As part of Cornell University's Rome 2013 Lecture Series, Pablo Castro, founder of OBRA Architects will be delivering the 'Hexameter' lecture this Thursday, March 7th, at the Palazzo Lazzaroni in Rome at 6:00pm. A 2012 Rome prize winner, Castro's design direction at OBRA has produced a body of award-winning projects including four AIANY Design Awards and two Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards. He is also a 2006 NYFA Fellow in Architecture/Environmental Structures and a 2003 Society of Architectural Historians de Montëquin Senior Fellow, which are just some of the many awards received. For more information on the event, please visit here.

Taking place this Thursday, March 7th, at 6:00pm, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) will present the first 2013 Mellon Lecture, a free event, featuring Japanese architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, founding partner of Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo with Momoyo Kaijima. Yoshiharu Tsukamoto will present his concept of Architectural Behavior, which investigates the physical responses to natural elements such as light, air, heat, wind, water, human behavior related to custom, and the way in which buildings relate to the city and their surroundings. For more information, please visit here.

Organized by the LIXIL JS Foundation, the 3rd LIXIL International University Architectural Competition invites university research laboratories from around the world for a site-specific challenge, with this year's theme of 'Retreat in Nature". The site is Memu Meadows in Taiki-cho, Hokkaido, Japan, which is composed of experimental sustainable projects including Même by architect Kengo Kuma. Calling for innovative solutions for sustainable architecture, the winning team is invited to construct the project on the site. The deadline for submissions is March 29. For more information, please visit here.

Terreform ONE is holding the annual ONE Prize event, which aims to explore the social, economic, and ecological possibilities of urban transformation and design. This years theme is 'Stormroof' with a call to deploy ecologically sound design to mitigate storm impact through urban interventions, protective parks, shorelines, alternative housing and public space models. The competition is open to students, professionals, and individuals of all backgrounds. The deadline for submissions is August 31. To register, and for more information, please visit here.

The 2013 Berkeley Prize Teaching Fellowship has officially been launched in the wide field of Universal Design education: teaching the social art of architecture. This is a competitive opportunity open to faculty members of undergraduate architectural design studios in accredited schools of architecture throughout the world. This year, to start this new effort, they will offer up to four, separate Teaching Fellowships for the most innovative and promising proposals that reflect their overall goals. The deadline for submissions is April 1. For more information, please visit here.

Open to anyone from anywhere, it's that time of the year for the 2nd annual Life of an Architect Playhouse Competition All are being called to flex your design chops to benefit needy kids with the design of a fun playhouse to bring out a positive experience. The intent is that these playhouses will be constructed and ready for delivery to Dallas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), a nonprofit organization of community volunteers trained and supervised to serve as voices in court for abused and neglected children, by July 30th where they will be installed for display and raffled off. The deadline for submissions is April 15. To register for free, and for more information, please visit here.

AIA Cincinnati, in partnership with the Over-the-Rhine Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation, recently announced the winners of their LIVE-MAKE Industrial Arts Center Cincinnati competition. The challenged was to design a membership based facility that will feature private residences, maker-in-residence studios, light industrial studios and an open workshop that will help shape a new economic opportunity for the neighborhood. The grand prize went to Frenchman Olivier Terrisse’s scheme, whose iconic element consisted of a silvery residential loft tower rising from the rear hill over the renovated factories, whose fabric the architect cut to continue the existing street patter and to open up the spaces of the factory building. More information on the winning proposals after the break.

The results of the Piraeus Underwater Antiquities Museum Competition were recently announced with the collaborative team of architects Antonopoulos Evangelos, Vetta Thalia, Gavalas Georgios, Riga Maria – Kiriaki, and Stamouli Anastasia, and Pilarinou Maria announced as the first place winner. The challenge was for the design of a new landmark for the city and the port of Piraeus, with main reference to the culture, quality tourism and sustainability as well. Piraeus Port Authority is organizing an open exhibition with all the proposals that were submitted to the competition at the “Petrini” (Stonebuilt) Warehouse – future Museum of the History of P.P.A. and Museum of Immigrants – within the zone of the Cultural Coast. The opening of the exhibition is planned on 28th March 2013. More information on the winning proposals after the break.

Videos

The topic of this year's Tallinn Architecture Biennale Vision Competition, Recycling Socialism, seeks architectural ideas and methods to envision the future of an iconic circular block-housing district in Tallinn – Väike-Õismäe ("Little Blossom Hill"). Väike-Õismäe stands apart from other similar neighborhoods in Tallinn by way of its concentric plan derived from the idea of a circle-city. The district is positioned circularly as a single, complete solution around a pond in the middle and the environment and modern-day life are still searching for a common language. More information and a video after the break.

The Rio de Janeiro CityVision Competition is the fifth international ideas competition launched by CityVision with the purpose of providing a vision on Rio de Janeiro’s future. We live in a particular period, made so ​​by a broader vision of history itself, for which “the sums don’t add up” and the meaning of “time” has lost its positive and progressive meaning, giving way to a “contemporary time” in which present, past and future (or rather our visions of it) seem to coexist. Reality is now compromised by the crisis and bad taste has prevailed. It has now become necessary to analyze the city and grasp the essence of its disgust. Submissions are due no later than June 11. For more information, please visit here.

The Spring 2013 Lecture Series at the College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) at NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) began this month with Kathryn Dean’s talk and will conclude on April 18th. This semester, the series, which is free and open to the public, will feature Jonathan Massey, Nataly Gattegno + Jason Johnson, Tony & Margaret Santos, Ken Greenberg, Alan Organschi, and Axel Schmitzberger as keynote speakers. The concluding event is an AIA-endowed lecture by Will Bruder, which is also a part of the annual Design Showcase event. As part of the series, on March 6, CoAD will host a Spring Symposium on “Distributed Intelligence” sponsored by AIANJ. Lectures are Mondays at 5:30pm in Weston Lecture Hall unless otherwise noted. For more information, please visit here.

Opening March 11, and on view until April 30, Rome’s Ermanno Tedeschi Gallery (Via del Portico d'Ottavia 7) will offer “Never Say the Eye Is Rigid:Architectural Drawings of Daniel Libeskind,” the city’s first exhibition of architectural drawings by the world-renowned architect. The exhibition includes 52 original drawings from eight diverse Libeskind projects in Germany, Italy, Poland, United Kingdom and the United States, including the architect’s signature work, the Jewish Museum Berlin (2001), and Memory Foundations, Ground Zero (2003), the master plan for the World Trade Center site. More information on the exhibition after the break.

As a follow up to 'The Competition' trailer we published this month, architect Angel Borrego Cubero of Office for Strategic Spaces (OSS) announced that the documentary he directed and produced is going to be shown at Instituto Cervantes New York, as well as Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. The screenings will take place March 4th, 7:00pm and March 8th, 4:00pm respectively. The screening at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, an event curated by Daniel Ibañez, will be preceded by a small introduction given by director Angel Borrego Cubero, and followed by a discussion with the audience and professors from the GSD. For more information, please contact: pr@o-s-s.org

As part of the VIII Biennial Ibero-American architecture and urbanism exhibition, Note Gallery will be hosting the presentation of the new book "Itenerarios de Arquitectura 06 - Paulo Mendes da Rocha" by Catherine Otondo and José Paulo Gouvea on Wednesday, February 27th. Following the book presentation, the Architects Conference, featuring Cristina Guedes & Francisco de Campos and Ricardo Bak Gordon Architect, both winners of the VIII Bienal Ibero-americana de Arquitectura e Urbanismo, will take place Thursday, February 28th. Both events take place at the Boavista Gallery in Lisbon. For more information, please visit here.

Upon their recent selection to host the International Specialized Exposition in 2017 (EXPO 2017) with a theme Energy of the Future, National Company Astana and Mayor’s Office of Astana launched a sponsored international architectural competition for the development of a concept design of EXPO facilities, including an installation to serve as the symbol of EXPO 2017 in Astana. The objective of the competition is to get conceptual architectural and urban planning solutions and ideas for EXPO facilities. The competition began last week and will last until June 18.The winner will get award equal to 15 Million KZT (equivalent to US$ 100,000). For more information, please visit here.