Richard Serra wins architectural award

For the first time in its 133-year history, the Architectural League of New York is presenting its presidential medal to an artist: Richard Serra.

The league's president, Annabel Selldorf, said the artist "engages the sense in terms of scale, space, volume and materiality in a way that is inevitably fascinating for every architect."

Image: Richard Serra, Te Tuhirangi Contour, 1991-2001, weatherproof steel, 6m x 257m x 5cm, The Farm, Kaipara, New Zealand

Construction begins on the world's first vertical forest

Construction is underway on Bosco Verticale, the twin tree-clad apartment buildings in Milan that will the be world's first ever vertical forest. In addition to adding an eye-catching feature, the buildings' 900 trees along with a variety of shrubs and plants, are meant to absorb CO2 and particles from Milan's notoriously dirty air, shield radiation, produce both humidity and oxygen, filter noise pollution and provide energy saving shade to each of the towers' apartment units. The buildings will also have wind and solar systems, along with greywater recycling systems to help irrigate the greenery on the buildings' cantilevered balconies, and a team of in-house horticulturalists to tend to the trees, the tallest of which will grow to a maximum height of 30 feet.
Image: architectural renderings of  Stefano Boeri's Bosco Verticale, Milan

Pritzker prize winner challenges the direction of contemporary architecture in China

Faced with the groundswell of huge new building projects in China, this year's Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu has proposed an alternative view saying they are not the only architectural products his country has to offer. The practice he runs with his wife Lu Wenyu, is concerned with such things as memory, location, craft and identity, for "real feeling between people and construction" and the ways in which they can be recognised in the extraordinary time through which China is now passing. Read more...
Image: Ningbo History Museum designed by Weng Shu

Shigeru Ban designs a temporary pavilion for Dasha Zhukova's Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture

Shigeru Ban is best known for his post-disaster zone design projects, such as his temporary housing project underway in Onagawa to replace homes lost in the tsuanmi and a temporary building to replace the historic cathedral in the quake-ravaged city of Christchurch.

Now he has designed a new temporary structure for the Dasha Zhukova's Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture while it transitions from its old one to a new OMA-designed space. The new 70,000-Square-foot temporary pavilion in Moscow's Gorky Park will host exhibition and education programmes until 2013, beginning with Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban. Using rare archival drawings, the exhibition will reveal the history of structures created in the park since it was established in 1923, before moving through the Russian avant-garde period to finish with some of the most interesting contemporary unrealised designs created by russian architects today.
Image: model of Shigeru Ban's temporary pavilion in Gorky Park

Whitney's new pop-up studio made of shipping containers

The Whitney has commissioned the New York-based architecture firm LOT-EK to design a pop-up studio for the museum's education programme. Made entirely of shipping containers, the material of choice for LOT-EK (a play on low technology), the designers stacked two layers of containers and partially cut the interior to create a 472-square-foot minimalist cube with a mezzanine floor and diagonals of neon yellow glass.

Dedicated to sustainable architecture, LOT-EK principals Giuseppe Lignano and Ada Tolla have been using these overproduced containers for over 20 years, making use of what they refer to as a "marginal aspect of our civilisation".
Image: the Whitney Studio under construction

Getty Museum initiative to preserve modern architectural masterpieces

The Getty Museum is launching a new international program, the Conserving Modern Architecture Program, in the hopes of giving preservation architects new and more sophisticated strategies to preserve 20th century buildings. Its first project will be funding research at the Charles and Ray Eames house in Los Angeles.

Tim Whalen, the director of the Getty Conservation Institute, said the program was not designed as an advocacy organisation, like the Los Angeles Conservancy's Modern Committee to keep landmarks from the wrecking ball. The point is to forge partnerships with architects and organisations already doing research on how to preserve modern masterpieces. Read more...
Image: the living room of the Eames house in Los Angeles

Guardian's architecture correspondent picks his favourite buildings - in pictures

As he hangs up his notebook, the Guardian's architecture and design correspondent, Jonathan Glancey, looks back at some of the projects - ancient and modern - that have enchanted him over the past 15 years. View images
Image: the ramp of Brasilia's National Museum by Oscar Niemeyer

The merger of elevated architecture and grounded green build thinking

As sustainability becomes an essential ingredient in the island nation of Singapore, the UK firm Foster + Partners is leaving no stone unturned to make good use of alternative energy sources in a new eco-complex that pushes the green envelop from top to bottom.

The complex will fill an entire city block between Singapore's Marina Centre and the Civic District with commerical, residential, retail, hotels and a 'green' link to a Mass Rapid Transit station.

All facades will be fitted with solar cells, and to help control solar gain, direct sunlight will be filtered through ribbon-like canopies.Vertical green spaces and extensive sky gardens are also important components, further greening the whole structure with natural vegetation and ambient temperature moderation.

The slanted facades are designed to catch wind and direct it downwards for natural cooling of ground floor spaces. A rainwater harvesting system, geothermal heating system, chilled beams and ceiling, and an ice storage system are further enhancements planned for the complex, which is being described as the perfect merger of elevated architecture and grounded green build thinking.
Image: Foster + Partners new green complex for Singapore

Dying river poses a threat to the Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal, the white marble tomb built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1648 for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal, could soon sink into the sand. The mausoleum's mahogany post foundations which are sunk into wells fed by the Yamuna River are reportedly rotting and brittle because the river is drying up due to pollution and deforestation. The main structure showed cracks last year and the four minarets around the monument are tilting due to the weakening of the foundation.

Ramshankar Katheria, a member of parliament from the northern city of Agra where the iconic monument is located, is leading the movement to save it. He warns that "if the crisis is is not tackled on a war-footing, the Taj Mahal will cave in between two and five years." He has proposed a $110m dam to maintain the water levels necessary to preserve the foundations, saying, "the river is a constituent of its architectural design and if the river dies, the Taj cannot survive."

Renzo Piano's new convent below Le Corbusier's famous chapel at Ronchamp

After running into resistance from the Fondation Le Corbusier, a fierce guard of the architect's reputation, Renzo Piano has created a new convent for the Clarisses (or Poor Clare Sisters) on a French hillside below Le Corbusier's famous chapel of Notre Dame du Haut.

Piano also had some initial reservations but the abbess, Sister Brigitte de Singly, finally persuaded him to accept the commission reminding him of the long tradition architects have had with the church. Read more...

Images: A concealed slit in the wall floods the chapel with daylight, Renzo Piano with a priest in the chapel and a nun in her Renzo Piano-designed room