The multidisciplinary design team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and Thomas Phifer & Associates was recently named winner of Design Waller Creek: A Competition. Organized by the Austin, TX-based Waller Creek Conservancy, this international design competition called for ideas to revitalize a 7-mile stretch of Waller Creek, a neglected Austin urban ecosystem, and thus turning a "currently fragmented and undervalued section of the city into a vibrant, livable, and workable district." — bustler.net

Canadian architecture, landscape and urban planning firm Brook McIlroy has shared with us Prince Arthur's Landing, an expansive downtown waterfront revitalization project for Thunder Bay, Ontario. The award-winning development opened in December 2011 and was designed by Brook McIlroy as lead consultant. — bustler.net

North Carolina architects Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee (PBC+L) recently received a 2012 Certificate of Recognition from the NC chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects for their project, "Brick Garden," designed for the Triangle Brick Headquarters in Durham, NC. — bustler.net

The Dutch city of Almere has won the bid for the Floriade 2022 and will host the prestigious world horticultural expo in the year 2022. The exposition takes place once every ten years in the Netherlands and is currently ending in Venlo. The MVRDV-designed plan for Almere seeks to be not a temporary expo site but a lasting green Cité Idéale as an extension to the existing city center. — bustler.net

Dutch firm HOSPER landscape architecture & urbanism has sent us images of its latest project, GENK C-M!NE, an urban square design for the revitalized mining area C-Mine in Genk, Belgium. C-Mine houses various creative industries as well as cultural functions and is currently hosting Manifesta, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art. The design of the square was a collaborative effort of HOSPER with Carmela Bogman Art In The Public Space and ARA Dries Beys. — bustler.net

After a series of acclaimed installations around the world, Munro will be bringing his Fields of Light back to the project’s birthplace at Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the heart of the Australian red desert in 2013. The installation will be his largest to date, and it will be powered entirely by solar energy. — Inhabitat

A jury of internationally recognized design professionals and Seattle civic leaders have declared a winner among three semi-finalists in Urban Intervention: The Howard S. Wright Design Ideas Competition for Public Space. The winner is ABF, of Paris, France, for its design, In-Closure, which envisions an interactive wall around a forested landscape that is both flexible and dynamic, embracing social life in the city at multiple scales. — bustler.net

Germany-based Egyptian architect Ahmed Al.Badawy has shared with us images of the fascinating project "Al.Mualla Cemetery Mural / A Matter of Life and Death" which won the First Prize at the First Islamic Competition for Ornamenting Makkah Al.Mukarramah (Mecca, Saudi Arabia). Next to Al.Badawy, the design team also included Ahmed Enab and Yasser Mehanna. — bustler.net

Rotterdam-based landscape architects West 8, together with local practice IROJE architects & partners, have recently won the international competition for the master plan of Yongsan Park, Korea. The park will be the first national park inside a South Korean city. More importantly, it will give ultra-dense Seoul some badly-needed green space and will be similar in size to New York’s Central Park. — bustler.net

Today the Trust for the National Mall announced the three winning teams of the National Mall Design Competition. [...]

The competition winners are: Union Square: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + Davis Brody Bond; Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument Grounds: OLIN + Weiss/Manfredi; Constitution Gardens: Rogers Marvel Architects + Peter Walker and Partners — bustler.net

Creating anything new, particularly a creative collaboration, is an act of pathological hope. It has been said the difference between construction and creation is this: a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. It was with this sense of hope that this project began—an idea borne not only of the notion that we had something to say, but that we could express it in an engaging, thought provoking, and intellectually rigorous way. — Lantern