HMGB Architects shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the competition to design the new Paracelsus Spa and Pools in Salzburg, Austria. Located at the northern edge of the Mirabellgarten Park, the project will replace the existing Paracelsus Spa and Pool from the 1950s to include a spa with 7 different pools (6 internal and 1 external pool), sauna and therapy spaces, as well as offices for various city departments. The design defines the northwestern park edge through the building’s clear volumetric mass and is divided into a southern part including all pools and a northern part including therapy and office spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Aimed at being a city for kids, the Prinsessegade Kindergarten and Youth Club Winning Proposal by COBE + NORD Architects, in collaboration with PK3 and Grontmij, will be the largest daycare center in all of Denmark. It also presents a big challenge – how to avoid creating a daycare factory when building an institution for so many users. Their design is not just one huge building, but rather a cluster of many small and varied buildings, grouped around two central streets that connect to the surrounding city structure. Like Copenhagen, it has different neighborhoods, different houses, different public spaces, squares and parks. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Holm Architecture Office (HAO) and AI have been invited to create a proposal for the city of Daqiuzhuang in northern China. Sited in a newly developed part of the city, the new cultural building takes its form from the traditional Chinese courtyard square. By lifting the square in the diagonal corners, dual entry points to the building are created which leads visitors and locals through the building’s ground level public programs to the mid- and upper- level exhibition spaces while extending the existing North- South axis of the surrounding city. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References (Birkhaüser, 2012), the new book edited by Robert McCarter and designed by Irma Boom, will be presented at a book launch event November 13th. ‘do you read me?!’, the renowned Berlin bookshop, will host the first presentation and signing of the publication in their ‘Reading Room’ located in Berlin-Tiergarten. The evening will begin at 7:00pm with a discussion on the topic of ‘A Wonderful World’, Arets’ optimistic outlook towards the future our of continuously ‘shrinking’ world, followed by a book signing session with Wiel Arets.

Hyunjoon Yoo Architects shared with us their proposal for the Green Square Library & Plaza Design in Australia. By locating the building on the west side of the park, this gave them the opportunity to integrate the library and the transport corridor together. The architects believe that a good library is the one that allows people to read books with nature. Therefore, they folded the park on the site to make a terrace garden on each floor of the library. People can read the book facing the garden, and sometimes they can get out and enjoy the fresh air. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Titled ‘Standing Shelves’, the design concept for the Daegu Gosan Public Library agrees that people are in need of finding places to sit and get relaxed for getting information from books, magazines, articles, etc. Thus, the expanded program for the local community by providing classrooms, an exhibition area, lecture room, semi‐private reading areas, digital data corner, etc. will be another major change in the current library system. TheeAe LTD believes not in a dramatic way, but strongly, the new design of a space that should convey this change in a way to enhance and motivate the public to come and enjoy the use of a library. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Rain Room is an art installation by rAndom presented at the Barbican in London composed of a hundred square metre field of falling water through which it is possible to walk, trusting that a path can be navigated, without being drenched in the process. As you progress through The Curve, the sound of water and a suggestion of moisture fill the air, before you are confronted by this carefully choreographed downpour that responds to your movements and presence. The installation was made possible through the generous support of the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art. The video was done by Gramafilm, with music by Max Richter. More images can be viewed after the break.

Located in the heart of Andenne, near the town square, the project by Frédéric Haesevoets Architecture + Art and Build focuses on the revitalization of the city center, to assure for the future a coherent urbanization. These future blocks will complete the existing urban fabric of the neighborhood which is booming. Carefully integrated, these blocks will fit into the urban fabric without attacking the city, on the contrary, they weave links with the surrounding streets by a sensitive treatment of the spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.

3LHD Architects shared with us their video for one of their recent projects, Hotel Lone, the first design hotel in Croatia. The hotel’s identity is recognized through the external design of the building, with a facade that is defined by dominant horizontal lines – terrace guards designed to evoke the image of slanted boat decks. The site’s complex terrain with dramatic altitude changes determined the locations of internal facility spaces through a dynamic interweaving of public areas and guest suites at all levels. More information on their project can be viewed here.

Co-organized, in cooperation with the Architectural League, by Christopher Marcinkoski and Javier Arpa, The City That Never Was symposium is a day-long event that uses the current crisis in Spain as a lens to reconsider patterns of urbanization and development around the world. Taking place November 9th from 9:00am-5:00pm at the Scholastic Building in New York, the event will reconsider how planners, designers, politicians, and financiers conceive of and realize large-scale contemporary urbanization and settlement. This event seeks to better understand the systems that have produced certain imbalances resulting from this urban growth and explore new models and approaches for urbanization and development. For more information, please visit here.

Designed by 109 Architectes, their proposal in the Zaarour Club Competition, which won the second prize, takes advantage of the natural setting while creating a distinctive yet unobtrusive project identity. Consequently, the primary challenge with the Zaarour Resort is to construct the density required while still respecting and incorporating the rich natural environment. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Not long ago the library was thought of as a huge archive, a storage of human knowledge. Now, all human knowledge is just information that after being digitalized can fit into the pocket. Therefore, FORMA aims toward the accessibility of information and etherealization of knowledge. Also, the concept of information (being shared) is wider than the concept of knowledge (being rather stored than shared), which means the space and activities in the library should become significantly more diverse. Not only does it share information, but also provides an intelligent pastime for local community and sets space for live communication between people. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by, the proposal by Harmonic + Masson Architects and Comte Vollenweider Architects for The Masséna is emblematic of the new Left Bank, which has spread along the Seine in Paris. Created to be symbolic move, the Left Bank has always been the public face of Paris, but it is now expressing that in height terms. The first and only 50-metre projects in Paris for many years are both being built in the same part of the city. Height is staking a claim as a possible planning tool in a “new” urban environment – and at the same time marking out new city limits. More images and architects’ description after the break.

On view at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery from November 8-February 2, the ‘George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher’ exhibition and symposium examines Nelson’s work in the context of both its own time and its legacy today. The event includes a comprehensive retrospective and symposium of one of the most influential figures in American design during the second half of the twentieth century. It will feature more than 120 three-dimensional objects including furniture, cabinets, lamps, and clocks, as well as fifty-plus historical documents in the form of drawings, photographs, architectural models and films. The symposium, ‘George Nelson: Designs for Living’ will specifically be held November 9-10. For more information, please visit here.

The design proposal for the Keelung New Harbor Service Building aims to reject grand architectural gestures that deliberately exist out of context for the sole intent of making a grandiose statement. ACDF Architecture rejects the use of elaborate sculptural forms that are fashionable, or are required to compensate for poorly planned design that does not respond to the local environment. They favor an architecture that portrays a creative, site specific design that is “grounded” in the local context. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Taking place November 11-18, the ‘Emerging Realities’ international student workshop will take place in Venice as part of the Biennale to feature international guest speakers. The event, put on by the Institute for Architecture and Landscape, LANDLAB ia&l, envisions the Venice lagoon archipelago as a prototype for a future metropolitan regional system. The new productive landscape proposes that it is capable of supporting such community while establishing an integrated and environmentally stable system that builds upon existing biodiversity, cultural practice, and production. For more information on the event, please visit here.

Designed by Gemawang Swaribathoro, Indra Nugraha, and Morian Saspriatnadi, their ‘Urban Sponge’ concept aims to unify, organize and manage, in one solution, the inner power of this marvelous city. Prague, an ancient city that has a long history of its own architecture style is no longer an underdog city in the European region. With the city becoming one of the most important places in this continent, the sponge concept can be described as a tool of connectivity to absorb the quality of life, to attract people, to make a better living. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Composed of ten buildings, the proposal by 10 Design for the Badshahpur IT Park is set across a sinuous series of adjacent plots of varied ownership. The challenge was to create a common identity across the site, a hierarchy of amenity spaces, and a strategy for future expansion (or contraction) of the campus. The ambition was to create a vibrant and inclusive work environment that meets the expectations of today’s IT graduate candidate / employee, and the employers that seek to attract the same talent. More images and architects’ description after the break.