The Herzog & de Meuron-designed Olympic Stadium in Beijing. Photo: Iwan Baan

Dutch photographer Iwan Baan has been at the forefront of architectural photography since 2005, when he documented both OMA’s CCTV tower and Herzog and de Meuron’s Olympic Stadium in Beijing. He soon rose to the top of the profession, being called on to photograph many of the most innovative contemporary buildings. His influence expanded beyond the architectural profession when he captured the iconic New York Magazine cover image of Lower Manhattan without power after Hurricane Sandy. This district soon came to be called SoPo—South of Power—and Baan’s photo was instrumental in bringing the storm’s effects into public view.

Honored with the Architizer A+ Relevance Award, presented by New Museum director Lisa Phillips, Iwan Baan is among the most talented architectural photographers working today. His art lies not only in capturing the building as an object, or in mastering composition, but also in capturing the urban context and human life both within and beyond his subjects’ walls. He shows architecture as most people see it, transcendent but also in touch with day-to-day life.

Presented here is a roundup of some of his most celebrated images, including studies of life in the Torre de David, an abandoned bank tower turned informal housing complex in Caracas, Venezuela. Check out all of the images below, as well as on Baan’s web site.

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Robert Hammond and Joshua David, co-founders of Friends of the High Line, accept their Architizer award.

Architizer Honorees Robert Hammond and Joshua David aren’t architects. They don’t have design degrees or urban planning experience. But that didn’t stop them from banding together to save an old elevated railway track in Manhattan’s West Side from oblivion. Little did they know that their passion project would end up not only creating one of New York City’s most beloved public parks, but revitalizing an entire neighborhood.

That project: the High Line, of course, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Robert and Joshua founded Friends of the High Line after a community meeting about the abandoned structure in 1999. Which made them a natural pick for our first Architizer Advocacy Award. Not only does their story illustrate the transformative power of architecture and design, but it also proves that anyone—not just architects, planners, and the like—can participate in it.

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Easter is just around the corner, and you don’t need to celebrate the holiday to enjoy all the Cadbury Creme Eggs, marshmallow Peeps, and chocolate bunnies currently in season. But there’s one guilt-free Easter tradition that we (gasp!) love even more than candy: That’s the good ole-fashioned Easter Egg Hunt. We’ve gone all over the world and back to find the best, most labyrinthian, and prettiest public parks to hide—or search for—those colorful little treasures. From ancient ruins to futuristic gardens, here are our nine favorite places for an Easter Egg Hunt. Click through to see them all!

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Tactical urbanism generates so much buzz now—what with cheeky-smart interventions like scaffolding seating, recliner benches, and recreational parklets—that it’s easy to forget how pedestrians usually get shortchanged in the urban scheme of things. After World War II, Rotterdam remade its city center with larger-than-life modernist principles in mind, installing big works of infrastructure fringed with big buildings and, in the process, cutting central Rotterdam off from its northern districts. To improve their lot, residents are turning back the clock to 1854, when the city architect proposed a plan based on public walkways. “He planned canal promenades as a way of structuring the city,” says Kristian Koreman, principal of ZUS (Zones Urbaines Sensibles). Now, of course, any pedestrian amenities must preserve traffic patterns, so ZUS designed a sky bridge that will knit the city center back together. Read more!

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Left image via Vulture; right image via Curbed

Usually pop-ups are relegated to the tiny and the temporary, like Zaha’s pop-up hair salon or this hammam-turned-library in Bulgaria. But if the ambitious Hudson Yards development continues apace, come 2017 the city may bestow on itself one of its fanciest architectural toys yet: a 150-foot-tall giant glass box outfitted with a hideaway synthetic shell that can glide out and enclose a public plaza.

Like a modern-day Crystal Palace, the 170,000-square-foot Culture Shed—designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Rockwell—will be an insta-venue that can house programming from all over the city, from Fashion Week to large-scale art installations to heretofore-unthinkable collaborations between the city’s artists, musicians, and performers.

“The Culture Shed encourages the city to shed those old definitions of culture,” Justin Davidson writes at Vulture. “It will operate the way the Forum did in Ancient Rome, as a neutral meeting ground where ideas can be incubated and influences exchanged.” Read more!

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Photo: Iwan Baan

Calling all NYC architects! We’re looking for the next revolutionary, innovative scheme that will revitalize and make a big impact on the city. (Think High Line, Plus Pool, or Brooklyn Bridge Park.) And it could be yours!

We’re collaborating with the Municipal Art Society of New York on Pitching the City, a singular event that’s part of the New Museum’s Ideas City 2013 festival. The event will explore new urban initiatives, and we need young designers to present their projects!  We’ll choose five architects to pitch their ideas to our esteemed jury of experts, as well as to an audience of urban enthusiasts. The designers will receive feedback from jury members, as well as be featured on Architizer!

So, think you’ve got an amazing plan that will transform New York? Send a brief description (250 words max) and four to six low-res images to editorial@architizer.com with the subject line “Pitch the City.” Deadline is Friday, March 8. We’ll be in touch if your idea is selected for the event.

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First it was the High Line. Then the Lowline. Now the Vine Line? New York architect and Upper West Side resident Laurence Tamaccio has drafted a petition to extend New York’s captivation with linear green space to the West Side Highway, where he wants to install a trellis of ivy to conceal the structure’s unsightly industrial blemishes. “The Vine Line is a concept to create a visual screen between the pedestrian viewer and the highway structure itself,” Tamaccio explains in a YouTube video about his proposal. “Almost like a scenic backdrop, but as a green wall that’s freestanding from the highway structure.” If he wins, the island of Manhattan will be one step closer to an improbable (but logical) fate of waking up one day under a carpet of ever-expanding parklike surfaces! Read more.

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Iwan Baan via highline.org

Architizer is hosting the world’s definitive architectural awards program, with 50+ categories and 200+ jurors. Alanna Okun, Assistant Editor at BuzzFeed Shift, will be covering relevant stories and news relating to the jury, the categories, and latest updates related to A+. See her previous post on Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp here. To learn more about the awards, visit architizerawards.com.

Robert Hammond, the co-founder and director of Friends of the High Line, has signed on to be a part of Architizer’s A+ Awards Jury!

You know the High Line. If you’ve visited New York in the last three years, chances are you’ve strolled the nineteen or so blocks, from Gansevoort Street all the way up to 30th, that the elevated park covers. It’s a manageable but substantial distance, and while you are on it you somehow feel both part of the city and privy to this secret overarching sense of it.

The park, which runs along part of the west side of Manhattan, looks like a garden from the future. It’s all tall, spiky grasses and benches that appear to rise organically from the boardwalk where tourists and locals stroll. It’s good for first dates and for showing your parents around the city, to keep them from worrying that you’re not eating well all the way out there in Brooklyn. As Hammond explained in his June 2011 TED talk, ”What really makes the High Line special is the people…I realized right after we opened that there were all these people holding hands on the High Line.” He added: “I think that’s the power that public spaces can have.”Aww.

Continue.

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image © Visualhouse

Midtown Manhattan has long been the site in mind for New York City’s greatest makeover yet, in the form of the Hudson Yards. The project consists of 48 city blocks and 26 acres of greenery stretched between 30th and 43rd streets vertically and spanning across 8th avenue to the West Side Highway. This massive development will include 20,000 housing units, 2 million square feet of retail space, another 3 million square feet in hotel ares, 12 acres of public space, a new public school, a subway extension, and a laundry list of world famous designers behind it all. Some designers who have already signed on include Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, David Rockwell, Elkus Manfredi and Thomas Woltz. Now add a number of developers, city officials, community boards, and pesky zoning laws and Hudson Yards is poised to be either the perfect plan– or perfect storm. Read more.

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The High Line, New York’s most buzzed about park, seems to be adding new attractions all the time. No, these aren’t themed rides, per se–though the High Line’s signature peel-up benches, and soon, the “peel-up seesaw” might count–but you could say that the elevated park’s peculiar urban presence, its formal magnetism, and, of course, its property value all but invite, even require a certain architectural exhibitionism. Ennead Architects’ Standard Hotel and Neil Denari’s HL23, under pressure by neighboring flashy designs by Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, set the tone for all the site’s future baubles to come.

The next in the series, however, cannot be reduced to pure formal extravagance, though there’s moments of that here, too. Studio Gang’s Solar Carve Tower, a 180,000 square-foot office tower that will nuzzle a portion of the High Line between 13th and 14th streets, is less willful (i.e. arbitrary) icon-making than “informed” design. Continue.

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