In the late 1960s, Amelie Edgü bought a house in the southwestern holiday resort town of Bodrum. Following the purchase, she had a chance to visit the many villages and historic ruins surrounding Bodrum and Milas Edgü, the curator of the İstanbul-based Milli Reasürans Art Gallery, had realized back then that the region’s ancient architecture and ornamentation.

On the modern buildings in neighboring villages were very special and deserved a special project that would show them to the world. As soon as she observed the area, she knew that a project on the region -- known as Labraunda during ancient times -- would be very special and could reveal the ongoing effects of the region’s history.

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Built within a centurion sweet chestnut tree, perche dans la Peche is a unique twist on green architecture and design.

The owners, couple Claire Stickland and Ivan Payonne, wanted to build something that would be in harmony with the local environment and landscape, and their tree was their answer.

“One issue we had was fitting construction plans around the branches.

The wood in itself, red cedar is perfect because it requires no treatment, in fact the less treatment the better,” says Stickland.

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Located in Kanagawa, Japan, this residence was designed by Shigeru Kuwahara Architects for a couple and a dog, the Trifurcation, is a typical satellite town, 30 minutes train traveling distance from the heart of Tokyo, Japan. The rapid expansion of Tokyo had already involved this area 20 years ago, but there are still some woods secured from the development.

The site of Trifurcation was a left piece at the edge of urbanisation, a very calm environment with the rich sunlight on the southern slope of a small hill and the view to the green park. However, this fragment was an irregularly shaped trapezoid.

Escaping from the difficult condition of the site shape, the plan study was started from the centre of the site looking for the gentle connection to those good environments. The architects placed three certain functions in ideal positions in relation both to the site orientation and to each other, connected those with the uncertain functioned space, and created one homogenous and trifurcated room.

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Urban design is something of an attraction in this quiet Melbourne, Australia, suburb. The Wrap House by award-winning BKK Architects is a contemporary concept for housing, constructed of a series of solid blocks on a steel frame, wrapped in an external glazing.

Inside, all of the home’s partitions are positioned centrally, away from the outer “skin,” resulting in a home without hallways.

But rather a divided space that “ebbs and flows,” as described by the architects. Large floor-to-ceiling storefront windows create a gallery-style space to showcase the firm’s awesome architectural aptitude.

The Victorian architecture on the historic building which is home to the Opera House in Oamaru, Otago on the South Island of New Zealand, dates back to 1907.

Built from Oamaru "Whitestone", the building is two stories high and was a common architecture design for many of the heritage places around the historic precinct of Oamaru. John Megget Forrester was the creator of the Opera House which is located along Thames Street in downtown Oamaru.

Restorations have been done to the Opera House over the last few years and it now houses a 500 seat theatre, conference events and a black box theatre.

This Victorian building is one of the most noteworthy places in Oamaru's heritage and brings out the true heart, soul and passion of this town.

Aqua—a new, eighty-two-story apartment tower in the center of Chicago—is made of the same tough, brawny materials as most skyscrapers: metal, concrete, and lots of glass.

But the architect, Jeanne Gang, a forty-five-year-old Chicagoan, has figured out a way to give it soft, silky lines, like draped fabric. She started with a fairly conventional rectangular glass slab, then transformed it by wrapping it on all four sides with wafer-thin, curving concrete balconies, describing a different shape on each floor.

Gang turned the façade into an undulating landscape of bending, flowing concrete, as if the wind were blowing ripples across the surface of the building. You know this tower is huge and solid, but it feels malleable, its exterior pulsing with a gentle rhythm.

The building would be an achievement for any architect, but Gang, who has run her own firm since 1997, had never designed a skyscraper before and happened into this one almost by accident.

A couple of years ago, she was seated at a dinner next to Jim Lowenberg, a developer who had built a number of mediocre condominium towers in a huge development over the old Illinois Central rail yards, known as Lakeshore East. A prime site in the project remained, Lowenberg told her, and he envisioned doing something more ambitious there. He liked Gang and offered her a shot.

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A leading indicator of U.S. nonresidential construction spending rose slightly in December, but remains at a depressed level as limited credit continues to hamper building plans, an architects' trade group said on Wednesday.

The Architecture Billings Index was up 0.6 points at 43.4 last month, according to the American Institute of Architects. The index has remained below 50, indicating contraction in demand for design services, since January 2008. Its lowest recent reading was 33.3 in January 2009.

"The main impediment to an economic turnaround for the design and construction industry remains frozen credit markets," said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker. A measure of inquiries for new projects fell more than 3 points to 55.3, its weakest reading since August. This measure has been higher than the billings index for several months, partly reflecting increased competition among architecture firms for the same projects.

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We’ve seen vertical gardens on the side of buildings before — but never one this, um, HUGE. Architects and federal officials are planning a series of 250-foot-tall trellises designed to shade the west side of the remodeled Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building.

The added greenery is just part of a $135 million project that will also feature elevators that generate electricity on the way down, solar arrays on the roof, smart lighting systems that adjust to the daylight available, among other advances.

This will truly be a stunning addition to the Portland cityscape if constructed as planned — and we’re thrilled to see other buildings adopt vertical gardens, as well as sustainable features. Check out the full article for more!

Let's say you're the head of a state and you've been given an enormous, prestigious site to advertise the creative brains of your country to about 70 million people touring through a world fair. You're thinking, okay, showcase imagination, no need to translate.

Straight away, you're calling up compelling talent – cool video artists and aboriginal performers – and figuring out how to seal lucrative business deals in your fancy VIP lounge. Turns out your pavilion, at 6,000 square metres or almost as large as four National Hockey League rinks, is one of the biggest among the 43 nations and organizations that are building stand-alone pavilions.

Other nations launch architecture competitions and unveil their designs with much fanfare in what has become a kind of Olympics of architecture and art. Not you, Mr. Canada. You farm out the commission for the Canadian Pavilion at World Expo 2010 in Shanghai to a circus corporation. Oh, Canada. Hewer of wood and drawer of water. You dumb cluck. You allow a monumental nation-branding building to be conceived without an architect.

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The new longitudinal house is conceived as a wall a fence forming a secure atrium in the midst of the existing built environment. The house is turned outside in. It enables its residents intimacy, and at the same time it offers a compromise with theco-existence of the widely divergent structures in the same area. It resemblesa nest, well- accommodated, protected and concealed, but at the same time benevolent to nature, openness and broadness of mind.

The longitudinal wall, 40 metres long, has two functions. It marks the parcel boundary of the new house, sets its exterior margin keeping out of sight the disorderly, inhabited side of the parcel – and at the same time, on the inside, accommodates a storagespace running along its entire length.

Between the cabinet/wall and the rest of the house there runs a corridor illuminated by natural light from a long skylight. Alongside the building, there is a range of functions, such as the entrance, kitchen, living room, bedrooms and workrooms. As if the architect had epitomized the perspective of the landscape and transferred it to anarchitectural drawing and idea.