International firm Penda Architecture and Design has designed a meadow with sunken pathways for China's International Garden Expo 2015.

As part of China's International Garden Expo, Beijing– and Vienna–based firm Penda Architecture and Design has designed a temporary meadow, named "Where the River Runs," sited for Wuhan, China. The installation, which contains sunken pathways and hidden meeting places, allows visitors to walk along a winding trail through the meadow, mimicking an imaginary river. With this installation, the architects hope to highlight that clean water is not an endless resource. 

The pathways lead towards a central, sheltered plaza below the landscaped surface. As visitors wind towards the plaza, they are invited to sprinkle seeds over the grass to encourage the growth of new plants and flowers...

With ideas ranging from floating homes to new mega-cities, New London Architecture has revealed 100 proposals to address the housing crisis in London. The ideas will be on display as part of the New Ideas for Housing exhibition at the NLA Galleries in the Building Centre in London. After an open ideas competition announced June 2015, over 200 entries were received with 10 finalists to be selected for the opportunity to work with the Greater London Authority to implement their ideas.

With so many entries, certain trends in thinking emerged. The retro-fitting of London suburbs, and the idea of giving homeowners greater responsibility was popular: Alastair Parvin and Adam Towle in partnership with the WikiHouse Foundation proposed the “Right to Replace,” which allows homeowners to replace their existing property with their dream home, if they use half their space, incentivizing density. Other ideas include apps that locate future development sites, and a ‘build-to-own’ financing and ownership model by Savills.

Visit the article link to view examples of innovative housing around the world...

Designed by Studio Olafur Eliasson, and built by the non-profit charitable foundation Nordea-fonden, Cirkelbroen bridge is a gift to the city of Copenhagen to promote good living in in Denmark.

'Cirkelbroen celebrates pedestrians. It reflects the daily life and intimacy that you find around the canal in the Christianshavn neighbourhood, its houseboats and sailing boats, the unique life on the ramparts. Copenhagen’s harbour was once a centre of maritime activity, and Cirkelbroen is a testimony to that history.'

The very idea of a moon city ignites a constellation of questions about what it would look like and how we would build it. So CityLab called Woerner to find out. With the International Space Station potentially coming offline around 2024, he says, it’s time to envision the next era of human presence beyond Earth. The moon-city project would be a prime driver of technological advancement as well as basic scientific research.

Airport runways are raised above the streets and waterways of a new Stockholm city district in this conceptual proposal by Bartlett School of Architecture graduate Alex Sutton.

The proposal, named Stockholm City Airport/Airport City, envisages a future where commercial aviation becomes more integrated into the fabric of the city rather than being relegated to the outskirts.

"This project uses Stockholm, one of the fastest growing cities in Europe, as a testing ground to establish a fully integrated urban airport as part of a new city district, in a time when aviation technology is such that aircraft and airports could operate from within our cities."

Snøhetta has unveiled plans to build the first official market building in Portland, Oregon, for over 70 years. The architecture and design studio – which has offices in New York and Oslo – will lead the design team for the community-funded James Beard Public Market, a new year-round food market for the American city.

It will be Portland's first permanent market since 1942, when the Portland Public Market closed down. Portland has a celebrated restaurant and street food scene, which is supported by a number of farmers'  markets, local breweries, and farms run by families and collectives in the surrounding area..

The Hyperloop is an entirely new form of a transportation proposed by Elon Musk that would hypothetically shoot capsules of people through what are essentially giant pneumatic tubes, getting travelers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about half an hour.

It's supposed to be "ultra-clean, ultra safe, affordable, intra-urban travel at super-high speed." Everyone, including Musk, knows it is hypothetical. What Suprastudio, a master's architecture and design studio at UCLA, and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, an Arts District startup, presuppose is: maybe it isn't? The two have been working together to come up with a prototype and the Suprastudio students have just released some of their research and proposals, with ideas for routes, station design, capsule design, and more.

Originally an area of tidal marshes, the Peninsula was decimated by pollution from Victorian shipyards and factories in the late 1800s.

A slice of lush green garden has emerged from the grey construction site on London's Greenwich Peninsula, where developers Knight Dragon are currently in the daunting process of constructing a new urban village on this formerly industrial stretch of the Thames. The Peninsula Garden, which sits alongside the soon-to-be-built No.2 Riverside apartments by SOM architects and Tom Dixon's Design Research Studio, is part of a much bigger Manhattan-style masterplan comprising five districts of homes, shops, art, entertainment and culture.

A Vancouver building illustrates how architecture can make an active, positive contribution to the environment.

 It’s great that buildings can minimize harm, right down to being carbon-neutral and zero-emission. But what if they could be designed to take it a step further—to give back to nature and make a positive contribution to the environment? This concept is known as regenerative design.

Arising from an international bridge design competition, Henderson Waves and other connections form part of a nine kilometer stretch of leisure destination that urban planners have envisioned for in the south of Singapore. This tallest pedestrian bridge and other elevated walkways creatively link up hills, parks and attractions to extend the green and recreational spaces available, bringing people closer to nature. 
Designed by RSP Architects Planners & Engineers Pte Ltd and IJP Corporation (UK), the 274 meter long bridge springs from a scenic location off Mount Faber to Telok Blangah. At 36 meters above Henderson Road, the bridge flows organically in seven wave spans, echoing the ridges’ profiles.

Floating cities can seem to be a futuristic dream. However, the London based firm AT Design Office are working together with a large Chinese based construction firm called China Investment Banking Co. to come up with a plan to test this project at a smaller scale next year.

On the edge of a recently completed civic square for the Canadian town of Newmarket, Ontario, Atelier Kastelic Buffey (AKB) have designed the “Story Pod,” a free community-supported lending library that is open to everyone.

The black box with vertical slats has two walls that pivot open like the covers of a book, welcoming people inside. Visitors can take or leave any of the books, or lounge quietly on the built-in seating and read...

This project consists of, on the one hand, the construction of a pedestrian bridge to improve access between the park and the city and, on the other hand, the construction of some sheds, in the park’s fruit and vegetable garden area, to serve as storage spaces for the garden concessionaires.

The bridge forms a part of the geometric design of the pedestrian and bicycle paths and the water and river systems. At the same time, it creates an ideal spot for visitors and an observation point from the bridge to view the park from the city...

Design students and a nonprofit theater group created a “park-in-a-cart” to serve the fast-growing city of El Alto, Bolivia.   

In this dense city, driven by commerce at all scales, streets, sidewalks, and communal spaces are often transformed into informal markets, where vendors and minibuses compete for real estate. While this competition brings vitality, it requires novel methods of occupying urban space for play.

The pop-up playground aims to do just that.

Over three summers, the International Design Clinic (IDC), a “guerrilla design” collective, has collaborated with Teatro Trono to design and build a pair of mutable, movable playspaces that will help the organization expand its activism into El Alto’s public space. The areas currently designated for children in El Alto are scant and often ill-maintained.

Architect Frank Gehry has conceived five distinct but interrelated buildings for a prominent site along LA's famous Sunset Strip.

Unveiled Wednesday, the design for 8150 Sunset Boulevard features five buildings that are united by a common plaza at street level. Public space is interwoven into the complex, which will encompass 334,000 square feet (31,000 square metres).

The site anchors the eastern end of the Sunset Strip and faces Hollywood Hills to the north. The development will have low heights along the street in order to relate in scale to nearby buildings. The area features architectural and cultural landmarks such as Chateau Marmot, a storied hotel meant to evoke a French estate, and the Art Deco-style Sunset Tower.

As a part of its EMBARQ Sustainable Urban Mobility initiative, the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities has created a global reference guide called Cities Safer by Design “to help cities save lives from traffic fatalities through improved street design and smart urban development."

WilkinsonEyre, BuroHappold Engineering and architectural practice Urban Agency have teamed to create the new Copenhagen inner harbour bridge.

The design will link the two misaligned axes of Vester Voldgade and Langebrogade in a graceful curvature. This process will be able to reconnect the city to the walls of Christianshavn, allowing for better use of the space. The bridge will gradually raise leading into the middle, before sloping down again to reach the alternate side, making it easy to use for pedestrians and cyclists. Two opening spans at the centre of the bridge will be able to pivot and open, creating a 35m wide shipping channel...

This housing in Brussels was funded by its residents – with a design by Stekke + Fraas based on "durability, prosperity, ecology and social diversity.

Named Brutopia, the project is situated in the city's Forest neighbourhood, close to the Wiels contemporary arts centre.

Its inhabitants wanted to enjoy the benefits of living in the city but without paying over the odds, so they clubbed together to form a non-profit organisation to manage the project's budget and construction.

"They wanted an affordable but high-quality dwelling in Brussels that has some architectural qualities and is ecologically progressive."

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) has selected six finalists for the 2015 Urban Open Space Award competition, which recognizes public spaces that benefit and revitalize their surrounding communities.

“The submissions from this year are representative of how quality urban open space has become more than just an amenity for cities,” said jury chair Michael Covarrubias. “The international diversity of the projects is reflective of how developers continually work to meet global demand by the public for the inclusion of healthy places in cities.”

The Big Dig freed Boston of its much-maligned Central Artery, an elevated expressway that divided the city. While the resulting underground tunnels opened to traffic beginning in 2003, much of the city’s residents still had to navigate under the defunct highway’s imposing steel remnants to reach the city’s North End neighborhood and waterfront.

The city's aerial sculpture, "As If It Were Already Here," by the renowned artist combines handcraft, digital design, structural engineering, and crane acrobatics.

In keeping with Paris’ mounting aversion to automobiles, Mayor Anne Hidalgo recently announced plans to bar motorists from the banks of the River Seine by summer 2016.

This latest blow to motorists occurs in tandem with the all-or-nothing anti-pollution target Hidalgo set last year of banning all non-electric or hybrid vehicles from Paris’ most polluted streets by 2020.

Renderings for the futuristic River Seine project a motor-free parkland consisting of a tree-shaded promenade with space for children’s playgrounds and sports facilities. The length of this promenade is TBD, with some proposals occupying a modest 0.9 miles, while others insist on a 2.05-mile car-free quayside, potentially freeing up 1.4 acres of parkland.

Tropical roof gardens and a leisure complex designed by Foster + Partners to sit above a new Crossrail station at Canary Wharf in London will open to the public this week.

The seven-storey structure is the first new building for Crossrail – London's new east-west rail link – to open, although trains will not run from the station for at least three years.

Located in the heart of London's Canary Wharf financial hub on the North Dock, the station will be one of 40 that will serve the capital's new rail network, scheduled to open in 2018...