All images courtesy of Danny Cheng Interiors

Hong Kong architect Danny Cheng’s new project for Discovery Bay rises from an enveloping reflecting pool like a mirage. The White Chapel deserves its name, because in order to give a reading of unity and purity, the designers made every single surface of the chapel’s interior a brilliant white.

With an overall form reminiscent of the US Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel, the Hong Kong project juts up in a series of A-frames, a pyramid of white before a back drop of mountain, sea, and sky.

Of course, it’s easy to be elegant when you’re sticking with one color, but the use of form and views prevents this project from being boring. Far from it, it’s one of the most dynamic uses of white since the heady days of the New York Five. More photos after the jump!

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Believe it or not, some of modern architecture’s most storied white boxes were never meant to remain so white. While Adolf Loos was skirmishing with Vienna’s Secessionist architects and descrying the whipping, stylized vines of their nature-inspired ornament, his 1930 Villa Müller in Brno was designed to be partially concealed in actual, living vines. Like Loos, Mies van der Rohe intended for some of his plastered white facades to be covered in vegetation. Few have paused to contemplate how this affects modernism’s clean, hard-edged historiographies, but with all this in mind, Act Romegialli Architects’ renovation of a disused garage on the slopes of the Raethian Alps — which uses raw nature as its primary form of exterior ornament — can be considered quite modern. More after the jump.

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We’ve probably all seen a video or two of some adrenaline junkies base-jumping off the tops of skyscrapers and other monuments (and if not, here’s one to start you off). Part of the allure of such spectacles is the fact that these landmarks were never intended to be sites for such high-flying stunts; one can easily imagine the thrill of seeing monumental icons like the Burj Khalifa or Christ the Redeemer flash before your eyes as you race towards the ground at however many miles per hour at which these things occur.

The same could be said about these abandoned cement silos on the outskirts of Warsaw, which were certainly not originally built for extreme sports, but could function perfectly as a skydiving and scuba diving recreation center if Moko Architects have anything to say about it. What’s more, the Polish firm wants to retrofit the structures with a facade of shipping containers. Holy adaptive reuse, batman! Click through to see more.

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Architects and aesthetes just love to disguise ugly infrastructure. We’ve seen so many kinds of proposals, from electrical substations made over with tiles and mirrors to highways trellised with ivy. Now the folks at AZPA want to dress up a coal-fired power plant outside Hamburg as a resplendent green “mountain” surrounded by new public park.

With a porous, mesh-like cladding that will support CO2-hungry creepers, the revamped plant would play a role in cleaning the air that it is also polluting. Can a lush, vegetated power plant become a genuine public good, or is this just a brilliant stroke of greenwashing? Read more!

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All images by FIXd Architecture

The problem with sustainable design? Sometimes the architects can forget the “design” part, letting the means for achieving sustainability define a project’s aesthetics. Since the late 1960s, this kind of structural and technical exhibitionism has become a widely practiced metaphor for the building-as-metabolic-system. The not-so-hidden agenda, of course, is to display the technical proficiency of a given architect and to make obvious the immense array of complex systems any designer must manage.

The latest example of this is the Mo Ventus house, by FIXd Architecture. This conceptual zero-net-energy, luxury residence—thus far realized only in digital renderings—can be built almost anywhere, unbound by climate or existing infrastructure.

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This week Snøhetta and AECOM released new renderings for the Golden State Warriors arena, a 740,000-square-foot sports complex that will rise on Piers 30–32 on the San Francisco waterfront.

Last time we checked in, the arena—which is slated to open in 2017—was but a distant gleaming orb, with few public details beyond the promise of ample open space (and water taxi service!). The updated renderings give us a few more clues about the Warriors’ new home. Read more!

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We are all familiar with the asterisk, that adorable star-shaped glyph used to denote the omission of information, be it the missing vowels of your typed expletive or some less favorable fine print, banished to the peripheries of an ad campaign. Formally speaking, however, the multi-pronged symbol can be a very inclusive form, gathering several uniquely oriented sections into one point of convergence. Thus the versatile asterisk became a fitting source of inspiration for SAKO architects‘ multi-use winery, restaurant, and wine showroom in Beijing. Click through for more.

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For Milan Design Week 2013, Kengo Kuma brought his traditional Japanese aesthetic of transparency and lightness from the natural environment to the city center. In “Naturescape for Urban Stories,” Kuma envisions a natural space set within the bustle of the crowded urban area of Milan. Suspended between sculptural environment and architecture, Kuma’s installation reinterprets the traditional Japanese garden as a series of sinuous, organic garden spaces comprised of pietra serena stone, bamboo, water and gravel. Around each garden, the terrain delicate steps upward, forming bulbous elevations that determine the borders of reflecting pools and paths of movement.

Known for his use of  light and natural materials and strong connection to the landscape, Kuma infuses the installation with a sense that these “urban stories” could be placed in any large city. The delicacy of materials and feeling of serenity achieved through the gardens helps a dense city area reclaim the natural environment taken away by development. Click through to see more!

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We’ve seen grandiose new skyscrapers do all sorts of weird things. From rotating dynamic towers, to hi-rises that have enormous voids, to skyscrapers built so tall they can’t find enough occupants to rent space, architects like to try anything to come up with a headline-grabbing design. However, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture‘s latest proposal for Mumbai’s tallest building—the slender 116-story, 400-meter residential Imperial Tower—may take the cake. According to AS+GG, the svelte structure is designed to “confuse the wind.” Click through to read more!

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This summer Gensler will break ground on Chicago’s first affordable housing development for LGBTQ seniors. Located in the heart of Lakeview (aka Boystown, the city’s most prominent gay district), the project will offer the area’s 55-and-over set the chance to grow old in their own neighborhood. It’s not exactly aging in place—this is still a retirement facility, after all—but it sure beats getting shipped off to unfamiliar surroundings. Read more!

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