Reflecting on the site of Farnsworth House, an obvious floodplain, toasteroven wondered "who pushed siting the building where it is - the client or mies?". To which snooker-doodle-dandy replied "don't believe Mies would ever let a Client tell him what to do. In fact if they tried, he would most likely stuff out his Cuban cigar on their forehead"

German architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have won the first prize in the international design competition for the new exhibition center in Tianjin, China. gmp beat out tough competition from Fuksas, HHP, NBBJ/BIAD, and others. — bustler.net

For nearly 40 years, Toyo Ito has pursued excellence. His work has not remained static and has never been predictable. He has been an inspiration and influenced the thinking of younger generations of architects both within his land and abroad. — Glenn Murcutt, Pritzker Juror

In October of last year, we reported that the parametric design concept Cast Thicket had been selected as the winning entry of APPLIED: Research Through Fabrication competition. Over the past 4 months, the winning designers Christine Yogiaman and Ken Tracy have further developed their proposal in collaboration with TEX-FAB, and now Cast Thicket is complete and installed in the University of Texas at Arlington’s School of Architecture Gallery. — bustler.net

The winning entries of the 2013 Housing Tomorrow competition have just been announced, awarding three prizes and sixteen special mentions to design concepts that "explore, document, analyze, transform, and deploy socially‐ and environmentally‐engaged approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects."

This year's first prize was presented to Die Hu, Boji Hu, and Yang Zhou for their extreme environments housing proposal, 'Life on the Ropeway.' — bustler.net

Our friends at eVolo Magazine just announced the winners of the 2013 Skyscraper Competition. The annual award, established in 2006, recognizes design visions that rethink the conventions of vertical living and the use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations. [...]

The winners were selected for their creativity, ingenuity, and understanding of dynamic and adaptive vertical communities. — bustler.net

To conclude our mini-showcasing of the 2013 AIA New York Chapter Design Award winners, here are now the two Honor and five Merit award winners in the category Urban Design selected by the jurors David Coomes, Kathryn Gustafson, PLA, ASLA, Hon. FRIBA, and Alex Krieger, FAIA. — bustler.net

Here are now the two Honor and four Merit award winners in the Interiors category selected by the jurors Amanda Levete, Andrew Wells, FAIA, LEEP AP, and Clive Wilkinson, FAIA, RIBA. — bustler.net

The 2013 AIA New York Chapter Design Award winners have been unveiled, honoring 42 outstanding projects in the four award categories, Architecture, Interiors, Projects, and Urban Design. [...]

All winning work will be exhibited in the Design Awards exhibition at the Center for Architecture beginning April 18, with an opening reception from 6-8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through May 31. — bustler.net

How does one apply 21st century green design to a city with sites and structures dating from the 17th to 19th centuries? That was exactly the challenge for teams in the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up design competition, and on March 7, 2013, nine finalist teams presented proposals to address the need for affordable green design within Philadelphia at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. — bustler.net

In our last post, we published the six finalists and category winners of New York City's ambitious Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge. Here is now the award winner in the "Creativity" category, the concept "NYC Loop" by New York architects FXFOWLE, in more detail. — bustler.net

New York City leaders have announced the winning prototypes from the Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge which launched last December. [...] The competition had invited architects, students, urban designers, planners, technologists, and policy experts to create physical and virtual prototypes that imagine the future of NYC’s approximately 11,000 public pay telephones. — bustler.net

Design contests are considered a springboard to personal success, but they are nevertheless an inexhaustible source of friction and entanglement, with recurrent complaints over defects and shortcomings, and even corruption. — haaretz.com

Polish architecture studio exexe has shared with us their entry to the OperaLab IDENTITY DESIGN/DESIGN IDENTITY competition in Warsaw, Poland. The brief called for the design—and eventually realization—of a mobile pavilion for the OperaLab project which can host various activities [...]. The mobile pavilion has to be built from renewable materials, and its structure needs be flexible and easy to assemble and dismantle. — bustler.net