Built to enable 24 couples to be married free of charge in July 2011 in celebration of the Marriage Equality Act of New York, the KISS Pop-Up Chapel by Z-A Studio won the Architizer + Pop Up Chapel competition. As a literal gesture, the structure is composed of two separate parts, made of the same DNA, but layered differently. Essentially, two unique individuals that when joined together create a stable entity that is more than the sum of its parts. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Hay Festival Segovia just announced that UK designer Thomas Heatherwick will be the keynote speaker for the architecture and design sessions at the Spanish edition of Hay Festival set to take place in Segovia September 27-30. In an hour-long conversation entitled The Truffle Pig Process, Thomas Heatherwick will be talking to Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and associate dean of external relations at IE School of Architecture & Design (IE University), about his studio’s creative process and the increasingly blurred borders between design, architecture and society. More information on the event after the break.

Located in Cordoda’s downtown area, the second prize winning design for the Veracruz Architects Association’s new headquarters takes advantage of the existing topography. Designed by lab07 + JMV Architects, one of the main features of the project is to break the scheme of close institutional buildings to its immediate context, to become a built space that opens to the city, creating public space between the building and the urban grid. More images and architects’ description after the break.

With a capacity of 3600 places, and an alternative to its ‘grand sister’, the small olympic hall, is embedded carefully in the protected Olympic Park ensemble as it almost disappears. With pfarré lighting design working closely with the architects, the attic has been detailed to house a linear, dimmable lighting system. The huge notch, cut into the hill, which covers the building, was underlined with light on both sides. More images and their description after the break.

In continuation of their exhibition program on architectural photography taking place in New Delhi, Photoink is currently presenting Chandigarh: Portrait of a City by French photographer, Manuel Bougot until October 27th. Bougot’s interest in Le Corbusier’s architecture began in the 1980s when he worked on Caroline Maniaque’s thesis in architecture–on the Jaoul Houses built in 1954 in Neuilly, France. Since 2006, Bougot renewed his interest in Le Corbusier, attending talks on Chandigarh and photographed the only building the architect ever built for himself – a cabanon (a summer cabin) in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Photographing Chandigarh was therefore necessary to further any understanding of Le Corbusier, the urban designer and his philosophy about architecture and modernism. More images and information on the exhibition after the break.

Steven Holl Architects just celebrated the pre-opening of the Sliced Porosity Block-CapitaLand Raffles City in Chengdu, China with a visit of the Prime Minister of Singapore. Creating a metropolitan public space instead of object-icon skyscrapers, this three million sq ft. project takes its shape from its distribution of natural light. The required minimum sunlight exposures to the surrounding urban fabric prescribe precise geometric angles that slice the exoskeletal concrete frame of the structure. The full expected completion is set for this fall. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The above video is an update to the Department for Architecture Design and Media Technology‘s Aero Pavilion which was completed just last year. An environmental condition of wind combined with the penetration of light through the structure is utilized as means for architectural articulation. Emphasizing the immediate understanding of the airflow, which defines the perceptive characteristics of internal space, the simplicity of the form consists of planar plywood plates in digital parametric models for simple and fast production and assembly.

Designed by Hadi Teherani Office + Design Core , the second prize winning proposal for the Tehran Stock Exchange competition is an elegant and simple two-part structure. While the lower main structure is ten storeys high and hovers above the piazza, the 66-meter high building stands as a dominant design motif in the city. The cubature, as well as the ecological and building services concept, is based on the historic Iranian ‘wind-catcher’ which forms a traditional, Persian architectural element to support the natural ventilation of buildings to convey an optimized state of the art technology. More images and architects’ description after the break.

This year’s Portland State Department of Architecture lecture series, which starts October 4 and runs until May 2, focuses on the theme of ‘Placing’. Six internationally renowned leaders from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, art, planning, and anthropology will tackle this once-controversial idea and discuss the ways in which the active processes of siting, locating, positioning and placing things and people in the world are conceived and embodied in their work. Dan Wood of WORKac will start off the lecture series, followed by Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey of O’Donnell+Tuomey Architects, Kevin Daly of Daly Genik Architects, Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, Tim Ingold of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, and Julie Bargmann of D.I.R.T. Studio. For more information, please visit here.

Located on the Yangzi River to the north-east of Nanjing in Jiangsu Province, the proposal for the Nanjing ecological and technological island, by AAUPC Agence Patrick Chavannes + G.C.A. Design Consulting, consists of a development strategy for the Yangzi delta and Jiangsu province. The aim is to define a new image for the city of Nanjing, transforming it into an open economy, developing eco-technological industries and modern services, innovating with existing mechanisms and putting in place the local development strategy of ‘crossing the Yangzi River’. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Santa Fe University of Art and Design and the Santa Fe Art Institute recently announced the Ricardo Legorreta Tribute event, a weekend of activities across the city honoring Legorreta’s influence on Santa Fe design. Taking place October 19-20, the event will include a series of lectures, films and tours that will honor the legacy of the late Mexican architect whose inspired designs have helped shape the landscape of many residential, academic and corporate buildings in Santa Fe. More information on the event after the break.

Taking place at SCI-Arc on Friday, September 14th from 7-9pm, Alexis Rochas and Eric Owen Moss will be discussing STEREO.BOT, a library gallery installation that documents the realization of the Coachella Gateway Pavilion, the largest customized structure in the US. Featuring interactive 3D projection mapping content, it was designed and built by design faculty, Alexis Rochas of I/O for the 2012 Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California. The exhibition in the SCI-Arc library features dynamic architectural models, 3D mapping projections and documentary material that follows the development of the project from inception to realization. For more information, please visit here.

Taking place September 29-30, Data Lab is a two-day workshop, put on my modeLab in Brooklyn, on advanced topics and data structures in Grasshopper for Rhinoceros. In a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment, they will cover the fundamental concepts of data structures as well as strategies for working with lists, sequences, and data trees in the newly released version of Grasshoppper 0.9. They will engage a series of design problems which highlight the limitations of standard parametric design workflows and serve as catalysts for discussions related to best practices, linear versus non-linear design processes, and the re-use of files. Each design problem will require either the specific use and manipulation of data structures or the extension of Grasshopper through add-ons. For more information, please visit here.

The AIA California Council Residential Design Awards 2012 competition will recognize the best in residential architecture and design in the state of California. The competition will highlight residential projects constructed in the state, and architects and firms who shape the landscape of architecture and design throughout the state and beyond. Entry is open to both members and nonmembers with projects in California or, California architects who have completed work elsewhere. Eligible projects include those completed after January 1, 2007. The deadline for submissions is September 19. For more detailed information, please visit here.

Designed by a team of graduate students, including Tabitha Nzilani, Obare Joash, Lomole Daniel, and Kuria Eric, their second prize winning proposal in the Kenya Judicial Architectural competition embraces the people coming to seek justice. The project invites visitors in through the adoption of a semi-circular form, which is inward curving to the entrance, and vertical elements which are also receding inwards. Anchoring on a central core that has two wings, these wings are representative of the scale of justice: on one side being the law and on the other the deed. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Conceived by Mexican architect Ivan Juárez from X-Studio, the Lightweave Palm Observatory consists of a dialogue with the natural landscape context of Bahia de Todos os Santos, Brazil. The project explores a local artisanal textile technique using the coconut palm leaf found in the island as raw material. It then forms an interior space for personal reflection which creates a visual dialogue between the interior and exterior landscape that it delimits. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Todd Saunders, founder of Saunders Architecture, will be delivering a lecture at Cornell University on the topic of ‘Architecture in Northern Landscapes’ on October 15. Bringing together dynamic building and material experimentation with traditional methods of craft, the Bergen, Norway–based practice has worked on cultural and residential projects in Norway, as well as England, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and Canada. Led by a strong contemporary design sensibility, the studio believes that architecture plays an important role in creating place, using form, materials, and texture to help evoke and shape memory and human interaction. Fore more information on the event, please visit here.

The competition winning proposal for the Jiaxing College Library & Media Center, designed by LYCS Architecture, seeks to break antiquated design conventions by intelligently negotiating contemporary architectural design into the traditional Chinese campus. Surrounded by rich woods and luscious water, the 42000m2 library plays with hierarchy – the hierarchy of multiple, increasingly private spaces; the hierarchy of the pace of spatial experience; and the hierarchy of introversion and extroversion. More images and architects’ description after the break.