The makers of the Copenhagen Wheel from M.I.T.'s SENSEable City Laboratory claim that the new features mark the advent of "Biking 2.0," a new era based on smarter bikes and easier rides. The wheel is certainly a step in that direction; it includes sensors for detecting distance, speed, direction, all of which are beamed via Bluetooth to the rider's iPhone. The wheel also includes a built-in lock that sends the rider a text if tampered with.

But the most notable feature of the Copenhagen Wheel is its KERS or Kinetic Energy Recovery System, a mechanism by which energy from braking is stored up for later use, giving the rider a boost when going up a hill or speeding through traffic. Some bicycle purists have already dismissed the wheel as a novelty while others suggest that M.I.T. has succeeded in reinventing the wheel. [MIT via Inhabitat]

Steve Holl's two-towers design met with serious criticism after it was chosen as the original winner of the "LM" harbor design. This spawned the response by 3XN. But before counting Holl out, you have to give the team props for coming up with some neat tech features. The buildings will have a solar-screen veil of photovoltaics, which, combined with the wind turbines that line the top of the 65-meter-high pedestrian bridge, would provide electricity for all the public spaces in the whole facility. Not bad.
The 3XN design, basically a rebuttal to Holl, has a proposal filled with yawn-inducing jargon like "complex," "coherent," "diverse," "distinctive" and "flexible", but when it comes down to it, the thing is just plain crazy. In a good way. The pedestrian bridge is still there, but it is hidden as part of the two support structures, a tall building and a short building. No word on the greenness of this particular build, but my guess is, this being Denmark and all, the thing is super green like Holl's.

There you have it, a Danish architectural bitchfight. Can't you just smell the rage? [Design Boom - 3XN and Design Boom - Holl]

Update: A friendly reader named Jakob who presumably lives closer to Copenhagen than I do just shared a link to all of the proposals, including the original ones that Holl went up against and crushed. They're all gorgeous and insane, so have a look here.

The Langenlinine tower (left) uses the old harbor as its geometric inspiration and features bright orange soffits. Meanwhile, the Marmormolen tower (right) draws its inspiration as the city's gateway, mimicking the yellow light and shapes of a metropolitan area.

Of course the buildings are extremely green, packing everything from photovoltaics in the curtains to a seawater heating/cooling system that warms the floor slabs and cools the ceilings—plus wind turbines on top of the bridge power the ambient public lighting (so people don't fall off, die, etc).

Walking around Chicago and watching builders put the finishing touches on Trump's latest generic blue glass tower (which claims the accomplishment of the world's tallest continuous concrete pour, I believe), I can't help but to feel like the US isn't exactly pioneering the new era of remarkable architecture. [World Architecture News via Inhabitat]

These pixels are arranged around a central core and can be moved about—so the layout would constantly evolve. On the downside, the ground floor was designed to be as thin as possible in order to make room for the surrounding plaza, so the whole structure looks bloated an precarious. Hopefully, they won't sacrifice strength and stability for eco-friendliness when it comes to the foundation. [Contemporist via Ecofriend]

Two hundred and fifty thousand. [Bjarke Ingels Group via Dezeen]