Magazine

Last night the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) announced the winners of the 2016 Design Awards in four categories: Architecture, Interiors, Projects, and Urban Design. John Hill

Twenty-five years after an anonymous water tower in Milan's Porto Garibaldi was covered with a colorful palette of ceramic tiles, the team behind Torre Arcobaleno (Rainbow Tower) returned to refurbish the local landmark. John Hill

Rock Print, a collaborative installation of Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich, and MIT's Self-Assembly Lab, was one of the highlights of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Beinnial. A short film presents its dusty deinstallation. John Hill

About a year and a half after Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for an end to "weird architecture" in China, the country's State Council issued an official directive that says no to "oversized, xenocentric, weird" architecture devoid of cultural tradition. John Hill

French architect Odile Decq has won The Architectural Review's Jane Drew Prize, which "recognizes an architectural designer who through their work and commitment to design excellence has raised the profile of women in architecture." John Hill

In a new video consisting of clips culled from the Louisiana Channel's numerous interviews with architects, Liz Diller, Craig Dykers, Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne, and Robert A.M. Stern discuss building in New York City. John Hill

Alejandro Aravena, director of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition has unveiled the list of national participations in the Venice Architecture Biennale as well as the participants in his "Reporting from the Front" exhibition. John Hill

Two weeks after being named the architect of the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion, the design by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group has been unveiled by London's Serpentine Galleries. John Hill

James F. Goldstein, owner of John Lautner's 1963 Sheats-Goldstein house, famous for being featured in the Coen Brothers' film The Big Lebowski, has agreed to donate the iconic house to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). John Hill

The New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects is conferring the Medal of Honor, its highest honor for an individual architect or firm, to Annabelle Selldorf, principal of the 65-person New York firm Selldorf Architects. John Hill

The American Institute of Architects has announced the three keynote speakers for the AIA Convention 2016 in Philadelphia: an Isreali designer, an actor who plays a fictional president, and a Pritzker Prize-winning Dutch architect. John Hill

PBS Studios' "blank on blank" program, which unearths lost interviews with famous people, animates Frank Lloyd Wright's September 1957 interview with journalist Mike Wallace as part of its Experimenters series. John Hill

Five new creations from Canada, United States, France and Switzerland have been selected by the jury for the International Garden Festival, to be presented at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens from 23 June to 2 October 2016.  John Hill

Announcing the YTAA - Young Talent Architecture Award, which joins the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award and the Emerging Architect Award in recognizing architectural talent in Europe. John Hill

GG-loop's renovation of a corner building in Altamura, Italy, features a bold, faceted red facade made from EIFS (Exterior Insulation and Finishing System), a system associated otherwise with bland, run-of-the-mill buildings. John Hill

London's Serpentine Gallery has announced the selection of Denmark's BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group to design the 16th pavilion in Kensington Gardens, to be accompanied by four summer houses designed by architects from Europe and Africa. John Hill

As part of its ongoing collaboration with Italian fashion house Prada, AMO (a research and design studio within OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture) has created a short film that takes place within "an artificial landscape where fiction and collection collide." John Hill

BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and developer Tishman Speyer have unveiled renderings for a supertall skyscraper with a spiral of terraces overlooking the High Line and Hudson Yards in Manhattan. John Hill

Indian architect Bijoy Jain, of Studio Mumbai, follows in the footsteps of Sean Godsell and Amanda Levete to design the third MPavilion in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. John Hill

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) opened its new Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed home on January 31st with the exhibition Architecture of Life, running until May 29th. John Hill

Following the November 2014 announcement by Mayor Anne Hidalgo and her Deputy Mayor in charge of urban planning, Jean-Louis Missika, to solicit ideas for 23 urban sites in Paris, the winning proposals have been revealed. John Hill

The FC Barcelona has announced that the team of HOK and TAC Arquitectes has been chosen as the winner of the architectural competition for the New Palau Blaugrana. John Hill, Silvia Pujalte Toledo

BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and Jeanne Gang's Studio Gang Architects have recently unveiled projects – a police station and a fire station, respectively – they are designing for the City of New York. John Hill

Escobedo Solíz Studio, the partnership of Lazbent Escobedo and Andres Solíz, has won the 17th edition of MoMA PS1's Young Architects Program with Weaving the Courtyard. John Hill

With 20 percent of the votes, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture's (AS+GG) FKI Tower in Seoul, South Korea, has won the Building of the Year 2015 on American-Architects. John Hill

Stuttgart-based architects h4a have completed the new sports hall for the Kepler- and Humboldt-Gymnasiums in Ulm, a boxy building stacked with three gyms one above the other. The interior is elegantly blurred by a sculptural facade of twisting aluminum fins. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

Developers Saif Sumaida and Amit Khurana have unveiled a rendering of the 35-story, 80-unit residential tower that Pritzker Prize-winning, Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza is designing for 611 West 56th Street in Manhattan. John Hill

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Louisiana Channel has compiled clips from some of its excellent interviews with architects to "share their inspirational thoughts on what it is that makes global architecture work." John Hill

The New York Times reports that "MoMA trims back some features of its planned renovation," being designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. John Hill

"The Weight of Sacrifice," by 25-year-old Chicago architect Joseph Weishaar and New York sculptor Sabin Howard, has been chosen as the winning design in the two-stage competition for a World War I memorial in Washington, DC. John Hill

Architect Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein have completed their much-anticipated addition to the 19th-century Swiss National Museum, a jagged concrete mass that touches down in three points to connect the old and new buildings to the adjacent Platzspitz park. John Hill

What does the selection of Alejandro Aravena as the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate mean for the future of "architecture's Nobel"? World-Architects ponders the question and offers a handful of nominations for future Pritzker Prize juries to consider. John Hill

Dublin's Heneghan Peng Architects, with Toronto's Kearns Mancini Architects, has bested four other finalists to win the international competition for the new $45-million Canadian Canoe Museum in Ontario. John Hill

Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture have unveiled their redesign of Berlin's historic Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe), which makes the large department store comprehensible by breaking it into four quadrants, each with its own atrium. John Hill, Katinka Corts

New York's Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled its latest design for the transformation of McKim, Mead & White's James A. Farley Post Office into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Train Hall across the street from Penn Station. John Hill

Less than a year after Bjarke Ingels's firm redesigned Two World Trade Center for 21st Century Fox and News Corp, the companies have decided to remain in Midtown Manhattan until 2025. John Hill