Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
The City of Kyiv has launched an international design competition aiming to commemorate the lives lost in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution, both through a memorial to their memory and through implementing the ideals of the revolution in the urban space surrounding Maidan Nezalezhnosti. The competition, honed through months of public discussions and consultations, is being organized by the Kyiv City State Administration and Ukraine's Ministry of Culture. More details after the break.
If you read a lot of articles about cities and urbanism, you're probably familiar with the words "half of the world's population now lives in cities." For a number of years, these words have been frequently used in the opening sentences of articles, hoping to convince readers in just a few seconds of the importance of the subject at hand. In fact, according to the World Health Organization these words are no longer even true: in 2014 the urban portion of the world's population has already reached 54%. In other words, every nine months the world adds enough new urbanites to fill a city the size of Tokyo, with an increase of nearly 300 million new urban dwellers since we reached the tipping-point in 2008.
The rise of cities has been so dramatic that UN Habitat has declared today, October 31st 2014, as the first annual World Cities Day.
Of course, all of this means that there has never been a better time to be an urbanist than right now. Or does it?
The City of Cardiff has unveiled plans by Foster + Partners to redesign the city's Central Square, close to the Millennium Stadium, adding over a million square feet of office, retail and residential buildings organized around a new civic square. Explaining that it is "the key gateway to Cardiff" for many visitors, City Council leader Phil Bale said that Central Square's "role in providing a positive image for Cardiff and Wales cannot be underestimated," adding that Foster + Partners' design is "reflective of the City’s ambition to be amongst the most ‘liveable’ cities in the world."
More on the plan after the break
A proposal to ensure the future of Preston Bus Station could see part of the structure converted into a youth centre, as part of a £23 million renovation. The proposal by the building's owners, Lancashire County Council, involves halving the number of bus bays used by the structure to 40, freeing up the western end of the building for other uses, including a sports hall, climbing wall, art centre and outdoor sports pitches.
In addition to the youth centre, the £23 million budget covers renovation to the existing structure and improvements to the surrounding highway. Funding for the proposal will come partly from the council and partly from Preston Youth Zone.
More on the proposal after the break
Ben Derbyshire, managing partner at HTA Design and a newly-elected member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Council, has called for a significant overhaul of the RIBA election process if the organization is to reverse "a long term decline in the fortunes of the profession, the role of architects in commerce and society, the influence of design in the quality of environment and on long term sustainability." Derbyshire, writing in his column for Building, argued that future RIBA presidents should only be drawn from the elected councillors if the RIBA is to avoid "the likelihood of successive Presidents failing to share agendas" - alongside five other proposals that he believes will strengthen the architectural profession. Read on after the break for more of his comments.
Architectural aid charity Article 25 has unveiled the drawings for its most important annual fundraising event, the 10x10 Drawing the City Auction. Featuring drawings donated by leading architects including Norman Foster, Ivan Harbour, Sheila O'Donnell, Terry Farrell and Ken Shuttleworth among many others, in previous years the 10x10 auction has raised over £90,000 for the charity, and this year it is hoped that it will top £100,000.
The 10x10 concept divides a section of the city up into a 10 by 10 square grid, with each participating architect assigned a section of the grid where they must find inspiration for an artwork. This year, the grid centred on the Shard, where this year's auction will be held on November 27th. In the lead-up to the auction, bidding will also be available online from November 4th-25th, at the 10x10 website.
Read on after the break for another 20 of the pieces to be auctioned
English Heritage has awarded a Grade-II listing to "The Rom," a skatepark in Hornchurch on the outskirts of London. Built in 1978, the Rom was one of the UK's first wave of purpose-built skateparks, and probably the most complete example found in the UK today. The listing makes the Rom the first protected skatepark in Europe, and just the second in the world after Tampa's "Bro Bowl" was added to the USA’s National Register of Historic Places last year.
More on the listing decision after the break
A new technology developed by researchers at Ohio State University has the potential to increase the efficiency and decrease the cost of generating and storing the sun's energy. Led by professor of chemistry and biochemistry Yiying Wu, the team has created a combined solar cell and lithium storage battery with an efficiency of electron transfer between the two components of almost 100%, in a design which they believe will reduce costs by up to 25%.
“The state of the art is to use a solar panel to capture the light, and then use a cheap battery to store the energy,” Wu said. “We’ve integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost.”
Read on after the break for more on the news
Developer Tom Bloxham has argued that problems with prefabricated homes or other unusual building techniques "must not stop innovation" in the UK housing sector. Bloxham, whose company Urban Splash was responsible for the Stirling Prize-nominated Park Hill regeneration and has worked with architects such as Norman Foster, FAT and Will Alsop, was speaking at an Archiboo event titled "Housebuilding is Ripe for Disruption." Discussing the problems that have befallen RSH+P's Oxley Woods project, he said "Whenever we innovate something inevitably goes wrong. There are risks and it is difficult. But somebody has to take these risks for the industry to move forward," reports the Architects' Journal.
With the first ever World Cities Day taking place on Friday, the Guardian is partnering with UN Habitat for the Cities Day Challenge, a day-long competition where representatives of 36 cities around the world will present their best city ideas, with the winner being selected for an in-depth article in the Guardian. Judged by Ivan Harbour of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Toronto City Planner Jennifer Keesmaat; Anna Minton, Dan Hill, Usman Haque and Adam Greenfield, the Guardian will be live-tweeting the entire day.
They are also reaching out to readers to "share your photos, videos and stories of something brilliant that your city does better than any other," some of which they will feature throughout the day. You can follow this link to contribute - or read on after the break as we take the opportunity to round up some of the biggest city ideas that have passed through the pages of ArchDaily.
The 2030 Progress Report for the American Institute of Architects (AIA)'s 2030 Commitment - a voluntary program for architects who want to commit their practice to advancing the AIA's goal of carbon neutral buildings by the year 2030 - has found a significant increase in the number of projects that meet its current targets for a 60% reduction in carbon emissions, with over 400 buildings in the program meeting the goal. "There is some very encouraging data in this report that shows how architects are making measurable progress towards reducing the carbon emissions in their design projects," said AIA Chief Executive Officer, Robert Ivy, FAIA. Read on after the break for more results of the report.
As part of the launch of his latest book, Food City, Professor CJ Lim of the Bartlett School of Architecture will present a lecture at Ravensbourne in Greenwich, London. Food City follows on from professor Lim's previous book, Smartcities and Eco-Warriors, exploring the role that food production and distribution has historically played in day-to-day life, and how we might once again reinstate it as an integral part of our cities through essays on 25 cities around the globe.
#GuggenheimHKI longlist designs are out. Some beauties and some fearful horrors http://t.co/MDOGs8XO5u pic.twitter.com/BXRiW1BAVC
— Rob Fiehn (@Rob_Fiehn) October 22, 2014 The news that every single one of the 1,715 designs for the future Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki have been released via a new competition website was understandably something of a media storm earlier this week. As the largest ever set of proposals to be simultaneously released to the public, how could anyone possibly come to terms with the sheer number and quality of the designs - let alone all the other issues which the proposals shed light on?
In this instance, the answer to that question is simple: get help. Guggenheim Helsinki will arguably go down in history as the prototypical competition for the social media age, not just for releasing the designs to the public but for their platform which enables people to select favorites, and compile and share shortlists. In the days since the website launched, Twitter users have risen to the challenge. See what some of them had to say after the break.
Invited by the Municipal Arts Society (MAS) and the Regional Plan Association (RPA), Woods Bagot has created an alternative design for the future of New York's Penn Station which would allow Madison Square Garden to remain in its current location above the station's entrance. The design, produced as part of MAS and RPA's report into the future of the station, the design was unveiled yesterday at Penn 2023: Where will the Garden Go?, the first session of the Municipal Arts Society's 2014 Summit for New York City, which discussed the possible options for the site at the end of Madison Square Garden's current 10-year permit.
Though the report by MAS and RPA favors the idea of moving Madison Square Garden - identifying Farley Post Office’s Western Annex and the Morgan Postal Facility and Annex as potential new sites - it also says that "there needs to be a Plan B... In the event a deal between the state, city, railroads and Madison Square Garden does not get done in the next eight years, there needs to be a plan for improving Penn Station and the surrounding district with the Garden still in place." This is where Woods Bagot's designs come in.
Read on after the break for more on Woods Bagot's proposal
The competition for the new Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki closed last month, becoming the most popular architectural competition in history with 1,715 entries. Now, competition organizers Malcolm Reading Consultants have made every single one available to view online, with each anonymous proposal presented in a series of two images, and a short description fro the architects. "Since its inception, this competition has been organized to be welcoming, inclusive, and transparent, and the gallery presents a singular opportunity for the public to explore and consider the broad expanse of entries," says Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.
Competition organizer Malcolm Reading added: "For anyone interested in design, the gallery is a tremendous resource that offers rare insight into the design process and further illustrates how the vision for a Guggenheim Helsinki... [has] captured the imagination of architects around the world."
And indeed, the website does provide a tremendous tool: with such a huge volume of entries, the database and its associated tagging system offer an interesting way to probe the architectural zeitgeist: for example, it seems 'curved' buildings are almost twice as popular as 'straight' buildings; and 'opaque' buildings are still unpopular, being outpaced by 'transparent' buildings by almost five to one, despite the traditionally opaque museum typology.
But when it comes to architectural quality, where do you even begin with 1,715 proposals? The competition's website has that covered too, with a favorites button, a six-building shortlist tool and a search-by-registration tool. ArchDaily is here to help too: after the break, we've hand-picked 50 of the most exciting, unusual, interesting and simply absurd proposals for you to start talking about.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)'s Future Trends Survey for September showed that, for yet another month, confidence is high among UK architects, with the workload index up fractionally to +29 from +28 in August. Again, this positive figure was spread right across the country, with the most optimistic reports coming from Northern Ireland and the North of England, reporting workload index figures of +80 and +46 respectively - promising figures considering that these two areas were "slowest to show signs of recovery" after the recession, according to the RIBA.
Wright & Wright Architects has revealed their designs for the Geffrye Museum in East London, a £15 million redesign that will increase the museum's total space by almost 40% through "unlocking" previously unused areas of the museum's 18th century almshouses. The design replaces a scheme by David Chipperfield Architects, which last year failed to secure planning permission in part because of the hugely controversial proposal to demolish the former Marquis of Lansdown Pub that occupies the corner of the site.
Earlier this year, Emre Arolat Architects completed their Sancaklar Mosque, "a simple cave like space" in Istanbul which through its humble exterior forms and emphasis on connection to nature, offers a "dramatic and awe inspiring place to pray and be alone with God." Over a period of 24 months, SGMStudio (Sarraf | Galeyan | Mekanik) documented this work, as the elements of the mosque gradually emerged from its steel rebar framework. "While recording the progress of the construction throughout passing seasons, the film aims to portray the building's existence within nature and its percept of space with the sensibility of the structure it purposes to narrate," say SGMStudio. Set to dramatic backing music, "the film dwells on the tension between the technical and engineering-centric implementation and humble and tranquil art of building with its pacing."
