The International VELUX Award 2012 for students of architecture wants to encourage and challenge students of architecture to explore the theme of daylight in its widest sense – and to create a deeper understanding of this specific and ever-relevant source of energy and light. “Light of Tomorrow” is the overall theme of the International VELUX Award. The award seeks to challenge the future of daylight in the built environment with an open-minded and experimental approach. Therefore, the award seeks to widen the boundaries of daylight in architecture, including aesthetics, functionality, sustainability, and the interaction between buildings and environment. For more information, visit the competition’s official website here.
Marc Anton Dahmen & Studio DMTW, in collaboration with Tilke & Partners, shared with us their third prize winning design for the Longchamp racetrack in Paris, France. One of the main aspects of their design is to understand each new structure as a solitary sculpture within the park to respect the landscape and nature of the Bois de Boulogne. Therefore it was very important to conserve as much of the spectacular mature trees as possible. In that sense, the design is aimed to maximize clear open moving space within that park. Consequently, the ground floor of the Grandstand was designed to be as open as possible to aids the visitors between the track and the betting halls, and also to achieve logical circulation between all functions within the site. More images and project description after the break.
d3 is pleased to announce the winners of the Natural Systems competition for 2011. The program, developed by co-directors Gregory Marinic and Ji Young Kim, promotes investigation of natural systems from microscopic to universal toward determining new architectonic strategies. The competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore the potential for analyzing, documenting, and deploying nature-based, sustainable influences in urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.
The competition awarded three top prizes and seven special mentions, with the first prize captured by Entropic Industries/Jared Winchester from the United States. More information on the remaining winners after the break.
Architecture for Humanity has launched the 2011 Open Architecture Challenge: RESTRICTED ACCESS, asking architects and designers to partner with community groups across the world and develop innovative solutions to re-envision closed, abandoned and decommissioning military sites. The six-month competition requires designers to work with the communities surrounding these former places of conflict to transform hostile and oftentimes painful locations, into civic spaces built for the public good. More information on the competition after the break.
Jean-loup BALDACCI & Atelier BORONSKI shared with us their first prize winning proposal for the New Taipei Museum of Art competition. Their aim was to create a field of dreams; a building for the people. Its existence actually extends the park and because it merges street and park it invites a high degree of participation. It is completely accessible for people to walk and even ride bicycles all over. The public can easily ‘take possession’ of this building, even just to come and sit on the grass and enjoy the view as they picnic on these huge pieces of ‘ground’ floating in the sky. But through various openings and glazed apertures the interiors beckon. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Cartoonist Alan Dunn (1900 – 1974) may still hold the record as the New Yorker’s most prolific illustrator, responsible for 1906 cartoons and 9 covers during his tenure from 1926 – 1973. Capitalizing on his background in design, Dunn also contributed many cartoons to Architectural Record, beginning in 1936.
A collection of those cartoons, ‘The Last Lath’ was first published in 1947 and was nicely written about in a blog where we found a lot of his work. In addition to lampooning the modern design trends and technologies of the 1930s and ’40s, much of the humor centers around the terminology used by contractors and architects of the day, as well as realities like WWII-era material shortages and the post-war housing boom. A gallery of Dunn’s cartoons can be found after the break.
Portuguese architect, Eduardo Souto de Moura, was recently honored with an exhibition that took place this summer at the Álvaro Siza-designed Porto Faculty of Architecture (FAUP) which was arranged by curators André Campos and Pedro Guedes Oliveira. The exhibition, Eduardo Souto de Moura-Competitions 1979-2010, is a tribute to a specific design approach and working method. More images and exhibition information after the break.
Federico Soriano Pelaez shared with us their third prize winning proposal for the New Taipei City Museum of Art. Their aim was to design a museum which contains all museums. A museum which is the entirety of all the museums in the world. They collected 100 of the most important museums of art from around the world. It is architecture as a refined abstraction of a historic landscape. It is a recollection of generic fragments from the plans of the museums from around the world which will be inserted into the Taipei City Museum of Art. More images and project description after the break.
The complexity of a problem that stands before competitors reflects a contrast that exists between rural surroundings and program demands that refer to a high built-up density in an otherwise non-urbanized (built-up) area of the prairie. This project, by MITarh Architecture Studio represents a model for an anticipated urban development of the area in which the competition task has been set. An initial motive for designing was the distinctive texture of the surrounding fields. Their aim is to establish a rational and useful urban matrix adaptable to the existing area using the dimensions and geometry of the new structure, while establishing continuity of the surrounding area. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place at the Yale School of Architecture gallery from November 14th-January 27th is the Gwathmey Siegel: Inspiration and Transformation Exhibition which is the first museum exhibition devoted to the work of Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, one of the most influential architecture firms of the modern period. The exhibition is free and open to the public. More information on the event after the break.
Leeser Architecture was recently awarded the second prize in international design competition for the reconstruction and renovation of Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum. The 430,000 sq ft Museum was built in three stages from 1887 to 1907 and has since become an architectural and cultural landmark in Moscow. Their design included covering the courtyards of the existing building with an additional 22,000 sq ft of exhibition space identified as ‘the Cloud.’ The Cloud, comprised of all glass, floats above the proposed active courtyard spaces, allowing for visitors to experience the feeling of walking on air. When occupying the Cloud visitors are granted unprecedented views over the city of Moscow establishing the Museum as a cultural destination. More images and architects’ description after the break.
As the winning entry for a competition to design an arts and cultural square at Lake Sanyon in Daqing, China, the project by Chi Wai Chan examines the relationships between the elements of the water, the sky and the earth. A waterfront promenade that ensues the formal attributes and fluidity of the water, a 1,394 m long canopy with LED display that transpires the form of the clouds and a ground condition of self-similar marine lifeform that establishes the view corridors to the lake; these three design elements serve as the organizing apparatus for the design of the square. More images and project description after the break.
Spillman Farmer Architects’ proposal for the Dickinson College Kline Sports Facility takes advantage of the existing features, while striving to introduce more transparency and connectivity as well as making the building’s sustainability evident. The new three-level addition transforms the Kline Center into a dynamic campus gateway, a marquee building with bold daytime and nighttime presence. The addition is placed along the eastern side of the existing building, reaching east to Cherry Street and south to High Street and integrated with the existing topography. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The design for the fire station in Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal by Luis Banazol arises from the dialectic of reflection, at the same time simple and strong, between the artificiality of the urban and the organic naturalness. As a concept of development, we tried to integrate the building with the involving, creating an element in sober, contemporary yet functional and appropriate to their function. More image and architects’ description after the break.
The project proposal for the first CTBUH international student design competition by Ajmona Hoxha and Elis Vathi aims to redefine the gap created between the two extreme social classes of India as the widening income gap between the rich and the poor over the years has raised fears of a social backlash. Since it is highly noticed that the difference between the rich and the poor is displayed not only in the social life but at a major grade on the physical environment, there is a need for redirecting social organization by creating a new environment. Displacement of the concentrated power of the narrow rich circles to wider masses would be achieved by strong physical means. More images and project description after the break.
The recreational family houses near Bratislava, designed by Chybik + Kristof Associated Architects, offer a possibility of permanent settlement. The project aims to create a residential area of high quality with direct contact with water surface. Furthermore, a considerable number of houses are located in the area of an ancient riparian forest in the riverbed of the Danube. The project’s main motto is to set up a space for a life in contact with nature, a life with a link to the original fauna and flora. More images and architects’ description after the break.
From December 2nd to February 19th, Flight Assembled Architecture, the first installation to be built by flying machines, will be conceived as an architectural structure at a scale of a 600 m high “vertical village”, the installation addresses radical new ways of thinking and materializing architecture as a physical process of dynamic formation. The exhibition is put on in Orleans, France at the Frac Center by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea in collaboration with ETH Zurich. More information on the event after the break.
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