The Jubilee Church is the jewel in the crown of the Vicariato di Roma’s (Archdiocese of Rome) Millennium Project. Formally known as Dio Padre Misericordioso, it is the 50^th new church and community center built in the suburbs of Rome. The Jubilee Church has been conceived as a new center for a somewhat isolated housing quarter in the Tor Tre Teste area, located outside central Rome and intended to revitalize a decaying residential fabric. The triangular site is articulating three concepts: first, dividing the sacred realm to the south, where the nave is located from the secular precinct to the north. Second, separating the approach on foot from the housing situated in the east. Third, again separating the approach on foot, from the parking lot situated to the west.

Sited at a point where the adjacent apartment buildings fan out, the church and the community center are centrally located towards the eastern side of the area of the site. Both components are accessible from the east via a paved entrance plaza (sagrato), which is situated on the side of the site nearest the effective center of the housing estate, adjacent to a proposed greensward in front of the sagrato. The church and the community center provide a social and cultural focus, serving more than 8,000 residents in the immediate vicinity and members of the larger Tor Tre Teste community center with the balance of the irregular site including a terrace with Roman pines to the northeast, a recreation court to the northwest, and a parking area to the west.

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Alsop’s Colorium forms one element of a larger ongoing program for the regeneration of Dusseldorf’s waterfront. The completed ‘Media Harbor’ project will include works by Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, David Chipperfield and Fumihiko Maki. The building was designed as an office block, with its special shape as a process of aesthetic, economic and social rebirth. The area in which it has been built is the old river port of Dusseldorf, which has several examples of industrial archaeology, with brick buildings and anonymous steel facades.

Designed for a private client, the Colorium occupies a long, narrow peninsula site whose thin side faces on to the water. Alsop’s original scheme for this challenging footprint was for a taller structure which mixed conventional office space with live/work lofts, a penthouse and restaurant. Planning restrictions, however, reduced the height of building to 62 m which the final design divides into 17 floors of office space. In place of the radical forms for which he is known, Alsop has elected to radicalize the skin of his design, with sensuous facade treatment transforming the tower’s standard orthogonal structure.

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Swiss Re London Headquarters is a landmark 40-storey office building in the heart of London’s financial centre, developed by Swiss Re and designed by architects Foster and Partners. Located on the former site of the Baltic Exchange, the distinctive form of the building adds to the cluster of tall buildings. This London’s first ecological tall building is instantly recognisable, rooted in a radical approach by technically, architecturally, socially and spatially.

Swiss Re, as the one of the worlds leading reinsurance companies, provides 76,400 sq m of accommodation, including offices in the tower and retail space at ground level, opening onto the landscaped plaza, and it’s open to public. Dining and events facilities are at the top. The building has a circular plan that widens as it rises from the ground and then tapers towards the apex to respond to the demands of the small site, which makes it appear less bulky than a rectilinear building of equivalent floor area.

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Built in 2002, the Peter B Lewis Building is housing the Weatherhead School of Management. Named in honor of lead donor Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, and designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, the building is the most advanced management school facility in the world and reflects Weatherhead’s international reputation for innovative management education. The building in the Case Western Reserve campus is a $62 million building, which Mr. Lewis donated $37 million, with 152,000 sq ft of space.

For Lewis and the school, Gehry’s curves and shapes signify the manner in which management and business is taught at Case Western. Interior spaces are specifically designed to encourage informal student-faculty interaction, making teachers and students equal partners in the learning process. Entering the building through a small door that is almost less scaled by the large shapes above, one enters into cleanly designed interior spaces. The light shifts and changes hue as it bounces from high white walls.

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Architectural imagination and social conscience are intertwined in the design for Diamond Ranch High School. It is a public high school with 50 classrooms, a gymnasium, cafeteria, administration and parking for 770 automobiles. Total cost for school was $30 million USD. The building presents a detailed story of the design and construction of a single building, by Morphosis. The presentation is a state-of-the-art public school in Pomona, California, offers a level of detail not normally found in architectural monographs.

Designed by Morphosis, principal architect Thom Mayne, the Diamond Ranch High School is an advanced solution of educational space, where the architects have tried to combine aesthetic beauty with a sense of social mission. The building is on a site that was considered too steep to build on with a gradient rising from 1:1 to 1:5. Morphosis took advantage of the changes in gradient to create a series of buildings and playing fields where the architecture and topography interact. The site provided an opportunity to create a place where architecture and environment continually exchange places, fusing landscape and building into a single organic unity.

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The Auerworld Palace was erected in the spring of 1998 by 300 volunteers from all over the world, directed by Swiss-born architect Marcel Kalberer and assisted by builders and artists of the building group Sanfte Strukturen, who guided the construction process. He is one of many architects who provide ecological aspect and sustainable development in his design. The way it was planted expresses the potential energies that can be mobilized in a community-oriented natural building process.

Three-to-five-year-old willows, the only construction material used, were planted, bound and interwoven into a large dome building. The young trees will continue to grow and will eventually fill in the gaps, covering the structure with leaves and creating a sheltered interior. The pattern of trunks resembles a rough vaulted arch structure, creating a bizarre overlapping of the natural and the highly designed. Kalberer works in building on nature’s own terms, observing its laws and forms of growth.

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The Orient Station was commissioned in the short term to serve the needs of World Expo 98 and in the long term to provide a main transport terminal for the east side of Lisboa as a future development of the city is planned for this side of the Tagus River. Today it is one of Europe’s most comprehensive transport nodes, an important interchange for high-speed intercity trains, rapid regional rail services and a tram and metro network. The building is a huge transport interchange, connecting local and taxis, and the underground system, and providing an airport link with check-in facilities.

It also connects with the former Expo site, now the Parque das Nacoes housing important civic functions, reached via an adjacent light industrial and social housing neighborhood. Calatrava’s design is visually robust and suitably monumental. The architect proposed piercing the existing embankment to establish a link between the two separated areas of the Olivais District and placed the railway platforms on a bridge structure. The entire station is articulated along two perpendicular axes. Unlike some of Calatrava’s building project which is more object-like designs, this one is structured in an urban, axial context.

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JELD-WEN Student Door Design Contest 2007/2008. The two winners will each receive a $3,000 scholarship, US student only.

The National Space Centre, a landmark Millennium Project for the East Midlands, is one of the United Kingdom’s leading visitor attractions devoted to space science and astronomy. It is located in the city of Leicester, England, on a former brownfield site on the north bank of the River Soar. The building, which is designed as an amenity represents a significant environmental improvement both for the immediate neighbourhood and for the city of Leicester as a whole. The site formerly housed a buried storm-water tank, sewage treatment works (donated to the project by Severn Trent Water) and a council tip. The building was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, and it opened to the public on 30 June 2001.

The centre arose from a partnership between the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre and local government agencies. The total construction cost was £52m, £26m of which came from a Millennium Commission grant, and the rest from private sector sponsors. It is run as an educational charity, and offers science workshops for school children of all ages. The design comprises two principal elements: a two storey lightweight steel building clad in perforated metal panels and an annexed rocket tower clad in a space-age skin of ETFE cushions. Together, these elements house an exhibition venue of international standing and a new centre of excellence for education and research affiliated to the University of Leicester. The site also houses the prefabricated Challenger Learning Centre, an interactive facility for school children simulating the situation of a space mission.

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Cyberport is a new “Silicon Valley” on a 26-hectare, previously undeveloped, site, contains high-tech offices as well as shops and plazas for a world-class IT community. The building is a strategic information technology infrastructure project that symbolizes Hong Kong’s determination to develop as a leading digital city in Asia. An estimated HK$15.8 billion (US$2 billion) has been invested on land located at the edge of Telegraph Bay on the western shores of Hong Kong Island, where the site is adjacent to the University of Hong Kong campus in the Pokfulam area.

The building is being designed as a place that attracts a cluster of IT companies and professional talent in IT applications, information services and multimedia content creation to foster creativity and innovation within the collaborative community. The project aims to combine the state-of-the-art interactive technology with a nurturing environment to facilitate the cross-fertilization of ideas in the IT field. All these will be set in a campus-like environment.

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Chile’s northern Atacama Desert is one of the hottest, driest, places on earth, and a particular sensitivity to location is required of anyone building here. Scorched by day and chilled by night, the desert plateau is bounded by the rugged cordillera of the Andes to the east. The light is unusually strong, intensified by clear skies and very low humidity. Drawing on semi-vernacular forms and passive methods of environmental control, this Explora Hotel for adventurous travellers is a highly poetic response to light, landscape and climate.

The building’s elements are arranged in the manner of an oasis settlement, with dispersed buildings arranged around outdoor spaces planted with trees such as carob, oak and pepper. Conceived as an elegant, hospitable haven, Explora Hotel is siting on the edge of the town, clearly distinguishes it as an object building in the landscape. It echoes the Pre-Columbian custom of using built structures to mark and define places, so establishing multiple relationships with nature. The long horizontal volumes are minimally articulated with a continuous strip of window, emphasizing the simple, monolithic building form. At present the building can accommodate 100 guests in 50 rooms, but in the future it will be expanded.

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The Oscar Niemeyer Museum, which also known as Museu do Olho or Museum of the Eye for its new addition, is located in the city of Curitiba, in the state of Paraná, in Brazil. The annex, which was launched on July 8, 2003, is to honor its famous architect who completed this project at 95 years of age. The first building, Castello Branco, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1967, faithful to the style of the time, and conceived as an educational institute. It was remodeled and adapted to function as a museum, imprinting it with a new characteristic identity for a twenty-first-century museum of international building standard.

To the existing building he added a striking annex in the shape of an eye, constructed from reinforced concrete and mounted on a cubic plinth, and providing the shock factor so characteristic of Niemeyer’s work. With project architectural of Oscar Niemeyer, the building has 33,000 m² of constructed area of which 15,300 m² destined the expositions, inserted in a complex of 144.000 m² that it includes a forest (the Forest Pope João Pablo II) and the Village of the Culture that will occupy the constructions of the State Department of Official Transport (Deto).

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The creation of a signature complement to Craig Elwood’s 1969 landmark building was initiated by a school-wide design session led by the California based practice of Craig Hodgetts and Ming Fung. This $800,000 project was set in motion by Art Center’s new President, Richard Koshalek. Envisioned as a casual diversion to the disciplined structure of its Miesian neighbor, the Sinclair Pavilion is intended for an alternative space in which to relax and socialize, on a break from their classes in Art Center’s landmark facility.

The result is a succession of light and airy spaces for student activities, and to satisfy the student-led brief for a place where they could unwind, where ‘anything goes’. The kinetic and transforming aspects of this project and its relationship to a setting of interaction among students, who can eat, relax and discuss their work is the advantage of this building. It is a building with thoughtful relationship to its surroundings, which also clear in organization and detail of the structure and its enclosure.

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Bellevue Arts Museum is located in the heart of downtown Bellevue where the bold glass, aluminum and textured concrete structure provides a dramatic presence at the intersection of Bellevue Way NE and the NE 6th pedestrian corridor. The building’s new facility, designed by renowned architect Steven Holl, has 5,800 sq ft of gallery space on three floors, plus an art school, studio space for visiting artists, and the interactive Explore Gallery. This art museum building specializes in the work of Northwest artists but also explores national and international influences on local art.

The Bellevue Arts Museum focuses on education and outreach rather than collecting, and collaborates with local arts and educational institutions to provide innovative arts programming and temporary exhibitions. Steven Holl made extensive use of glass, terraces and skylights in his investigation of light, creating a building that is an artwork in its own right. Roughly a third of the exterior surface is glass, with the remaining two-thirds divided evenly between hand-sanded marine aluminum and textured concrete stained in earth-red tones.

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Broadwick House comes as something of a surprise. The building was commissioned by a developer and occupies an entire city block in the heart of Soho’s dense conservation area, which this quadruple-aspect office development provides six floors of office space raised above street-level retail and restaurant accommodation. It is a place where straightforwardly ‘contextual’ design has been the norm, a contemporary landmark that lifted the profile and enriched the life of this historic neighbourhood.

The planning negotiations for the project were protracted but the result is a strikingly contemporary structure that enhances the neighborhood. The site is an island, with thoroughfares on all four sides. To the east, it abuts Berwick Street, famous as the oldest surviving fruit and vegetable market in central London, dating from the 1840. Neighbouring buildings range from Georgian town houses to 60’s high rise apartments and 80’s Post-Modern styled office blocks. Into this diverse context, Broadwick House introduces an element of rationality and urbanity.

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This installation for Giovanni and Marella Agnelli Art Gallery hovers atop the historic and enormous former Fiat factory at Lingotto in Turin, overlooking the city of Torino. The building constitutes the third phase of Piano’s 14-year renovation of the factory, into a mixed-use center with a hotel, shops, and conference space. Built in the 1920 by Matte Trucco, the building was the largest and most modern plant in Europe, both architecturally and in terms of mass production capacity. The Lingotto Factory Conversion was the first example of modular construction in reinforced concrete, based on the repetition of three elements: pillars, beams, and floors.

When it was closed down in 1983, the building had such a great symbolic importance that it was essential to give it a new lease on life. The project consisted of radically transforming Lingotto without betraying the spirit and intended use of its premises, while preserving the overall architectural character and monumentality. By creating public facilities such as an auditorium, an exhibition center, a branch of the educational activities, meeting rooms, a shopping center, a hotel, a 2,600-seat cinema complex, as well as Fiat’s headquarters, Lingotto Factory Conversion has turned into a piece of city.

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Dorte Mandrup has designed a community center in Kobenhavn that accommodates a wide variety of uses and gives new life to a faded 19^th century warehouse. The main objective was to connect the building’s many different activities and provides an openness and accessibility for the public. The practice has much experience with historic buildings, and the existing warehouse, located in an industrial building which dates from 1880, was treated respectfully but not shied away from. The Neighborhood Center contains a local library, cafe, youth center, offices and multipurpose hall.

The timber and glass box of the hall resembles a large shelving system that defines the borders of the space and creates a smooth transition between the interior and exterior. Sited on a small forest of sloping concrete columns, the main new building addition is connected to the first floor of the main building by a closed footbridge which allows access to the building without disturbing the library when its opening hours. This design gives the building two quite different lives, transparent by day, and a glowing presence on the street by night.

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Burraworrin (‘Magpie’) House, on the coastline of the Mornington Peninsula, is for three generations of one family. Many country residences are detached and isolated, this house, however, melds with the undulating landscape and explores, through its spatial arrangement, the physical need for attachment within the family unit. Burraworrin House expresses an interest in creating spaces that can delight, challenge, heal, calm, even excite. It has been brought forward right to the edge of the ridge. It’s just starting to emerge out so it seems this could be a hang glider, on the tip.

The Burraworrin House has got a sense of movement and an almost rotational quality that dances. There’s a sense of anchor, too, that is reinforced by the long stone wall that leads in from the carport. That long straight wall turns into a circle and there is vertical connection to the lookout. The main living arranged space around the kitchen and the fire pit. External curved elements are rescaled and repeated internally, resonating in the details of the kitchen bench, the undulating elliptical ceilings, and the rising and falling floor levels.

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Neil M Denari’s first built work in his hometown of Los Angeles, California, is a showroom for LA Eyeworks, a retailer that specializes in cutting-edge eyewear. For this store, the client wanted a showroom that could successfully accommodate ever-changing trends while providing the retailer with a fixed spatial identity. The relationship between the conventions of commercial retail space and the stability of architecture usually associated with institutional work, and the LA Eyeworks Showroom deals with the contrast between the permanence of architecture and the seasonal collections of fashionable glasses.

So, although fashion is by definition based on quick stylistic shifts, the clients specified that the architecture itself would not be changed while they occupied the building. Neil M Denari thus had to resist the fashion of architecture without resorting to a lack of expression. The renovation of this existing two-story building still keeps the upper, curved portion of the facade which wraps the corner between Martel and the main entry of Beverly Boulevard. In working with the basic parameters of store design such as the demand for transparency from the street and from the sales counter, the design shapes space and movement through a continuous suspended surface.

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Anastassios Kotsiopoulos succeeded in outflanking the constraints on House 2 in this protected area of the ancient city of Thessaloniki by laterally interpreting the rules. The design was accepted by the local archaeological council because it deals sensitively with the relationship between the house and the neighboring monastery of Latomou. House 2 was built on a sloping 130 sq m site, close to Saint David’s Church. The materials are such as stone, brick and wood which are sympathetic to the historical context, the exterior presents a series of facade treatments, breaking down the impact of this substantial building.

The House 2 is developed on three levels plus basement, covering a total of 350 sq m. The vertical organization over three levels makes the central skylight essential for the distribution of natural light as well as allowing visual contact between the main floors. The basement floor is containing with the storage and boiler-rooms and the ground floor with the library, the study room, a small courtyard and the entrance with the garage.

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