The Structural Awards, held by the Institution of Structural Engineers every year, recognizes the range of innovation, achievement, and excellence of structural engineers whose work is often overlooked. The Structural Awards highlights the challenging environments structural engineers constantly face in order to help build highly complex structures. The annual competition aims to distinguish talent, garner public attention, and inspire young people to explore the field of structural engineering. — bustler.net

Great architects build structures that can make us feel enclosed, liberated or suspended. They lead us through space, make us slow down, speed up or stop to contemplate. Great writers, in devising their literary structures, do exactly the same.

So what happens when we ask writers to try their hand at architecture? — New York Times

That’s a nice photo of Paris, isn’t it? Nope! That’s not Paris and no, it’s not Disney World or even the Las Vegas Strip; it’s a replica Paris in China. What makes this clone of Paris even more weird is that it’s a ghost town. Only about 2,000 people live there, which means that those giant skyscrapers, with 700+ units tend to only have around 30 people living in each of them. This city has become a place to take wedding photos for Chinese citizens who can’t afford to travel to the real Paris... — mydesignstories.com

Rio de Janeiro remains the hottest subject for architectural ideas competitions around the world right now. Just last week, we published the winners of the [RIO DE JANEIRO] Symbolic World Cup Structure competition, hosted by British organizers [AC-CA], and today we have received the results of the latest challenge by Italian architecture publication Cityvision, Rio de Janeiro: Two Presents, One Future. — bustler.net

The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) is a philanthropic body, dedicated to preserving local culture. It recently wrote to RIBA after the architectural body awarded Zaha Hadid Architects' Galaxy Soho complex a 2013 International Award for architectural excellence, chastising RIBA's choice of winner. — phaidon.com

Three winners have been selected for the New Vision of the Loft 2 competition, held by Polish roof window manufacturer FAKRO in cooperation with A10 New European Architecture magazine. [...]

Entrants were challenged to create a new type of loft space through the inventive use of light and space. Other design requirements included highly energy-efficient technology and using at least 10 FAKRO windows or other products. — bustler.net

The New York Restoration Project, a non-profit founded by Bette Midler dedicated to bringing private resources to under-resourced communities citywide, launched the EDGE/ucation Pavilion Design Competition. — bustler.net

So much information flows by and through us at every moment--but most of it is either not available or not legible to us. Whether you’re a prospective student considering an education in architecture, an administrator assessing your school’s academic offerings, or a graduate navigating possible career paths, you need to understand the relevant data and the stories they tell. — acsa-arch.org

Almost invisibly in her own day, Natalie de Blois, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, helped guide the design of three of the most important corporate landmarks of the 1950s and ‘60s — the headquarters of Lever Brothers, Pepsi-Cola and Union Carbide — whose suave steel-and-glass facades still exude the cool confidence of postwar Park Avenue. — New York Times

Alessandra Cianchetta, a partner at AWP, the firm mapping the master plan, acknowledges the enormousness of her task. “La Défense as a concept is a bit obsolete,” Ms. Cianchetta said. “There is no interaction, no hospitality here.” — NYT

Yin Zhi, head of Beijing Tsinghua Urban Design Institute, said, "The technique that Broad Group uses has no precedent in the world, and the cost they promised is very low. So they either have some record breaking techniques or it’s a lie. They are gambling. If they win, they will change the history of world architecture, but that's one chance in a million." — news.xinhuanet.com