On october 9, Iñaki Abalos and Renata Sentkiewicz will give the lecture ‘Landform Buildings’ at Roma Tre Universitá (Aula Urbano VIII, Via della Madonna dei Monti 40, Rome). The lecture will take place at 4:30pm.

The pavilion consists of three areas — Whispering Garden, Hall of Light and Hall of Innovations. The Whispering Garden is a green orchard that greets visitors as they enter the building. Some facilities will be installed to make the trees begin to “whisper” in both English and Chinese when visitors walk close to them, Haim Z. Dotan, chief designer of the pavilion, told Shanghai Daily.

The hall of Light includes a 15-meter high screen. It will display films highlighting the country’s innovations and technological achievements.

The Hall of Innovation is the centerpiece of the Israel Pavilion. A special audio-visual show will allow visitors to talk with Israeli children, scientists, doctors and inventors via hundreds of screens. These Israelis will introduce themselves and share their hopes for a better future. Israel allocated about US$6 million for its participation at Expo 2010, which includes the cost of its pavilion and other activities. It is the first time Israel has committed to building a national pavilion at a World Expo. Images and video after the break.

Since ArchDaily’s David Basulto is currently in Croatia participating at CIP Talks 2009, we decided to show you some croatian architecture. So to start this week’s Round Up, we bring you previously featured projects from 3LHD.

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) presents “Marcelo Spina: Wholes, Holes, and All the Other Stuff in Between”, part of their lecture series, this Wednesday, October 7 at 7pm in the W. M. Keck Lecture Hall.

Hasbro, the makers of the Monopoly game, have officially announced a competition that gives Monopoly-lovers the chance to design a building that will be included in the new interactive game Monopoly City Streets.

The RMJM designed Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS), the first collaboration of its kind in Singapore between two of the world’s top higher education institutions – Duke University in the U.S. and National University of Singapore – was opened yesterday, September 28th, by the country’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The new school building designed by international architects RMJM, will significantly boost the number of highly trained doctors in the country, demonstrating Singapore’s commitment to becoming a world leader in healthcare and biomedical research.

At 26,000 square meters and 11 stories tall, Duke-NUS is a “vertical campus,” housing research offices, wet and dry laboratories, classrooms, lecture halls, a library, student lounges, a café and administrative offices. The placement of the building’s functions and programs were designed to build the academic community and promote scientific collaboration. More description and images after the break.

The global design practice Populous announced this week that they have been selected by the State Corporation ‘Olympstroy’ to design the main stadium for the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

It’s Friday. Time to relax. So are these great leisure projects. And in case you missed it, check our first part of leisure Round Up right here.

Our friend Xavier Vilalta from Barcelona-based xvstudio sent us his new project: the Melaku Center. The Melaku Center will be new center of learning, working and projection for the inhabitants of Mek’ele, capital of the Tigray, a region of the north of Ethiopia.

The Melaku Center will be a reference model of sustainable development in Africa, from the design of the buildings to the program itself. The whole project will be a ecosystem of knowlegde, development and natural resources.

A common parameter in the traditional African architecture is the use of the fractal scale: small parts of the structure tend to be similar to the bigger ones, for example, the circular villages are made of circular houses. More description and images after the break.

Yesterday, through our Facebook Fan Page we launched a new contest for you to participate. We are looking for the best render that you can send us. Only one per person/office is allowed. The best ones will be featured next week on ArchDaily.com.

The MODULE ARK, by Sponge Architects, is a design for an autarkic (=self-sufficient) ark to live and/or work on. The design is modern, modular and sustainable. Surrounding the ark with glass facades ensures a maximal openness. Despite of these big glass surfaces, the MODULE ARK stays sustainable because of the low energy consumption, realized by means of a simple mechanical principle consisting of individual façade parts that can be closed and opened separately. These parts are utilized in extreme weather conditions against overheating and hypothermia. More after the break.

We are always looking forward to see the results of an awarded competition. As we feature a lot of them, we might as well do a second part of our awarded competitions Round Up. Check out the first one here!

On September 29, Storefront for Art and Architecture will inaugurate a new exhibition showcasing research conducted over the past 3 years at ETH Zurich by Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler into full-scale digital fabrication in architecture using industrial robots. At the same time, construction work will begin on Pike Loop, the first architectural project to be built on site by an industrial robot in the US.

Located on Pike Street, the robot, R-O-B, will work for up to four weeks—in full view of the public— to construct a brick wall, a highly sculptural response to the specific identity of the site. The same robot unit recently built the award-winning installation, Structural Oscillations, at the 2008 architectural biennial in Venice. For the Pike Loop installation, more than seven thousand bricks aggregate to form an infinite loop that weaves along the pedestrian island. In changing rhythms the loop lifts off the ground and intersects itself at its peaks. The installation was coordinated through the New York City Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program.

More images and a video after the break.

Last month, we featured a post about James May, a toy fanatic (and presenter of the television show James May’s Toy Stories), that built a house using LEGO bricks. The house was complete, but unfortunately, it’s now demolished after a deal to sell it didn’t quite go well.

Because the home didn’t have planning permission on its site, the builder was hoping to find a buyer to transport the house elsewhere. LEGOland theme park showed interest, but the high cost of transportation didn’t make seem like a good deal. The 3.3 million LEGO bricks used to build the home will be donated to charity once the home is teared down.

Seen at designboom. More images of James May with the completed house and demolition process after the break.

In the post-parametric era, one key challenge for architectural design is the acquisition, processing, and integration of data. Designers already have an enormous amount of computable data from building simulations, physical sensing, geometric form, construction techniques, cost and location of materials—and the mountain of numbers shows every sign of rapid expansion.

MONU – magazine on urbanism is a unique bi-annual international forum for artists, writers and designers that are working on topics of urban culture, development and politics.

Each issue collects essays, projects and photographs from contributors from all over the world to a given topic. Thus MONU examines topics that are important to the future of our cities and urban regions from a variety of perspectives.

They have just released their latest issue on the topic of “Clean Urbanism”. You can see more about the articles on their official website. Also, you can browse the entire issue YouTube (video after the break).

While we keep showing you the 100 houses designed by 100 architects in ORDOS 100, we might as well remember the ones we published quite some time ago. You can also check Part I here.

The Turkey Pavilion unveiled its design this week and its theme “The Cradle of Civilization” was inspired by one of the first known settlements in the world, said Sencar Ozsoy, commissioner general of Turkey.

The main inspiration for the exterior of the 2,000-square-meter rented pavilion was also derived from settlements called “Catalhoyuk” in Turkish, which were the center of advanced culture in the Neolithic period.

The pavilion looks like an amazing red and beige box with an animal sculpture, inviting visitors to explore a maze of dreams. The first section of the pavilion will take visitors through a journey of time to learn about Turkey’s historical firsts. A map indicating the ancient sites of Turkey, the world’s first mirror and the world’s first man-built dam will be featured here. Istanbul’s infrastructure will also be introduced.

In the middle section, a 360-degree movie will display scenes from the streets of Istanbul to reflect the pride of the city as the European Capital of Culture. Visitors will then encounter the future in the final section, which is represented by a symbolic figure of the phoenix, a mythical bird which dies in flames and is reborn from the ashes, to embody aspirations for the future.