Trahan Architects have proposed a 4.3 million square-foot mixed-use development in the historic city center of Zhengzhou, China – the capital and largest city of the Henan province, with a population of 8.6 million. The concept is part of a broad scale master plan for redeveloping Zhengzhou through ecological and infrastructure development. Continue after the break for more images and the project description.
The American Institute of Architects Pennsylvania Chapter has awarded a Silver Medal, the institute’s highest honor, to Spillman Farmer Architects for their highly successful ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks. Located on the landmark Bethlehem Steel site in eastern Pennsylvania, the dynamic performing arts, media and cultural center has served as an anchor for the revitalization effort in the City of Bethlehem that is transforming the once-abandoned historic industrial core into a dynamic, sustainable and livable mixed-use community. The 200-foot industrial ruins towering above the ArtsQuest Center is part of the country’s largest privately-owned brownfield.
AIA jurors praised the project saying, “The design captures the energy and utilitarian beauty that the best of the industrial revolution once offered. At the same time it demonstrates the power that a truly successful marriage of architecture and program can exert in bringing new purpose and hope to the most abandoned parts of our community.”
Continue reading after the break for more information and images.
The ten finalists competing in the final phase of the National Mall Design Competition are dreaming big. Proposals to restore the National Mall include flourishing lakeside gardens, contemporary cafés hovering over water, grassy new amphitheaters and underground pavilions exposed at the foot of the Washington Monument. Since the announcement of the finalists, the teams have been refining there proposals behind closed doors.
Now, the Trust for the National Mall has released the highly anticipated proposals to the public. From now until Sunday, at the Smithsonian Castle and the National Museum of American History, you can view each proposal in its entirety. If you don’t live in the D.C. area, no need to worry. Continue after the break to catch a glimpse of each submission and learn how you can help the jury decided who will revamp America’s “front yard”.
Saturday, we shared with you Bureau Spectacular founder Jimenez Lai’s contribution to the University of Michigan’s Taubman College lecture series, focusing on what the genre of installation can offer architectural practice. Fascinated by experimental architecture, storytelling, cartoons and the pursuit of alternate realities, Lai’s latest performance-based architectural installation has made it to Kickstarter. It is up to you whether or not Lai will get the chance to transform the Architecture Foundation’s Project Space in London with a cartoonish architectural installation of Super Furniture – “a building that is slightly too small and a furniture that is kind of too big” – inspired by the exhibitionism of Hugh Hefner with the live-art of Joseph Beuys.
As his first solo exhibition outside of North America, the Chicago-based architect will inhabit the Hefner/Beuys House for a few weeks, acting as a 1:1 comic book that people can literally become a part of. You may remember his past projects of the Super-Furniture Series, including the Briefcase House, which he has continued to live in for the past three years, and White Elephant (Privately Soft). His previous installations have been wildly popular, stimulating the imagination of those from across the globe, and there is no doubt the Hefner/Beuys House will do the same.
All funds will go towards construction of the installation, which includes labor, material and transportation. Find more information and donate here on Kickstarter!
Be sure to take advantage of the early bird special by April 30th for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s 2012 World Congress, appropriately located in the skyscraper city of Shanghai. According to The Skyscraper Center, ten of the 20 tallest buildings in the world will be in China by 2020.
The Congress will examine poignant issues such as: Is the skyscraper a sustainable building type? Can tall buildings truly reduce and harvest enough energy to become carbon-neutral? What is the full impact on the city and the lives of its inhabitants by developing skyward? And what support mechanisms and urban infrastructure are required for such growth? CTBUH2012 has confirmed an impressive list of several Chinese leading developers, architects and engineers to speak at the World Congress. Continue after the break to review the full list.
Known as an architect, artist and cartoonist, Jimenez Lai has lectured on and exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He is known for his imaginative cartoon narratives and architectural installations. He is the founder of Bureau Spectacular and currently an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. His graphic novel, Citizens of No Place, will be published by the Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation this year.
Deborah Berke & Partners Architects have released their plans for the expansion and renovation of I.M. Pei’s 1969 Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center (RAC). Located at Fredonia’s State University College in New York, the visual and performing arts complex has served as a major cultural center for western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. Continue reading after the break for more.
Memory Cloud is the winning commission awarded to RE:site (Norman Lee and Shane Allbritton, Artists website: www.resitestudio.com) and METALAB (Andrew Vrana, Joe Meppelink and Michael Gonzales, Architecture + Fabrication) by Texas A&M University for the new Memorial Student Center 12th Man Hall. Through a competition and short-list interview process the team demonstrated the ability to harness the potential of programmable LEDs, remote sensing, parametric design and digital fabrication to create an open ended narrative of the story of the University through animated silhouette imagery of past and real-time present student life on the campus.
Memory Cloud will be installed in December of 2012. Continue after the break for more images, video and the designer’s project description.
If you are in the Bay Area this weekend, we recommend you stop in at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and check out their current exhibit The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area. This exhibition is the first of its kind, featuring Buckminster Fuller’s most iconic projects as well a focus on his local design legacy in the Bay Area. Though he was never a resident, Fuller’s ideas inspired many local experiments in the realms of technology, engineering and sustainability. Continue reading for more information.
As cities grapple with budget cuts and rising infrastructure costs, the value of removing costly freeways has been gaining more attention. Boulevard conversions are now being considered as a cost-effective, practical alternative to rebuilding expensive expressways. At first, most residents gasp at the thought of removing their local freeway and for good reason; it seems counterintuitive. Nobody likes it when their drive home is prolonged due to heavy bumper-to-bumper traffic, so we should make our freeways wider! Not tear them down…right?
John Norquist, former Mayor of Milwaukee (1988-2004), current CEO of the Congress for New Urbanism and author of The Wealth of Cities, was recently interviewed by Next American City to discuss highway removal and “our congestion obsession”. Norquist’s best known achievement as Mayor of Milwaukee was demolishing the Park East Freeway – 1960s-era expressway that restricted access to the city’s downtown.
Continue reading after the break for more on this subject and to view the top twelve freeways pending their demise.
Imagine Jeanne Gang’s Starlight Theater. You are standing under the origami-shaped roof as it begins to open like petals on a flower. One moment you are sheltered by a heavy metal roof and the next you are staring up at the blue sky. Many expect architectural filmmakers have the goal of recreating architectural experiences such as these, however architectural filmmaker Red Mike disagrees. He believes film is not meant to compete with the actually experience of architecture, but rather “help communicate architecture for the betterment of architecture.”
After remaining on hold since 2005, the General Services Administration (GSA) has reinstated plans to construct a new U.S. Courthouse in downtown LA. The 3.7 acre dirt lot at 107 South Broadway, down the street from Morphosis’ Caltrans building, LA’s City Hall, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, has remained dormant since 2007; shortly after the GSA abandoned Perkins + Will’s estimated $1.1 billion conceptual design due to rising costs. Now, plans for the courthouse have been scaled back and the GSA has just released the shortlisted teams competing of the project. Continue reading after the break to see who made the cut.
Created by Reiser + Umemoto for the Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale, “Manhattan Memorious” explores what Manhattan could have been. The film visualizes several unrealized projects from Manhattan, including Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Midtown, Rem Koolhaas’ City of the Captive Globe, RUR’s East River Corridor, Paul Rudolph’s Eastside Redevelopment Corridor, Morphosis’ West Side Yard and others.
d3 is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Housing Tomorrow competition. The annual competition promotes the exploration of contextual, cultural, and life cycle flows that offer new housing strategies for living in the future. Sponsored by New York-based d3, the competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore innovative approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.
d3 recognizes innovative strategies that challenge conventional housing typologies with emerging planning strategies, advanced technologies and alternative materials. Competition submissions for 2012 reflect forces of globalization and adaptation, as well as the changing nature of visualization in academia and professional design practice. As an annual competition, d3 Housing Tomorrow seeks to identify and celebrate emerging voices and visionary proposals that connect housing with people, context and ecologies.
Continue after the break to view the three winners and twelve honorable mentions selected by the jury.
Receiving second-place in the Classic Siftung Weimar international competition for the New Bauhaus Museum, the proposal by Architekten HRK (Klaus Krauss and Rolf Kursawe, Cologne) enhances the public access into Weimarhallenpark. The distinctive form of the museum creates a strong impression in the urban setting and is characterised by the cleverly staggered arrangement of the elongated structures. The proposal is also impressive in terms of its interior design qualities. The central interior space creates a unique, independent and attractive flair for the New Bauhaus Museum. Continue after the break for more images.
We hope these architectural LOLCats will help you through your Monday. They have been appearing all over the internet and invading all of our favorite architectural icons, courtesy of the students at UC Berkeley. Follow us after the break to view a few of our favorites.
From April 8th through the 14th, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) will be hosting National Architecture Week in an effort to increase public awareness on the role architects play as a force for positive change in our communities and to elevate the public’s appreciation of design. With a theme of “Design Connects”, the AIA encourages you to join in an online national conversation. Continue reading to learn more on how you can participate.
