The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life — from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age — has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work opening November 18th at the IFC Center in New York City.

DawnTown Miami invites you to its very first exhibition, titled ‘The First Four Years of Ideas’ which will open on November 9th, 2011 at the University of Miami School of Architecture. The opening and reception begins at 6:30pm at the Irvin Korach Gallery, and marks the first retrospective ever produced by DawnTown.

The First Four Years of Ideas takes a look back at the very best works produced from their unique competitions. On display will be the winning entries from all four years, as well as curated works, selected by DawnTown’s directors. A video display will be also being present, streaming every entry ever submitted. More information on the exhibition after the break.

The Organizing Committee of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale Of Urbanism\Architecture announced the program for the fourth edition of the Biennale, which takes place December 8 to February 18 and is organized by the Chief Curator of the 2011 Biennale Terence Riley.

Selected from an international call for proposals, Mr. Riley is the first non-Chinese curator for the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale Of Urbanism\Architecture. Riley is an architect and partner in the architectural firm K/R, and the former director of Miami Art Museum. As the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art New York, he played a key role in overseeing MoMA’s 2004 expansion project. More information on the event after the break.

At the Second Exhibition Forum on Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Garden Art last week in Moscow, the project Green River Project Brateevo has been awarded with the Russian National Award on Landscape Architecture. The project, designed by OKRA landscape architects, is a joint cooperation between Russia and the Netherlands. Supported by the Dutch Government, the Department for Natural Resource Management and Environmental Protection of Moscow and the Dutch Government Service for Land and Water management (DLG), are working together with the Dutch consultancy OKRA landscape architects, the Russian consultancy Ampir landscape architects and the Research and Design Institute for the Master Plan of Moscow on the development and exchange of ideas for a sustainable cityscape. Objective is to develop a toolkit for sustainable green development as an integral part of urban redevelopment. More images and project description after the break.

The Executive Committee of top international design and architecture firm Perkins Eastman is pleased to announce that the firm is expanding its presence on the West Coast by opening an office in downtown San Francisco, which is rapidly becoming a thriving city for architecture making it an ideal location for an additional office. Located at 23 Geary Street in the One Kearny building, the 8,100 sf office will accommodate a growing staff of 45. Managing Principal Leslie Moldow FAIA is joined by Principals Dan Akol AIA and Rick Drake AIA and Associate Principal John Amanat AIA in leading the office. The office is expected to be complete and ready to occupy on November 1, 2011. More information on the firm’s expansion after the break.

The Diana Center, a 98,000 square-foot multipurpose arts building at Barnard College designed by WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, is the winner of a 2011 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award. The project will be exhibited in Buenos Aires at the 13th International Architecture Biennial in October, and will be on display throughout Europe in the next year.

In the international design idea competition to find the best design solution for a music themed upscale hotel in Jurmala, Latvia, the proposal by Nobutaka Ashihara Architect (NAA), which won the third prize, transforms the existing, implements a new linear sinuous curve circulation spine to which the public elements are attached, and reinforces the predominant east-west circulation of Pumpuri. More images and architects’ description after the break.

As we all know, natural disasters continue to kill hundreds of thousands each year, and the vast growth of cities with unsafe and unreliable buildings and other infrastructure will only increase the cost of human life and negatively impact local economies. To address this, The Campaign for Safe Buildings, along with The Rubin Foundation and the Yale School of Architecture, is hosting a symposium November 4th and 5th to look closely at safe building initiatives around the world and many of the challenges that stand in the way of keeping natural disasters from turning into man-made catastrophes. More information on the event after the break.

The stadiums built by the architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa received the IOC/IAKS Award on 26 October 2011. In the context of the international Trade Fair for Amenity Areas, Sports and Pool Facilities (FSB), the International Olympic Committee and the International Association for Sports and Leisure Facilities (IAKS) selected the Cape Town stadium for first prize and the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium in Port Elizabeth for third prize in the “stadiums for competitions and events” category. The awards were received by Hubert Nienhoff, gmp partner in charge of the offices in Berlin, Frankfurt and Rio de Janeiro. More information on the projects after the break.

In the year 2008, the American designer George Nelson (1908-1986) would have celebrated his 100th birthday. To commemorate this occasion, the Vitra Design Museum exhibited the first comprehensive retrospective of his work. Nelson was one of the most influential figures in American design during the second half of the twentieth century. With an architectural degree from Yale, he was not only active in the fields of architecture and design, but was also a widely respected writer and publicist, lecturer, curator, and a passionate photographer. His office produced numerous furnishings and interior designs that became modern classics, including the Coconut Chair (1956), the Marshmallow Sofa (1956), the Ball Clock (1947) and the Bubble Lamps (1952 onwards). This same exhibition will be opened from October 29th, 2011 at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Seattle (until February 12th, 2012. More images and exhibition description after the break.

Award-winning San Francisco-based Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects are known for a practice that combines the principles of early modern architecture with the materials, techniques and sensibilities of the 21st century. Raised in a traditional Jewish family in South Africa, Saitowitz has designed private residences, institutions, public and commercial spaces, and religious architecture across the globe. Among the many commissions he has completed during his 30-year career are a number of significant Jewish spaces, including the Holocaust Memorial in Boston and the critically acclaimed Temple Beth Shalom in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

Now, Saitowitz brings ancient tradition and contemporary design together in Stanley Saitowitz: Judaica, an extraordinary display of modern Jewish ritual objects on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum November 3, 2011 through October 16, 2012. More information on the exhibition after the break.

Vitra Design Museum recently presented the exhibition, titled Antibodies, which included the works of Fernando & Humberto Campana from 1989-2009. The Brazilian brothers have worked together as furniture designers in Sao Paulo since 1989. Humberto came to the partnership as a self-taught artist with a degree in law while Fernando had been trained as an architect. The first joint work of this unequal pair – brutalistic, surrealistic furniture sculptures – caused a sensation in the Sao Paulo art scene right from the start. Over the past twenty years, they have established themselves among the most well-known and successful designers of our times, implementing their distinctive and individual language of objects in a tremendously wide-ranging oeuvre of furniture, lighting and installations that has been recognized in numerous publications and exhibitions. More images and information after the break.

As a temporary installation at Park Slope, Brooklyn for the Jewish Sukkah holiday, the design by BanG studio for this new sukkah, titled, “In the Field” reflects both the symbolic nature of the design as a pastoral escape to a transitional and temporary space in line with the holiday’s spirit and the in situ design principal where all aspects of the specific development of the form were resolved in the actual assembly. More images and project description after the break.

d3 and Transportation Alternatives are pleased to announce the winners of the “Close The Gap” design competition, which invited architects, landscape architects, urban designers, engineers and students worldwide to envision the completion of the East River Greenway. Submissions from pla.net Architects and the design team of James and Madeline Stokoe were selected by the jurors for their outstanding work. The competition called for proposals that fundamentally transform how people move through Manhattan by filling in a 22-block gap along the East River. More information on the competition awards after the break.

Bates Masi + Architects of Sag Harbor, New York is pleased to announce the receipt of three AIA Long Island Awards and three AIA Peconic Daniel J. Rowen Memorial Architectural Design Awards. The AIA Long Island Awards were presented on October 19th at Oheka Castle, in Huntington, NY. The AIA Peconic Awards were presented on October 22 at an Award Symposium located at the Southampton Cultural Center in Southampton, NY. More information on the awards after the break.

The exhibition “Rudolf Steiner – Alchemy of the Everyday” demonstrates that design is linked with many other topics of great relevance to society: from art and architecture, natural sciences and technology up to questions of ethics and spirituality. To this day, the practical implications of this broadly conceived understanding of design have an especially strong presence in the Basel region, which served as the centre of Steiner’s life and work over many years. The Vitra Design Museum embraced this local connection as an opportunity to develop an extensive supporting programme for the “Rudolf Steiner – Alchemy of the Everyday” exhibition. It offers a chance to retrace Steiner’s footsteps in the region, take a good look at his contributions, voice criticism and seek connections to the design and architecture of the present. More information on the event after the break.

Last September, Mateo Arquitectura, together with the French practice Dominique Perrault Architecture, presented a proposal for the project to urbanize Îlot P in Lyon Confluence, to the south of the city of Lyon which was recently named as a finalist. This competition forms part of the process of urban remodeling being conducted throughout the Lyon Confluence area with the aim of leaving behind its industrial past. The project involved the urban development of a city block (Ilôt P), including housing, commercial areas and offices (laid out in two buildings), and landscaping. More images and project description after the break.

Published by CARTOGRAM Architecture + Urban Design, The semiannual journal SOILED has released its second issue, entitled Skinscrapers. It is now available here, where you can order a printed copy from Lulu or download the free electronic version as a PDF . Skinscrapers probes how our bodies interact with the spaces around them and how the spaces we inhabit can become extensions of our bodies. By focusing on the surface of the skin as a natural mediator, Skinscrapers navigates a continuum of scale, starting inside the gut, proceeding to the contours of the body, and culminating in the anthropomorphic city. More images and description after the break.