Pasarela del Arganzuela by Dominique Perrault

Ribbons of mesh spiral around two conical bridges by French architectDominique Perrault that cross a river and park in Madrid. One part of the 278-metre-long footbridge crosses the Manzaranes River, whilst the second bridges the Arganzuela Park, beneath which the city ring road is buried. The two steel-framed cones meet at the peak of a hill inside the park but are separated by a snaking footpath. The footbridge connects two residential neighbourhoods and provides a route for both pedestrians and cyclists.Lights hanging from the branches of tree-like lamp posts illuminate the bridge after dark. The Pasarela del Arganzuela opened to the public in April, as did the park designed by landscape architects West 8 and other architects.

Universiade 2011 Sports Centre by GMP Architekten

Faceted glass triangles create glowing crowns around a trio of stadiums for the World University Games currently taking place in Shenzhen. The three Universiade stadiums were designed by German studio GMP Architekten and surround an artificial lake. The largest of the three buildings is the main events arena, which seats up to 60,000 spectators in three tiered stands. The second stadium hosts indoor activities including ice skating and the third houses a swimming pool for aquatic events. The closing ceremony for the games takes place on 23 August.

Martin Luther Church by Coop Himmelb(l)au

Steel whirlpools spiral into skylights in the roof of a church in Austria by architects Coop Himmelb(l)au.

The swirling roof, which was manufactured in a shipyard, rests like a table-top upon four steel columns over the prayer room of the Martin Luther Church.

Daylight penetrates the room’s stucco-covered ceiling through the circular voids, as well as through a street-facing facade of projecting glass triangles.

Through glass doors at the rear of the prayer room is a church hall used by the local community, while a sacristy, pastor’s office and toilets are situated alongside both spaces. A 20 metre-high steel bell-tower soars up into the sky in front of the building’s entrance.

House in Yotsukaido / Studio NOA

Architects: Studio NOA Architect & Associates
Location: Chiba, JapanProject Year: 2011
Project Area: 160 sqm
Photographs: Courtesy of Studio NOA

Located in suburb area, House in Yotsukaido is a residence that looks to merge the boundaries between the private interior space and the context, a non transference glass terrace connected to the home.
Thick walls surround the outdoor area, shielding the residents from outside eyes, while maintaining a sense of openness and exposure to nature. A single square opening cuts through the enclosure, framing a nearby retention basin and the neighborhood beyond. A solid black form cantilevers over a semi-opaque volume, inverting the traditional structural orientation.
Enclosing the ground floor, thin walls with a cloudy surface provides an area of transition between the contrasting atmospheres. At night, interior lights radiate through the translucent skin, illuminating the solid black mass, which appears to float in the sky.

World’s Tallest Skyscraper

Over 1,000 meters (that’s 3,280 feet!) with a total construction area of 530,000 sqm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture are currently in design development phase for Kingdom Tower. Slated to surpass Burj Khalifa by 173 meters (coincidently which Adrian Smith also designed while at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) Kingdom Tower is the centerpiece of the $20 billion dollar Kingdom City Development, with the tower itself expected to cost $1.2 billion dollars. Featuring a luxury hotel, office space, serviced apartments, luxury condominiums and the world’s highest observatory the tower’s foundation drawings are complete with the piling currently being tendered.

The world’s largest tower which will be located near the Red Sea in Jeddah,Saudi Arabia.

09FDIP / Spaceworkers

Architects: Spaceworkers
Location: Lordelo, Paredes, Portugal
Principals in Charge: Henrique Marques and Rui Dinis
Project Team: Rui Rodrigues, Sergio Rocha, Pedro Silva, Vasco Giesta
Finance Director: Carla Duarte
Engineering: Stru Concept
Project Area: 4,000 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Images: Courtesy of Spaceworkers

A “factory”for the city … A space to do things …. anything! Simply do things … Communicate. Communicate with the World … Know … Learn in a fun way!
A building that needs to dialogue with the city. An organic block, which gently lands on a square … A kind of constant sensory challenge that appeals to the discovery, experimentation, to a new way of experiencing this amazing city!
A space where the physical boundaries of the site are diluted in the geometry of the shape and permeability zones created by the balance sheet, reinforcing the desired fluidity of the surrounding urban space.

The building looks like a massive form, modeled on the basis of foreign relations to enhance, easily seized at car speed and able to stimulate the curiosity of passersby, in a constant game of seduction between “show” and “hide”.

The interior is thought of as a kind of continuous functional spiral around a huge central void, exploring an idea of ​​transparency, diluted in a lacy structure (suggesting the branches of trees in a dense forest), making the perception of different spaces possible and be a constant invitation to the movement and the discovery of spaces that are visible.

Barcode House / David Jameson Architect

Architects: David Jameson Architect
Location: Washington DC, USA
Project Architect: Alex Stitt
General Contractor: The Ley Group
Project Year: March 2011
Photographs: Paul Warchol Photography

Barcode House explores juxtapositions between the heavy and light and the old and the new. The work is formed by positioning the project’s diverse pressures into a unique situational aesthetic. Brittle masonry walls of the existing Washington, DC row house governed that the addition be engineered as a freestanding structure. Site constraints dictated a vertically oriented spatial solution.
The client’s desire for transparent living space generated the opportunity to create an integrated solution for lateral force requirements. Structural steel rods within a glass window wall are aligned with datum lines of the neighboring building elevations. A stucco circulation tower anchors the living space to the existing row house.

The Market Bag by Linus

The Market Bag by Linus is beautiful and functional. Perfect for the market or a sleep over, carry it in with a shoulder strap, or roll up the sides when not in use.

WasteLandscape by Elise Morin and Clémence Eliard

An undulating landscape made of 65,000 discarded CDs carpets the floor of theCentquatre art space, housed in a former funeral home in Paris.

The collected CDs were sewn together with wire then draped over inflatable mounds.

Called WasteLandscape, the installation by architect Clémence Eliard and artistElise Morin remains in place until 10 September when it will tour other locations.

Hourai 1111 by Touhoku University of Arts and Design

Undulating timber panels line the walls and ceiling of a Japanese hotel room renovated by Touhoku University students. The project entailed the modernisation of the Hourai 1111 suite in the Kameya Hotel, which is located in the Yamagata prefecture.

Lengths of cypress wrap around the main room to create beds, which face windows with a sea view.

The timber also curls below the windows to create a bench and raised platform.

Doorways on one wall lead to an entrance hallway and study, opposite to a duplicate upside-down doorway that leads to bath, shower and wash rooms.

These three adjoining bathrooms are finished with black paint and tiles, contrasting with the light-coloured spaces elsewhere in the suite.