Hitting the A+ Awards Red Carpet tonight are (clockwise from top left): MoMA’s Paola Antonelli, David van der Leer, Elizabeth Diller, and Yves Behar

Our first gala for the Architizer A+ Awards starts in … a matter of hours! And we’re putting the finishing touches to make sure we look all pretty and polished for our guests, who are, needless to say, pretty distinguished. So, who’s gonna be on the red carpet tonight (you know, besides the President of Georgia)? From architect giant Juergen Mayer H. to intrepid photographer Iwan Baan, here’s just a sampling of the many glamorous names attending our fete!

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BIG’s masterplan (top) and OMA’s (bottom)

Miami Beach is heating up as two of the biggest international architecture firms compete for the masterplan of its convention center area. High-profile competitions between high-profile firms are nothing new; usually involving four out of the ten usual contenders, these matches happen on almost a weekly basis. What makes this instance more captivating, though, is the strong frisson of oedipal tension at play between contenders BIG and OMA: Bjarke Ingels, founder and head of BIG, used to work at OMA. More after the jump!

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If you’re anything like, um, everyone else who uses the Internet, you spend a good chunk of your time online looking at animal photos. But while the World Wide Web abounds with images of writers and their dogs, or celebrities and their cats, or Salvador Dali and his lobsters, there are dismayingly few—if any—Architecture + Animal posts. (Believe us, we’ve Googled it. Lots.) So, inspired by our friends at Buzzfeed and their amazing Corgi roundups, we present: starchitects and dogs, specifically their doggy doppelgängers. Because, it’s Friday, and we—and you—deserve it. Click through to see them all!

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Before we could even finish saying “trash-incinerator-ski-slope,” BIG has dished out another dazzling showcase of founder Bjarke Ingels’s “hedonistic sustainability” concept. The Danish wunderkind and his firm were recently announced as the winning designers for EuropaCity, an 80-hectare cultural and commercial destination between Paris and Roissy in France described by the architects as “a laboratory for sustainable technologies.” Sure enough, the renderings are drenched in neon green, illustrating the crowning achievement of the design: an enormous continuous green roof spanning over a new metropolis of retail, culture, and leisure. More after the jump.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Vote Award in the Landscapes and Gardens category. See the full list of winners here.

A lot can be said about a neighborhood from observing its parks. The social interactions that go on in these public areas—the groups of people who visit at different times and utilize the spaces and amenities in divergent ways—can reveal a great deal about the socioeconomic systems undergirding the community. So though an unsuspecting bench, tree, or bike rack might not seem to communicate much, these objects set the stage for very telling public exchanges.

For their design of Superkilen, a half-mile-long urban park in Copenhagen, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Topotek 1, and Superflex took the concept of the park as a social laboratory a step further. The designers crowdsourced ideas from the community—a famously diverse group of local inhabitants—to come up with a collection of objects from 62 countries to incorporate into the park plan. See how it turned out after the jump.

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Our friends over at Audi (an Architizer A+ Awards sponsor) have teamed up with Marvel Comics to launch a pretty awesome contest. “Steer the Story” invites comic-book fans to draw the final panel of a new Iron Man installation, on steerthestory.com, featuring superhero Tony Stark driving his, you guessed it, sleek new Audi. (Danger and mayhem ensue, naturally.) Participants who submit their own artwork will have their name featured in the final digital-download edition of the “Steer the Story” comic, with US participants getting a chance to win a signed drawing—as well as a trip to Comic Con in San Diego to have their art reviewed by a Marvel editor.

Anyway, we know plenty of you architects would be amazing at this. After all, Bjarke Ingels wrote his own (pretty snazzy) comic book!

So, get drawing, you guys! And go to steerthestory.com for more info.

Image: courtesy of Audi

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Critics of BIG poke fun at the blocky, elemental formalism that the firm employs — or did, at least in their earlier projects — by likening them to mountains of LEGOs. Bjarke seemed to be in on the joke when he (and a poor team of interns) built a gigantic 250,000-piece LEGO model at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in 2007.  The installation played to BIG’s critics and advanced Bjarke’s, admittedly sketchy, “hedonstic sustainability” agenda, balancing architectural “research” in form and program with unabashed, if unironic, fun. Six years later, Bjarke is embarking on another LEGO venture.

BIG will design the first ever LEGO museum in Billund, Denmark, according to a report by Architect Magazine. Known as the LEGO’s “Brand House,” the project’s function is being described as a “public museum and experience center.” The architect envisions an open museum with walls of “user content of such a high quality,” though what that says of the project’s spatial program, or even curatorial approach, we’re not sure. If you’re having any doubts, put them to rest. ”It will be the best museum ever,” Ingels promises—yes, EVER.

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Of all the things to stop Bjarke Ingels‘ (and that hair’s) incredible winning streak, who would have thought a tree might do the job. A protected 80-year-old tree located on the site of BIG’s Marina Lofts project for Ft. Lauderdale has locals worried about its fate. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the octogenarian rain tree (albizia saman)—the largest in Florida—stands on the spot of one of BIG’s 36-story mixed-use towers that form the heart of developer Asi Cymbal’s plan to revitalize downtown Ft. Lauderdale. Continue.

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All images via naibooksellers

You may have noticed that we’ve taken a short break from the giveaway business, but who are we kidding, they’re so much fun that we couldn’t stop for too long! Now that the hiatus is officially over we’ve decided to celebrate by giving away a copy of The New Wave in Danish Architecture by Kjeld Vindum and Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss. The book is a comprehensive examination of the new developments that have occurred in Danish Architecture since the 2000s. Featuring interviews with architects Bjarke Ingels, Winy Maas, and Julien De Smedt, the book explores the success of 12 young Danish architecture offices including PLOT, BIG, and Nord. Click through to learn how to enter.

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Sliced Porosity Block by Steven Holl. Photo: Hufton + Crow

When’s the last time you saw the world’s top architects come together for a meeting of the minds? As we all know, architects can be a very individualistic bunch, with egos and accents usually getting in the way of  that blissful round of kumbaya. But, the egos have been shelved for the Architizer A+ Awards, the biggest architectural awards program ever.

From Steven Holl and Preston Scott Cohen to Bjarke Ingels and the principals at MVRDV, architecture’s best and brightest can all be found on the A+ Awards jury. They will decide who—you?—takes home the trophy in 50 categories. They will choose whose projects will be showcased in major media publications like the Wall Street Journal, GOOD, Huffington Post, Cool Hunting—and Architizer, of course! Our jury also includes big-name journalists, developers, tastemakers, digital gurus, cultural luminaries, and other key figures, all of whom are helping us break architecture out of the echo chamber.

You’ve only got 7 days to submit your projects to the A+ Awards site, so if you want a chance to get your work in front of these great designers, be sure to enter now. Click through to see more of the architects on the jury and some of their best work.

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