Architects Jarrik Ouburg and Laura Alvarez sent us their "Hortus conclusus" scheme in the recently concluded E12 of the Europan Norway competition. This year's theme focused on the future development of three Oslo-region municipalities projected to grow within the next 25 years: Bærum, Asker, and Ås.

Alvarez's and Ouburg's collaborative entry won second prize in the Ås category. — bustler.net

Architecture firm von Gerkan, Marg, and Partners won a large commission earlier this week to design a new urban development in Shenzhen, China. The 45-hectare project is part of an economic plan that China developed for the area. — bustler.net

Construction has begun on a 47-story office tower at the edge of one of the busiest rail yards in the U.S. The $15 billion development will ultimately roof much of the 26-acre yards and stretch west from Midtown’s brawny brick to the sparkling park-edged Hudson River. A swath of greenery will flow around 10 high-rise towers. — bloomberg.com

The 11-story development will feature approximately 37 residences of up to 5,500 square feet, focusing on expansive, gracious layouts with 11-foot ceilings, thoughtful technological integration and state-of-the-art finishes and features. Designed with multiple elevator cores, a majority of the residences will have a private vestibule and entrance that adds to the intimacy of the building. — prnewswire.com

"It was a place where you got your information, and served as a post office -- it had an integral role in the community," Moy said of the building, as well as other similar sites. "It's a unique structure, even though architecturally it's very utilitarian and doesn't represent any high style of architecture. It's more about the people and the work they did." — Los Angeles Times

“Cities today have become far too large,” Wang said in an interview while visiting New York in April. “I’m really worried, because it’s happening too fast and we have already lost so much.”

Wang, a sturdy 49-year-old, has built his small architectural practice as a riposte to this heedless destruction. With his wife, architect Lu Wenyu, he runs a 10-person firm called Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city southwest of Shanghai. — bloomberg.com

South Brisbane’s renewal is well underway and the suburb could soon become home to a landmark $50 million twin tower development known as Arena.

The contemporary 12-floor twin tower apartment buildings is slated for 9 Edmonstone Street and has been designed to allow pedestrian access to Browning Street via a dedicated cross block link. — DesignBuild Source

"I'm going to be intolerant of bad architecture," he says, describing how the former head of planning was a highways engineer who "let anything and everything through – including office blocks stacked on top of multistorey car parks.

"My idea of good architecture is about creating place. It's not about providing glitzy iconic buildings, competing one against the other, but how we use the best of what we've got." — guardian.co.uk

Luo Baogen and his wife are the lone holdouts from a neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the main thoroughfare heading to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city of Wenling in Zhejiang province.

"Nail house" families occasionally have resorted to violence. Some homeowners have set themselves on fire in protests. Often, they keep 24-hour vigils because developers will shy away from bulldozing homes when people are inside. — in2eastafrica.net

The idea of creating a low-line companion to Philadelphia's planned high line has so gripped imaginations that a team of top designers has volunteered to sketch ideas for a belowground trail on the west side of Broad St. Tours are now practically weekly events conducted by Paul van Meter, who first proposed a low-line park.

There's one hitch: A new city plan just earmarked the low-line trench for a high-speed bus route that would connect a string of cultural venues to the heart of downtown. — articles.philly.com

In a few weeks, construction begins on New York’s largest development ever. Hudson Yards is handsome, ambitious, and potentially full of life. Should we care that it’s also a giant slab of private property? — nymag.com

David Mirvish and world-renowned architect Frank Gehry formally introduced their plans for a major overhaul of King Street West this morning at the Art Gallery of Ontario — an appropriate setting considering the 2008 AGO redesign exists as Gehry's other major Canadian project. — blogto.com

The people who run the Swedish home-furnishings behemoth are launching a bold push into the business of designing, building and operating entire urban neighbourhoods. Where once they placed a couch in a living room, the Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives. Their bold, high-concept notion of an urban ’hood could be an important solution to the housing-supply shortages... — theglobeandmail.com

The saga of Cabrini-Green compels us to engage some hard and fundamental questions. It is not enough to ask: who benefits from public housing redevelopment? We must also ask: how we measure such benefits and who gets to do that measuring? — Places Journal

The City of Dublin, Ohio is an affluent Columbus suburb typically known for it’s good schools, easy access to jobs, and low density housing and retail developments that have rapidly sprawled outward over the past forty years.

Fast forward another forty years and things may look drastically different. Officials with the city’s planning department have been steadily working on the Bridge Street Corridor plan, which calls for the redevelopment of 1,000 acres located at the core of Dublin. — ColumbusUnderground.com