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A new community center in Sydney blends Aboriginal themes with contemporary design principles and building materials. The recently completed George Street Plaza and Community Building, designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with artist Daniel Boyd, creates a new cultural venue and place of refuge in the bustling Sydney Place, a commercial district within the city’s Circular Quay neighborhood. The two-part structure features a perforated canopy that rests atop a steeply pitched A-frame building. The long sides of the structure are faced in tubes; on the plaza-facing side, the ground level is enclosed with storefront glazing. The short ends are finished…

British studio Heatherwick Studio has revealed plans to transform a former desalination plant into a makers’ museum on the waterfront of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.Commissioned by the Jeddah Central Development Company (JCDC), the new museum, dubbed Jeddah Central Museum, is envisioned as part of a 5.7 million square meters in the heart of Jeddah, aiming to provide tourist, entertainment, sport, cultural, commercial and residential amenities. When complete, it will be Heatherwick Studio’s first project in Saudi Arabia.The new museum, which is intended to be the destination of “next generation of artists and makers”, will consist of production spaces for makers, including studios…

Mexican architecture practice Erre Q Erre has built a stone-clad pavilion as a “containment, rest and contemplation” in Mexican landscape in Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico. Named Chapultepec Environmental Culture Center, the 90,000-square-metre pavilion was replaced from a former vehicular parking lot into a pavilion where visitors are surrounded by a set of gardens with a naturalistic design and an ethnobotanical look.Erre Q Erre has completed the project as a result of a public and open competition, called by the Government of Mexico City in coordination with the Federal Government.Emerged as a new cultural, landscape and environmental node within the second section…

Drawn in by the propulsive four-on-the-floor bass that could be heard blocks away through the then-derelict streets of Chicago’s West Loop, in the late 1970s and early ’80s young club-goers gathered at a modest but stylish three-story former industrial warehouse where the party raged from midnight until 8:00 a.m. or later, the punch was spiked with LSD, throngs of dancers felt the wooden floor inside bounce and heave with their movement, and a new sound was created that would take over the world. This 1906 building, designed by the largely forgotten industrial architect Vernon Behel, became home to the legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles, whose nightlife soundscapes established…

Consortium PvJ, composed of Barcode Architects, HUB Architects, engineering firm ABT and landscape architect Karres en Brands, have been selected for the sustainable renewal of the Palace of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands.Based on a leading theme in the design, which is het Nieuwe Bowen, the new Palace will be built upon the principles of “what is available”, in order to minimize CO2 emissions and societal lifecycle costs as well as to maximize health, functionality and flexibility.Set to be built as an inviting building, the building, incorporating a reassuring effect on the visitors, is an ensemble of functions that…

The sixth annual MICROHOME architecture competition is part of the Buildner’s Small Scale Architecture Appreciation Movement, which hopes to highlight the fact that bigger isn’t always better. With great design and innovative thinking, small-scale architecture could change how this and the next generation view residential property.For the MICROHOME / Edition #6 architecture competition, participants are invited to submit their designs for a micro home – an off-grid modular structure that would accommodate a hypothetical young professional couple (which will be used as an example of family size throughout the competition series). The only requirement is that the structure’s total floor…

Ideas Competition addressed to all qualified architects and architecture students in the world, as long as Spanish is maintained as the official language.A beach art pavilion will be created as an alternative attraction for tourists to the beach in Los Cabos, Mexico. It will have spaces for temporary exhibitions and events. The Pavilion will have a Beach Club, gazebo and dock for yachts.The Desert Pavilion is presented as a real and different alternative for all those who want to be in balance with the natural ecosystem, in an artistic and aquatic environment, in the midst of contemporary architecture.1º Prize US…

MAD Architects founder Ma Yansong has crowned an abandoned market with a rainbow-hued fabric in Guangdong, China. Named Timeless Beacon, the installation, commissioned by the Guangdong Nanhai Art Field, wraps the Taiping market, known as the largest abandoned building in Taiping Xu, with reflective film and colorful fabric fluttering in the wind romantically.The three-storey building is located in Taiping Xu, a once bustling fair established in the late Ming Dynasty and and flourished for centuries until the 1980s when fishermen, businessmen, and villagers gathered there for trading.Image © Tian Fangfang”However, the onset of an urbanization boom changed everything, gradually pushing young…

At San Diego State University (SDSU) a new innovation district will make way for laboratory and incubator spaces where students and faculty can study alongside and collaborate with businesses working on groundbreaking research projects. The innovation district is part of a larger scheme at the university, dubbed Mission Valley, that will add 80 acres of park space and up to 4,600 market-rate and affordable housing units in addition to a stadium, retail, and a hotel. Its construction will allow SDSU to “expand its academic and economic impact on the region.” According to the university, it will serve “a national hub…

Uncontrolled urbanization, uncontrolled construction, ignorance, incompetency, unskilled labor force, the lack of technical know-how of architects and engineers are few of major consequences of the devastating Turkey-Syria earthquake, according to Turkish architects.While the architects argue that the destruction caused by the earthquake erose from negligence and “a systematic collapse” in the production and construction chain, they also underline that it resulted in a “collective complicity in relation to the form of production”.In addition, the architects believe that catastrophic urbanization policies guided by the political will, the collapse of architectural education system, construction amnesties and the implementation of urban renewal plans…