For the latest in the Showcase series Archinect featured Villa Solaire by JKA + FUGA as well as Folkwang Library by Max Dudler.

Villa Solaire in Pied de La Plagne, Morzine, France is an ancient farmhouse converted into a luxury rental villa. The project made use of a traditional technique of decorative cut-outs within the wood strips resulting in a uniform perforated cladding, which wraps the whole facade. 

The Folkwang Library located in Essen-Werden, Germany is an institutional project which , combined musicological programs/collections from three institutions under one roof. The Folkwang Library also took advantage of a special photographic/glazing technique to create the illusion of the facade being fashioned from the stone material itself.

royc commented "it's a bit too literal of a reinterpretation for me...I love the knife edge though, it's nicely done. I'd be really interested to see the interior of that space, with the stairs/atrium". Save Western pointed out  "It looks like the original proposal was for actual marble, which came back astronomically expensive, so they VE'd to curtain wall instead. I wish, however, that instead of using the film to mimic marble, they would have used it to do something marble could never achieve".

News
One of history's most talented, dedicated, inspirational, and passionate architects passed away at the age of 104 years, Oscar Niemeyer who had been in and out of the hospital a number of times this year. Norman Foster published the following in a personal tribute to Oscar Niemeyer

"But what I most enjoy in his work is that even the individual building is very much about the public promenade, the public dimension...As a student in the early 1960s, I looked to Niemeyer’s work for stimulation; poring over the drawings of each new project. Fifty years later his work still has the power to startle us".

While discussing with other Archinectors LITS4FormZ memorialized "An irreplaceable force in the profession and his homeland. He will be missed. He survived long enough for many his works to go from cutting edge, to misunderstood, to hated and finally loved".

The Archinect iPhone app is updated with Discussion Forum, Job searching, and some bug-fixes! Download the app now from the App Store via this link: itunes.com/apps/archinect. Plus, in response to a question by Steve Fuchs, Paul Petrunia ‘let it slip’ that "Archinect is working on a fully mobilized version of that will offer an app-like experience on iOS, Android, Windows, etc... and that will have profiles, along with most of the content on the desktop version of the website.This will then be added to the iPhone app, and an Android app”.

Donna Sink posted the news that the innovative Chop Stick had hit the internets!  Chop Stick is a concession stand, playground, and sculpture-building for the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, which she was very fortunate to be local architect-of-record for, with the Swedish architecture duo Visiondivision. FRaC thought it was a "nice project!  i like the big swing but i wonder if diagrammatically it should have been something more different than the (5) swings on the other side - like a maybe a teeter-totter..structures professors should use this for students to calc loads/moments and stuff like that".

The University of Minnesota College of Design,  Tandus Flooring, and PublicInterestDesign.org introduced  Public Interest Design 100. The list is, a comprehensive look at 100 individuals and teams working at the intersection of design and service. While there are many designers, there are a great many more people working in roles essential to movement-building--as educators, communicators, connectors, funders, and more.

AP commented "great to see this list, and great to see Paul included.   looking at some of the other emerging members of this group, i'm surprised at the omission of DSGN AGNC / Quilian Riano".
 

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Michael S Bergin put up a post to serve as a teaser/call for assistance on a research paper, he is developing on the History of BIM. Therein he lays out how "The conceptual underpinnings of the BIM system go back to the earliest days of computing". He then moves on to examine the roots of the SAGE graphical interface and Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad program in 1963.

Xenakis reflected "I use to work for a competitor to Evans and Sutherland - Singer - LInk in Sunnyvale CA, and we were performing parametric modeling of cities for flight simulators back in 1986 - 89' ...We also did research for the urban design department at San Jose State - where modeled downtown San Jose for trolley system design - What we were doing then, would play out many years later when I as studying architecture and creating my own BIM system in Maya - Now I use Revit".

Tima Bell recently worked on an Awesome Pivot Door - Designed by TWInc - Fabricated by Breaform Design while Luis Guerrero recently worked on Ramps/Rails/Chair aka FixieCouch.

amlocke had a chance to stop in at the three groups of temples in Kahjuraho: the West, East and South groups respectively. He is still on his thirteen-week train expedition across India. He described the site as "Once veiled in dense woods, it now lies unveiled to the heavens with lustrous lawns of green. It is India's Parc de la Villette".

Recently, in Rozenburg (The Netherlands), a building and interior were designed by Sputnik Architecture Urbanism Research from Rotterdam. the new office building was completed for Qualm, a contracting firm for earthwork, road- and waterworks.
 

Schools/Blogs
SAC congratulated Prof. Gabriela Seifert and Götz Stöckmann of Formalhaut winners of the Baukunstpreis 2012. Their project, the Living Room, outside Frankfurt, was designed by two archi­tects, artists and a poet.

Christopher Sjoberg who this year started at G30 the English language, architecture and urbanism course offered through the University of Tokyo looked back to his/classes Workshop One presentation, held on November 22nd (Turkey Day). The goal of Workshop One was to develop a canopy system based on the principles of nonlinear tensegrity pioneered by Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto and Kenneth Snelson. As the class moves forward into Workshop Two, the focus will shift to simulating the actual performance of the system digitally.

Matthew Messner questioned "I understand as a first year curriculum that this is focusing on design technique/technology/fabrication, but I am wondering where else the conversation is going in the program...I ask this because it seems like so often Cool Wavy Wall Interesting Material Pavilions never reach beyond Cool Wavy Wall Interesting Material Pavilions.  I think that this is often a sign of the curriculum over failure of students".

Over at his Cranbrook Academy of Art school blog Farid Rakun included a critique of Gallery A: 7 a.m., his entry for this semester's 2D Design crit by Erica Mahinay a fellow student "The strength of Farid’s Gallery A: 7 a.m. is in its rigorous conceptual ambition, but it is also in this rigor that the work undercuts itself. The work asks me to go through a process of dissecting a complex network - which in itself becomes detritus. After going through a laborious process of sifting through each link, I find myself understanding little more than at the beginning".

Discussions
The news that Indianapolis had hired Danniel Libeskind to design a major downtown transit center, kicked off a discussion amongst the folks over at Thread Central. Donna Sink worried that while "Aiming high is good...Libeskind isn't aiming high.  He's a joke. And his weirdness will prove to be counter-productive in our city, which is exceptionally conservative and not terribly smart*, either...*No one in a position to lead public discourse about the project  will be willing to actually engage in a critical analysis of it, only in lobbing severely negative soundbites that do little more than ensure their OWN position in the spotlight.  And few in the community will have a sense that cultural discussions should be framed in any other way".

Yet, Steven Ward argued "indy doesn't just have to accept what libeskind brings, does it?!...why shouldn't a grassroots committee be involved in shaping the community conversation, serving as the good 'client' that libeskind will really need to make the project more suitable for the city's needs? seems like a good opportunity!” Will Galloway agreed "totally hoping you will write op-ed to danny libeskind donna.  those all sound like great arguments to make public instead of chewing it out here.  we all need to take those kinds of public positions but never do.  architects are such a reactionary crowd".

Over at the Your Final Architour Destination thread share what building you would spend your last days going to visit. accesskb answered "Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Chapel for all the sins I've comitted, followed by relaxation at his Vals Thermal Bath before the world ends :)”. For his part Mark Vanden Akker has always wanted to go to Kuokkala Church by Lassila Hirvilammi and thinks that "a church seems the right place to be at the end".

Finally for two fun threads check out Top 3 Worst/Horror architecture-z on planet earthbrought to us by Kos Scarpa Kos along with Yo Mama, Architectural Style....brought to you by Sarah Hamilton.
 

Additionally
Geographer and researcher Javier Arbona started a blog to document what he calls "climate urbanism". In Why a climate urbanism? he explains "I am interested a bit less in the science behind global warming (even while I try to understand it), and more in the human actors that scramble to respond—or to gain advantage from—a changing nature. I began this informal gathering process because I want to learn more about the ways in which established cities become territories of new forms of accumulation, displacement, and re-development based upon notions of catastrophe and climate disaster. This research begins from a growing angst, for me, that the quickening pace of unpredictable super-climate is not only real, but all-too real for those who have the least political capital and social agency to make do with what I see as emergent climate Enclosures".