The FIFA World Cup is on in South Africa, and Brazil just beat out the Ivory Coast to advance from the so-called “Group of Death.” Dangerous! Now we present #4 in our series of giveaways that tie into our database of architecture projects from around the world.  [Note: We drew winners for the first three giveaways on Friday.] This is… the World Cup of Architecture!

In honor of its big win, today’s competing nation will be BRAZIL. A bit of explanation: our database contains tons (literally!) of architectural projects from all over the world.  Inspired by a World Cup match, we will highlight a single country; your task is to comment on our Facebook page or below with your favorite building. You can even add a sentence about why you picked it, but that’s not required.

What is the prize? Because we know you love architecture, New York, and witty building descriptions, we have a lovely AIA Guide to New York City for the winner.

Steps to the World Cup of Arch:

1) Check out the database of built projects made in Brazil.

2) Comment on this post with your favorite (below or on Facebook).

3) That’s it, now entered to win a free AIA Guide to NYC.

Here are a few examples of Brazilian architecture to love: 

more

Chicago, we love you. Not only do you have architectural boat tours, skyscrapers and public art galore, you hosted what was probably the best World’s Fair and your art museum supports architecture, too.

The Art Institute of Chicago just opened a small photography show this weekend featuring the architectural photographs of John Szarkowski, Aaron Siskind, and Richard Nickel, who all worked during the 1950s, shooting the buildings of the late, great Louis Sullivan.

Demonstrating the role that the three held in maintaining Sullivan’s legend for modern audiences — then attracted the Modernism (capital “M”) so prevalent in the mid-century — the curators outline a thesis as follows:

In the 1950s, the photographers John Szarkowski, Aaron Siskind, and Richard Nickel embarked on in-depth photographic explorations of structures designed by the renowned architect Louis Sullivan, whose commercial buildings and theaters of the 1880s and early 1890s broke with historical precedents, displaying a radical, organic fusion of formal and functional elements. Attracted to Sullivan’s renegade American spirit and uncompromising values, Szarkowski, Siskind, and Nickel also found inspiration in the play of light over his ornamented facades and the dynamism of his buildings within the bustling city of Chicago. The interest of these photographers came at a critical moment, when many of Sullivan’s most important structures were being threatened with demolition in the service of urban renewal; their photographs illustrated the fragile existence of his architecture and provided new impetus for its preservation.

A few images from Looking after Louis Sullivan after the break.

more

Hey sports fans! We just selected three winners at random from the pool of commenters who weighed in with their favorite projects from the Architizer database. (Each contest was aligned with timely FIFA World Cup matches — coming up we’ve got Japan, Denmark and more, so stay tuned.) Without further ado, our medalists:

GAME 1 Mexico: Anna (“My favorite is the Personal Shopper Palacio de Hierro Perisur. I’d likely buy anything they tried to sell me in that room.”)

GAME 2 France: Anna Kiraly (“Windshape is beautiful. Very evocative, it is art/installation/architecture.”)

GAME 3 The Netherlands: Angel Taleb (“Maastricht Academy of Art & Architecture. The building is an incision into the body of the city. It is set in a discreet, almost camouflaged relation to the city, providing an enclosed public space. GREAT!!!”)

The first Anna will receive a copy of Arium: Weather and Architecture signed by co-author Juergen Mayer H., and Anna Kiraly and Angel Taleb will both snag a copy of the new AIA Guide to New York City.

Congrats, winners, and everyone else: keep playing for a chance to snag a free book! We have more great architecture tomes than we know what to do with, and the FIFA World Cup lasts another few weeks.

more

The FIFA World Cup is on in South Africa (as of writing this, Portugal and the Ivory Coast are tied). Now we present, #3 in our series of giveaways that tie into our database of architecture projects from around the world.  This is… the World Cup of Architecture! [Note: We will draw winners for the first three giveaways on Thursday, so stay tuned!]

The big Cup news over the weekend was Ghana’s win (the first victory for an African nation), Germany’s pounding of Australia 4-0 and a 1-1 draw between England and the U.S. Also, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding those loud Vuvuzela horns (they sounded cool at first, but the buzzing sound is drowning out everything!). And yesterday, the Netherlands blanked Denmark 2-0.

Today’s nation will be THE NETHERLANDS (after a last minute change from England). A bit of explanation: our database contains tons (literally!) of architectural projects from all over the world.  Inspired by a World Cup match, we will highlight a single country; your task is to comment on our Facebook page or below with your favorite building. You can even add a sentence about why you picked it, but that’s not required.

more

The Fumihiko Maki-designed extension to the MIT Media Lab in Boston is a six-floor, heavenly-white transparent machine. Its glass-and-metal exterior screens, white-washed walls, and colorful stairway leading up to the lab spaces are serene, a physical manifestations of openness and collaboration for the students that occupy it (a novel concept in an age of aesthetic showmanship).

The Media Lab was only recently opened and occupied at the beginning of December 2009. It is designed for flexibility, attempting to anticipate the future—however, its main feature, transparency, could bring a certain social anxiety.

When I toured the $90 million project complete with seven labs, conference rooms, social spaces, exhibition, and sixth-floor event space, it was already full with life. On a campus filled with contemporary architecture, this one is comparatively cheaper (Gehry’s Stata Center came in at over $200 million!).

An eyewitness account of MIT’s new Fumihiko Maki lab building after the break.

more

A trend has begun to surface in both the art and architecture worlds in the form of the inhabitable installation. Historically speaking, the overlap of disciplines is nothing new. Cross-pollination in art movements and architectural theories are evident in everything from Boullee’s cenotaph for Newton to the Italian Futurist movement.

The “intervention” has become a testing ground for many young designers as a way to explore the properties of a material and the structural integrity of form. Often designed at a manageable scale — one larger than a study model but smaller than an entire building — these undertakings act as tangible prototypes for larger projects.

This set of projects draws inspiration from arachnids, which spin their own brand of spatial constructs. Structurally, the spider’s web is a compelling mixture of efficiency and aesthetics — the projects below take the idea of a spider’s web and reconfigure it at  human scale.

more

As architects are trained in the art of building, light, materials, and space, they often develop a talent for photography. The AIA Architectural Photography Competition, sponsored by the St. Louis Chapter of the AIA, celebrated these talents, picking three top photographs and commending many others. The first place, “Soho Snow” by Ryan Barnacastle, is a classic black and white snow-filled shot of an empty New York street, with no traffic save for a few brave souls making their way.

Brian Tye’s “Starry Night,” captures a massive unidentified modern building’s downlights, revealing a celestial sky for those looking up. William C. Mead documents the “Porch Shadows” that are created from a perforated chair. “An Altar in Teringua” by Robert L. Meckfessel reveals an empty place of worship flanked by two windows on each side and a textured wood roof. The room echoes meaning from the unseen people who once occupied the space.

The award for spookiest photo should have gone to Andrew Raimist for “Ando’s Ghost”: we peak through what appears to be a window in the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (in St. Louis) and see a blurring body moving through. Tadao Ando might be shocked to learn that he haunts his own buildings. It’s a sensuous photo nonetheless. Enjoy the some of the winners, via aia.org, after the jump:

more

Every architect has that ‘one that got away’: the project  another firm landed, the job where the client pulled the plug just before construction — a common occurrence this past 18 months — even the commission whose demise was no fault of their own. I think of two Los Angeles architects whose years of designing a dream Modernist house fell by the wayside when their clients, a warring couple, opted for a divorce instead of a home.

But few architects have confronted a wayward project in the fashion that Los Angeles-based architect Clark Stevens did recently.

Once partners with Michael Rotundi at the avante gard firm RoTo and now the head of his own practice, Stevens aims to re-design great swathes of the American West. Essential to this brief is creating houses for these breathtaking landscapes.

A few years ago, Stevens designed a delicate, light-filled Modernist home to be built in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument area in South East Utah. Although the site had been readied, the project fell victim to the 2008 recession: the clients pulled the plug. A dispute over fees ensured which was resolved some months later.

Two months ago, Stevens, whose love of fly-fishing and camping has led him all across the West, found himself cruising Google Earth. He thought he’d tale a nostalgic peek at the hole the in the ground that marked this fated house’s end point. Imagine his surprise at spotting shadows cast over the site.

more

Good afternoon, sports fans! Coming up today is the second in a mighty series of giveaways that tie into our vast database of architectural projects and summer’s hottest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup.

For first-time players, here’s the rundown: we’ve got projects. And they’re all over the world, so we’re picking one country at a time to highlight according to the order of matches in the FIFA World Cup (see the schedule here).

Today’s nation? France! We have 81 built projects in our database from la patrie, and your task is to comment here — or on our Facebook page — with your favorite building. Everyone who comments will be entered in a drawing to win an awesome book, today’s pick being a copy of the brand spanking new AIA Guide to New York City.

Start your engines:

1) Peruse 81 spiffy projects built in France, whose team is playing in the second FIFA match against Uruguay on June 11.

2) Comment on this post with your favorite.

3) Sit back, relax, and score a free book.

Here are a few options to consider:

more

The Royal Institute of British Architects might be a tough crowd to please (the London chair recently resigned in the face of a “no confidence” vote — meow!) but its taste is unimpeachable.

Each year the organization awards accolades to a host of British architects for their built work in the field, seeking the edifice that made the “greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year.” Of its 102 honorees in the 2010 RIBA Awards, 93 are in the UK, with the remaining 9 sprinkled across Europe.

And despite economic woes, the show will go on. President Ruth Reed said, “In the midst of the deepest recession in the 45 year history of the RIBA Awards, this year’s awards demonstrate that although times might be hard for architects, there are still great buildings being built throughout the country and overseas.”

Unlike its cousin the Stirling Prize, also awarded by RIBA and pulled from the larger list of 102, the honorees comprise a handy reference guide to emerging and mid-career practices-to-watch: “Far from being a size prize, the RIBA Awards are for buildings that offer value to people’s lives.” Examples of “gem-like” projects that made the shortlist include a small circular restroom for bus drivers in London, a zero-carbon house, and the energy substation for the 2012 Olympics.

We’ve selected a handful of especially stellar projects after the jump. For the full list of award winners, visit architecture.com.

more