In wake of the April 25, 2015 earthquake in Nepal, SHoP has partnered with Kids of Kathmandu and Asia Friendship Network (AFN) to help rebuild 50 public schools in the hardest hit areas. The project will not only replace damaged schools, but also will raise the standard for public education in remote regions of Nepal.

In the hopes of providing a future model for non-governmental organizations, the design is a flexible system that is adaptable to different site conditions and available resources, and can be easily assembled.

The Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) has announced the fourth iteration of its annual pavilion series Fugitive Structures. Designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects, the pavilion centers around “the innovative use of bamboo, and [the architect’s] passion and self-imposed duty to green the world’s urban landscapes with plants and vegetation.”

Steven Holl Architects has unveiled their design for a new public library and museum in a developing area of Shenzhen, China. With the goal of creating a public space with two buildings connected below the plaza level, the massing concept is based on a three-part removal. While the design did win the most votes from the jury in the overall competition, city officials chose a different scheme to continue with.

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For the third consecutive year, Hello Wood—an international educational platform of design and architecture based in Hungary—have "rethought the Christmas Tree." Their three festive installations, in London, Manchester and Budapest, have been designed to live beyond the holiday season and will be recycled into new structures to help different causes in the New Year. "The role of architecture has changed a lot in the last few years," says Peter Pozsar, co-founder of Hello Wood. "Hello Wood represents this socially responsive architecture."

View the three projects after the break.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has released an interactive infographic of its Home Design Trends Survey for the third quarter of 2015, focusing on community and neighborhood design.

According to the findings, walkability, higher density and infill development, as well as access to public transportation, are all on the rise, with homeowners “seeking community amenities that allow them to remain connected to people and commerce” throughout the nation’s growing metro areas.

Multimedia exhibition EXTRACTION has been selected through a national competition to represent Canada at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The project, led by landscape urbanist Pierre Bélanger, features work from design and media organization OPSYS, architectural firm RVTR, Ryerson University’s Ecological Design Lab, and Studio Blackwell.

EXTRACTION explores Canada’s “extractive industries and mineral lives,” delving into “the architectures, histories, and economies of Canada’s culture of resource extraction, to profile the rise of a ‘global resource empire’ where, in the words of revered political economist Harold Innis, ‘Canada has emerged as a political entity not in spite of its geography, but because of it.’”

Arup’s Foresight + Research + Innovation, Madrid Sustainability and Master Planning, and Landscape Architecture teams have released Madrid + Natural, a series of guidelines to address climate change within the city.

The forward-thinking report to seeks to provide “multiple nature-based solutions to regulate Madrid’s urban environment and respond to problems like pollution, increased heavy storm events, drought, periods of abnormally hot temperatures, and local biodiversity loss.”

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NKA Foundation has announced the winners of the 3^rd Earth Architecture Competition, Designing for the Arts, in Ghana. The competition called for recent graduates and students of architecture and design to design innovative, modest, and affordable housing for artists that could be built using earth and local materials in Ghana.

The design was required to be a mud house type of about 2,400 square feet for eight to ten users on a plot of 80 by 100 feet in the Abetenim Arts Village, near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The overall design was designated for use by musicians, theater artists, potters, sculptors, painters, textile artists, designers, writers, or media arts practitioners. Total costs of construction were not to exceed $7,000 USD for materials and labor, not including the land value.

The winners of the competition are:

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Have you ever wanted to live in a Hobbit House? Or maybe just be closer to nature? Now, with Green Magic Homes’ prefabricated houses, you can. Made with fiber re-enforced polymer modules, the homes can be customized, and take as few as three days to construct.

The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia has nominated Christian Kerez, a Venezuela-born, Swiss architect, to represent Switzerland at the 15^th Architecture Biennial in Venice in 2016. The exhibition will be curated by Swiss art historian Sandra Oehy, and will be on display at the Biennial from May 28 to November 27, 2016. Switzerland will also be represented by <<Salon Suisse>>, a platform for discussion and debate on contemporary art and architecture.

Lebanese architecture practice PARALX has won the AIA in Los Angeles' Merit Design Award for its T3 high-rise tower in Beirut. The tower is a part of a larger development scheme in the burgeoning Beirut Digital District (BDD) that will include 12 buildings and over 150,000 square meters of office spaces, apartments, hotels, shops, and entertainment facilities.

T3 will host cafes and restaurants on the ground level, with residential apartments located throughout the upper floors, all targeted towards the creative class that is moving into the area labeled as “Lebanon’s Silicon Valley.”

After reimagining famous landmarks with paper cutouts, photographer Rich McCor is back, this time with holiday-themed scenes based in London’s Covent Garden.

In light of the recent kickoff of Art Basel Miami, Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY has shared its Labrys Frisae Pavilion, which was installed at Art Basel Miami from 2011 to 2014. Constructed from aluminum less than one millimeter thick, the installation sought to blur the distinction between edge and space through “an immersive, multisensorial experience.”

“The structure’s interior leads a visitor to lose their time as they peruse the curves and try to understand the space,” which changes as viewers move throughout, especially at night, when shadows emerge through the shell’s intricate perforation.

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Bergamo, Italy-based architect and artist Francesco Ravasio has launched Archiposters, a series of minimalist architecture posters, on Kickstarter.

Drawn from his own point of view and style, Ravasio has utilized graphic design to represent architecture from 1931 through 2013, featuring buildings like I.M. Pei's Louvre Pyramid and Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum.

The Archiposters project is not only comprised of A2 sized posters, but also includes A5 sized postcards. 12 buildings are featured on the designs:

Populous, in collaboration with Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects and BuroHappold Engineering, have submitted their design proposal for the new 12,000-person Bristol Arena to the Bristol City Council for planning approval. Following the consultation with the city and with the public, “plans have been developed further to show how event spaces in front of the arena can be used for performances, outdoor cinema, festivals, and markets.”

A design team led by Nikken Sekkei, in collaboration with Tierra Design and Arup Singapore, has won a competition to Master Plan a 24-kilometer long former railway corridor that spans the entirety of Singapore with their proposal entitled “Lines of Life.” The proposal, chosen by a panel from Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority incorporates green areas, footpaths, bicycle paths, and surrounding developments that are flexibly implementable over many years, so that the former train line can be best integrated into its surroundings.

Istanbul-based architecture studio Salon, in collaboration with Praxis Landscape, has unveiled the designs for its Beylikdüzü Life Valley Bridges and Routes Master Plan for Istanbul's Beylikdüzü district. Guided by the idea of “Keeping the Valley Alive," the project has created a new design for the area to thrive, maintaining the valley “livable, accessible, sustainable, feasible, and alive.”

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