A jury of internationally recognized design professionals and Seattle civic leaders have declared a winner among three semi-finalists in Urban Intervention: The Howard S. Wright Design Ideas Competition for Public Space. The winner is ABF, of Paris, France, for its design, In-Closure, which envisions an interactive wall around a forested landscape that is both flexible and dynamic, embracing social life in the city at multiple scales. — bustler.net

Germany-based Egyptian architect Ahmed Al.Badawy has shared with us images of the fascinating project "Al.Mualla Cemetery Mural / A Matter of Life and Death" which won the First Prize at the First Islamic Competition for Ornamenting Makkah Al.Mukarramah (Mecca, Saudi Arabia). Next to Al.Badawy, the design team also included Ahmed Enab and Yasser Mehanna. — bustler.net

Rotterdam-based landscape architects West 8, together with local practice IROJE architects & partners, have recently won the international competition for the master plan of Yongsan Park, Korea. The park will be the first national park inside a South Korean city. More importantly, it will give ultra-dense Seoul some badly-needed green space and will be similar in size to New York’s Central Park. — bustler.net

Today the Trust for the National Mall announced the three winning teams of the National Mall Design Competition. [...]

The competition winners are: Union Square: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + Davis Brody Bond; Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument Grounds: OLIN + Weiss/Manfredi; Constitution Gardens: Rogers Marvel Architects + Peter Walker and Partners — bustler.net

Creating anything new, particularly a creative collaboration, is an act of pathological hope. It has been said the difference between construction and creation is this: a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. It was with this sense of hope that this project began—an idea borne not only of the notion that we had something to say, but that we could express it in an engaging, thought provoking, and intellectually rigorous way. — Lantern

The team led by James Corner Field Operations has been selected as the winner in the international Navy Pier Redesign Competition. The Pierscape concept is part of the larger vision for Chicago's famous Navy Pier called The Centennial Vision, which seeks to make the "People’s Pier a truly iconic and world-class destination as it approaches its 100th anniversary in 2016." — bustler.net

A few days ago, we published BudCud's finalist entry to the Kiev Islands Master Plan Competition. Here is now also the winner of the First Prize, the concept THE BLUE LINE by Romanian team Wolf House Productions and Gabriel Pascariu. — bustler.net

Krakow-based architects BudCud have shared with us their finalist entry for the international Kiev Islands Master Plan Competition. The proposal suggests the development of a network of existing islands and artificial mirco islands along the Dnieper river, right outside of Kiev, Ukraine, for recreation and nature exploration. — bustler.net

Des Moines Water Works, working in partnership with Iowa State University Department of Landscape Architecture, recently announced that Sasaki Associates, with RDG Planning & Design and Applied Ecological Services (AES), is the winning team of the Water Works Parkitecture Competition. — bustler.net

Dutch firms LOLA landscape architects, Deltavormgroep, and Piet Oudolf have won the commission for the extension of the historical park Groot Vijversburg in the north of The Netherlands with their submission “Star Maze”. The team has won the commission through a national tender, for which five teams were selected. — bustler.net

Diller Scofidio + Renfro have won the Aberdeen City Garden Project design competition which seeks to transform the center of Aberdeen, Scotland. New York City-based DS+R collaborated with local Scottish architects, Keppie Design and landscape architects OLIN, on this project and emerged as winners from a head-to-head race with another finalist team led by Foster + Partners. — bustler.net

The YUL-MTL : Moving landscapes international ideas competition on the Autoroute 20 gateway corridor linking the Montreal-Trudeau Airport to downtown Montreal recently announced three equal winners. The competition [...] aimed to develop strategic visions for the development of the 17 km corridor mainly composed of transport infrastructures, residential and industrials areas and brownfields in dire need of revitalization. — bustler.net

It is not uncommon today for an architect to give a public lecture about a building and gloss over the parameters of its program or the specific needs of its users, speaking instead mostly about the building's site — its measure, tendencies, desires, structure, mythologies, meaning — as if the problem of architectural design was primarily one of site response. — Design Observer

Munich's Department of Urban Planning and Construction recently announced that Rotterdam-based practice West 8 has won Part B (Housing and Neighborhood Center) of the urban and landscape planning competition for the first phase of Freiham North. Part A (Community Center, School and Sports Center) was won by Ortner & Ortner Baukunst Gesellschaft von Architekten, Berlin. — bustler.net

Oslo-based Eriksen Skajaa Architects recently won the competition for new gateways to the Sjunkhatten National Park in the northern part of Norway with their proposal called SAIVU. The proposal was a collaboration with Pushak and Bjørbekk & Lindheim Landscape Architects. — bustler.net