By Design is a two-day inaugural event taking place January 25-26 that aims to build a platform of innovation by engaging key stakeholders through the creative process. The event includes a speaker series and a design challenge at the newly constructed Harvard Innovation Lab, Harvard Business School, and the Graduate School of Design. With a focus to reframe the future of education, the model and structure of the conference allows participants to unpack tacit, hidden, and evident knowledge from each corner of the university, through simple yet uncommon dialogue between each school. More information after the break.
As part of Ajman University of Science & Technology‘s series of architecture workshops by architects and designers, Emilio Ambasz will be presenting the ‘Towards Green Buildings/Architecture for UAE?’ workshop. The event will take place at the Ajman University February 4-10. To register and for more information, please feel free to contact the workshop coordinator: Dr. Jihad Awad: Dr_jihadaa@yahoo.com, j.awad@ajman.ac.ae.
Opportunity. Challenge. Innovation. These words form the backbone of RMIT University (Melbourne Institute of Technology University) in Australia. Too often, architecture schools become enamored of the aesthetics in the field to the detriment of all else. Not so at RMIT. Here, the approach is an ideal combination of meaningful research with design solutions. The architecture program achieves this by teaching design skills based in their practical application and framed by social idealism and cross-disciplinary training.
Taking place January 23rd from 2:00pm-7:oopm EST, the Reyner Banham Symposium, ‘On Error’, focuses on how error can be many things. In its most common display, however, it is something we are taught to avoid. It is often characterized by mannerisms that were once trends but are now condemned or qualified by a lack of command over formal logic, material tolerances, construction techniques, and space planning, to name but a few. The accepted belief is that by avoiding error we promote progress. It seems only fitting to surrender to this logic as it is much easier to agree on what constitutes a mistake than it is to admit to a measure of success. The event is organized by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning and will be held at the Darwin Martin House’s Greatbatch Pavilion. For more information, please visit here.
Wilmotte & Associés recently won the competition to design the 2018 FIFA World Cup Stadium in Kaliningra, Russia. Their design features an urban facade that wraps the stadium, consisting of a series of orthogonal screens that respond to the surrounding urban context. The project will be constructed from a primary steel structure, but the upper tier of the stadium will be temporary. The stadium has been designed so that after the tournament completes in 2018, the stands can be dismantled and the upper canopy can be removed. Construction of the 45,000 seat football stadium will begin in 2014. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Seen as geologic formations rising from the land, the design for the KAFD Men’s and Women’s Portal Spas by WORKSBUREAU form great shade porticos beneath long cantilevered masses. Located in two of the civic Attractor beacons of the dense urban King Abdullah Financial District of Riyadh, the project also forms the gateway to the masterplan, framing the main park as it flows into the Wadi pedestrian artery. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Recently destroyed by the 2010 Earthquake, Port-au-Prince’s new design for the National Cathedral is presented as an absolute plain wall of concrete which expresses the true character of the construction. Designed by NC-Office, the concrete material is not only structurally appropriate, but it also produces a somber cool space that absorbs light – forming an architecture of shadows. More images and architects’ description after the break.
We live in the world of a sad separation that began some five hundred years ago when art and science split apart. Scientists and technicians live in their own world, focusing mostly on the “how” of things. Others live in the world of appearances, using these things but not really understanding how they function. Just before this split occurred, it was the ideal of the Renaissance to combine these two forms of knowledge. This is why the work of Leonardo da Vinci continues to fascinate us, and why the Renaissance remains an ideal.
So why did Santiago Calatrava, now one of the world’s elite architects, decide to return to school in 1975 for a civil engineering degree after asserting himself as a promising young architect?
Now in its fifth year, the DawnTownDesign/Build competition announced that the international collaboration between Manuel Clavel-Rojo (Murcia, Spain) and Jacob Brillhart (Miami, FL) has been tasked to present their design to the public in the next 30 days. With the challenge of creatiung a low cost, temporary installation on the topic of Evolution in Miami, their winning design will be turned into a reality. ‘Up-Downtown’, the title of the project, is defined by Rojo defines as a metaphor for Miami, “A city is a complex machine, where everything is interconnected and any movement affects the other.” More images and architects’ description after the break.
NACO, its Saudi Arabian branch SADECO, and global architect HOK were just awarded the contract to design the expansion of King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The design consists of the expansion of the existing terminals 3 and 4, which will enable the airport to handle 20-25 million passengers per year. Currently, the 30-year-old airport is handling approximately 15 million passengers annually. NACO, Netherlands Airport Consultants, a Royal HaskoningDHV company, and HOK will lead the design team for this prestigious project. More architects’ description and their press release after the break.
Confronted with an original form of the pyramid, the shape of the Operlab Theatre Pavilion proposal, designed by UGO Architecture and Design, is the result of a consistent analysis of the building of the Grand Theatre. The character and function of a row of interior spaces, including the entrance, auditorium, and stage, finds its reflection in the arrangement of forms composing the body of the building. The pavilion then becomes a repetition of this arrangement and gives it additional meaning. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Slums, shanty-towns, favelas - they are all products of an exploding migration from rural to urban areas. Over the last half century, people living in or near metropolises has risen in proportion to the global population. Migrations from rural areas to urban areas have grown exponentially as cities have developed into hubs of economic activity and job growth promising new opportunities for social mobility and education. Yet, with all these perceptions holding fast, many people who choose to migrate find themselves in the difficult circumstances of integrating into an environment without the proper resources to accommodate the growing population. Cities, for example, like Mumbai, India's largest city and 11th on the list as of 2012 with a population of an estimated 20.5 million. According to a New York Times article from 2011, about 60% of that number live in the makeshift dwellings that now occupy lucrative land for Mumbai's developers.
Designed by Studio Alfirevic, their proposal for the Operalab Theatre Pavilion competition represents ‘live’ theater, in which different performances and experiments take place in the field of art. The suggested position of the pavilion is in the fringe area of the park, in the direct vicinity of the building of the Great Theater. The circular form of the pavilion is a subtle response to the conditions of the natural environment and it allows an equal visual experience from all sides. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by architect Dina Hadi, the proposal for the Beirut Multi Art Use project represents a total art mass from the city with different rhythms and patterns. It becomes a live scene from local artists that is captured into this box. With a focus on art as a foundation base for cultures, this project becomes a model for global art beyond. Her study was also awarded the best prize at the Oslo School of Architecture under the title, ‘Excellence in Professionalism’. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Synthesis Design + Architecture Inc. and Shenzhen General Institute of Architectural Design and Research Co. Ltd have been awarded first place in the invited international design competition for the Shanghai Wuzhou International Plaza. Their scheme, entitled “Urban Canyon”, embodies the energy and vibrancy of the cities distinct urban environment. Inspired by traditional Chinese concepts of Yin and Yang, the project is organized as two nested rock-like volumes which have been broken apart to reveal a flowing canyon condition which connects the project to the urban fabric of the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.
With much awaited anticipation, Steven Holl‘s Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, China has just been completed. Forming giant public plazas with a mix of various functions, the group of five towers is intended to be seen as more of a public area despite its towering design as already witnessed in the site. Its sun sliced geometry results from required minimum daylight exposures to the surrounding urban fabric prescribed by code and calculated by the precise geometry of sun angles. The large public space framed by the block is formed into three valleys inspired by a poem of Du Fu (713-770). In some of the porous openings chunks of different buildings are inserted.
We have already brought you images of the project as it was under way, but the latest images from Hufton + Crow truly capture this inviting public realm in the heart of this metropolis like no one else!
Check out all the latest images of Steven Holl’s Sliced Porosity Block after the break.
As a designer, architect, artist and founder of the Mediated Matter group at MIT’s Media Lab, Neri Oxman has dedicated her career to exploring how digital design and fabrication technologies can mediate between matter and environment to radically evolve the way we design and construct our built world. In this article, which was first published by CNN, Oxman discusses the future of 3D printing buildings with five tenets of a new kind of architecture.
Aimed to support educational, cultural, and artistic projects based on the knowledge of the marine environment and its comprehension, the Jacques Rougerie Foundation recently announced the winners of their 2012 competition. The Foundation’s ambitions are to encourage young architects’, designers’, and engineers’ creativity, by promoting groundbreaking projects that will have an impact on our future lifestyles. The purpose is to imagine unprecedented solutions to current challenges, and to work in compliance with sustainable development. More images and the descriptions of the winning projects after the break.
Make Architects was just granted planning permission by the Crown Estate for the £450million St. James Market development plan located in the heart of Westminster, UK. Also given the go ahead by Westminster Council, their plan also includes three associated residential developments, hinging around the creation of a new public square and two new buildings. One building sits on Regent Street and retains an historic facade while the other presents a completely new facade to Haymarket. More images and architects’ description after the break.
STUDIO architecture and urbanism magazine is currently accepting proposals for our forthcoming issue TRANSFORMATION. This issue aims to investigate which were, are, and will be the dynamics and the transformation processes of the cities. Through their decisions, men repeatedly adapt space to their necessities, in a path of programmatic choices and transformations caused by uses and customs that are always different. The city is a place involved in a continuous Transformation where man is the main creator and user. The city withstands continuous changes in its form, generating new and different landscapes. Abstracts are due January 31st will final pieces due February 28th. For more information, please visit here.
Designed by Aflalo & Gasperini Arquitetos, the Trump Towers is an innovative project that will contribute to the development of the port area of Rio de Janeiro, the future home of the 2016 Olympic Games. Defined as five rather slender towers, with broad front to Francisco Bicalho Avenue, they are similar, equal in height and in geometrically tessellated form. This development is carefully arranged creating a sinuous line suggested by gardens occurring at different heights in each tower. This language gives a sense of order that connects with the landscape and stimulate diversity. More images and architects’ description after the break.
I remember the smog in Beijing rendering the most beautiful skies. There was an innocence to the air pollution back then, before the engines of economic development really got going.
It was just a pretty sunset, or a delicate brown haze that romantically softened the edges of things—while wrecking your lungs, of course. But, like the sand storms, pollution gave the city a different, rarified quality.
Going back to where it all started, TEX-FAB will be holding their Parametric Design and Digital Fabrication Conference at the University of Texas Arlington School of Architecture from February 28 to March 3. The event will include their largest selection of workshops and a full day symposia, which will culminate in the exhibition opening of the APPLIED: Research Through Fabrication competition winner. Ranging from basic for beginners to advanced for the experienced user, a broad spectrum of cutting edge workshops will be offered for this year’s conference by industry leaders. To register, and for more information, please visit here.
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