Ozel Office, a practice based in both LA, California and Istanbul, Turkey, has designed a competition proposal for an Opera House for Izmir, a port town off the Aegean Coast. The competition challenged participants to see architecture as a “catalyst” that could potentially help the city re-center itself as a hub of economic activity and source of cultural significance. The collaborative effort within the office, especially led by Guvenc Ozel and Erdim Kumkumoglu, produced a proposal where the ”architecture becomes a catalyst that reinforces the relationship between the old city, the new city, the waterfront and urban culture. In short, our vision is a synergy of spatial, cultural as well as practical and contextual aesthetics.”

More images and more about the project after the break.

New Zealand architect, Tim Stephens, shared his Huntington Urban Farm design with us. The farm responds to the lack of support for the sustainable practice of growing and cultivating one’s own food source, an important issue Stephens sees as becoming more prevalent as our population increases. The farm provides convenient access to individualized plots of land where users can produce their own food right in the middle of the town.

Not only did Laura Alvarez Architecture place in Europe’s top 40 architects under 40, but the young firm also just received a unanimous first prize standing from the jury of the Customize Me! competition sponsored by the Heijmans Vastgoed & Woningbouw. Asked to provide a new vision for contemporary housing, Laura Alvarez responded with a housing model that can be aadjusted for different kinds of families and if a person suddenly changes his way of living. Entitled 4D LIFE | Space and Time – four dimensions of living, space and time are linked entities so that how the space is used directly correlates to time. ”We want to offer a house that fits all moments of life and to all kinds of standards of living. We want to offer space for personal input, for all kinds of people, independently from their origin, social status or age.” explained the architect.

Check out this video we found by Yellow Line Pictures and the 2010 MoMA/MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. We’ve been documenting SO-IL’s Pole Dance quite extensively and we feel that this video is a good addition to our coverage. We hope the film’s fun take on demonstrating how to use the project will make you even more excited to visit the PS1 schoolyard if you find yourself in the New York area. What do you think of the noise making poles? And, how about the fact that the project can be affected by an iPhone app ?

Recent Harvard graduate, Nicolas Fayad, was awarded the Boston Society of Architects’ James Templeton Kelley Prize, an honor recognizing the most successful graduating project. Fayad’s “Brittle”, a School of Arts, is an exploration of responsive and adaptive form. Fayad’s programmatic elements have been organized and molded in response to the changing typography of Chongqing, China – making the design quite flexible as it can easily adapt to any change of land within the city.

More about the awarded design after the break.

Similar to their identifiable products, the Apple stores require a sleek, almost instantly recognizable, aesthetic. As keepers of the latest technology, the buildings’ minimalist interiors boast a calm and sophisticated demeanor, complimenting, yet not overshadowing, their prized possessions. It may come as a surprise that the leading architects behind the stores are Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ), a firm that had never designed a retail store before Apple and whose principal, Peter Bohlin, winner of the AIA Gold Medal, ironically doesn’t use email.

Bohlin has awed us in the past, especially with Apple’s second Manhattan retail store located on Fifth Avenue. Turning a tough retail space into a successful masterpiece, the store’s iconic cube, a 32-foot glass structure, marks the store’s entrance and beckons customers down to the retail level which is illuminated with natural light. And now, BCJ has just unveiled their latest Apple store, and the first of its kind in China which seeks to emulate similar design decisions as the Fifth Avenue project.

C.F. Møller Architects just won a shared first prize in the competition for the new Opera and Culture Center in Norway, entitled Kulturkvartalet. This new Opera Center will house the country’s oldest opera in Kristiansund, the capital of the region of Nordmøre. The site proposes an interesting challenge as the new design must integrate two existing buildings with the proposed new urban center, and the most critical component becomes the shared urban space between the old and the new which will ultimately connect the Opera and Culture Center with pedestrian streets and a nearby park.

With this stifling heat wave New Yorkers are trying to brave, it is hard to take refuge in the city filled with skyscrapers and traffic. This summer, we are flocking to parks along the edge of the Island to relax amidst a sea of greenery, catching some breezes off the water while enjoying the amazing views of the skyline and different bridges. This step marks an important part in our history, as prior to this, as Nathan Ward in an Op-Ed for the New York Times put it, we have shied away from “claiming our waterfront.” In Ward’s article, he outlines the history of the waterfront, explaining that as the ports’ economy slowed down toward the end of the 1900s, the abandoned piers became “a ghost town between landlubbers and the water” where no one wanted to be, let alone live. Within the past few years, we are beginning to discover the potential the waterfront has to offer. And, areas that have been rundown and vacant for years are now getting green makeovers and contributing more and more feet of parkscape for New Yorkers to enjoy.

Whether you are closest to Governors Island, the West Side or perhaps Brooklyn, here’s the scoop on three fairly recent park developments we hope all can enjoy.

Nine students studying at the Aarhus School of Architecture, one of Denmark’s premiere architecture universities have transformed the typical college quad into an activated social hub with their temporary pavilion. In a quick ten-day workshop, the students designed and built the pavilion with 420 recycled euro-pallets. “By being built with nothing else but pallets, easily reachable on the site by the closeness of the harbor, the pavilion was basically a short-living vernacular architecture,” shared the students.

Special thanks to Thibault Marcilly, a French student who organized the initiative and shared the project with us.  More about the pavilion, including images and a video, after the break.

This just in from the Serpentine Gallery – Jean Nouvel’s pavilion is complete! In honor of the Serpentine’s 40th Anniversary, Nouvel’s pavilion is a bold and strong expression comprised of lightweight materials with dramatic cantilevers. Designing the pavilion allows international architects to experiment with different architectural ideas, and over the years, the commissions’ varied aesthetics have added to the thrill of the exposition. Nouvel’s bright red pavilion is drastically different from SANAA’S subdued silvery curvillinear form of 2009, and its vivid color contrasts the park’s greenery, immediately drawing the eye.

More images and more about the new pavilion after the break.

Erick van Egeraat’s 330,000 m2 proposal for the Dynamo Stadium in Moscow recently placed ahead of four international competitors. Situated on a 116,000-m2 plot in Petrovsky Park, the competition site has been chosen by the Administration of the Stadium and VTB Bank to be developed in order to meet contemporary international requirements to support Russia’s bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Erick van Egeraat’s proposed “multifunctional urban regenerator” will feature a 45,000-seat Stadium Arena, a 10,000-seat Arena Hall, a Retail and Entertainment complex, restaurants, parking and other facilities. With these various programmatic activities, the proposed design aims to provide a self sustaining model that will be activated continually throughout the day.

More about the awarded project and more images after the break.

When you’re interested in the field of architecture, it basically consumes your entire life from how you look at things, to what you read to even what you watch. Over the years, different films have portrayed some of the inner reflections of architects – there’s a piece on Khan entitled My Architect, there’s Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, and even Sketches of Frank Gehry, just to name a few. Now, as Architectural Record reported, there’s a new film to add to your collection. Filmed by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch, and produced by Arthouse Films, Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect offers a “thought-provoking portrait of the architect.”

More about the video after the break.

Carving out a gigantic void in the middle of Copenhagen’s City Hall Square, Larry Hill’s conceptual approach for a new metro station calls attention to the activity of passengers as well as the trains.   “The project aims to put the public in the City Hall Square, as well as on it. The void and the metro machine is thus a seamless part of the city,” explained the architect.

More images and more about the project after the break.

Placing ahead of four other proposals, Christensen & Co + Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects were awarded first prize for their design of the Niels Bohr Science Park for the University of Copenhagen. The project, a collaborative effort with Ramboll DK + UK + SE, GHB Landscape Architects and Collin Gordon Associates, includes 45,000 m2 of laboratory and teaching facilities to house math, computer science, chemical and physical disciplines. The building is a functional entity with dynamic student circulation among light filled spaces with access to large greens.

More about the winning proposal and more images after the break.

This past week, we’ve featured several of Jeffrey Durkin’s videos, such as Lindsay Brown’s ideas for the SD Waterfront and Miki Iwasaki’s philosophy on furniture design, architecture and society. This video highlights Jonathan Segal, a San Diego developer and architect, who focuses on urban projects such as high-density residence, mixed use, and live/work units.

More about the video after the break.

A few days ago, we introduced Junya Ishigami’s Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop, a lightweight studio space with an interesting interior due to 305 slender columns. Our friend, Brandon Shigeta, shared his photos with us that illustrate Ishigami’s technique of using column distribution as a space generator. Although the slender columns appear randomly distributed, the architects’ seemingly scattered order has created defined zones that subdivide the large studio workspace.

More images and more about the columns after the break.

The Open Source House Competition, an initiative of Enviu and architect Vincent van der Meulen, asked participants to provide well designed sustainable housing prototypes for low-income countries. The competition entries were judged according to the following eight principles (listed on the competition’s website): the design must be embedded in the local cultural context; it must address the whole life cycle of materials in terms of dis-assembly and reuse; the design must use its climate to minimize energy consumption; it must adhere to local building standards; structurally, the load-bearing elements must be separated from the demountable building skin; all connections between the components and the structure are dry and demountable; a household organization must be flexible; all designs and ideas will be published and shared on www.os-house.org to inspire others. For the competition, more than 3100 architects participated and over 250 teams from 45 countries submitted their designs. After an intense jury procedure 10 designs where nominated which we will feature after the break.

We’ve featured lots of sustainability driven projects on AD that implement passive systems, eco-friendly materials, and green roofs. But this government building in Portland, Oregon has completely overshadowed any green wall we’ve seen thus far. Tim Newcomb for Architectural Record reported that a 200-foot-high living wall may be tacked onto the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building.

More about the potential 200 foot living wall after the break.