The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) has announced seven international teams competing to design a 14 hectare, landscaped public space for arts and culture on a waterfront property in Kowloon. After the project breaks ground in 2014, the phased development is expected to only take a year. It will feature a lush, sculpted terrain that will provide a new green open space in the heart of the city and a vibrant venue for music, dance, theatre, art exhibitions and other free outdoor cultural programs.
Located in Tenerife, one of the most populated islands in Spain, the second prize winning proposal for the ITER Building Technology Park settles in like a crater, relating to its volcanic surroundings. Estudio Lunar‘s design consists of two elements, the first one contains the program which is situated in the terrain interacting with it; and the second element that is situated over the terrain and only touches it to create the main access in the north protecting the building from the prevalent winds coming from the north-east. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located around the Hauptbahnof in Berlin, the proposal for the Haus der Zukunft competition by Project Architect Company capitalizes on the site’s potential which lies between the Reichstag and the main railway station along the River Spree. The site is experiencing a surge in development, transforming a previously underused area into a new city-wide destination. The architects propose to use the building as an ‘urban activator’ to link the city and waterfront. More images and architects’ description after the break.
META architectuurbureau, in collaboration with SW, Technum, and landscape architects, West 8, were recently awarded the first prize in the competition for Building O, an auditorium and laboratory building for the University of Antwerp. The new multi-disciplinary building, sited on the Drie Eiken campus in Wilrijk, will host 8 auditoriums, with the capacity to hold about 200-300 people, and 2 laboratories. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located on a cliff at an altitude of 4100 meters high near Yading Village in China, the proposal for the Yading Cliff Building by ELEV (Elevation Workshop) was inspired by the terrain of the cliff itself. The local mountain has had landslides in the past. As nature formed the mountains in the first place, it also created the imperfections. The architects wanted to use our man-made construction to fill the remaining void. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place tomorrow, November 9th from 2:00-4:30pm EST, the Subdivision Modeling with Grasshopper + Weaverbird webinar put on by modeLab offers us a fluid way to create and control complex, continuous forms from simple shapes. Beginning with a presentation on the main principles of working with Meshes and Subdivisions, this webinar will incrementally unpack a diverse set of Tessellation techniques through a series of “live” exercises with Grasshopper and Weaverbird. The event will last 2.5 hours including a 30 minute Q & A session. To register and for more information, please visit here.
MoMA P.S.1 has announced five finalists to compete in the 2013 Young Architects Program (YAP). Now in it’s 13th edition, the competition will challenge a group of emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series.
Lebbeus Woods was an architect’s architect. Artistically uncompromising, unapologetically theoretical, and, in his own way, marvelously optimistic, Lebbeus’ death last month deeply saddened the architectural community.
In a world where computers are making architecture an increasingly technical profession, Lebbeus provoked architects to consider – what is architecture’s purpose? And, more importantly, what is it’s potential? As Woods’ friend Thom Mayne told The Los Angeles Times, “Architecture wasn’t what he did. It’s who he was. There is no other Lebbeus.”
Today, Wolf D. Prix, the oft-controversial figure, published his own eulogy to Woods, an architect and friend he held in high-esteem. Unlike the “Lady-Gaga-aesthetics,” that prevail in architecture today, Prix says, Woods’ forms were always new, profound, and impactive. Prix claims that Woods’ unique drawings”conquered the drawing boards of innumerable students and architects and put the question about the contents of a future architecture into the foreground.”
“Lebbeus was the living proof of Derrida’s theory that often a small sketch can have more influence on the world than a large building.”
You can read all of Wolf D. Prix’s “For Lebbeus Woods” after the break…
Our friends at NOWNESS have shared with us this mesmeric film by Johnnie Shand Kydd that captures the illustrious modernist Richard Meier and multi-disciplinary creator Massimo Vignelli as they reflect on their respective crafts, city life, and enduring friendship. Filmed inside the minimalist offices of Richard Meier & Partners on 10th Avenue and West 36th Street in New York City, the two powerhouses discuss their collaboration on the firm’s forthcoming monograph, Richard Meier, Architect Volume 6, chronicling the stark, white, rationalist buildings that define the firm’s aesthetic. Enjoy!
Continue after the break to browse through iconic works by Richard Meier & Partners.
HMGB Architects shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the competition to design the new Paracelsus Spa and Pools in Salzburg, Austria. Located at the northern edge of the Mirabellgarten Park, the project will replace the existing Paracelsus Spa and Pool from the 1950s to include a spa with 7 different pools (6 internal and 1 external pool), sauna and therapy spaces, as well as offices for various city departments. The design defines the northwestern park edge through the building’s clear volumetric mass and is divided into a southern part including all pools and a northern part including therapy and office spaces. More images and architects’ description after the break.
It is projected that by the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers. With fears of overcrowding and land scarcity, the need to evolve our agriculture is one of the primary challenges we face in the 21st century.
A solution? Vertical farming. The innovative concept, which was first pioneered by Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier, is a promising solution that many of the world’s most populated cities are starting to consider. As of now, the land-scarce Republic of Singapore is leading the way with the opening of the world’s first commercial vertical farm, featuring 3.65-hectares of stacked vegetables in the northwestern district of Lim Chu Kang.
Aimed at being a city for kids, the Prinsessegade Kindergarten and Youth Club Winning Proposal by COBE + NORD Architects, in collaboration with PK3 and Grontmij, will be the largest daycare center in all of Denmark. It also presents a big challenge – how to avoid creating a daycare factory when building an institution for so many users. Their design is not just one huge building, but rather a cluster of many small and varied buildings, grouped around two central streets that connect to the surrounding city structure. Like Copenhagen, it has different neighborhoods, different houses, different public spaces, squares and parks. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Our friends from CEBRA just shared the news of their next endeavor for designing a skidome in Randers, Denmark. Serving as more than a series of complex slopes for those to enjoy, the project will become the largest skidome in the world. When viewed in isolation, the massing’s gentle curves and minimalistic exterior treatment read as a subtle strategy to incorporate the slopes; yet, only when seen at the city scale does the project’s 1,000,000+ sqf (including a hotel, restaurant and shops) allow the viewer to understand the project’s potential urban presence.
Panavision, the Uruguay exhibit for the 13th Venice Biennale, features the works of the new generation of Uruguayan architects, using their Pavilions as a common ground, a place rather than an exhibit, where the focuses, approaches, tools, worries, emphasis and strategies of these practices converge. More details from the curators after the break:
Holm Architecture Office (HAO) and AI have been invited to create a proposal for the city of Daqiuzhuang in northern China. Sited in a newly developed part of the city, the new cultural building takes its form from the traditional Chinese courtyard square. By lifting the square in the diagonal corners, dual entry points to the building are created which leads visitors and locals through the building’s ground level public programs to the mid- and upper- level exhibition spaces while extending the existing North- South axis of the surrounding city. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Wiel Arets: Autobiographical References (Birkhaüser, 2012), the new book edited by Robert McCarter and designed by Irma Boom, will be presented at a book launch event November 13th. ‘do you read me?!’, the renowned Berlin bookshop, will host the first presentation and signing of the publication in their ‘Reading Room’ located in Berlin-Tiergarten. The evening will begin at 7:00pm with a discussion on the topic of ‘A Wonderful World’, Arets’ optimistic outlook towards the future our of continuously ‘shrinking’ world, followed by a book signing session with Wiel Arets.
You could argue that architectural education is pretty good the way it is. In fact, it is most likely the best that it has ever been. But it’s not good enough. Just as architects and designers need to deliver more value in the future, the education that supports and gives birth to the future of the profession needs to prove its relevance.
It is the profession’s responsibility to support the evolution of higher education. Human capital is in jeopardy. We have a talent supply problem as we look to the horizon.
There is a changing nature in the work of design. In this context many educators acknowledge that higher education has not kept up with the big changes taking place in the design professions. Who has? Change and uncertainty face all of us. Finger pointing is not going to advance us to a higher place. It is time for architects and educators to adopt a learning, non-blaming approach to change.
Find out the 12 steps that will help provide design students, educators and professionals the best opportunities for success today, after the break...
Hyunjoon Yoo Architects shared with us their proposal for the Green Square Library & Plaza Design in Australia. By locating the building on the west side of the park, this gave them the opportunity to integrate the library and the transport corridor together. The architects believe that a good library is the one that allows people to read books with nature. Therefore, they folded the park on the site to make a terrace garden on each floor of the library. People can read the book facing the garden, and sometimes they can get out and enjoy the fresh air. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Architects: TALLER Mauricio Rocha+Gabriela Carrillo Location: Coyoacán, México Architects: Mauricio Rocha, Gabriela Carrillo, Carlos Facio Project Manager: Carlos Facio Collaborators: Adrian Iturriaga, Israel Espín, Guillermo Peregrina, Alma Caballero, María Suter, Francisco Ortiz, Andrés Velázquez, Antonio Aguilar, Sebastián Ayala, Juan Santillán, Joel Cruz, Pedro Lechuga Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Courtesy of TALLER Mauricio Rocha+Gabriela Carrillo
