[China.org via Ecofriend via Inhabitat]

Yep, pretty big. [Kottke]

Volcano Buono is a commercial center right near Mt. Vesuvius, the only volcano on mainland Europe to have erupted in the last century.

The roof of most of the structure is what looks like a grassy knoll, a surface that holds over 25,000 plants and helps naturally insulate the interior spaces. The crater holds an outdoor theater, a market and a "sloping pine forest." In addition to the normal mall shops inside, there's also a 2,000 seat cinema, a supermarket, a hotel and a bunch of restaurants. Seriously, how cool is this thing?

[Volcano Buono via Inhabitat]

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some sweet pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

D-Shape's 3-D stereolithic printer creates models entirely out of artificial sandstone using CAD-CAE modeling technologies and CAD-CAM software to control the plotter. The printing proceeds in 5-10mm layer segments and, in the end, produces a structure that has strength characteristics reminiscent of standard Portland Cement—without the need for internal reinforcement. This gives designers greater flexibility with structural shapes.

The final 10-meter structure is scheduled to be erected in Pontedera, Italy next year, but D-Shape's 3-D printer might be the beginning of a major shift in architectural design. How long will it be before we move on from machining small scale models (and cupcakes) to full-scale buildings? [Dezeen via Fast Company]

These incredible structures are the results of a contest to determine their best adaptive reuse, won by Amsterdam's own NL Architects. The towers now have climbing surfaces both inside and out as well as multi-purpose areas, offices, restaurants and other commercial spaces. How cool is that?

[Designboom via Inhabitat]

Devise an image of your dream home of the future and send it to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Future Dream Home in the subject line. Name your files FirstnameLastname.jpg with the name you want to be credited with, and save them as JPGs, PNGs or GIFs. Send your entries in by next Tuesday morning, and I'll post the top three winners and rest of the best that afternoon. Get to it!

Sprouting between buildings, the Sky-Terra (another entrant in the 2009 eVolo Skyscraper Competition) hopes to create a neuron-like network of parks, pools, amphitheaters and bathhouses in the sky.

So far, so good.

But what happens to those poor souls living their lives under the Sky-Terra? What about those millions of people not on holiday, who'd just like to walk to work with some shard of sun on their face?

Have you ever seen those glowing fish from way deep in the ocean, with fluorescent skin you can see in complete absence of light? That will be the human race. So really, it's not all bad. [Inhabitat]

By Singapore-based Design Act, "My Dream, Our Vision" is constructed from 3866 cubes of varying opacity, and serves as a physical manifestation of the intangible: digital information floating above the green landscape. Embodying "xin" (or "new"), visitors are beckoned inside by music to post their dreams of tomorrow, to incite innovation.

And it just looks really, really cool.

[Design Act and World Expo 2010 via Inhabitat]

The idea of it is quite simple. When you pull up to the apartment building, at 200 Eleventh Avenue in New York, NY, the garage will automatically identify who you are and which apartment your car belongs to. After driving into the elevator, the lift will transport your car to the floor you live on, and will then allow you to pull forward into your own garage (attached to your apartment). Voila—you, and your car, are now two steps away from your living area. A steal at $3 million dollars. (You can't put a price on this kind of car convenience in Manhattan.) [200 Eleventh Avenue via Core77 via DVice]

Designer Lars Behrendt's newest project—Lotto Turm—is to revamp the "Oesterreichischer Platz," which is currently a parking spot in Stuttgart (Southern Germany), isolated by surrounding highways.

The new structure will be made from 55 shipping crates being stacked on top of each other, with a spherical roof that will mainly serve as a lottery-number-drawing area. The buiding will also be split in two so that at least one section of the structure will be secluded from traffic and other outside noises. Not much else is known about the project, but from the pictures, it looks like there will be many levels connected by stairs, roomy terraces, a colorful courtyard, a lengthy swimming pool—with a naked lifeguard—and what's that I see? A nicely dressed escort in the love room or red-light district? You had me at naked lifeguards. Woohoo! [Design Boom]

This isn't some neat concept, it's an actual construction, penned by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and built by Prada with help from LG and Hyundai Motor. It's framed out of steel and covered entirely with a "smooth elastic membrane" and it will be situated in Seoul, Korea, where it will be used for concerts, fashion shows and other cultural events.

I think the best illustration of it is this piece from Freshness Mag, when the Transformer was only in the planning stage:

As you can see, the hexagonal side is flat, and the square has some bleachers, so it works for "cinema" mode. The circular side has a giant cylindrical platform in the middle of it, which houses a projector when it's in the air for cinema mode, but then is used as a performance stage when it's flat on the ground in "special event" mode.

Shot from the air and as yet unpainted, it doesn't look like much, and reminds me less of the robotic Transformers of the 1980s than it does of the Dungeons & Dragons dice from roughly the same epoch. The question is, how in hell do you make sure that the thing is on level ground? And while we're talking, who has to hose all the mud off of it when it gets rotated to a new position? And most importantly, who gets to drive the crane? Ooh ooh, me me! [Dezeen]

Why would Penn & Teller go to the trouble of having themselves plastered all over their workplace? Because it's their 35th working anniversary. When I hit 35 years working here, I plan to drape the office with a 26-story pair of pants. [Rio]

Kalkin's prefab homes use anywhere from one to six, or sometimes even 12 shipping containers as the frame for the home. Kalkin's homes tend to range in price from $150-$400 per square foot, with the cheapest container house costing $50,000. Some are very simple, merely containing a room in in a single container, where as others have whole other structures built inside them.

But despite all the architectural eye candy, I think my favorite part of the piece was an anecdote about how Kalkin once decided to shave while delivering a lecture at the Whitney museum. But I digress. Fast Company has plenty more photos, so check them out. [Fast Company]

The four buildings in the complex have a variety of features typical of environmentally friendly and sustainable structures of recent, and the kind we may see in the future.

Rooftop garden ponds to recycle rainwater, solar tracking screens around the buildings' exterior and circular footprints for the towers, enabling wide-open social spaces to face the sun. And of course the position of the buildings, arranged in a horizontal linking pattern so they double as giant sun umbrellas for the Stock Exchange. The buildings will be linked by underground rail as well, so the only time you'll have to venture outside is to partake in all the rooftop garden festivities. [designboom]

Apparently, this property used to be some sort of musical venue called "Caveland" where the likes of Bob Seger and Ike and Tina Turner (!?!) once performed. As if the story wasn't already strange enough, the house is now for sale because the economy crashed and the family can no longer afford their balloon payment mortgage, so their attempting to sell the house for $300,000.

Apparently the house is finished, but most of the photos show the house in an unfinished form. But whatever, because the main point here is that these people are living in a cave. And that's just crazy. [Cave House eBay via Uncrate]

I'm not going to say I don't love the look of these proposed buildings—they are a noble attempt to put environmental relevance and soulfulness in front of sheer density and speed of construction—but damn if they don't appear to be freakishly devoid of privacy.

The building that MAD itself designed barely has so few enclosures, they must be planning to install bathrooms in the elevators. You can see it in the foreground above, and in the gallery below, along with three equally transparent concepts from BIG (which looks like a Wii), Emergent (which looks like it was designed by the Master Control Program) and Rojkind Architects (which looks like it was drawn by a Parkinson's sufferer).

You only start seeing some semblance of privacy when you get to this would-be Podling village by Serie:

There are 11 buildings total, all with seductively nouveau designs, some even fit for people who are modest, mecha fat and/or coyote ugly. To get a better sense of how they harmoniously fit together, hit the links. [MAD via designboom and Dezeen]