Attention book lovers, your personal library needs this one: we’re giving you the chance to win an epic book, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro: Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account!

This impressive hardcover takes an in-depth look at the redesign of Lincoln Center, one of New York City’s most iconic cultural centers. Lincoln Center Inside Out, published by Damiani and written by the firm behind the brilliant redesign (Diller Scofidio + Renfro) chronicles the process and context through a combination of photographs, drawings, renderings, archival records, and texts. Everything you ever wanted to know about the institution’s revamping is there in one package! Awesome, right? Find out how you can enter for a chance to win after the jump!

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Today’s A+ finalist spotlight includes museums, theaters, and cultural centers around the world. And trust us, these buildings are as beautiful and rich as the art that they hold. Click through to see them all!

Spot a favorite? Make sure to vote for it over at the A+ Public Voting site!

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Bring on the European-sized portions of popcorn and dark chocolate M&M’s: The Architecture and Design Film Festival is now under way here in New York City, and with more than 25 films from around the globe ranging from 2 minutes to 103 minutes, this four-day event offers something for everyone (there’s even a film on the “art of human waste“).  We had the chance to watch Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line, by the Checkerboard Film Foundation, which takes a long and steady look at the illustrious architects. Read more.

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Photographed by Iwan Baan

The Municipal Arts Society (MAS) recently announced the winners of its annual MASterworks awards. Among the “best new buildings” was Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Hypar Pavilion, a freestanding structure that unites a new home for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and an 11,000 square foot destination restaurant all under an elevated public lawn.

The architects behind the High Line, the darling urban park that has turned an outdoor promenade into an act of finely tuned voyeurism, have once again integrated building and landscape to challenge traditional notions of public and private. The Hypar Pavilion’s twisting grass canopy is a bold form, a source of visual identity for the project that has no shortage of predecessors. Click through for a survey of other notable sloping green rooftops.

Photographed by Iwan Baan

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Li Xiaodong, Bridge School, Xiashi, China.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture winners have been announced: Li Xiaodong, Emre Arolat, Nieto Sobejano, Association de Sauvegarde de la Medina de Tunis and Moriyama & Teshima Planners Limited / Buro Happold are the final choices for the award, which comes with a prize worth more than five times that of the Pritzker. The prize was established by the Aga Kahn to reward architectural excellence that addresses “the needs of societies in which Muslims have a presence.” [via BD Online]

Ya burnt, Gehry! Donald Trump on Beekman Tower, luxury real estate and the ruling class: “It’s always very tough to make something successful at the high-end level with a public school in the building.” Trump must be steaming that Gehry’s quickly progressing tower will eclipse Trump World Tower as the tallest in New York. Anyways, If there’s one reason to click through for more, it’s Curbed’s photoshop, which we included after the jump. [via Curbed]

There’s nothing we love more than the cold-hearted take-down of a restaurant. The Times review of Lincoln Ristorante isn’t exactly brutal (though this one was), but it’s interesting as an exposition of how a space can affect the interpretation of food and the dining experience (it’s housed in the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed Lincoln Center space). [via New York Times]

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“I also think lawns are over. High maintenance, riddled with pesticides, an emblem of the suburbia we are now trying to remake. I knew the grass would die a quick death. We need landscape architects to come up with new sitable surfaces, either plants or man-made, so we can stop trying to make grass grow like a rug.”

–  Design critic Alexandra Lange addressing landscape design as part of “Lunch with the Critics,” in which she and Mark Lamster chat-and-chew while discussing the highs and lows of architecture in its space.

The first part of the Design Observer series chronicles the new look of Lincoln Center, courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Though Lange and Lamster take issue with, respectively, the lack of “hierarchy” and “charm” in the new Alice Tully Hall, they do complement the LED steps and it’s an even split on the ballet studio projected over 66th Street. The Illumination Lawn, not faring much better, is by turns referred to by the critics-who-lunch as WOG (Wedge of Grass) and a Pringle.

Read the entire in situ review here and let us know if you agree: how does Lincoln Center 2.0 feel to you?

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Las Vegas’s architecture dog-and-pony show City Center posted an operating loss of $255 billion for Q1 of 2010. One of the owners, MGM Mirage, is also “locked” in a $500 million financial dispute with the contractor. That’s gotta sting. [via Wall Street Journal]

Ouroussoff throws down: the New York Times architecture critic pans the Lincoln Center re-look by Diller Scofidio + Renfro as “pointlessly gimmicky,” “comparatively oppressive,” and rife with “cheap thrills.” Looks like he’s taking that “be more critical” directive to heart. [via New York Times]

Curious design brief for this “inspirational landmark” building in Leeds, England, but we’re digging the renderings. Think that bright yellow will pass the city council elders? [via ArchiCentral]

A little-known building outside of Perugia, Italy, designed by a young Renzo Piano is under threat of the wrecking ball. The “evolutionary” house was intended as a residence for mentally ill patients, but the infrastructure has been declared unsound and the tenants evicted. [via Arch Record]

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The redesign of Lincoln Center has been heralded as a vast improvement over its somewhat severe modernist forebearer. Diller Scofidio + Renfro with FXFOWLE and Beyer Blinder Belle have made the design a more engaging experience to the pedestrian.  Photographer Paul Clemence sent us some beautiful shots of the newly rehabbed Lincoln Center Promenade.

The original Lincoln Center was conceived as an urban renewal project in the 1960s by Robert Moses, John D. Rockefeller III, and civic leaders for Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Original architects of the buildings composing Lincoln Center included Philip Johnson (David H. Koch Theater), Eero Saarinen (Vivian Beaumont Theater), and Gordan Bunshaft (NY Public Library for the Performing Arts), among others.

The Lincoln Center design was viewed as something of a folly once it was complete.  Critics cited that it represented the worst about Moses-era urban renewal, specifically that it paid no mind to its context and created a cultural superblock that was not in keeping with New York’s virtue of pedestrian-friendly urbanism.

In 2006 DS+R, FXFOWLE and BBB took on the massive task of overhauling the Center’s design.  The results are amazing.  Check out the Alice Tully Hall project on Architizer and also marvel at the shots below.

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