This house has many facets that make it an intriguing example. First of all, it is a very aesthetically pleasing project with the use of light horizontal timbers and a clean pitched roof. Designed by MOS, an interesting design collective based in America, the secret to the Floating House is that it floats on a structure of steel pontoons. The house rises and falls with the changing waters and is frozen in place depending on the season. The steel pontoons were constructed first and towed to the lake outside the contractor’s factory and then the house was built atop of it. When finished it was towed to its position, anchored and enjoyed in its unique position. Finally, it forms a bridge between the land and an island. Wonderful!

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Dutch uber-firm OMA, headed by Rem Koolhaas, has created this concept in Mexico City to symbolize the coming two hundred years of Mexico’s independence. There are many layers of symbolism in this building, from Mayan pyramids to which part of the building controls the park and which part controls the city, to the fact that the bulge of the building is below the centre height, and that it all happens on a relatively small footprint. Most of all, in this building there is a barely contained energy that seems near to release and it may be that this is what Torre Bicentenario represents.

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The Danes are renowned for their considered and subtle design. However, in these times of change, they must feel they need something with this selection of a bridge building as the winner of a recent architectural competition in Denmark. The American architect Steven Holl designed this building with a pedestrian bridge that links two sides of the harbour in the distinctly low-rise Copenhagen. Full of many sustainable features, such as wind turbines that power the pedestrian bridge, the design aims to ensure that Copenhagen has a striking harbour gateway that is also a literal link. As supporters of contemporary development, this example has unfortunately left us feeling underwhelmed. There is something so awkward about the whole thing, a lacking in proportion that seems to miss the point of the qualities of that place. Then again, those qualities could belong to the ‘old’ Copenhagen.

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Since the beginning, architects have been faced by the challenge of housing the ever unpinnable idea of music. The challenge here is the Elbe Philharmonic Hall in Hamburg, Germany. Basel-based architects, Herzog and de Meuron have created an ephemeral glass tent-like structure perched on top of an existing heavy modernist abandoned warehouse. The warehouse will be composed mainly of parking and back of house, while the glass structure incorporates concert halls, restaurants, bars, apartments and a luxury hotel. Clearly, this is a tremendously exciting alteration and addition to an existing site and building, with this new ice sculpture reflecting the surrounding changing environment and the soaring notes within. Completion is scheduled for 2010.

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An egg is the symbol of birth, life and imminent development, and it has been used here as the basis to create a revolutionary Indian office environment. Located in the burgeoning and rapidly changing Mumbai, this egg achieves much with an intelligent water filtration system, a renewable power system of photovoltaic’s and wind turbines, and a health system in the bathrooms to track user’s blood pressure and weight. Designed by James Law Cybertecture International, they claim that the shape is even sustainable as it reduces building surface area, therefore reducing temperature loss-gain. We will see a lot more of this in India.

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This organic form, revealing itself from the sprawling metropolis of Barcelona via the marauding eye of Google, is the Santa Caterina Market. Designed by the late architect Enric Miralles it has a floating ceramic roof that drapes the bustling market below in a parental way. The coloured ceramics, of course, represent the smorgasbord of fruit and vegetables on sale within and enable a majestic view, not only for Google, but also to its immediate neighbours overlooking the site.

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This is a preview from the game The Unfinished Swan, created by Ian Dallas and due to be released next year. The game is set in an all white world and features a maze that you find your way through by shooting paint balls to reveal your 3D environment. We highly recommend you check out the tech demo above, as that’s what really gets you in. We can’t help but be excited by this premise of discovery in the white noise of our architectural environments. Thanks to fellow architect Marcus Trimble, from whom we found this lead.

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Located on a mountain in country outside Mudgee, in New South Wales, Australia, a permanent camp designed by Casey Brown has been set. A timber structure clad in copper has been designed to have a closed state and an open state. From the closed position, the flanks of copper are hoisted and capture views across the valley. With an imagery of structures, materials and mechanics of old, there is something romantic about this foothold on the hill.

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Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss architects, have led the way with this re-use of the existing building fabric of CaixaForum in Madrid. Rather than being slavish to the existing openings, the building has been cut away for a contemporary practicality. We think this is an example of heritage not getting in the way of progress. Check out a similar concept of a previous post re-using the city fabric, where we were dreaming of such thing.

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Rainwater tanks are here to stay. Not only is the general populace turning to them as the realization sinks in that water is a scarce resource, but they are also being legislated by government at all levels. The unfortunate problem is that the vast majority are not the most attractive additions to the built environment, particularly the latest round of polypropylene models, which are mostly big beige blobs.

Full Tank, grown as an adjunct to a Melbourne based architectural firm, has spotted this need in the market and in response has presented the LUMI water tanks. Using Plexiglass in a variety of saturated colours, these tanks have been designed to fit into urban environments as an alternative to a naked normal water tank. The material used has a satin finish, which glows in the sunlight and illuminates by night with internal LEDs. LUMI is fully recyclable and compatible with greywater recycling systems and rainwater diverters. The outer casing can be retro-fitted to most domestic sized rainwater tanks.

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Here’s another commercial building, and no doubt a nice one too. But just another commercial building. Yet there is something different here and it’s in the materials used. The cladding is a fibre-reinforced polymer, or a FRP, and has a finish similar to that of a car. This technology has not been used on buildings extensively, though it has been used commonly in aerospace industries due to its higher strength to weight ratio than steel and concrete. The building by Foster and Partners — called The Walbrook — is located in London and is due to be completed in 2009.

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We have reported on Danish firm, JDS Architects, before. And here their memorable work continues. This glorious design for the Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo is the result of an international competition and is to be completed in time for the 2011 World Championships. The ski jump is an existing landmark on the hillside northwest of Oslo’s city centre. However, the renovation will ensure the jump glows, kinks and projects a shaft of light into the sky. The top has been clipped to form a flat platform, with a heated floor to melt any snow, to offer 360 degrees views for the public.

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Formed in New York and now based in Rotterdam and Berlin, SMAQ is a collaborative studio for architecture and urbanism by architects Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau. Here they have created an interesting installation called Bad (bath) in the Solitude Palace Gardens in Stuttgart with the premise of creating a usable sculpture which entwines a 1000 metre long garden hose throughout a timber structure. At one end, the hose is filled by a hydrant with enough water for a bath, and is then pushed through the length of the hose, entering a high surface area shape where it is heated by the sun. It is then entered back into the structure for a warm bath and then further along to be spread through the gardens as irrigation. It’s a fascinating demonstration of inventive sculpture that both tells a story and performs a function.

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Created by Danish based research team, CITA, Slow Furl is a cybernetic environment that fills a room. CITA conceived this project as an organism with its own patterns of action and reaction. A skin envelopes the space and moves itself through arms connected to micro-controllers, and in reaction through sensory patches that feel movement. The skin unifies these two energies, producing unexpected and mysterious movement. It has just finished exhibiting at Lighthouse in Brighton and we are sorry we missed it.

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We came across this building a while ago by French architects EDCM, but as information at the time was only in French, it was all a bit tough – just like this building. Made of a road, an undulating concrete skin concaves from flat into walls and convexes from walls into roofs. The surface is a high performance concrete with a raised texture named Ductal, which is cut back in areas to reveal coloured glazing creating a beautiful effect of rough tough and fragile tough. The fact that the building is a bus center says so much about being on — or in — the road.

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A new idea has emerged in Norway that we think could be the precursor to things to come in the way our societies interact and develop. The general gradual demise of traditional gathering places such as town halls, community centers and churches has seemingly gone in hand with a generational shift and sharp increase in online virtual communities. However, humans still need to rub shoulders at some point to get things done, until, say, we perfect the sensitive hologram. In the meantime, places like Transplant could be the gathering points. With an increasing set of mobile businesspeople, places where idea creation and collaboration can occur will be jewels in the landscape. These individuals are not interested in carrying or owning much more than a mobile and laptop. So a place to gather with other minds, with shared resources such as material rooms, material workshops, prototype workshops, design shops, food and a bar, seem to us to be very attractive. With creativity becoming a broad future currency, these kinds of places could form the basis of progressive communities.

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Zaha Hadid has been announced as the winning architect for the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania. As with the rest of the Guggenheim Museums, the architectural boundaries are pushed. Zaha lets loose with her fluid, energetic architecture and has subsequently deemed the building to be the manifestation of the city’s new cultural significance. One wonders which is the next city that requires a Guggenheim shot in the arm?

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Italian architect Antonio Cardillo is of the opinion that architecture is only still in pictures, as in its real life it is in a state of transition with man and light moving through it. This ‘house of convexities’ near Barcelona is an embodiment of Cardillo’s question that, if architecture is music, then can its limbs dance? There is no doubt that his architecture has a quality that plays with transition and light and that this is one of the most beautiful renderings around.

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Using an intuitive sketch by Ilona Lénárd, the architect Kas Oosterhuis has created a very unusual façade. In a way it is more than a façade as it includes the roof also, fully wrapping the building in all its 3D glory. Made of 6 mm cold formed aluminium plates the pattern has been impressed upon the material using ship building techniques. Oosterhuis has gone to the extent of capturing the power of calligraphy itself, with the indentation in the metal being deeper where the artist’s line was heavier. The underlying idea is that each apartment has a unique pattern that defines their part of the façade while still unifying the building as a whole.

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French design dynamo Jean-Marie Massaud has created a Manned Cloud. A cruise airship with a hotel for 40 passengers and 15 staff, Massaud worked with the Office National d’Etudes et de Recherche Aérospatiale in this proposal. The design is based on the way whales swim and hence has some resemblance to a very large white whale. The pure concept involves travel that is so quiet that the surrounding world does not realize that the Manned Cloud has passed by.

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