Conditions of scarcity demand new ways of thinking, an expansion of the role of the architect and designer outwards in order to function more broadly and imaginatively as spatial agents. In contrast to the regimes of austerity ... the territory of processes and networks opened up by scarcity is far more conducive to creative intervention. It is here that scarcity — which can seem at first a bleak prospect — can become the inspiration and context for constructive and transformative action. — Places Journal

Vancouver hosted a fascinating hybrid of public spatial art and waste material upcycling in its downtown area this summer: Pop Rocks, a temporary installation that covered a full city block. The project is fabricated entirely from post-consumer and post-industrial waste from the metropolitan Vancouver region. — bustler.net

Ned Dodington, founder of AnimalArchitecture.org, today announced the winners of the 2012 Animal Architecture Awards. This year's competition, titled "URBAN ANIMAL", called for designs that reshape, expand and redefine the context of urban thought and space while keeping in mind the needs (and possible benefits) of synanthropic species — wild animals that “live near, and benefit from, an association with humans and the somewhat artificial habitats that humans create around them”. — bustler.net

Earlier this week in London, the Architectural Association and Foster + Partners announced AA diploma student Yi Yvonne Weng as winner of the 2012 Foster + Partners Prize for her project ‘The 6th Layer – Explorative Canopy Trail’. The award is presented annually to the AA fifth year diploma student whose portfolio best addresses the themes of sustainability and infrastructure. The recipient is selected jointly by the AA and Foster + Partners at the end of each academic year. — bustler.net

Amsterdam's UNStudio has just realized its latest project, the Center for Virtual Engineering (ZVE) [...] in Stuttgart, Germany. The official opening took place this week with an opening ceremony during which the German Sustainable Building Council (DNGB) awarded the building with a Gold certification.

UNStudio worked in collaboration with German firm Asplan Architekten on the architectural services for the Center. — bustler.net

The folks in Alabama have just passed a law that says quite clearly that they don’t want anything to do with sustainability. Though they might not have any problem with clean air and water and all that, it seems to be the planning for it that is the problem. Because planning, after all, is apparently what communists do. — triplepundit.com

So, to re-pose the question: what is the radical aesthetic consequence of the cultural desire for sustainable performance? Is it something that expresses itself in a set of formal rules, like the Modern response to the development of the steel frame? Or is it something — because it is essentially about performance — requiring entirely different means to fruition? Well, as with uncharted territory: here there be dragons. — Places Journal

Green building does not always require the latest in smart grid technology, solar panels, expensive recycled materials or the manipulation of Leed scores for environmental design in the same way students study tactically for standardised university examinations. Architects and designers across the globe are channelling their ancestors and creating building plans that maximise air flow, mitigate their impact on the local environment and offer comfort to residents and workers. — guardian.co.uk

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

Swapping cement and steel for timber is the vision of a number of environmentally-minded architects who are planning high-rise buildings across the world.

Architect Michael Green has plans for a 30-story wooden skyscraper in Vancouver, while plans are afoot in Norway and Austria for 17- and 20-story buildings that use wood as the main building material, eschewing steel and concrete. — CNN.com

We are happy to also present the second prize winner of the 2012 Design to Zero competition: Project Zero, a collaborative effort by graduate students Daniel Kim and Caitlin Ranson from Clemson University School of Architecture [...]. Project Zero seeks to redefine the "unit," focusing on the tight relationship between material unit, family unit, and living unit. The site chosen for the proposal is in a historic residential district not far from downtown Grennville, South Carolina. — bustler.net

A team of two graduate students from Clemson University School of Architecture, Eric Laine and Suzanne Steelman, has won the international Dow Solar Design to Zero competition. The team's proposal LiveWork was awarded the first place award, along with a $20,000 prize sponsored by Dow Solar. — bustler.net

Designed by John Kaliski Architects, in conjunction with Lawrence Moss & Associates, Landscape Architects, and Kimley-Horn & Associates, Civil Engineers, the Ocean Park Boulevard Complete Green Street recently broke ground on December 12, 2011. When completed in early 2013, it will be the longest complete green street in the City of Santa Monica, and one of the longest in Southern California. — bustler.net

The collaboration of three Toronto-based firms, JET Architecture, JCI Architects, and Terraplan Landscape Architects, has won the commission to build the "Shobuj Pata" (Green Leaf) Eco Community Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh. — bustler.net