Imagine a project that does not need to be constructed, because – being a tree - it grows by itself. Such a project only needs to be planted. Therefore the transportation of the materials for such a project is very energy efficient, because as a matter of fact, no major transportation of materials is actually necessary. The only materials to be transported are the seeds for planting. And the only energy spent is to prevent hastiness and impetuousness as such a project needs a lot of time and patience to grow. (source bustler) Read more...

On paper it’s almost nothing: a small cabin on Spain’s west coast looking out over the Atlantic ocean, with just enough space for a bed, a fire and a table. But it is a remarkable little building – it looks as if it has been carved out from the very cliffs it stands upon.  (source icon eye) Read more...

The dream house “Casa Son Vida” in Spain, designed by tec Architecture, a Studio from Switzerland. (source LooksLikeGoodDesign) Read more...

Amsterdam-based studio FABRIC won the most important prize for Dutch young architects. The Prix the Rome is more than 200 years old and is awarded once each four years. Last Tuesday, June 8, the jury chaired by Aron Betsky, selected FABRIC as the winner. (source bustler) Read more...

Dutch architectural firm VMX Architects have designed the SODAE-House in Amstelveen. (source contemporist) Read more...

The house occupies a natural ledge on a hillside looking towards the panoramic valley of Montaña Monarca, in Morelia, Mexico. The building has been conceived as a homogenous stone mass, hollowing out a huge opening that slopes from ceiling to floor, framing the hillside panorama. A sloped celosia grid meant to evoke renaissance perspective drawings was placed in the middle of the core in order to distort and emphasize the view. (source archdaily) Read more... 

How would an apartment look like if it was inspired by a painting of Karel Appel? Well, something like the one that follows! Dutch Architectural office DUS Architects recently designed the interior of the Karel Appel House which opened its doors in May 2010. The concept of the house is inspired by the idiosyncratic works of Karel Appel, who was characterized in his paintings by his phrase: “I start from my matter- the paint and the canvas.”  (source yatzer) Read more...

Architect Byoung Soo Cho’s Earth House is quite possibly one of the classiest dugouts ever built. Set amid peaceful woods and rice fields an hour east of Seoul, Korea, the subterranean structure consists of six tiny unadorned rooms (kitchen, library, two bedrooms, and a bathroom) and a 23-by-23-foot courtyard. Cho describes the house, dedicated to Korean poet Dong-joo Yoon, as a place for self-reflection. He says the concept goes back to his 1991 graduate thesis at Harvard, where he began exploring Taoist ideas about negative and positive space, and the question of just how much (or little) space we need in order to live comfortably. (source dwell) Read more...

There were over 75,000 visitors, in four days, to the two new museums in Rome: the MAXXI by Zaha Hadid (inaugurated with four major exhibitions) and the Macro by Decq Odile (which will begin activities from October). (source archiEurope) Read more…

Fallingwater today announced that a jury has chosen Patkau Architects of Vancouver, British Columbia, as the winner of its first-ever design competition for on-site cottages that will support residential educational programming at the Frank Lloyd Wright masterwork in Fayette County. (source spaceInvading) Read more…

The High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995. (source spaceInvading) Read more…

With over 16,797,000 square feet (1,560,500 m2), the recently opened City Center Las Vegas has become one of the largest LEED certified projects in the world. (source archdaily) Read more…

Check out the the 64 winners of the 2009 American Architecture Awards recognize. Read more…

Over the past few years Vitra has aquired a wide-ranging Home Collection. The quantity and variety of objects by many different designers led to the idea of building a showroom to present the items to the public. (source coolboom) Read more…

With the many boxes of architecture books in our basement you could say that they’re helping to support our house, and with all the architecture books on our shelves you could also say that they’re helping to weigh it down. (source eye on design) Read more…

From the beginning, the project was conceived as the possibility of making the "underground" visible, a construction devised as a radical manifestation of Madrid’s outskirts youthful spirit in general, and of Rivas' youth groups in particular. (source archinect) Read more…

Bluff House sits along the crown of a 30-mile long oval bluff range, its intersecting volumes growing out of the site’s gently sloping terrain. Approaching the house from the former logging road carving through the site’s rhythmic woodland, the building’s silhouette slowly emerges from the dense vegetation. (source contemporist) Read more…

Miguel Angel Aragones has designed the recently opened Hotel Encanto in Acapulco, Mexico. (source contemporist) Read more…

This design for a special cabinet-cabin by Jeroen van Mechelen (Studio JVM) creates a guesthouse within a newly designed villa that was carved out of a mountain wall in the village of Vals in Switzerland. (source design.nl) Read more…

The Scottish practice Rural Design is specialised in contemporary architecture for the Highlands of Scotland. On Isle of Skye, an island close to the Scottish westcoast, they realised this holiday house. (source dailytonic) Read more…

The organisation of the new building is based on five linear volumes, of varying length and height, arranged along the western face of the existing building. This arrangement does not only provide more space but also forms a new facade and entrance facing downtown Anchorage. The Museum and downtown Anchorage are now in a new relationship. (source arcspace) Read more…

CityCenter Las Vegas, which officially opened last week, is the largest (18 milion square feet of buildings on 67 acres of land) and most expensive ($8.5 billion) private development in the city, probably the country. It is actually a close-packed complex of buildings, each designed by a different, well-known architectural firm. (source wall street journal) Read more…

The best Scottish buildings of the past decade revive a weird and wonderful tradition. Rory Olcayto presents the highlight of each year. (source aj) Read more…

Timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this month, the exhibition Climate and Architecture aims to relate architecture and sustainability to the larger context of climate. (source metropolismagazine) Read more…

Duncan G. Stroik combined careful craftsmanship and several architectural influences to create this traditional chapel on the Thomas Aquinas College campus.
As an ecclesiastical architect by specialty, Duncan Stroik had no objection to giving the folks at Thomas Aquinas College, just northwest of Los Angeles, everything they wanted for their magnificent new chapel. The wish list: … (source architect) Read more…

Dubai is the most populous city of the confusingly named Dubai, one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its primary export is photos tagged WTF!? and crazy. (source cracked) Read more…

As a way of thinking about space, “performance architecture” is based on the notion that the relationships between occupied spaces and occupying subjects are permeable. This is to say that a subject first perceives his or her environment and is then changed by that perception. (source alex schweder) Read more…

It sounds like the plot of the movie Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaurs), but JDS Architects’ have created an incredible plan for a zoo located on the South Korean island of Dochodo. The island could, according to the architecture firm, be a “case study to define a tourist region based on sustainable development only, where natures and structures function in equilibrium, symbiotically feeding one another.” (source inhabitat) Read more…

The ‘State Kremlin Palace’ in Moscow was built in 1961, under Nikita Khruschev, as a modern arena for Communist Party congresses and conferences, performances and concerts. The main part of the building is one of Europe’s biggest and finest auditoriums with 6000 seats, used mostly for concerts and ballet performances today. (source dailytonic) Read more…

“…dramatic and welcoming spaces for those who aren't traveling as well as those who are.” Rafael Viñoly (source arcspace) Read more…

Finally, an urban informatics project I worked on that I can talk about here, even if it’s currently still ‘paper architecture’ (pixel architecture?). The nature of urban development is such that I can’t yet say much about recent design work on projects (including Masdar (with LAVA), Helsinki (with Sauerbruch Hutton/Experientia), and just yesterday Seoul (with Studio Libeskind) etc., as well as various others I can’t yet mention, and building/infrastructure-level projects in Brisbane and Sydney.) (source city of sound) Read more…

A new voice in the emerging field created from the interdisciplinary overlap of architecture and the site specific art. (source leadpencilstudio)Read more…

“I see the MAXXI as an immersive urban environment for the exchange of ideas, feeding the cultural vitality of the city.” Zaha Hadid (source arcspace) Read more…

During the AIA Convention we had the chance to visit Architecture for Humanity (now on their 10th anniversary) and talk with Cameron Sinclair, the Co-founder and Eternal Optimist of AFH. (source archDaily) Watch video…

A new collection of writing by the late Herbert Muschamp reveals, beneath his lavish praise for Gehry & Co., a surprising (and ambitious) reading of 20th century culture. Like the man himself, Hearts of the City: The Selected Writings of Herbert Muschamp (Knopf, $50) is going to offend a lot of people. The book is nearly 900 pages long, the vast bulk of it in the form of 1,500-word articles written during Muschamp’s 12-year stint as The New York Times’ architecture critic. Who deserves 900 pages? How dare he? (source architect) Read more…

Superkül Architects have designed the SHIFT Cottage in Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada. (source contemporist) Read more…

Two architects, changki yun (korea) and xiaoyi zhang (china) and kyungam architects  have sent in images of their just completed project floating stage named diliter:dancing  light and water) located on the han river. The project is part of the han river renaissance  master plan and will be an eco friendly icon that harmonizes with yeoido's bam island. (source designboom) Read more…

The Academy Building by TEGET Architects is an addition to the already existing banking center designed by British Architect, John McAslan. (source spaceInvading) Read more…

Next to one of the city of Talca’s harshest ghettos –Villa Las Americas- this Church in Villa la Paz serves not only as a place for religious cult, but it also embraces a social agenda in terms of a community program. (source archdaily) Read more…

The Novartis building by Gehry Partners is part of the Masterplan for Novartis, designed by Vittorio Magnano Lampugnani, that will transform the St. Johann site, its headquarters in Basel, from an industrial complex to a campus of innovation, knowledge and encounter. (source arcspace) Read more

The arched building is a hybrid of public market and apartment building. (source arcspace) Read more… 

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels rockets through photo/video-mingled stories of his eco-flashy designs. His buildings not only look like nature -- they act like nature: blocking the wind, collecting solar energy -- and creating stunning views. (source TED) Read more…

Accessible only by boat, Formodesign's House On The Water, is a brilliant concept relying on the sea and the sun's rays to fulfil its energy and water requirements. Located off the coast of Greece's Zante Island, this concept home was conceived as a single family rental unit and is positioned so as to maximize its use of solar energy. (source dezona) Read more…

Marcus O’Reilly Architects has carefully designed a low key, site responsive beach house in Sorrento on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in Australia. The timber clad structure reinterprets a longstanding beach house tradition in the area. It uses local materials to blend into, respect and compliment it’s sought after, national park adjacent location. (source dezona) Read more…

For our second installment of Ninjas of the Month: Eastern Design we have the MON Factory/House 8 in Kyoto, Japan. Completed in 2007, the 260 m2 project houses both a workshop of a traditional craftsman and his family home. (source ANMP) Read more…

Dune Anti-Desertification Architecture investigates adaptive (as opposed to mitigatory) strategies leading to the creation of a climate-conscious architecture that responds to the extreme environments of tomorrow’s globally-warmed world. (source earthArchitecture) Read more…

ZeroEnergy Design, a Boston based architecture and energy consulting firm, has designed the English Residence, located in the town of Orleans, Massachusetts. (source contemporist) Read more…

The AIA voted yesterday to award Pugh + Scarpa Architects the 2010 AIA Architecture Firm Award. We’ve featured Pugh + Scarpa’s sustainable works before here (Cherokee Lofts) and here (Solar Homes) — so we were glad to hear that this Santa Monica-based architecture firm was being honored not only for their attention to sustainable design, but for their “excellent work, including its seamless blending of architecture, art, and craft; community involvement…and nurturing of in-house talent.” (source inhabitat) Read more…

One of the sad things about the recent demise of the construction boom in Dubai is that we will no longer have so many wonderful architectural renderings to show. Some come from talented starchitects jumping through architectural hoops; others like the amazing confection that was Falcon City, feature the Eiffel Tower, pyramids and hanging gardens of Babylon. Sigh, so many glories that will never be built. (source archiEurope) Read more…

This week saw a building by famed modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe succumb to the wrecking ball, making room at the Illinois Institute of Technology for a commuter rail station. A few fevered bloggers complained, but the preservationists yawned. Perhaps that's because the building was a dumpy brick shed devoid of interest or import. Or perhaps it's because the Mies style doesn't seem endangered at the moment. (wall street journal) Read more…

MAD architects has sent us images of a new project, urban forest, located in chongqing, china. Drawing on the mountainous landscape of the country, the commercial high-rise building, is made up of curved, abstracted shaped floors which have been layered slightly off-center from one another. (source designboom) Read more…

The blob is eating architecture. In every architecture school and in every competition, oozing, bulging, tentacular forms grow, as if by magic, out of the click-clacking of myriads of computer keyboards and the invisible working of processors, promising an organic ecology that will one day replace the wasteland of our gridded reality. Don’t give in, don’t be seduced by silky strands of computer code, and don’t think that organic architecture is any better than Certified Organic Milk. It is worse. It will destroy our world or, what is more likely, condemn architecture to a continued existence in the margins of our culture. (source ¬¬architect magazine) Read more…

As Seen from Abroad (As Imagined from Within)
In conjunction with the release of GA Japan magazine's 100th issue is an exhibition entitled "Contemporary Japanese Architecture Seen from Abroad" at the GA Gallery in Sendagaya, Tokyo. GA is the ubiquitous Japanese publisher of hefty magazines, quarterlies and retrospective volumes on architecture and interior design. (source artscape) Read more…