Berlin-based Henn has been chosen as the winner of the architectural competition to design the 280-meter Cenke Tower in Taiyuan. Located on a north-south axis, the mixed-use tower will include office, hotel, and retail space.

Asymptote's Velo Towers, designed for the Yongsan master plan in Seoul, Korea, are formed by vertical cluster of cylindrical volumes which were strategically stacked and rotated to maximize views, privacy and environmental conditions. Consisting of eight distinct residential components, each cluster is carefully choreographed to establish a strong visual connection with the adjacent Yongsan Park and distant Han River. These clusters are complimented by a series of roof gardens, shared amenities and internal circulation spaces centered around light filled open atriums.

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DALE, short for Dynamic Augmented Living Environment, is this year's U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon entry for the SCI-Arc/Caltech team. Made of two movable, prefabricated modules that open to allow the outdoors in, DALE celebrates the active California lifestyle through its dynamic architecture.

DALE learns from two classic California precedents: the super-sized suburban tract home and the compact, sufficient bungalow; amending one and expanding on the other to become a new Southern California typology. At 600 square feet, it is a micro house with an unprecedented flexible interior that results in the program of a house three times the size.

Architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli has been selected to design the new $195 million McCormick Place Event Center in Chicago that will double as home for the DePaul Blue Demons basketball program. With 10,000 seats, the building will also house large business and professional meetings as well as concerts and special events.

More on the design after the break.

In an effort to “feed the world,” penda, in collaboration with Alex Daxboeck, has won first runner-up in the two-stage competition for the Austrian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Supporting the Expo’s theme, penda’s proposal plans to be designed and harvested by its visitors, who will plant herbs, vegetables and fruits all over it throughout the duration of the seven-month event. By the end of the Expo, the pavilion will be fully taken over by organic food, which will then be prepared by chefs and served back to the visitors in the Pavilion-Restaurant.

Construction begins in late October on the approximately 16,000 square foot new wing and building renovation of the Tacoma Art Museum. The new wing will provide a home for the Haub Family Collection of Western American Art, double the museum’s gallery space, provide greater art experiences for visitors, and increase the museum’s role in downtown Tacoma. Award-winning architects Olson Kundig Architects will design the expansion and renovation.

GRAFT Architects has won first place in a competition to design a “premium common good resort” in Lofer, Austria. Located in the Pinzgau region of Salzburg, the resort will include a hotel complex, staff building, workshop based on “the economy for the common good,” “café villa” and a premium residence area. GRAFT’s design was highly lauded by both the client and locals, all of whom were fully involved in the decision process.

SeARCH has won an invited, international competition for the urban renewal of Marievik. Their winning proposal, STA(CK)HOLM plans to transform an area along one of central Stockholm’s main access roads, opposite the island of Södermalm and facing a new bridge by Norman Foster, into a futuristic sustainable neighborhood.

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London's King's Cross has seen a surge of redevelopment in recent years, the most iconic of which - John McAslan + Partner's new concourse for King's Cross Station - was completed last year. The area has also been defined by the new Central Saint Martin's campus, designed by Stirling Prize winner Stanton Williams, and Google's new London headquarters. Plans have now been unveiled for Gridiron (One St. Pancras Square), a 50,000 square foot office building nestled between St. Pancras International and King's Cross Stations, designed by David Chipperfield Architects and set for completion in the first half of 2014.

New York based Asymptote Architecture have unveiled designs for a new Centre of Performing Arts in Sejong, South Korea. Described as celebrating "the cities emergence and growth as a place of stature and culture," the arts centre is designed to "seamlessly connect to the city fabric." Containing two theaters, the program of the building has been designed to create a unified experience, allowing for a "powerful and 'episodic' interiority and experience."

The Bubble Building, a "renovation of a common, old and unattractive building" in the centre of Shanghai, is a simple design containing complex environmental qualities. Unlike a conventional retrofit or renovation, 3GATTI's proposal places inflatables made of white antibacterial technical outdoor nylon, in front of the windows on the existing building. Their concept was to "create an icon-building, a kind of landmark very easy to recognize, a kind of sculpture with a strong character able to detach itself from the boring cityscape" with the ultimate aim to attract customers to rent both the office and commercial spaces.

In September 2012, the Haitian Ministry of Economy and Finance called for the reconstruction of the hospital of the State University of Haiti, a medical facility located in the heart of Port-au-Prince that has been operating in ruins since the 2010 earthquake. After the Ministry received large development grants from the US and France, the challenge for designers was to create an earthquake resistant hospital within the $48 million budget, while also phasing the construction to maintain an operational capacity of 500 beds. MASS Design Group was one of the design teams to come up with such a proposal.

For the team's project description, read on.

Update: Steven Holl Architects has announced the topping out of the University of Iowa's Visual Arts Building, a commission they won in a competition in 2010. When complete, the new building will work with their Art Building West, which they completed on the University of Iowa campus in 2006, to provide a dedicated arts space for students. Read on after the break for our coverage of the design reveal from 2013, and for construction photos and up to date renders of the project.

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A few days ago, Korea's Incheon International Airport broke ground on its latest addition, Terminal 2. Gensler, in collaboration with the HGMY Consortium, designed the $2.5 billion project that will double the size of the country's busiest airport with its 72 gates and 7.4 million square feet of space. The project includes a second airport control tower, train station, parking facilities and an airside Intra Airport Transit (IAT).

Keep reading for the architects' description.

Supermarket stores have become the last link in the linear and out of consumer sight “farm to fork” chain. For the new Chedraui Supermarket Store in Santa Fe, Mexico City, Rojkind Arquitectos proposes that folding the chain onto itself and bringing it into view becomes an opportunity for interactive and educational programs, connection to local markets and a place for community. The proposal comes in response to the company’s desire to launch itself into a new direction offering something more that just groceries and goods; it tries to position the brand in a new market segment not considered to date, to help establish the new sustainable direction the company is trying to achieve and to offer a unique experience to it’s consumers while giving a public space back to the city.

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• Architects

  MAD Architects

• Location

  Harbin Xiangfang Cultural Center, Zhujiang Road, Xiangfang, Haerbin, Heilongjiang, China, 150090

• Directors

  Ma Yansong, Dang Qun, Yosuke Hayano

• Area

  1800000.0 sqm

• Project Year

  2014

• Photographs

  MAD Architects

Henning Larsen Architects has won a competition to design a new city hall for Kiruna in northern Sweden. The design, which has already been named Krystallen (The Crystal), is intended to "become the city's natural gathering point, where the traditions of democracy will be united with a vision about a dynamic meeting place for politics as well as social and cultural events". Comprising of two buildings, the outermost circular in form and the innermost "shaped like a crystal", the design has been "inspired by the enormous concentration of iron ore" that can be found beneath the site, the discovery of which led to the founding of Sweden's northernmost city.

Following the news that Studio V Architecture has been commissioned to convert the 19th century Empire Stores, next to Brooklyn Bridge, into 380,000 square-feet of office, restaurant and commercial space, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has unveiled designs for "a flowering meadow with seasonal grasses, a sprawling field and a triangular wooden viewing platform" close by.

After fifty years of neglect the Empire Stores, located next to the Brooklyn Bridge, are now the most coveted waterfront property in New York. Midtown Equity has partnered with Studio V Architecture to adaptively reuse the 19th-century coffee warehouse into 380,000 square-feet of office, restaurant and commercial space, highlighted by a Brooklyn-centric cultural museum. "After the Brooklyn Bridge," says Joe Cayre, Chairman of Midtown Equities, "the Civil War era Empire Stores are the most iconic structures on the Brooklyn waterfront. As a Brooklyn native who raised my family in the borough, it is an honor for my firm to be chosen for the redevelopment of the Empire Stores."

Learn more after the break...

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, together with LOOP Architects, COWI Denmark and Norway, Transsolar Energitechnik and Vugge til Vugge Denmark, has won the Nordic Build Challenge in Norway with their innovative scheme, Urban Mountain. The winning proposal, which would be Norway's tallest building, seeks to refurbish and extend an existing 50,000 square-meter office tower in central Oslo into 79,000 square-meter sustainable icon. Not only would the building be the first Norwegian high-rise to utilize natural ventilation, but the design would employ Cradle to Cradle principles and BREEAM Outstanding certification targets to significantly reduce the building’s energy consumption and CO2 footprint.

Continue reading to learn more...

As a continuation to his “Shan-Shui City” concept, which envisions a “city of mountains and water,” Ma Yansong of MAD Architects has proposed an interpretation of China’s ancient natural philosophy in the contemporary city: the Chaoyang Park project. Situated in the world’s second largest city park and surrounded by a typical Chinese business district, the Chaoyang Park project seeks to infuse the “vigorous Shan-Shui culture” with a new urban typology that unites architecture and nature as a single entity. 

In 2003, BOLLES + WILSON won a national competition that gained them commission of the new Luxemburg National Library (BnL Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg). After years of hibernation, the 39,000 square meter library will break ground in 2014.

Follow us after the break for more analysis on the library...

Consider a social-networking experience that combines real-time amusement with an awareness of your surroundings. Dutch architecture firm, UNStudio, together with Ferris Wheel Investment of Japan, have laid out a colossal vision that expects to attract millions of visitors to a mixed-use retail, food and beverage center anchored by an architecturally-iconic observation wheel, Nippon Moon. The concept utilizes a user's smart phone or tablet, extending the rider's experience far beyond the moment they physically enter one of the 32 single or double-decker capsules.

One of Coop Himmelb(l)au's latest competition winning designs is the Dawang Mountain Resort near Changsha, China, a combination of an entertainment ice world with an indoor ski slope, a water park and supporting restaurant and shopping facilities. Positioned directly on top of a historical cement mining quarry pit and lake, this proposal aims to combine "striking landscape with ambitious design" in a way that could redefine the idea and aesthetics of recreation for the south-central Chinese city.