‘How can architecture and urban planning provide answers to the current urban challenges in Brussels?’ is the headline question for this exhibition. With the Belgian capital’s population set to grow in the coming years, issues such as jobs, mobility and public amenities will be intensified and in the search for answers, this presentation looks to other major European major cities for solutions. Models, films, plans, photographs and a selection of projects designed by the likes of Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Peter Zumthor, MVRDV, Lacaton & Vassal, Christ & Gantenbein and Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen explore the potential of future visions.

A display examining the designs carried out by architect Charles Holden during the 1920s and 1930s for London Underground. The full range of his work is explored, from stations on the Northern line and refurbishment of Piccadilly Circus station through to his creation of a new London Underground headquarters at 55 Broadway and his iconic, modernist, station designs produced for the Piccadilly line such as Arnos Grove and Southgate. Holden’s collaboration with London Underground’s chief executive Frank Pick is investigated – their joint belief in the design philosophy of fitness for purpose was instrumental in shaping the Underground’s unique, corporate style. (See also www.architecture.com) 

The fourth edition of Oslo’s architecture fest offers international and national perspectives on architecture and urban development, with the MAN MADE TOMORROW conference one of the key elements in the programme. The event will focus on infrastructure, densification and mobility and will include speakers Wang Shu, Amateur Architecture Studio; Richard Burdett, London School of Economics (LSE); Alan Berger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MiT); Francis Rambert, Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine Paris; Finn Geipel, LIN; & Knut Eirik Dahl, Dahl & Uhre, ao. Elsewhere, the main exhibition MAN MADE ENVIRONMENT takes place at DogA and will show a selection of new Nordic landscape architecture.

LaN (Live Architecture Network) directors Monika Wittig and Luis Fraguada direct a week-long seminar on associative design and production. Investigating several modes for interacting with real time, real life data using a combination of existing data libraries and prefabricated sensory nodes, the workshop will use the 22@ Innovation District in Barcelona as a data source as well as a test bed for spatial configurations generated from the recorded data. Participants will engage these topics through Grasshopper, a generative modelling tool for McNeel’s Rhinoceros.  The workshop will work with the Fab Lab BCN for prototyping and fabrication.

This exhibition features photographs by architectural photographer HG Esch, who in summer of 2009 photographed 30 projects by Walter Henn and Gunter Henn in a period of 30 days. Taking in the impact of Walter Henn - regarded as a leading exponent of the Braunschweig School - on industrial and administrative buildings from the 1950s up until the 1970s and the tradition perpetuated by the work of Gunter Henn through the office Henn Architekten, founded in 1979, the former’s dedication to the ‘spatial structuring of processes and functions’ and the latter’s combination of ‘formerly separate areas into hybrid buildings’ is highlighted.

You've seen the pictures, visited the building, now experience the play. The Bilbao Effect by Oren Safdie is being billed as a work that 'puts contemporary architecture on trial'. Frank Gehry, whose success with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao sent the world's city marketeers into a formulaic frenzy, isn't actually dragged into the dock, but the disguise is thin.  The plot centres on one 'Erhardt Shlaminger', who is a 'world famous architect who faces censure by the American Institute of Architects, following accusations that his urban redevelopment project for Staten Island has led to a woman's suicide.' The said project is apparently a Museum for Contemporary Contemporary Art, which one colleague describes as a 'toaster on steroids'....This is a blind preview, so no judgement on the satirical bite of its content, but alongside an architectural send-up, the play seeks to 'explore whether architecture has become more of art than a profession, and at what point the ethics of one field violate the principles of the other.'

This international competition, launched by the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, invites architects to design a single family dwelling that is radically cheap to build for Luanda, a city under extreme demographic pressure and undergoing an intense period of transformation. The family unit should be designed to house a severely deprived family of between seven and nine people. A shortlist of 30 finalists will be chosen and contacted by the Triennial to develop presentation models of their proposals that will, in turn, appear at the exhibition at the Museum of Electricity (between 28 October 2010 and January 2011).

The 1960s and 70s saw new generations of architects begin careers amidst a period of profound social change, new conditions to architecture and the city, and lasting changes to popular and critical forms of culture and its production. This exhibition tells the story of the era and re-assesses the conditions of architecture, featuring a single key early project from the likes of Archigram, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Norman Foster + Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Cedric Price, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, Bernard Tschumi, Robert Venturi and Paul Virilio + Claude Parent, among others.

Stretching for 32 kilometres, the A10 Circular Road is the longest construction in Amsterdam. As a result of its length, the Circular cuts through a wide variety of urban environments and is currently being swamped with spatial design projects. Motivated by a desire to become better acquainted with this ‘construction’, ARCAM’s research collected unexpected perspectives of the urban landscape in the margins of the A10. From bold student plans to relevant images from the roads past & future, these initial findings are complemented in the exhibition by a series of scales models of the road’s trajectory.

The 4th IABR includes three major exhibitions (two in Rotterdam and one in Amsterdam); an extensive massive event programme at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI); and a large cross-media project in cooperation with the broadcaster VPRO. Things kick off on 24 September with the opening of its main exhibition, Open City: Designing Coexistence, at the NAI in Rotterdam. Two other exhibitions will open their doors to the public: Parallel Cases//IABR@RDM on 25 September and The Free State of Amsterdam on 26 September. The 4th IABR’s curator is Dutch architect and urbanist Kees Christiaanse, professor at ETH Zurich and founder of and partner in KCAP Rotterdam.