Since dissolving the avant-garde Copenhagen architecture firm PLOT in 2006, former partners Julien De Smedt and Bjarke Ingels have launched individual practices with grandiose, statement-making visions. Considering how to add new housing in the middle of already-crowded Copenhagen, for example, Ingels’s firm Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, decided that a local sports field could be surrounded by a giant wall containing 5,000 apartments—an unsolicited idea that the municipality now intends to realize. De Smedt, too, has thrilled potential clients. His studio, JDS, recently won a competition to redesign the Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo. Images courtesy JDS Julien De Smedt

It’s only natural for America’s ski community to embrace the environmental movement: a rise in average global temperatures could dwindle vital snowpack. Last year at least 61 ski resorts purchased wind and solar energy credits. Similarly, Jiminy Peak, in Massachusetts, became the first ski resort in the country to produce its own alternative energy, installing a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine that supplies one-third of its electricity. Images ' dbox An overview of the new Base Village in Snowmass Village, Colorado (top). The Little Nell Residences at the Base Village (above). Eco momentum has continued to build during the 2007–2008 ski season.

Although the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition “Provoking Magic: Lighting of Ingo Maurer” represents less than one-third of the German designer’s oeuvre, the show’s 53 pieces reveal the staggering breadth of Maurer’s imagination.

Predock's Flexible Arts Center Suits College's Boundary-Breaking Style A biologist, musician, and a playwright enter a classroom: this isn’t the setup for a joke, but rather the essential pedagogy of Colorado College. This small liberal arts school, located in Colorado Springs, operates on a so-called block plan, in which students enroll in just one course every three-and-a-half weeks. The classes are interdisciplinary and intense, taught by a tag team of three or four professors from different departments and culminating in a final project that weaves all their subjects together. Images courtesy Colorado College Antoine Predock’s new Cornerstone Arts Center at

Saucier+Perrotte Experience Rocky Mountain High Saucier+Perrotte Architectes, in collaboration with Marc Boutin Architects, have designed the National Mountain Centre, a Rocky Mountain museum and visitor’s center to be constructed in Canmore, Alberta. Program elements within the five-story, 55,000-square-foot space will be layered—a touch inspired by geological stratification, says partner Gilles Saucier. Images courtesy Saucier+Perrotte Architectes Saucier+Perrotte Architectes, in collaboration with Marc Boutin Architects, have designed the National Mountain Centre (top). Program elements within the five-story, 55,000-square-foot space will be layered—a touch inspired by geological stratification (middle). A 98-foot-tall central, seismic column doubles as a rock-climbing wall, which will be North

Fuksas Serves Up Gourmet School Design Hotel and restaurant trainees in Montpellier, France, are due to get a crash course in chic design appreciation. Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas has designed the new Marianne hotel, catering, and tourism trade school. Images courtesy M Fuksas ARCH Massimiliano Fuksas has designed the new Marianne hotel, catering, and tourism trade school in Montpellier, France (top). Partially exposed structural framework will create a diamond pattern on the curved exterior surfaces, while the building’s skin is made of triangular aluminum panels punctuated by triangular aluminum window frames with double glazing (middle). The school includes five buildings

With Airbus unveiling its A380 jumbo jet last fall, and Boeing at work on its own new jumbo called the Dreamliner, due out in December 2008, airport architects find themselves accommodating a trio of recent phenomena: a new generation of large aircraft, the burgeoning of low-cost carriers, and post-9/11 security measures. Although the North Terminal of the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, which will open in September 2008, does not have to accommodate A380s or Dreamliners, Gensler engaged thoroughly with air travel’s changing playing field. Due to budget limitations—the project’s $315 million price tag was set in 2000—the 800,000-square-foot, three-story

Sebastian Mariscal found his professors not in the halls of academe, but in the offices of practicing architects. Starting when he was 14, he spent afternoons and evenings after school working for his father, Raul Octavio Mariscal, a public-housing architect in Mexico City.