Rem Koolhaas has been announced as this year's recipient of the Dutch state prize for the arts, the Johannes Vermeer Award. The jury made a unanimous decision, citing Koolhaas’ critical contributions to architecture and urbanism since his career began with the publication of Delirious New York in 1975. — bustler.net

Architecture’s favorite black humorist Rem Koolhaas is at it again, off planning a Venice Biennale that stresses the dangers of globalization while battling conservationists for rights to transform a 16th-century Venetian palazzo — which currently serves as a post office — into a retail hotspot. Koolhaas’s firm OMA and its client Benetton recently secured permission to redesign the palazzo into a department store/cultural venue after five years of facing resistance from preservationists. — blogs.artinfo.com

The Three Grand Prize winners and thirteen Special Mentions were released for d3's Unbuilt Visions 2012 competition. The program promotes critical debate about architecture and design by acknowledging excellence in unbuilt projects. The Grand Prize: went to The Emperor's Castle, designed by Thomas Hillier, UK. In response homme_du_jura applauded "I'm very glad to see Thomas Hillier's work recognized...A beautiful piece!"

Yesterday we published a first image of OMA's latest competition win, the Essence Financial Building in Shenzhen. Here is the project now in more detail. — bustler.net

OMA has been awarded the first place in the international design competition for the Essence Financial Building in Shenzhen, China. OMA Partners David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas are heading the project which they intend to be a new generation office tower for Shenzhen. — bustler.net

In the competition for the new École Centrale engineering school in the French city of Saclay, southwest of Paris, OMA has been awarded the First Prize. The brief also includes the urban development of the area surrounding the school in Saclay's research and innovation zone. The winning proposal was developed in collaboration with Bollinger and Grohman, Alto, DHV, DAL, and D'Ici Là. — bustler.net

Scriptwriting also taught him something about architecture. "If you write a script, you try to stitch episodes together so that, at the end, you have a sort of suspense to a conclusion or a climax," he says.

"Architecture is very similar: You create a series of spatial moments and find a way to relate them to each other with the same purpose. An architect writes scripts also, but for people, not for actors." — cnn.com

The building has two colossal, uneven leaning towers (the highest rises 768 feet) that are conjoined at the top by an enormous angular bridge. Conservative estimates put the cost at nearly $900 million; Koolhaas, for his part, says he has “no idea” of the price. What is certain is that the CCTV building now dominates the skyline of Beijing, just as it dominates the airwaves of the country. — thedailybeast.com

An OMA-designed temporary pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival was inaugurated today with a screening of Kanye West's debut short film Cruel Summer. The pavilion, with a design led by Shohei Shigematsu, is a raised pyramid containing a seven-screen cinema invented by West's creative team, Donda. — oma.eu

Over the weekend, OMA’s design for the stage set at the historic Greek Theater in Syracuse, Sicily, was inaugurated with the performance of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Unbound, directed by Claudio Longhi. The scenography features three temporary architectural devices that reinterpret the spaces of the theater, which dates from the 5th century BCE. — bustler.net

Elected officials in Goshen, N.Y., voted Thursday against a resolution to demolish and replace the Orange County Government Center by Paul Rudolph. Steven Ward, hoped “mr diana will now get behind this decision and determine how best to renovate to meet the needs of the community...score one for preservation of the modern!"

Things are changing enormously in almost every sense. The effects of globalization have been positive and negative. My generation of architects is the first that could work almost anywhere in the world. We had the option to repeat the same building everywhere or to push ourselves forward, to create an encounter between ourselves and the local culture. — americancity.org

Before a city becomes a thing of steel, concrete, and glass it is a theater of visions in conflict. As a city ages, the visions do not die but come up against the physical and ideological resistance of the place and its people. This is an account of a Manhattan that could have been – might have been. A phantasmagorical Manhattan where the visionary meets the everyday. The island as we know it is but a pale reflection of a city designed by visionaries – a city of mad, incongruous utopias.