BRITE is a part of a statewide initiative to make North Carolina a premiere provider of skilled workers for the biotechnology industry. The facility houses laboratories and classrooms for faculty providing undergraduate and graduate level education in the areas of Process Development, Quality Control and Quality Assurance. The facility, representative of the development labs found in industry, allow students to get hands-on training as part of their collegiate experience.

Architect: The Freelon Group Architects Location: Durham, North Carolina, USA Project Area: 59,900 sqf Photographs: James West

We recently received the book Reveal: Studio Gang Architects. This monograph takes an in-depth look at several of firm’s extraordinary projects. Archdaily has featured many of the same projects, but our pieces are mere shadows of what is presented in this book. If you enjoyed the glimpses on our website you will love this book. It is rare that I find a monograph that goes into such great depth. Beside the standard plan, section and photographs, each project is accompanied by notes, research, sketches, histories, philosophies, and more. This allows for a much more rewarding conversation than the standard glossy monograph. By the end of each chapter you can easily understand why each design decision was made and how meticulous this studio is. The Aqua Tower, for example, without any additional knowledge holds its own amongst the architecturally cherished Chicago skyline; however, after you read about the design process behind it the tower becomes that much more wonderful. I highly recommend this book.

P.S.: You can watch our interview with Jeanne Gang.

Reach 11 is a sports complex in North Phoenix comprised of 18 soccer fields and 4 baseball fields. A Call for Artists went out to provide large amounts of shade at four diverse locations within the large park. Visibly adjacent to the site, a raised earth-buttressed canal brings water 350 miles from the Colorado River to Phoenix as the city continues to grow. Expressing the audacity of the desert oasis, colab studio sought a way to describe this precarious scale of human intervention on the landscape. Comparing such an endeavor with weightlessness moments found in sporting events, 6,000 pound local stones can be quarried and set on posts in various configurations around the huge soccer tournament park, surrounded on 2 sides by the canal. Shapes mimicking mountains and water’s movement through canyons create a unique environment to dwell in deep shade.

The New Zealand team from Victoria University of Wellington is the first-ever finalist from the Southern Hemisphere in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The team is led by students from Victoria’s School of Architecture and is made up of students from a range of disciplines across the university. New Zealand is the first country in the world to see the light each day, this gave the house its name— First Light.

Located in the heart of downtown Austin, this project is a renovation and expansion of an existing contemporary art space. LTL was commissioned to design 21,000 sqf of new program within the building envelope, including an entry lounge, a video/projects room, a large open gallery, multipurpose room, two artists’ studios, additional art preparation areas, and an roof deck.

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Architect: Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis Architects (LTL Architects) Location: Austin, Texas, USA Project Area: 21,000 sqf Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Michael Moran

The J‐House uses a historically standard New Orleans housing lot: 30×150 feet. The original site for the J‐House is located in a designated flood zone as is common with many housing sites throughout the Southern Louisiana region. Recent FEMA studies have concluded that a vast range of New Orleans housing sites are currently 9‐feet under sea level. The original site for the J‐House is no different.

Architect: AEDS | Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio Location: 918 Upperline Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Project Team: Ammar Eloueini, Jana Masset, David Merlin, Dan Kautz, Jamie Lookabaugh, Surawat Hanthawichai Architect of Record: Wisznia A+D Sturctural Engineer: Buro Happold New York, Craft Engineering Studio New York Photographs: Courtesy of AEDS

Every year, the AIA stages a competition for an intervention that brings to life the historic city of New Orleans. This year the institute selected a scheme by Gernot Riether that proposed a series of glowing spherical enclosures sited within the hidden courtyards of the city’s distinctive French Quarter. They would be illuminated in the evening, dramatically modulating the host environment and bringing attention to these romantic, mysterious and usually private spaces, typically located deep in the block, away from the street.

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Architect: Gernot Riether Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Project Team: Gernot Riether, Valerie Bolen, Rachel Dickey, Emily Finau, Tasnouva Habib, Knox Jolly, Pei-Lin Liao, Keith Smith, April Tann Photographs: Courtesy of Gernot Riether

Miami University graduate students, Brian Albrecht and Kristopher Kunkel, and their faculty adivsor, Mary Rogero, recently sent us their submission for the AIAS School of Tomorrow 2010 Competition. They chose to design for the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School that we recently featured on our site. Their proposed design seeks to accomplish two vital aspects of sustainability and design: the preservation of an iconic Modern structure that embodies the period in which it was built, and secondly adapts that structure to suit present day needs for an area with unique problems and a unique culture.

Field Architecture‘s goal for Bodega Bauer was to create an architecture informed by the same particularities of the earth which are embodied in the wine of the region. Siting and materiality are guided by the subtleties of sun and wind exposure, climate, the unexpected nuances of each season, and the presence and absence of water and shade.

The ‘Box Mobile Gallery’ is a gallery responsive to various exhibition intentions and art media. The gallery consists of 12 panels soft-hinged side by side. Each of these panels features an art work fixed to its inside. The flexibility of the soft hinge system allows the spatial reconfiguration of the gallery, transforming one space to another according to site conditions, exhibition intention, and art media; from independent cells for an individual exhibition, to a common exhibition space for a group exhibition, often times with an introductory area or a court yard, and to a special exhibition space for various art media.

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Architect: WISE Architecture Location: Jongno-gu Tongin-dong, Seoul, South Korea Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Hwang Hyochel

The new Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center, to be located off of Interstate 25 at mile marker 4.9 north of the Colorado/Wyoming border, will replace an existing 20-year old facility that is outgrown and difficult to access given its proximity along the western side of the interstate. The project is exploring the relationship of building and landscape to structure a sequence of experiences that occur at various scales – from the drive along I-25 which offers a presentation of the entire site, to the transformation of the site as one enters and transitions to pedestrian.

In this book Michael Maltzan holds conversations with a photographer, architects, a landscape architect, a futurists, and a urban planner about Los Angeles’s recent past and its near and distant future. For Maltzan, Los Angeles is currently in a delicate moment of transformation “where past vocabularies of the city and of urbanism are no longer adequate, and at this moment, the very word no longer applies.” In order to guide this transformation in a positive direction Maltzan asserts that “architects, urban theorists, architects, designers, planners, and city leaders requires keen investigation to produce forms that represent this city and and its culture, as opposed to importing other urban models.” The conversations along with the photographs by Iwan Baan presented in this book are part of the keen investigation Maltzan advocates for. This makes for a very engaging book for anyone interested in Los Angeles and shaping the future of cities in general.

I recently read Detail Magazine’s latest issue about Digital Processes. The issue is divided into three parts. The first part deals with digital planning technologies that include mapping techniques for analysis, terrestrial laser scanning, and geographic information systems among others. The second section delves into digital production technologies such as CNC laser cutting, hot wire cutting, and jointed-arm robotics. The final piece brings these together by showcasing six projects that utilize these technologies. In its totality, the issue is a good overall look at the present and future opportunities digital technology offers the profession.

The Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural and Popular Music Center evokes a giant vessel moored at the quay. Both preposterous and appropriate, the Center is the icon, the scenic landmark. The concept is that of a dynamic, vertical-horizontal public space—a twenty-four-hour attraction. By day the Center is an iconic silhouette against the Kaohsiung sky and by night a luminous showplace, an animated marquee on a grand scale. It is a symbol for the city and a place for all the people—a great symbol of Kaohsiung’s maritime heritage and its music industry future. It is a place where everyone can experience the loftiest position of privilege and the most serene moment of peace and contemplation, a place where the youth of the city and its internationally renowned community of commerce can come together to celebrate, party and relax in the beauty of their home—a place of origins, new and old.

This week our Architecture City Guide is headed to Portland, Oregon. As one of the greenest cities in the world, it is a leader in sustainable architecture. Even though Portland is only the 29th most populous city in the U.S., it has the second highest number of LEED-accredited buildings. Only Chicago, a city more than four times the size of Portland, has more green buildings. Beyond its contemporary and green architecture it has a good variety of historic buildings that are worth visiting. We have put together a list of 12 contempory buildings to visit, but since we limited it to 12, it is far from complete. We would like you, our readers, to suggest other “must not miss” in the comment section after the break.

Architecture City Guide: Portland list and corresponding map after the break!

The Karoo Wilderness Center represents a significant shift in perspective and practice, sponsoring and provoking the learning, dialogue, and action necessary to redefine the consequence of human inhabitation on the land. The Center aims to re-establish the connection between the built and natural world as one that is mutually beneficial. Forming an exemplary model of sustainability, the Center generates its own energy, harvests its own water, processes its own waste, and provides thermal comfort using no municipal water or power. Learning from the continuum of life in the Karoo, the architecture of the Center provides a lasting connection to the landscape, and fosters an understanding of the interdependence of ecosystem health, and human well being.

Architect: Field Architecture Location: Karoo, South Africa Project Team: Stan Field, Jess Field (Design Principals), Andy Lin, Erik Bloom, Chris Graesser Structural Engineers: Arup Conservation Management: Wilderness Foundation South Africa Environmental Impact Analysis: Integrated Environmental Management Project Area: 21,800 sqf

These two 3-story mixed-use buildings, side-by-side reflecting each other, sit on a narrow thirty-foot lot along Ocean Front walk on world famous Venice Beach. This culturally diverse urban community is a busy commercial pedestrian area, popular with tourists and locals alike.

Architect: Kanner Architects Location: Venice Beach, California, USA Project Area: 13,000 sqf

Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects state, “In human experience there is no greater contrast than the conditions of peace and war.” For the Museum of the Second World War International Competition they wanted to highlight this contrast. The architecture of the museum building and its landscapes posits the conditions of contrast that invoke contemplation of the contradictions that war overlays onto human endeavor. Ultimately, the magnification and illumination of the museum’s message is the project of the architecture and the landscape.

Architect: Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects Location: Gdansk, Poland Project Team: Mack Scogin , Merrill Elam, Alan Locke, Rubi Xu, Greg Tran, Jared Serwer, Christopher Hoxie, Helen Han, Margaret Fletcher, Barnum Tiller, Mathew Weaver, Barrett Feldman, Ted Paxton Landscape Architect: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Landscape Project Team: Michael Van Valkenburgh, Izabela Riano ,Nicholas Pevzner Structural Engineer: Jane Wernick Associates Mechanical Engineer: Max Fordham Mechanical Engineer Team: Henry Luker, Mark Nutley Façade Consultant Team: Front, Bruce Nichol, Zach Wiegand Cost Consultant Team: Turner Townsend, Colin Wood Project Area: 22,330 sqm Competition Year: 2010