Barcelona architect Benedetta Tagliabue has been appointed as the newest and ninth member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury, joining Martha Thorne (executive director), Peter Palumbo (chair), Alejandro Aravena, Stephen Breyer, Yung Ho Chang, Kristin Feireiss, Glenn Murcutt, Juhani Pallasmaa and Ratan N. Tata.

As Tom Pritzker, president of the Hyatt Foundation described, Tagliabue was chosen for her “deep and international knowledge of the best in architecture today” which will bring “new perspectives” to the jury. 

“The Pritzker Prize has become the award that points out the most important directions in architecture,” stated Tagliabue. “For more than 35 years, quality in architecture at all scales and regardless of firm size has been the outstanding value of the prize. I feel incredibly honored to be part of the jury and I am looking forward to sharing ideas and beautiful moments with my colleagues.”

More on Tagliabue’s selection, after the break. 

Three finalists have been selected to move forward in the Van Alen Institute (VAI) and New Orleans Redevelopment Authority’s (NORA) “Future Ground” open ideas competition. Each will be provided with a $15,000 stipend to investigate and develop long-term design and policy strategies for vacant land reuse in New Orleans.

“Too often, vacant land has been seen only as a remnant of or absence within the 20th century city,” described the VAI. “Today, with a critical mass of designers, policymakers, scholars, artists, activists, and residents creating pilot projects, thoughtful studies, and new kinds of urbanism on abandoned properties, it is possible to imagine this land as an integral part of the future city.”

John McAslan + Partners (JMP) has won an international competition to design 16 elevated stations and a depot for Dhaka’s 20 kilometer metro line. The $3 billion, three-phased project will connect Dhaka’s residential district in the north to the business center in the south. It is part of a wider urban plan to decentralize urban growth from the center to satellite communities.

All stations are planned to open by 2022 and will serve an anticipated 505,000 passengers per day by 2025. 

Another image of a proposed JMP-designed Dhaka metro station, after the break. 

d3 has announced the winners of its Natural Systems Competition for 2014, an annual competition that offers architects, designers, engineers and students the chance to investigate natural processes from the microscopic to macroscopic scale and propose innovative, nature-based solutions in architecture, urbanism, interiors and product design for sustainable living.

The jury, a panel of architects and designers engaged in sustainable practices and computational explorations, has this year selected a top three as well as eleven special mentions. Join us after the break for images from all 14 designs.

Take a moment to enjoy German-Korean musician Isang Enders play Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 within the sacred, charred interior of Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel.

Last week, Frank Gehry made headlines when he responded to a reporter asking about his “showy architecture” with the finger and a proclamation that 98% of today’s architecture is “pure shit.” Unsurprisingly, this got the architecture world storming. Responses ranged from “oh the irony” to “absolutely refreshing” (join the conversation here). Perhaps most notably, one tumblr has responded in support of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect with images of architecture’s biggest icons giving the finger and Supporting Frank Owen Gehry.

Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer are some of the few who have “shown” their support. See our favorites, after the break.

As part of NOWNESS’ latest In Residence series, American architect Ray Kappe takes you on a tour through his glass and redwood “treehouse” on Los Angeles’ Rustic Canyon hillside. Built some 50 years ago, the house is considered to be one of the greatest modern residences in Southern California.

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Over the weekend, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto exhibited an inhabitable sculpture of stacked and suspended aluminum cubes as part of the FIAC art fair in the Parisian Jardins des Tuileries’ gardens. The installation, “Many Small Cubes” is his first project in Paris and was commissioned by the Philippe Gravier art gallery as an exploration of nomadic structures and Sou Fujimoto’s concept of bringing architecture closer to nature.

"The floating masses of Many Small Cubes creates a new experience of space, a rhythm of flickering shadows and lights like the sun filtering through leafy trees,” described Sou Fujimoto.

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Commissioned by Sonos to create a sound reactive installation in collaboration with the musician Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange), The Principals created a 16-foot-tall canopy, 8-feet-wide by 36-feet-long covering the performance and grand stand seating area of the private workspace collective Neuehouse. Inspired by the work of Arthur Rimbaud, The Principals chose the name Ancient Chaos, a phrase from his poem Matinée d'Ivresse which speaks to a basic force of wonder within all of us at the hidden patterns of nature. The installation, both a sonic composition and a physical structure, creates sounds that verge on the architectural and architecture that verges on the fluid.

More information and a video of the installation in motion, after the break.  

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"Don't fight forces, use them." - R. Buckminster Fuller

SCAPE’s comprehensive climate change adaptation and community development project, Living Breakwaters has been announced as winner of the 2014 Fuller Challenge, “socially responsible design’s highest award.” Announced by the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), the proposal was selected over seven shortlisted humanitarian initiatives and will receive a $100,000 prize for their innovative solution to solve one of humanity’s most pressing problems.

"Living Breakwaters is about dissipating and working with natural energy rather than fighting it. It is on the one hand an engineering and infrastructure-related intervention, but it also has a unique biological function as well. The project team understand that you cannot keep back coastal flooding in the context of climate change, but what you can do is ameliorate the force and impact of 100 and 500 year storm surges to diminish the damage through ecological interventions, while simultaneously catalyzing dialog to nurture future stewards of the built environment," said Bill Browning of Terrapin Bright Green, a 2014 senior advisor and jury member.

More on Living Breakwaters, after the break.