QLD Architecture Awards

Over the next few weeks, in the lead-up to Queensland Architecture Awards in July, Steve Austin will be celebrating the best designs (featuring both beauty and practicality) that Queensland's architects have to offer in QLD Architecture Awards - Darling Downs

The Tobin Winery is located on a North facing gently sloping site on a vineyard in the heart of the Granite Belt. The vineyard merges with remnant scrub that borders a creek while occasional protrusions of the local granite punctuate the landscape. With Sundance Road dissecting the site, the house is located at the top of the site, looking down over the vines, road, and creek to the distant hills.

Cruising Chicago architecture

As we cruise along the Chicago River viewing the city's world-famous architecture, our tour guide motions to the former location of the house and barn belonging to Patrick and Catherine O'Leary - where the Chicago Fire Academy now stands.

She tells us the Chicago City Council has exonerated Catherine's cow of any wrongdoing. Cruising Chicago architecture by leading architects such as Chicago's own Daniel H. Burnham, who prepared the "Plan for Chicago"; William Le Baron Jenney, the so-called "father of the skyscraper"; German immigrant Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who championed the "less-is-more" modern approach; and Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, leaders of the Chicago School movement, made architectural history in Chicago.

The modern skyscraper was invented here. Jenney's 1885, nine-story Home Insurance Building at LaSalle and Adams streets was the first building whose weight was completely supported by a steel frame instead of walls.

Did you know?

Did you know?
New York's Wall Street is so named because it was built along the length of a wall that was constructed by 17th century farmers to prevent their pigs from escaping.

Temples at the sacred source

I am in northeastern Israel, just one mile from the Lebanese border, three from the Syrian, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, the 9,286-foot, snowcapped peak that dominates the Golan Heights.

Near the base of Hermon is a ledge of soft limestone from which flows the Dan, named for the seventh tribe of ancient Israel. It is the largest tributary of the Jordan, and the beginning of a journey that has shaped the whole of the world.

Temples at the sacred source The Jordan River is cited nearly 200 times in the Bible. In Genesis, Lot looked up "and saw the whole plain of the Jordan was well-watered, like the garden of the Lord. Most rivers serve as thoroughfares for vessels, bringing people together. But the Jordan has always been a border, something to cross to get to a better land, a healthier time, a home.

Starbucks store to open in 18th century inn

Starbucks arrive at historic Annapolis inn > Starbucks store to open in 18th century inn

The historic Maryland Inn, once visited by George Washington, plans to modernize a bit by adding a Starbucks on the property.

'It's a monster. But if it stops changing, it will die'

As the London Architecture Biennale kicks off, its director Peter Ackroyd tells Jonathan Glancey how money has transformed the city, and will make it almost unrecognisable by 2010.

He said that London 'It's a monster. But if it stops changing, it will die'. There is, though, as developments in the City and the East End continue to prove, little chance of London coming to heel or becoming one city.

It remains a many-faced, buccaneering, brute beauty.

'Send for Disney' to save Venice

The waters are rising around Venice. Each year the floods worsen and last longer.

Carpets of slime coat St Mark's Square. Statues and church walls are coated with filth. The city is drowning. But there is a solution: run the place like Disneyland. 'Send for Disney' to save Venice The Italian government recently backed a £3bn plan that would involve building barriers between the lagoon around Venice and the sea.

The barriers would be raised when abnormally high tides were due. But, unless global climate controls are agreed in the next few years, no one will be able to save one of the world's most glorious cities. Not even the Disney Corporation.

Out in the desert, growing a skyline with a photo

The expanding skyline of Doha, the capital of Qatar. More than 100 buildings and towers are under way in the city, which is aiming for a future as a tourist destination.

Out in the desert, growing a skyline

According to the Qatar Tourism Authority, more than 100 buildings and towers are going up in Doha, whose modest skyline is currently punctuated by about two dozen high-rises.

Cranes fill the hot sky. Out in the desert, growing a skyline the expanding skyline of Doha, the capital of Qatar.

More than 100 buildings and towers are under way in the city, which is aiming for a future as a tourist destination.

Design-conscious Miami calls in the celebrity architects

Just when it seemed that the traditional Miami aesthetic had made a national comeback, a new chapter has opened for this city's architecture.

Read this and you will exactly know > Design-conscious Miami calls in the celebrity architects

Major new station opens in Berlin

The biggest railway station in Europe has been inaugurated in Berlin by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A Major new station opens in Berlin and took eight years to build and for the first time will link the railway lines in the north and south of Berlin with those in the east and west.

Around 300,000 passengers are expected to use it every day.

See In pictures: Berlin's station and admire the architecture and infrastructure of the station. Then, you may shout as loud as you can > Berlin here I come!