Architect, Urban Designer, and Editor-in-Chief of ArchDaily.com. Based in Beirut, Lebanon, Covering the World.
Making history, Virgin Hyperloop’s Pegasus pod carried its first passengers in the Nevada desert. Designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and Kilo Design, Pegasus or XP-2 is a new vehicle typology for an autonomous transportation system to achieve hyperloop travel at the speed of over 1,000km/hour, the fastest form of land-based travel.
The International Photography Awards has announced the winners of its 2020 photography competition. Showcasing some of the most outstanding photographic work from around the globe, this year’s contest gathered a total of 13,000 entries from 120 countries. Discover the selection of winners and honorable mentions from the architecture sub-categories: fine art, cityscapes, bridges, buildings, interior, historic, industrial, abstract, and other.
Johns Hopkins University has selected BIG to design its new Student Center, regenerating the heart of its campus and reviving the social experience, from a shortlisted list of 4 offices, after a months-long international competition. Entitled “The Village”, the proposal is an “open, modern, and welcoming facility envisioned as a social engagement hub for all members of the Hopkins community”.
Barozzi Veiga, in collaboration with Tab Architects and Barbara Van Der Wee Architects, has just won the competition for the renovation of the Jewish Museum of Belgium. Discrete yet present and integrated into the urban fabric, as the jury stated, the proposal was selected from five shortlisted established and young architectural practices.
Parpend, a design studio from Lagos, Nigeria, interviews every year a group of architects to discuss their favorite projects and how they created them. Believing firmly that design should be a fusion of function and expression, statements are compiled in a publication in order to highlight the designers’ creative process to achieving good design.
Entitled “PERSPECTIVE”, this edition of the report, destined for designers and non-designers alike, examines 4 projects with 3 designers: Seun Oduwole, Principal designer at SI.SA talks about the JK Randle Centre for Yoruba History and Culture, on Lagos Island; Tosin Oshinowo, Director at cmDesign Atelier discusses a Bahá’í temple competition and an art space for Victor Ehikhamenor, a prominent Nigerian artist. Moreover, James Inedu-George, Head of Design at HTL Africa explores a mosque contest.
Creating new standards for a more connected and livable city, Henning Larsen has designed a New Masterplan for Wolfsburg, Germany. The new prototype for urbanism across the European continent diffuses new energy in the city center. Selected to design the project in a competition in 2019 that included competitors UNStudio and Bjarke Ingels Group, Henning Larsen’s proposal for phase 1 is expected to reach completion by 2023.
3XN/GXN have revealed their design for a new CO2 neutral and climate positive addition to the Hotel Green Solution House (Hotel GSH), in Rønne on the Danish island of Bornholm. Scheduled for 2021, the new wing including 24 rooms, a conference room, and a roof spa, is expected to provide a positive climate footprint when built, a novelty in Danish commercial buildings.
Across the globe, ever since 2014, every year on the 31st of October, World Cities Day is celebrated. To mark this event, UN-Habitat has released its World Cities Report 2020 on the value of sustainable urbanization, focusing on the most up-to-date and pressing topics. Analyzing the intrinsic value of cities in generating economic prosperity, mitigating environmental degradation, reducing social inequality, and building stronger institutions, the report highlights how together these can drive transformative change.
The International Highrise Award (IHA), organized by the city of Frankfurt and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM), has selected Norra Tornen, the residential towers designed by OMA / Reinier de Graaf as the winner of its ninth edition. Granted every 2 years, to architects and developers for buildings of minimum 100 meters in height, completed in the last two years, Norra Tornen was selected from 31 projects from 14 countries.
The Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, has just announced the appointment of Alejandro Aravena as Chair of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury as of March 2021, in time for the award’s 43rd year. Moreover, the announcement also designated Manuela Lucá-Dazio, the Executive Director of the Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia, as an advisor to the Prize and the next Executive Director.
Hufton+Crow has unveiled its latest series of images, capturing Denmark's recent and inventive projects, completed between 2018 and 2019. The photographs showcase CopenHill Energy Plant and Urban Recreation Center by BIG, along with Tingbjerg Library and Culture House and Køge Nord Station, both designed by COBE.
10 projects, 10 functions. Featuring a multitude of different programs, this week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights diverse and innovative conceptual approaches. Submitted by our readers, this variety of proposals includes sports, religious, cultural, educational, and social purposes.
Compiling projects from all over the world, this article puts together a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand, a ring-shaped experience center and eco-tourism catalyst for Latvia, a cemetery in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the biggest extreme sports park in Russia. Moreover, unconventional office spaces are underlined with an innovation start-up center in Vietnam, headquarters in Shenzhen, and Tirana’s new municipality building.
Jean Nouvel has just unveiled his design for Sharaan, a resort hidden within the rock dwellings of AlUla, a cultural oasis in north-west Arabia. Showcasing a modern take on millennia-old ways of living, the project puts in place monumental designs carved into the rocks, respecting and preserving the landscape. Inspired by the nearby Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, the concept takes a curatorial approach bringing together landscape and history.
MVRDV has revealed the first images of Chengdu Sky Valley, the firm’s competition entry for the Future Science and Technology City in Southwest China. Fusing technology with nature, urban with rural, and modernity with tradition, the proposal introduces “a liveable city into the Linpan Landscape”. Located in one of China’s emerging cities, the project balances the competing needs of the area, through a computational workflow developed by in-house tech taskforce MVRDV NEXT.
The FRAM Museum will take on a new extension dedicated to polar exploration and environmental education. Designed by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, the winning proposal of the invited architectural competition, Framtid, or Future is centered on the idea that “architecture exemplifies how we care for our environment”.
The first 3D printed residential building in Germany, built by PERI GmbH, and designed by MENSE-KORTE ingenieure+architekten is undergoing construction in Beckum, North Rhine-Westphalia. The two-story printed detached house with approx. 80 sqm of living space per floor is using a system put into practice in Germany for the first time. In fact, the construction technique has come through all of the regulatory approval processes over the last few weeks and months.
A recent study conducted by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) examined how architecture students have been affected by the pandemic. Examining 398 architecture students, the COVID-19 survey found that these young adults are under significant stress and are concerned about their future career. In fact, the results highlight that 58% of students are struggling with mental health and almost half are concerned about job prospects.
Reflecting on the current global situation, Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) has reinvented its 2021 edition, in order to generate conversations about the “intersection of architecture and design and such critical issues as health, sustainability, equity, and racial justice”. The Biennial has also announced the appointment of David Brown, designer, researcher, and educator, based at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as the Artistic Director of the fourth edition, entitled The Available City.
