The American Institute of Architects, San Francisco chapter (AIA San Francisco) announces the winners of the 2010 AIA San Francisco Design Awards program. The winners were revealed and celebrated last night at a special gala held at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. The emcees for the evening were Sarah Lynch, Editor in Chief, California Home + Design and Bill Roger, 2010 AIA San Francisco Board President.

At the gala, winners were recognized for their outstanding contributions to the built environment in the categories of Architecture and Interior Architecture, Energy + Sustainability, Historic Preservation and Innovation in Rehabilitation, Integrated Project Delivery, Young Architects and Associates, Unbuilt Design, and Urban Design in the Bay Area. Each of these award categories was divided into three subcategories—Honor, Merit, and Citation. In addition, awards for Special Achievement were also presented. Read the rest of this entry »

OMA, the research based think tank within the office for metropolitan architecture, has extended its expertise in planning the design of the future energy infrastructure of the EU as part of ‘roadmap 2050: a practical guide to a prosperous, low-carbon europe’ the project, proposing an EU-wide decarbonized power grid by 2050, debuts in brussels today to an audience of european leaders. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone blitzing through the annual San Francisco Flower & Garden Show may have been left with the impression that when the Bay Area isn’t planting Japanese maples or potting orchids, it’s installing vertical gardens. The show seemed to be wall-to-wall green wall.

The event did hold a few other discoveries, which we’ll feature in the weeks to come. But make no mistake: Living walls spoke most loudly, if not most eloquently, from the showroom floor in San Mateo. “The Living Room” installation pictured above consisted of 19,000 succulents, said its designers, James Pettigrew and Sean Stout of Organic Mechanics in San Francisco,organicmechanics@att.net. The exterior panels were made by a Michigan company called Bright Green USA, and the plants came from Succulent Gardens in Castroville, Calif., north of Monterey. Inside the structure, carved river rocks were aglow with LEDs.

More at: LA Times Blog

Harvard University Graduate School of Design hosts some great lectures featuring some of the world’s most important architects. We will be telling you about their events on a monthly basis, so here are the dates of their April events.

April 1 / Science and Democracy Lecture Series: Can We Leave the Bauxite in the Mountain? / Arundhati Roy
April 2-3 / Critical Ecologies / Colloquium, Keynote Speakers Sanford Kwinter, Piet Oudolf, Richard Wrangham
April 6 / Now? Territories and Territoriality /Martha Rosler in conversation withMohsen Mostafavi
April 7 / Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Color is not a Decoration / Claude Cormier
April 8 / On the Future of Landscape History / John Dixon Hunt in conversation withMark Laird
April 12 / Architectural Agency: The Case of Elemental / Alejandro Aravena with Andres Lepik, Toshiko Mori, Hashim Sarkis
April 13 / The Return of Nature: The Nature of Architecture / Peter Eisenman, Jorge Silvetti, Sarah Whiting
April 14 / Discussions in Architecture / Peter Eisenman with Preston Scott Cohen
April 15-16 / Inside/Out: Exploring Gender and Space in Life, Culture, and Art /Conference
April 16-17 / Cambridge Talks IV: Design Politics / Symposium
April 20 / Digital Culture in Architecture / Antoine Picon
April 21-23 / Design, Infrastructure Sustainability, and Social Responsability /Conference

You can find more on each event on the GSD official website. Every event is free and open to the public.