This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the Architecture + Weather category. See the full list of winners here.

It is rare for an architect to find an untouched location in a large city that lends itself so perfectly for constructing a monumental building. Like the iconic waterfront Sydney Opera House, the Wuxi Grand Theatre, built by Finland’s PES-Architects, benefits from its location. The theater is on a manmade peninsula on the north shore of Taihu Lake, highly visible from all directions and in particular from the main bridge linking the old and new cities of Wuxi. This prime spot provided the perfect opportunity to design an equally eye-catching roof, which the architects used to place the building in a direct dialogue with the city’s weather.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Choice Award in the Architecture + Weather category. See the full list of winners here.

When submitting a design for an administrative office at the factory site of a cement plant in Rajasthan, India’s largest province, Sanjay Puri Architects were feeling the heat—heat in excess of 110°F (45°C), that is. Since Rajasthan features the Thar Desert, where temperatures during the summer months make the locale nearly inhospitable, the architects had to consider the climate and weather patterns for the proposed office’s design. To mitigate the effects of an extremely harsh climate, the architects turned to the traditional Indian design of incorporating open-air courtyards to create cooler internal spaces, and came up with a concept called BIOME. Read more!

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

Part of the virtue of the conventional playground—with its swing sets, monkey bars, slides, and assorted colorful, climbable, spin-able accouterments—is its modular and compact nature, its condensation of so many replicable obstacles and stimulants into a relatively small space. The downside of this, however, is the limited variety of experiences that the traditional playground can offer. Given a sprawling, riverside space at the Sydney Olympic Parklands, JMD Design sought to re-conceptualize the children’s playground, manipulating space and rethinking typical play equipment to enhance the experience of Blaxland Riverside Park Regional Playspace for both children and adults.  See more after the jump.

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The KAUST Breakwater Beacon looks more like a vertical honeycomb than a seaside lighthouse. Far from the traditional imagery of quaint watchtowers, this Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, lighthouse, designed by Daniel Tobin, Matthew Tobin, and Jamie Perrow of Urban Art Projects reflects ancient Arabic maritime traditions and regional artwork and architectural details, tying it to the Red Sea. Click through for more!

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The megacity of Shanghai is known for its futuristic skyscrapers, booming population, and economic dominance—not for bucolic images of mountain ranges. Perhaps that is why we immediately thought of a twisting, looping roller coaster when we spotted this brand new bridge designed by Shanghai-based CA Group on psfk, which was meant to evoke the peaks of mountains not found in the region.

Making its way across a river, the bridge seems to echo the energy and motion of the world’s most populated city, rather than giving its residents a distant feeling of nature. The dynamic arches are visually striking, recalling that nervous, excited feeling of plunging down a colossal coaster. However, they also function to support the bridge’s infrastructure. See for yourself!

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Miele Kitchen by Tamie Glass & Uli Danel

That headline catch your attention? Good. We’ve got an amazing competition for you—and best of all anyone can enter: architects, interior designers, home builders, or just anyone who likes to cook (and has a space in which to do it!).

We’ve teamed up with The German appliance company Miele in search of the coolest kitchens in the world. With its full suite of kitchen appliances that double as objets d’art, Miele wants to see how you use its products to enable the most cutting-edge kitchen design.

Starting today, April 22, Miele and Architizer invite all architects, interior designers, kitchen designers, home builders, developers, interior architects, and home owners to submit their exceptional Miele kitchens for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Eurocucina in Milan, along with a visit to Miele’s international headquarters in Gütersloh Germany! The winning designs will be featured on Architizer.com and shared with Architizer’s 1,000,000+ social media fans.

Entries must include at least three Miele appliances, and must be submitted by July 12. For more information and submission guidelines, check out the competition page. Good luck!

Miele Kitchen by Jorge Martinez

Miele Kitchen by Cassie Wyner

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Choice Award in the Architecture + Sustainability category. See the full list of winners here.

In contemporary architecture, the concept of sustainability is often associated with the latest technology. It might bring to mind glossy, high-performance buildings bedizened with photovoltaic cells, or LEED-stamped supertalls embedded with water- and energy-conserving systems. This notion of sustainability, however, caters to a metropolitan environment, its glass-and-steel facades blending in with the existing fabric of urban development. For its Off Grid Home in Extremadura, Spanish firm ÃBATON faced the challenge of transforming an abandoned stable tucked away on a hillside far from city infrastructure into a state-of-the-art, environmentally conscious family residence without disturbing the pristine ecological and aesthetic milieu of Cáceres, Spain. See more after the jump.

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Earth Day is here! In honor of the annual holiday that brings awareness to the environment, we’ve decided to gather some of our favorite architecture with living walls. We’ve got everything from workplaces that grow their own lunches (yum!) to single-family homes veiled in greenery (wow!). Enjoy the green walls!

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The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has released new photos taken from the summit of 1 WTC, what will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The tower’s glazing has been nearly completed, as can be seen in the photo below, and the 42.2-ton spire, which will help the structure reach its symbolic 1,776 feet, is being prepared for installation. The shot above was taken from some 100 floors up, just over the future public observation deck where visitors will be able to take in uninterrupted views of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. (Oh, and Staten Island, too.) Looking at onto Manhattan, you’ll find the Woolworth Building and other nearby landmark structures that once stood proudly as the technological achievements of their day.

All photos: The Port Authority

[via WTC Progress]

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