ASAR Consulting Engineers shared with us their winning proposal in the competition to design the JAY mixed-use complex in Tehran, Iran. With the aim of a long-term plan to create a vibrant urban complex in a 54 hectare area site, their proposed response to these challenges begins with a public garden which improves the existing green spaces and plays a role as an urban structure to integrate the 4 different zones of the project. The program includes about 173 hectares of commercial, recreational and administrative activities. More images and architects’ description after the break.

DawnTown, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting architecture in Miami, is announcing an open call for portfolios for their Design Build competition. Now in its fifth year, Dawntown seeks the talents of a designer or design team to create a low cost, innovative, and temporary installation in Miami. The competition is open to architects, artists, and all creative professionals. Designers can work individually or collaboratively in teams, with the requirement that at least one team member is located in the United States. Dawntown Design Build is made possible by the generous grant of the John S and James L Knight Foundation and The Miami Downtown Development Authority. Don’t miss out on a chance to be a part of this inaugural architectural event for Miami! Entries will be collected from September 17th 2012 to October 31st 2012, with finalists being announced on November 15th 2012. To register and for more details, please visit here.

The call for entries was recently announced for the ninth annual Travel + Leisure Design Awards. Honoring the best design in the world across twelve categories completed in the past year, the winners are honored in a feature spread in our March issue as well as online. Winners will be chosen by a panel of outstanding experts in their fields, including architect Deborah Berke, chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson and fashion designer Reed Krakoff. The deadline to apply is Oct. 1. To register and for more information, please visit here.

Featuring more than twenty-five films from eleven countries, public programs, and an architectural driving tour of Lower Manhattan, the fourth season of the Architecture and Design Film Festival is taking place October 18-21. Returning to Tribeca Cinemas, in New York City, the films in this year’s Festival consider a range of topics, including contemporary and historic visionary architects, the creative design process, architecture as cultural emissary, the creation of the High Line, and modernist architecture on the East and West Coasts, among other subjects. The Festival features two world premieres, two U.S. premieres, and numerous films shown in New York City for the first time. Tickets go on sale October 1. More information after the break.

The proposal for the New Harbor Service building by IaN+ aims to define a simple and severe architecture. The project’s construction scheme reflects eastern philosophy; its clean aesthetic and unadorned simplicity, where structure turns into a decorative system clearly defining space. The grandeur of the complex will become the new symbol of the city and at the same time, these openings as large telescopes, frame the view from the city towards the sea and the infinite. More images and architects’ description after the break.

North Carolina State University’s School of Architecture recently launched their Fall 2012 lecture series which focuses on “Material | Digital.” The series begins September 24th with Grace La of La Dallman. Featuring other keynote speakers throughout the series, it concludes on November 19th with a local practitioner panel. For more information, please visit their website here.

Opening October 12th, the ‘Pleated Shell Structures’ Exhibition consists of a short term, site specific research prototype designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid and her firm. Presented by the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in their gallery, the exhibit positions itself within the argument of parametric design research to focus its efforts on design methods that encompass an operative pathway from design intent to manifestation. The exhibition will be on display until December 2. More information after the break.

As part of the masterplan, ‘Bassin a Flots’ designed by ANMA/Nicolas Michelin, Barcode Architects and Habiter Autrement recently presented the Pôle de Compétences (Center for New Businesses). The 7,000m2 project will be a part of the masterplan, which aims on a phased transformation of the present introvert industrial harbor area into a new lively precinct with an urban mixture of living, working, and recreation. The slender 90 meter long and 21 meter tall building presents itself as a pure monolith volume stretching out over the entire length of the site. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed by Cannon Design, the expansion of the University of California Riverside (UCR) Recreation Center will provide additional fitness and activity spaces integrating with the existing building and site creating a unified recreation complex. Located at the north boundary of the main campus within the natural Arroyo Zone, the design also includes views to the Box Springs Mountains to the east. The building is scheduled to open in 2014. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Serving as a backstage area for artists who perform at the Olympic Hall in Munich, the business area can be booked for conferences, meetings, seminars and other events. In order to meet established requirements calling for variable use of the business area, pfarré lighting design created a system which is as effective when the area has no partitions as when it is subdivided into separate areas. More images and their description after the break.

The HARDWARE SOFTCORE Installation, designed by Gabriele Falconi, is directed to the interaction of the viewer, to his involvement, even physical, as an actor aware of choices and paths. Of monumental size, its modular installation was born from the idea of using the standard scaffolding system, which is made of shiny galvanized steel, repeating and assembling in vertical and horizontal direction.“The use of construction element, the simplest, declined to unusual, different, ambiguous shapes. For a skeleton of a large lizard, a cathedral with many naves, an interstellar starship. All that is involved here is multiple and transforms itself, starting from temporary basis to monumental forms, contradicting its premises. And finding its attractive side in construction hardware.” – Falconi. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The St. James’s Market development, designed by Make Architects, is a key area in central London that will be reinvigorated if the plans, on behalf of The Crown Estate, are approved. As one of The Crown Estate’s flagship sites, the St. James’s Market project entails the redevelopment of six buildings to the south of Piccadilly Circus bounded by Jermyn Street, Haymarket and Regent Street. With much of the newly configured site being ‘traffic free’, the site will be divided around significant public realm improvements to include a new public square. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Designed and built by a very talented student team at Arizona State University, the Peritoneum shade structure reflects their collaboration and interdisciplinary skills as they employed their respective talents for this temporary shade structure. Originally built on a plaza space on the university campus, the project was recently moved to be displayed in a major art district in downtown Phoenix along Roosevelt Row. The design, which won the ASLA Student Award of Excellence 2012, is an undulating blue structure that evokes a calming, cooling environment, and captivates others by its daring interpretation of typical shade structures. More images and the students’ description after the break.

Designed and built by Dániel Baló, Dániel Eke, and Zoltán Kalászi, the concert hall installation in the Archabbey of Pannonhalma was intended for the classical concerts of the Arcus Temporum Festival. Fitted for the gym of the abbey’s boarding school, the installation uses just two elements as the artwork’s clear but complex structure still engulfed the spacious dimensions of the gym. The light bulbs’ strict geometrical grid and the parallel waving layers of the translucent textile, which also improved the gym’s acoustics, were dropped from the ceiling into the space below. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The initiative by h2o Architectes for the renovation of the first cinema for art house film follows the tradition of innovation and evolution that have been a part of this establishment’s history. The main project for the Studio des Ursulines in Paris was concentrated on the lobby, as the existing theatre has been simply refurbished. Founded in 1925, by the actors Armand Tallier and Laurence Myrga, this theater continues it’s tradition today by catering to the younger Parisian public by providing a locale to discover cinema in it’s many facets. The small theater offers selective programming as well as the opportunity to meet those who make films. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Located in the “Albufera de Valencia”, one of the national territory´s most singular natural areas, the winning proposal for the Inspiration Hotel is formed as a huge ring shaped wooden pier 160 meters in diameter that rises above the Albufera´s water surface. Designed by Paul Dieterlen Architecture, the building is resolved with two main rings, one with an eight meter section which contains the architectural program and the public areas, and another one, with a three meters section turn to the interior that works a continuous circular path. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The proposal for a Jinzhou New Area Medical Center by Design Initiatives is located as closest as possible to the existing wing of the hospital in order to shorten the routes and form one integrated complex with that existing wing. The architects believe that the everyday experience of the users is critically important for the hospital typology. They shifted and offset the four different wings so every room that needs it has an access to natural light and ventilation – something so rear in medical buildings and hard to get organized with an area of 185,000 m2. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The 3rd China Architecture Media Awards (CAMA) is now open for individual submissions. As a biannual program, CAMA is the first architectural award established in Greater China to advocate the construction of civil society through engaging architectural practice. Through an independent and rigorous jury process, the program promotes architectural works with high ‘social value and humanistic concern’ in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. The CAMA expresses its value orientation with the slogan “Towards a Civil Architecture” – referring to the works that engage with the issues of civic life, such as living, community, environment and public space, and that serve the public interests, express humanistic concerns, and actively search for high quality cultural expression. The deadline for submissions is October 1. For more information, please visit here.