Faced with rising sea levels, would you consider a move onto the water? Soon, a community of Londoners will have exactly that option. DRMM Architects has won the Royal Docks competition to design England's first floating village. London Mayor Boris Johnson revealed a consortium including Carillion Igloo Genesis and Buro Happold who will together transform 60 thousand square meters of water just east of the Emirates Airline. Floating villages are a new idea for the UK, but already popular in Europe, especially in Holland where designers have long considered sea levels in relation to housing and city planning. The Royal Docks scheme borrows expertise developed at the floating prefab village of Ijburg near Amsterdam. In Scotland two schemes are already planned, including a solar powered floating community for Edinburgh and a £30 million development directly adjacent to the Glasgow Science Center. The water site at the Royal Victoria Dock, just east of the Emirates Airline, will be transformed into a community with 50 custom-built homes, plus restaurants, bars and offices. There will also be a blue-water square framed by a market square, a floating cornice and an events space. Plans for additional facilities, such as a lido and ice rink, were also proposed as part of the bid. The winning scheme will be 100% floating with the walkways, residential and non-residential units anchored in place using a series of piles located within the dock and connected to the dock by bridges. Future inhabitants will be able to play a part in the design of their property. Chris Brown, director of Carillion Igloo Genesis said: "Living in a floating home you've helped to design is a dream lots of us have. By combining the floating home experience of our Dutch collaborators with our custom built business we hope to make these dreams come true in Royal Victoria Dock... East London's place on the tourist trail is growing fast. It's about to be joined by Europe's largest floating village, with floating markets, creative workspace, events and watersports." Alex de Rijke of DRMM recently presented his studies on floating villages to the Venice architecture biennale. The prefabricated floating water-homes will use the same type of concrete foundations that are already in use at the Ijburg development in Holland. The construction of the homes - including the bases - will be carried out off-site and then transported by water to site. The scheme is due to enter the formal planning process with Newham council in Spring 2015, and it is expected to address the need for affordable housing to avoid opposition from local authorities and residents.

Dubai is already home to the biggest shopping mall in the world, but that apparently isn't enough. Dubai has just unveiled plans for the world's largest temperature-controlled pedestrian city, the Mall of the World. To be completed in time for the World Expo 2020, the 4.5 million square meters mega development will include the world's largest shopping mall, the world's largest indoor theme park, and a 280 thousand square meters wellness center catering to medical tourists. It will be located right across the street from the 223 thousand square meters Mall of the Emirates. Dubai Holding will need US$ 6.8 billion to build an entertainment district. While the impending Expo 2020 undoubtedly gives a timeline to the project, in unveiling the plans His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum commented: "We announced recently that we plan to transform Dubai into a cultural, tourist and economic hub for the two billion people living in the region around us; and we are determined to achieve our vision." It is estimated that the Mall of the World will be a draw card for 180 million visitors per year. The project will be completed in stages, "in alignment with the gradual growth of family tourism in Dubai." The project's "highlights" include the world's largest mall at 743 thousand square meters, connected to 100 hotels and serviced apartment buildings totaling 20,000 hotel rooms. The shopping mall will be a temperature-controlled, covered retail street network spreading over 7 kilometers and modeled on Rodeo Drive and London's Oxford Street. It will also include The Celebration Walk, which is based on La Rambla in Barcelona. The development also includes the largest indoor family theme park in the world, which will be covered by a glass dome that can be opened in the milder winter months. There will also be a cultural district based on Broadway, with a 15,000-person capacity "celebration center," to be Dubai's largest.

CDL's Tree House in Singapore just set a new Guinness World Record with the world's largest vertical garden. The building's green wall measures 2289 square meters and is expected to save more than US$ 500 thousand in energy and water costs annually. Located in a quiet corner of Singapore's District 23, Tree House is a 24-storey condo building that boasts the world's largest vertical garden and features state-of-the-art sustainable technologies and elements such as heat-reducing windows and motion sensors that automatically activate lights. The vertical garden will reduce the estate's carbon footprint by filtering pollutants and carbon dioxide out of the air. The green exterior wall will reduce heat absorption, which could result in energy savings of between 15 and 30 percent. The developer, City Developments Limited (CDL) won the tender for the site in August 2009 and the project was completed in 2013.

UK-based Chetwood Architects just unveiled plans for the Phoenix Towers in Wuhan, China, which will be the world's tallest pair of skyscrapers upon completion. The supertall structures are the centerpiece of the firm's four master plans slated for construction in China. The Phoenix Towers are outfitted with wind turbines, solar panels, thermal chimneys and rainwater harvesting systems and they will act as an "environmental catalyst" to re-invigorate the city of Wuhan. The Phoenix Towers, designed in cooperation between Chetwood Architects and HuaYan Group, are expected to be built on a 47-hectare site on an island within a lake in the city of Wuhan in China. They are expected to reach the height of 1km, catching up with Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture-designed Kingdom Tower in Jeddah; they would be the tallest pair of towers in the world. Inspired by the symbol of the Chinese Phoenix, which combines male and female principles in perfect balance, the architects designed two interdependent towers. The "male" one (Feng) feeds the "female" (Huang) with renewable energy and together they act as a beacon of sustainability in the area.

The awards ceremony for the 14th International Architecture Exhibition is known and the results are in! The Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to South Korea for "Crow's Eye View: The Korean Peninsula". The jury cited Korea's "extraordinary achievement of presenting a new and rich body of knowledge of architecture and urbanism in a highly charged political situation." Chile received the Silver Lion for a National Participation for "Monolith Controversies". The jury said, "Focusing on one essential element of modern architecture - a prefabricated concrete wall- it critically highlights the role of elements of architecture in different ideological and political contexts." The three Special Mentions to National Participations went to Canada - Arctic Adaptations, France - Modernity, Russia - Fair Enough. Armenian delegation also is presented in XIV international Architecture Venice Biennale. Our pavilion is dedicated to Yerevan and called "The Capital of Desires". National Coordinator of Armenian delegation Arev Samuelyan reported that Armenia participates in exhibition for 6 years. This year Armenian side invited well-known international curators Ruben Arevshatyan and George Shellhammer. According to Ruben Arevshatyan there are presented three key Armenian modernist architecture schools of XX century. First, it is "Tamanyan School", second is "Constructivists School" and the third is "Rafael Israelyan School". XIV Venice Architectural Biennale under the slogan "Fundamentals" opened for visitors on June 7. This year it doesn't present any new architectural solutions or projects, instead, architectural experts of different countries tries to present their vision how architecture has evolved in the last century and what we can do with it now. Curator of the Biennale, which takes place every two year, became famous Dutch architect, Pritzker Price winner Rem Koolhaas. Exhibition theme "Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014" he announced early enough to invite national pavilions to discuss a single theme. In the contest Biennale attended 65 national teams.