Taking place at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on October 11, the Smart Growth: Tactical Urbanism Event features Mike Lydon, the primary author of Tactical Urbanism Volumes 1 and 2. He will discuss chair bombing, site-previtalization, depaving, open streets, intersection repair, and numerous other placemaking tactics at a time when cities and citizens are increasingly using short-term action to spur long-term revitalization. The event, which starts at 12:30pm, is free and presented in association with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Smart Growth Network. For more information, please visit here.

Taking place October 20-21, modeLab is putting on Simulation Lab, a two-day workshop on the topic of simulation with processing. In a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment, they will cover technical programming concepts such as syntax, control, and modularity. Utilizing a suite of libraries to extend processing’s functionality, they will explore and incrementally develop force-based, physics-based, and agent-based simulations. Additionally, they will examine strategies for visualizing the dynamic nature, unexpected tendencies, and behavioral effects present in our simulations. For more information, please visit here.

As we published yesterday, iconic Chinese artist, designer, and dissident, Ai Weiwei has just had his architecture design firm shutdown by the Chinese government. But this scuffle is only the latest of Weiwei’s many brushes with Chinese law. Seemingly since birth (“I was born radical“), Weiwei has been mixing art and politics to speak out against censorship in his country. Which is why he is the subject of a fascinating new feature-length documentary by Alison Klayman: ”Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.”

As the documentary description explains: “Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.”

While working as a journalist in China, the director, Klayman, gained unprecedented access to Ai while filming. Since being released, the documentary has gained many accolades, including the Sundance 2012 Special Jury Award for Spirit of Defiance.

You can find out more about the documentary, including if it’s playing at a theater near you at its website. And you can keep updated on Weiwei’s struggle at the Never Sorry Facebook page and on Twitter, @AWWNeverSorry

Screenshots from the trailer of “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” after the break…

The Nanjing Hexi District recently selected tvsdesign for the south expansion of the Nanjing International Expo Center (NIEC). The goal of this mission was to promote cooperation and exchange between the two cities, and re-emphasize the importance of friendly business relations between China and the United States. Their design will compliment the original master plan and design while embracing the cultural history and beauty of Nanjing, calling upon its dramatic landscape of iconic mountains and scenic waterfronts to enhance architectural roof forms and shape towers that emphasize the importance of the Olympic Axis to the Hexi District. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Nordic Light is a 240-pages book with a wide array of lighting projects in nordic architecture as well as essays about light in late 19th century art form. The book contains architects and comtemporary artists such as Snøhetta, Olafur Eliasson, Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects and Henning Larsen Architects. The graphic elements presented in the book is an interpretation between northern lights and architectural sketching.

In Western thinking the notion of void, or emptiness is a usually considered a negative state of affairs, absence or lack of something. As an existential term emptiness, coupled with our contemporary condition with unforeseen wealth, is associated with the sensation of uneasiness and alienation in the midst of our plenty. This spiritual emptiness may be filled on its surface with busyness and entertainment, cultural hipness and formal styles. This obsessive behavior or fear of emptiness, well exploited by commercial interests, is a trap that enforces us to produce, to consume and to fill the seemingly meaningless gaps, rather than allowing things to evolve in a natural and sustainable way.

Architects: Arhitektonski studio Fabijanić Location: Selve, Zadarsko-Kninska, Croatia Author: Nenad Fabijanić Co Author: Željko Pavlović Project Year: 2012 Project Area: 133 sqm Photographs: Miro Martinić

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Designed by Architetto Matteo Ascani (AMA), their horizontal farm proposal is a flowing architecture system where the farming world meets the Indian slum in New Dehli. The project aims to create a balanced mix with farms, working areas and housing to improve the living conditions for the inhabitants. By doing this, their design is able to avoid the slum situations to enhance the micro-economy. ‘Farmandala’ also provides an urban scale development, involving the street life and a territorial scale development based on vertical flowing connections. This is done by means of ramps that climb shops, farms and the recycle factory connecting to walking trails in the fields on the top of the hills. More images and architects’ description after the break.

David Mirvish, founder of Mirvish Productions, and Toronto-born starchitect Frank Gehry have officially unveiled a massive, mixed-use project that will transform Toronto’s downtown arts and entertainment district. The multi-phase project will significantly alter the city’s skyline with three, “sculptural” residential towers perched atop two, six story podiums.

Mirvish describes, “I am not building three towers, I am building three sculptures that people can live in.”

Continue reading to learn more.

Architects: JVA Location: Kvitfjell, Norway Design Team: Einar Jarmund, Håkon Vigsnæs, Alessandra Kosberg, Claes Cho Heske Ekornaas Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Nils Petter Dale

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After 81 days of detention without cause, a year-long travel ban extended for claims of internet “pornography,” and a $2.4 million dollar fine imposed for supposed tax evasion, Ai Weiwei has now been accused by the Chinese government of failing to re-register his architecture design firm, Fake Cultural Development Ltd.

Andreas G. Gjertsen and Yashar Hanstad, principals of the architecture cooperative TYIN tegnestue Architects in Trondheim, Norway, have been named as this year’s winners of The European Prize for Architecture. The young Norwegian architects were honored for their humanitarian work designing and building with community participation in poor and underdeveloped areas in Africa and Asia.

Annually presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, the prize is awarded to influential European architects “who have demonstrated a significant contribution to humanity and to the built environment through the art of architecture”.

Continue reading for more information and a sample of TYIN tegnestue Architects’ work.

Cube is a movie that cannot be highlighted by its cinematographic features. However, the idea of a perfect space driven by geometrical logics seems an attractive subject for us, architects. Along the film, the characters try to solve the twisted organisation of this “cube” in order to find their way out.

Have you already seen this movie? Share your thoughts about idealisation of space, or let us know any other reference that comes to your minds. As usual, we wait for your comments.

By Andrew Hawkins

From the author of the popular post, “So You Want to Own Your Own Architecture Firm,” Andrew Hawkins, we bring you his latest: “Architecture Decay.”

As an architect I am interested (and have always been) in the way in which buildings are put together. To me, at times, the actual process in which a building is constructed is more interesting than the final product. Not to say the final product is not interesting to me, after all that is the intent of my design, but I find much enjoyment in the process that follows the end of my designing and brings my creation into the physical world. At certain stages of the construction, the completed portion of work produces very visually appealing imagery. (At least to this architect)

With that in mind I also enjoy the opposite process: the deconstruction of buildings. And this main fascination stems from the photo above. My obsession really revolves around the slow decay and atrophy of buildings over time due to lack of care. Also the way in which nature can destroy a building over time or in an instant is a study of architecture itself.

More examples of #ArchitectureDecay, after the break…

Presented with the chance to make an impact on an urban skyline can be one of the most exciting opportunities for an architect, albeit one of the most stressful.   For, as much as we are driven by the project’s potential prominence, its soon-to-be visibility brings with it heavy criticism and concerns- and, rightly so.

Such is the case with Peter Gluck & Partners’ latest project for Philadelphia, 205 Race Street. Situated on the border of the Old City, the 16 story residential building has sparked debate due to its 197’6″ height – a marker that far surpasses the historic district’s height limit of 65′. Yet, the building’s positioning - immediately adjacent to the Ben Franklin Bridge and PATCO train lines – demands an architectural strategy that can remedy the site’s vastly different edge conditions.

More after the break.

Recently shortlisted into the top 8 for the UK sector and awarded a commendation for its creative and imaginative solution to housing in the UK, the Trent Bank proposal is a design-led framework that centers on self-provision as a sustainable development and procurement model for new neighborhoods. As a competition entry for the Isover Multi-Comfort House and designed by Eric Chancellor, Jordan Lloyd, and Chris Matthews, The development allows for a low density, but high intensity program of start-up businesses and community amenities, with transient commercial use – taking advantage of a piece of planning legislation called a Local Development Order (LDO). More images and architects’ description after the break.

VAUMM shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the competition for the remodeling of Molinao Park and the location of a covered and open fronton in Spain. Their design pretends to be the continuity of the park situated along the riverside and the eastern end of the town to the highway and Don Bosco slope. The fronton (sports space) is situated at the southern end of the park, next to the pedestrian access from the Oarso street bridge, so that releases the largest area of the open space to the north, near the train viaduct and the possible accesses through it to create a space which allows the use of it with temporary uses. More images and architects’ description after the break.

As the winner of ‘Environmental Quality Mention’, the proposed scheme for the HOf – Horizontal Farm International Ideas Competition is conceived of an intricate weave of the ‘farm’ and the ‘dwelling’. Drawing from the traditional Indian courtyard typology, the project, designed by ETT Architecture, enables community living (and farming) through a modular, scalable model that offers residents the benefits of low purchase cost, flexibility to expand as per means, and the potential of skill development and employment through self-build. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Authoring: Re-placing Art and Architecture challenges traditional assumptions about the relationship between art and architecture. From 2008 through 2010, David Adjaye, along with Marc McQuade, taught three studios at the Princeton School of Architecture. Each studio focused on a collaboration with three distinguished artists—Matthew Ritchie, Teresita Fernández, and Jorge Pardo—on interventions in three vastly different sites: the state of New Jersey, the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and the city of Mérida in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

The government of Turkey is considering the possibility of constructing a second canal in Istanbul that would result in carving out one billion cubic meters of soil from Turkey’s main land. In response, Turkish developer Serdar Inan has commissioned New York designer Dror Benshetrit to design a proposal that would reconstitute the soil into an innovative, net-positive community for 300,000 residents off the shore of Istanbul. Inan’s only wish is that the proposal blends “innovative design ideas, state of the art technology and cultural legacy with inspirations from the work of chief Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan”.

After six months of exploratory, interdisciplinary discourse with a team of experts – such as the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Buro Happold, Shoji Sadao from Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects – Dror has unveiled his radical vision this weekend at Istanbul Design Week. Check it out after the break.

Foster + Partners has broke ground on the Hongqiao Vantone SunnyWorld Centre, new dynamic mixed-use community centered on a four-hectare public park in the heart of Shanghai Hongqiao CBD. The large-scale urban plan that extends from Shanghai’s main station and brings together highly efficient, flexible office buildings, animated at ground level by shops, restaurants and a range of new civic spaces.

Continue after the break to learn more.

Today, the Southbank Centre announced its appointment of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS) as lead architect to refurbish and renew the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex. The UK-practice beat OMA, Heneghan Peng, Allies & Morrison, Eric Parry, van Heyningen & Haward and Grimshaw Architects to the job (see shortlist here). A formal appointment will be made after the statutory 10-day standstill period in accordance with EU regulations.

Rick Mather, Southbank Centre’s Masterplan Architect and a member of the selection panel, said: “We heard a huge amount of high quality and serious thinking demonstrating six quite different approaches to this part of the site. Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio’s proposals won because they best understood the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex and how it can be enjoyed and used more effectively. I look forward to seeing their designs develop over the coming months.”

Learn more after the break.

Visionary architect, MacArthur Fellow and National Academician Jeanne Gang joins Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and architecture critic Paul Goldberger as part of the Academy’s annual Architects in Conversation series. Together they will discuss Studio Gang’s past, present, and future projects, as well as Gang’s role within the important architectural tradition of Chicago. The talk will be on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, at 6:30pm at the National Academy Museum. For tickets and for more information, please visit here.