Back in 2009 SOM's City Design Practice took a comprehensive look at the the entire Great Lakes Lakes and the St. Lawrence, ecosystem and proposed The Great Lakes Century, a pro bono initiative - to begin a broad-based, bi-national dialogue. Reed Webster wrote that his "masters project was dealing with some of the same issues." His project waterWORKS was designed as a piece of a larger green-infrastructure plan for Traverse City, Michigan.

Israel’s ages-old city, Jerusalem, is rightly famous for its warm, honey-colored limestone architecture. But its lazily hip rival, Tel Aviv, has lately begun garnering attention for a contrasting — and equally abundant — assemblage of cool and creamy Bauhaus buildings. — washingtonpost.com

A secondary school project in Gando, Burkina Faso, a community center project in São Paulo, Brazil, and an urban renewal plan in Berlin, Germany are the winners of the Global Holcim Awards for 2012. These leading sustainable construction projects were selected from 15 finalist submissions by a jury of independent experts led by Enrique Norten. The finalists were the regional Holcim Awards 2011 winning projects that had been selected from more than 6,000 entries in 146 countries. — bustler.net

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Celebration was the debut of Dallas’ newest architectural icon connecting Downtown Dallas to West Dallas over the Trinity River. More than 40,000 people attended the opening celebrations from Friday through Sunday, March 2-4, when it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to walk, run and party on the bridge and toast the best new view in town.

The bridge, Santiago Calatrava’s first vehicular bridge in the United States, will officially be opened to traffic this evening. — bustler.net

For all its Brutalist charm and rigid adherence to the now-outmoded ‘streets in the sky’ concept, Robin Hood Gardens was an easy target for those who call architects hypocrites eager to champion crumbling estates they wouldn’t dare live in themselves. Many of the current residents can’t wait to be rid of it: a consultation in 2008 found that over 75% supported its demolition. — londonist.com

LAN Architecture recently completed 70° Sud, an apartment building in Boulogne-Billancourt, a western suburb of Paris. The project emerged as the winner of a competition back in 2008. — bustler.net

Hemp Technologies said it wants to use hemp-based materials to construct a 500-square-foot structure at the ruins of Knapp's Castle near Santa Barbara. The principal material for the project is Hempcrete, made of the woody internal stem of the Cannabis sativa plant, which is processed into chips and mixed with a lime-based binder. That concoction is then sprayed on, poured into slabs or formed into blocks like concrete to create the shell of a building. — latimesblogs.latimes.com

Lawrence Cheek explored the trend of open office design, amongst recent commercial/institutional architecture in Seattle. George Showman found fault "This is a weird article because one of the examples is an absolute palace (the Gates Foundation) and the others seem a little miserable...I have worked in an open office for years, but it was small enough that there were many moments of productive silence, and poor enough that I didn't expect more."

"What has fueled the Eisenhower memorial controversy in the media are the public pronouncements of two of the president’s granddaughters, Susan and Anne Eisenhower, who have proclaimed themselves dissatisfied with the design. Understandably, their position is being taken seriously. Yet I am concerned that the growing public brouhaha will ultimately weaken the memorial design." — The New York Times Op-ed by Witold Ribczynski

Big metal roofs speak of confidence and boldness and of the time of this country's greatest industrial might...It manages to be futuristic and nostalgic at once; the concept may be pushing two centuries old, but the likes of Foster and Rogers still present it as the acme of modernity. — Guardian

The Mecanoo / Royal Haskoning joint design team is the winner for the realization of the new The Hague headquarters of Eurojust, an agency of the European Union handling the judicial co-operation of cross-border criminal matters. The jury [...] announced the winner this week. — bustler.net

In our last post, we published the awarded entries of the international competition for the New Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Germany. One of the three Honorable Mentions was the entry by Rome/Paris-based MenoMenoPiu Architects. — bustler.net

Real Madrid Resort Island will be a major tourist and sporting centre of great dimensions and the highest level. This extraordinary complex will attract millions of people looking for quality leisure services. — The Guardian