Videos

Transformation of 530 Homes – Grand Parc Bordeaux by Lacaton & Vassal architectes, Frédéric Druot Architecture and Christophe Hutin Architecture has been awarded the 2019 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. The innovative renovation of three large blocks of social housing in Bordeaux was praised for “radically improving the space and quality of life of its occupants” and for optimizing their economic and environmental cost of living.

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The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were regarded among 2nd-century scholars as the finest works of architecture on the planet. Some of these iconic structures, including the Great Pyramid of Giza, still survive to this day, albeit in a ruined state when contrasted with how they would have looked 2000 years ago. 

Vincent Callebaut Architectures has unveiled images of their tribute to Notre-Dame Cathedral following the fire that badly damaged the historic structure. A transcendent project that forms a symbol of a resilient and ecological future, the project is inspired by biomimicry and a common ethic for a fairer symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.

Amey Kandalgaonkar has unveiled a project which reimagines the traditional Chinese pagoda in a modernist style. The Shanghai-based designer created the fictional reinterpretation as a homage to a building form largely untouched by Modernism, featuring raw brut concrete, minimal ornamentation, and bold geometric moves.

Jonathan Ben David of the Israel Institute of Technology has created a thesis project titled “Terra Nullius” which dwells on the identities and conceptual restraints dividing people in the Middle East. Suggesting alternative concepts, frames of mind, and mediums for which different social groups can gather upon, the thesis takes place off the coast of Jaffa, once an epicenter of Palestinian urbanism, where a new state is formed as an act of protest by Jews and Palestinians longing for co-existence.

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eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of its 2019 Skyscraper Competition. Now in its 14th year, the annual award was established to recognize “visionary ideas for building [high-rise] projects that through [the] novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.”

Videos

Italian artist Federico Babina has published the latest in his impressive portfolio of architectural illustrations. “Planimal” seeks to convey the close link between architecture and the natural world, translating animals into architectural plans. Through his set of drawings, Babina reimagines the architectural spaces as “narrative subjects that host us and lead us into a fantastic labyrinth of a dreamlike reality, architectures imagined as allusively zoomorphic sculptures.”

Houses, museums, and churches are conveyed as roaring lions, crawling snakes, and swimming whales, with dynamic spaces formed from cocktails of asymmetries and symmetries, curves and straight lines, solids and voids, sounds and silences, lights and shadows.

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1024 architecture has released details of their exhibition at La Philharmonie de Paris. Freed from the classic codes of presentation, the exhibition adopts a raw, deliberately urban design, including a scaffolding structure reminiscent of concert scenery. The firm as also designed a digital installation, Core, whose light sculptures change with the soundtrack.

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Perkins+Will has unveiled its design for 799 Broadway, a 12-story boutique office building just south of Union Square in Manhattan. The scheme seeks to reinvent the classic NYC loft building with contemporary materials, systems and, and technology. An exercise in designing from the inside out, the midrise scheme features a range of flexible floorplates that extend into a cascade of undulating terraces on almost every floor. The sculptural massing responds to zoning setback regulations, delivering a human-scaled expression with meaningful connections to the outdoors.

Bjarke Ingels Group and Uribe & Schwarzkopf have designed a 24-story rose-colored tower in Quito, Ecuador inspired by natural beauty, diversity, and the community of the city. EPIQ is BIG’s second building in the city, with a dynamic, porous structure clad in colored titles to echo the beauty of Quito, and to be the face of a new sustainable urbanism in the growing city.

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LIONLION has released the music video for their latest song “Oceans Rise,” inspired by Bauhaus architecture. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the influential German school, the video offers a reduced, minimalistic design vocabulary set in the Pescher House by Richard Neutra.

The 20 shortlisted projects for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture have been announced. Located in 16 different countries, the shortlisted schemes will compete for a US$1 million prize fund that recognizes all parties involved in the conception, design, and realization of a built project.

odD+ architects have released details of their proposed Grove Tower in Quito, Ecuador. A 10,000-square-meter office building for one of the country’s most prestigious law firms, the scheme has been designed as a “monumental structure that represents the values of the firm on an extremely narrow terrain.”

The Statue of Liberty Museum is set to open on Liberty Island, New York. Designed by New York-based firm FXCollaborative led by Nicholas Garrison, the 26,000-square-foot scheme seeks to create the illusion of a structure lifted from the earth. To achieve this, the project incorporates angular design techniques and native materials to the island and statue, such as Stone Creek granite, copper, plaster, and native vegetation.

Architecture firm NUDES has released details of their proposed secondary school in Malawi, constructed from straw bales. Responding to a brief focused on modularity, incremental expansion, deployment, and sustainable technology, the scheme is formed of a modular “ladder” component deployed to create a structural system that houses the pedagogical intent of the school.

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MUDA-Architects has released details of their M50 Art Hotel project located in Pingle, Sichuan, China. Situated within an ancient town with strong musical heritage, the design process for the scheme involved exploring and activating local cultural genes, creating a landmark building that reflects its historical context, with an architecture that is forward-looking.

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Studio Gang is celebrating a significant milestone with the topping out of their twisting high-rise MIRA tower in San Francisco. Construction of the 400-foot-tall tower began in mid-2017, with steady progression leading to projected occupancy in late 2019. The scheme's design is centered on the evolution of the bay window element, a feature common to San Francisco’s early houses. The bay window is reimagined in a high-rise context, twisting across the full height of the tower to offer views across the city.

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In the aftermath of the blaze that destroyed the roof of Paris’ iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral, Studio NAB has envisioned a replacement “greenhouse roof.” Described as a cathedral “in green for all,” the project would see the creation of rooftop greenhouse that embraces the reintroduction of biodiversity, education, and solidarity.