Tuesday 20th September 2011

	Issue No.351 // 20 September 2011

Hotel & Park development, Canada

New sports arena, Peru

District master plan, Korea

New bridge, Sweden

Schools renovation, Democratic Rep. of Congo

20 New houses, Australia

Life science park, India


Arts & Leisure	Big Architecture
Conservation	Education
Healthcare	Hotels
Industrial	Infrastructure
Interiors	Landscape
Master Plan	Offices/Comm
Public Building	Private Housing
Public Housing	Religion
Retail	Sports
Sustainability	Transport
Tall Building	Urban Design

Chinese projects on thin ice?

As rumours emerge of illegal steel thinning in Zhengzhou, all goes quiet on the Chinese front...

One trillion. This is the number of American dollars allocated for infrastructure projects in China over the next five years. Zhengzhou. This is the location of the latest ‘stretching’ factory in China pulling steel reinforcement rods to illegal diameters and threatening the lives of countless citizens who will use the infrastructure projects constructed using these substandard materials. This week a surprisingly small article in British newspaper The Times detailed the discovery of illicit practices at a Zhengzhou ‘stretching’ factory where steel reinforcement rods used in a number of construction projects had been pulled to a thickness below regulatory standards. The reasons for this are simple - 10mm wide rods can be easily stretched to a thickness of 8.5mm, creating many additional metres of metal then sold on for profit - but the resolution is not. Despite countless assertions from experts that......more

Landmark reached at Open City
Open City event in London pushes visitor numbers to Olympic Park past 200,000 mark: Open City is an annual event in London (and more recently extended to Tel Aviv, New York, Dublin, Galway and Barcelona) which throws open the doors to some of the......more

The final act
Spotlight on Busan as Cinema Center rushes to complete in time for 16th Busan International Film Festival in October: The COOP HIMMELB(L)AU-designed Busan Cinema Center in South Korea is undergoing furious finishes to construction in preparation......more

A view from above
Tallest building ever realised by a British architect nears completion in Shenzhen: TFP Farrells is preparing for the completion of its stunningly bisymmetrical KK100 tower in the Luohu district of Shenzhen, China’s fastest growing city. The tallest build......more

New images of London River Park
Gensler releases renewed renderings of floating civic platform on The Thames: Global design studio Gensler has just released these illustrative images of its concept for the kilometre-long floating River Walk on the north bank of the River Thames in England’s.....more

An escape in the city
Suburban health facility offers sanctuary for those living with mental illness in Victoria: This inviting composition is the newly completed Dandenong Hospital in Melbourne, Australia designed by Bates Smart in association with Whitefield McQueen Irwin......more

Follow the masses
Keep track of fellow architecture tweeters with the global Architect Twitter Map: It may be closing in on Facebook as the world’s favourite social media site, but in business terms the jury is still out on how effective Twitter can be as a commercial outlet. At......more