new addition to UC Davis was to be a net-zero facility. Serving as the largest of its kind and a model for campus communities and environmentally conscious urbanism. That is sustainable and community oriented. The program required 123 units of student apartments in one, two and three-bedroom configurations, 45,000 square feet of ground level commercial space all of which would emulate the central park space in downtown Davis and become the heart of West Village.

Follow us after the break to see the sustainable solutions that Studio E Architects came up with!

As many of us have already realized, sustainable design contributes to an awareness of environmental patterns and thereby creates communities that are more resilient to the devastating effects of the natural disasters that we have seen across the globe in recent months. Many people have accepted the cause and effect relationship that exists between current practices – those that pollute water and food sources, strip minerals, disturb fault linesand throw off ecosystems – with the rapidly increasing changes in climate. For those that do not, U.S. Green Building Council and the University of Michigan released this report: Green Building and Climate Resilience: Understanding Impacts and Preparing for Changing Conditions, which addresses pre- and post-emergency management situations while stressing a consciousness about the environment and ways in which to design and build communities that are physically and structurally prepared for natural disasters.

More on this report after the break.

Josep Lluís Mateo, of Mateo Arquitectura, recently presented his masterplan for the Pôle Multimodal Nice-Aéroport quartier d’affairs Grand Arénas which imagines a city of the future. His brief description and a video can be viewed after the break.

The intention of the design for the School Farm by Felipe Grallert Architects is to enhance the history of the place of Antilhue, once a train station, located in the Los Lagos town. Their design aims to put value on the station area as a large urban public square and create a path along the railroad tracks. Doing so would add history and cultural identity through an urban element capable of enhancing the rural characteristics. This would then translate into concrete action, an element capable of educating and bringing new opportunities based on its own roots, the vernacular and unique place. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Above is a video of NOW presenting their project, Kulttuurisauna, a new public building for the city of Helsinki, the World Design Capital 2012. Their design features saunas, cafe, offices, and a courtyard that opens directly to the sea. Using their model as a reference, you are able to get a sense of the spaces and their relationship to each other, as well as to the city itself which is discussed in the video.

Exhibited from April 6 – Mary 13, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is pleased to present “Towards Comfo-Veg,” a large scale, site-specific installation designed for the SCI-Arc Gallery by architect and artist Peter Cook and partner Gavin Robotham of London-based CRAB Studio. Building on CRAB’s internationally recognized experimental work, Towards Comfo-Veg introduces an almost completely light-tight, multimedia experiential space welcoming visitors through a single point of entry and leading towards hints of an invented and dreamlike world. More information after the break.

U.S. Department of Energy has announced the date and location of the 2013 Solar Decathlon. Appearing for the first time outside of Washington D.C., the highly anticipated competition will take place in 2013 from October 3rd through the 13th at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California. Launched in 2002, the biennial event will challenge twenty collegiate teams to design, build and operate a solar-powered house that is cost-effective, energy-efficient and attractive. Participants are judged by their ability to blend affordability, consumer appeal and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency.

Continue reading after the break for more information and the complete list of the 2013 teams.

Norman Foster’s Swiss Re Building will soon have a new neighbor! London-based practice Fletcher Priest Architects have designed a 16-story tower that will replace the existing, outdated 1980s office building. Now under construction, the new 230,000 square-foot office building at 6 Bevis Marks will reuse 50% of the original structure and be 80% more energy efficient than the current building. Continue reading for more.

When Apple revealed the plans for their new campus in Cupertino, the responses to the “spaceship” were….varied, to say the least:

“Spectacular would be an understatement” ; “So disappointing…” ; a “…panopti-lawn…” ; and – my personal favorite – “Sphincter?” [1]

The announcement instigated a flurry of analyses and criticisms over the meaning of the design for the world – the Zen-like significance of the circle, the role of architecture in this technologically-driven age, the legacy and hubris of Jobs – but produced very little discussion over its meaning for the company itself.

Meanwhile, months before news of the “spaceship” landed, another internet giant was searching the California landscape for its own space to call home. Still very much under-wraps, the new Googleplex will be the first time Google builds a workplace completely from scratch. [2]

These projects will be the Magnum Opuses, the ultimate physical representations, of the two most influential Tech companies in the world, and the two share striking similarities. So let’s clash the plans of these two titans and take another look at Apple 2 – but this time in the light of Google – and see what they can tell us about these companies’ futures.

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 announced an International Architectural Ideas Competition for a new National Museum of Afghanistan (IAIC_NMA) in Kabul. The one stage ideas competition seeks to generate new and creative design proposals for the museum. Applicants may be invited to provide full design serves, or may be asked to partner with other design firms to produce the documents for the planning phase. This is seen as a great opportunity between the international and local design communities to collaborate and envision a museum that represents Afghanistan in the 21st. The top three winning proposals will win a cash prize up to 50,000 US$. Continue reading for more details.

Lebbeus Woods is well known for his conceptual drawings that bring new worlds and spaces into the eyes of their viewers. In four decades, Woods has shared his imagined worlds, expressing ideas about spaces, inhabitation and technology, and outlined alternate futures. Through April 6th, Friedman Benda Gallery will be exhibiting Lebbeus Woods: Early Drawings from the 1980s, many of which have never been displayed before. The gallery is located 515 West 26th Street in New York City. A preview of the exhibit after the break!

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The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montréal, announces the launch of the book and website related to its current major exhibition, Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture, on view in the CCA’s main galleries for an extended run until 15 April, 2012.

Produced by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Lars Müller Publishers, the book, in French and English editions, bears the same title as the exhibition and is available from March 2012. Edited by exhibition curators Giovanna Borasi (Curator of Contemporary Architecture, CCA), and Mirko Zardini (Chief Curator and Director, CCA), the book extends the research produced for the exhibition and includes essays by leading academics Margaret Campbell, Nan Ellin, David Gissen, Carla C. Keirns, Linda Pollak, Hilary Sample, Sarah Schrank, and Deane Simpson.

The book investigates the historical connections between health, design and the environment, bringing to light uncertainties and contradictions in cultures informed by Western medicine. Within this framework, the essays it contains reflect on themes related to the exhibition such as the relationship between the built environment and human health; pollution; modernism and hygiene; planning strategies for dealing with urban disease; the challenges of the urban environment on health; the relationship between physical health and the built environment; urban design in an ageing society; and the impact of sun on health.

More about the book, the microsite and the exhibition after the break.

European real estate investment firm, Orion Capital Managers, teamed with development company, Groveworld, and received permission to move forward with a 30-storey tower for 257 City Road Basin in London. Designed by UNStudio, the tower will become a new landmark residential development with waterside vistas. Aref Lahham of Orion Capital explained, “The Canal Basin is being transformed into one of London’s most stylish waterside residential quarters…With such an exciting design, 257 City Road will be a highlight of this regeneration effort and a landmark for the area.”

More after the tower after the break.

Representing the future development of Venice, the LINK Solar Power Skyscraper aims to provide the geographic area of the laguna of Venice with a new landmark: a link between architecture and urbanism, between the ancient city of Venice and the industrial area named Marghera. A link between function and emotion. Designed by LED Architecture Studio, the project is an architecture-infrastructure, a crucial urban development responding to the present and future needs of this locality. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The CEDEI Nursery School, designed by +K Arquitetos, was conceived with urban dwelling in mind, and with a facade that resembles the manufacturing plants of the neighborhood where it is located. The separate buildings and spaces, each with its specific and exclusive purpose – administration, nursery, atelier, multiple use rooms, eatery and kitchen, etc – are interconnected by wide sidewalks, plazas and skywalks. More images and architects’ description after the break.