The British Government will showcase Britain’s distinctive qualities of creativity and enterprise to millions of international visitors through the UK Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015.

Shenzhen is located in the south of Guangdong, China, facing Hong Kong across the river. In 2012, it had a permanent population of 10.54 million and its GDP, standing at RMB 1,295 billion, ranked the fourth amongst cities in Mainland China for years. After more than thirty years of reform and opening up, it has developed from a small town in the southern coast of China to a modern metropolis, becoming a miniature of China’s reform, opening-up and modern construction.

Naqsh,E,Jahan-Pars (NJP), in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Architettura e Design (LAD), has been named winner of an international competition for the Iranian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Based on “a living process narrative in the central plateau of Iran,” the winning scheme responds to the Expo’s “Feeding the Planet” theme by exposing the underground channels of water that give life to Iran’s many desert cities.

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“A New Online Marketplace for Mobility,” an innovative proposal by city planner Philip Parsons and mobility expert Federico Parolotto that aims to optimize mobility in megacities, has been named the first participant in the Audi Urban Future Award 2014. Selected from a shortlist of three, the winners will now assemble a team of urban designers in order to pursue their visionary idea. Read more about their winning proposal, here.

This proposal by architects Bence Pap and Mario Gasser of Studio Greg Lynn / University of Applied Arts Vienna has been ranked fourth in an international competition for the Austrian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Inspired by the Expo’s theme, “We feed the World – Energy for Life,” the pavilion aims to highlight Austria’s rich culture of craft and agriculture by offering a two-story experience that exhibits goods unique to the country.

The Architecture Foundation is delighted to be working with the Museum of London to commission a design team to develop a temporary structure that will help facilitate participatory discussion about future development plans for the Museum of London and the wider cultural hub in this part of London. The structure, which will be located outside the Museum of London’s main entrance, should be able to accommodate individuals and small groups at any one time and allow them to feedback on proposed visions for the Museum and its future. It is envisaged that the structure should also help attract visitors to the Museum and make use of its exterior forecourt spaces.

A team led by London-based masterplanners Gillespies has been announced as the winner of an international competition to design the largest theme park in Europe. Planned for a 1,000-hectare site in the Domodevdovo district of Moscow, “Park Russia” aims to merge concepts of healthy living, entertainment and education into one commercially attractive tourist destination.

IE School of Architecture and Design has reached an agreement with WAYRA TELEFÓNICA to organize a Design Challenge with the students of the Master in Work Space Design.

Think Space has now launched the second competition in its MONEY cycle: Culture & Society, to be jurored by Pedro Gadanho, the Curator of Contemporary Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Three teams have been shortlisted from a longlist of ten for the renovation of Washington DC’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library - the only library and D.C. building ever designed by Mies van der Rohe. The three competing teams are:

The Italian joint-venture between Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners and C+S Architects has been announced as winner of an international competition for the requalification of a former railway station site in Chiasso, Switzerland. The team’s winning scheme proposes a “soft urban design” aimed at giving value to the pre-existing buildings, which are substantially maintained and sewn to the newly designed complex of two fashion schools: SAMS and STA.

The London Cinema Challenge, organized by Combo Competitions, challenged participants to design a new cinema located on Newman Street in central London which should "reflect the participants’ ideas of the cinematic experience in the near future." The scope of the proposal, along with the extravagance of the idea, was decided by the individual competitors with the only criterion being that the design provided a space to watch movies. In addition to the cinema, each proposal had to include a "unique feature helping to serve the main purpose" of the building. Whether "an intimate screening room for indie films, or a commercial multi-storey cinema complex showing blockbusters," the winning proposals demonstrate an array of unique ideas.

Trailing Situ Studio’s recycled lumber heart, Young Projects has been chosen to design the annual Times Square Valentine’s Day installation for lovers in the Big Apple. Made in collaboration with fabricator Kammetal, “Match-Maker” will debut early February.

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He has made his debut in the MAXXI piazza. As the winner of the Young Architects Program (YAP) in Rome, Turin-based studio Bam! Bottega di Architettura metropolitan has transformed the concrete facade of the Zaha Hadid-designed museum into a visual spectacular with the installation of a yellow, translucent and aerostatic prism.

Heneghan Peng Architects has won an international competition for a new National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) at Moscow’s Khodynskoe Pole. Selected from a shortlist of three, the Dublin-based practice will now further develop their winning scheme which vertically stacks exhibition spaces as flexible “trays” to maximize accessibility and visually connect the NCCA’s activities to the surrounding landscape.

Slash with Phillips/Pilkington Architects have been announced as the winners of the Royal Adelaide Hospital Site International Design Competition, which was open to registered architects and landscape architects from around the world. The competition centred around redesigning the current hospital site, which will be vacated in 2016, in order to create an iconic place within the Greater Riverbank Precinct of Adelaide. See the winning and shortlisted proposals after the break.

Architects have been invited to submit expressions of interest in designing The Crystal Palace as a new cultural destination for London in the spirit, scale and magnificence of the original. Plans to invest £500 million in rebuilding The Crystal Palace and restoring the surrounding public park were announced in October by ZhongRong Group, with the support of the Mayor of London and the Bromley Council.

The Parramatta City Council has announced Sydney firm Johnson Pilton Walker as the unanimous winner of the Parramatta Square Design Competition, beating a shortlist (curated from 73 submissions) that included Sydney based Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp, Bates Smart, and Italian practice Mario Cucinella Architects.