What is the future for cities? Are they expanding at an ever-increasing rate or are they being abandoned and shrinking into oblivion? Are cities polluted, overcrowded and anonymous, or are they dynamic centres of innovation and culture? Are they sociable or anti-social? Well, it depends who you read because each description reflects the confusion about the state of the world’s cities. Anxieties over urban space within western cities, and fears over the dynamic growth of megacities in the developing world have altered the way that we see the benefits and drawbacks of urbanisation. It has been said that a culture of shrinkage is set to develop; or alternatively, that the city will have finally swallowed the world.
A pool can certainly add some ‘coolness’ to a great house. If you don’t believe me, check our first part of pool houses Round Up, and then have a look at our second part of previously featured pool houses in ArchDaily.
Over the last few months architectural firm Powerhouse Company have been working on the project Rien ne va Plus. This project consists of a research on the economic crisis and its intricate relation with architecture. This research resulted in an exhibition, that takes place at the architectural instute NAiM/Bureau Europa in Maastricht (The Netherlands), a reader that was published in collaboration with the magazine A10 and a series of debates.
You can also find the architect’s description after the break, along with photos of the exhibition taken by Johannes Schwartz and Christiaan van der Kooy, and a video created by Powerhouse Company.
Friends of 339 invites architects, designers, artists, engineers and multi-disciplinary teams worldwide to participate in a competition to re-imagine and rebuild the Peace Pentagon, located at 339 Lafayette Street in New York City. This is an opportunity to give a physical form to a name in-use since this building became the center of peace-promoting activism in the 1960’s.
Construction has already began on the Venezuela Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo site. The 3,000-square-meter Venezuela Pavilion will look like a figure 8 – a symbolic number in both China and Venezuela – and depict many traditional aspects of the country’s history and culture with the theme “A Better Life, Better City.”
The Yanomami tribe that has thrived in the rainforests of South America for thousands of years will perform in the pavilion. Another highlight of the pavilion will be a Venezuelan children’s orchestra, which will perform in a 286-seat theater on July 5, Venezuela’s National Day, said Temir Ponceleon, the country’s commissioner general of the Expo.
The pavilion will be in the geometric shape of a “Mobius strip,” or an inverted cylinder. The exhibition area will feature two-way audiovisual transmissions via satellite between Shanghai and Venezuela. More images and a video after the break.
This Monday, October 19th, young architects working and living in France will present their recent projects in a debate taking place at Columbia University (Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, 6:30pm). Architects participating will be:
With over 6,000 pictures from our Flickr pool, we are constantly receiving some amazing photos provided by our readers. Each month, we’ll show you our selection of best pictures. You can check Part I, Part II and Part III. And of course remember you can submit yours right here, and also follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page.
The picture of the Nottingham Science Park in the UK was taken by wojtek gurak. Check the other four after the break.
OLIAROS, a young property development company, called architects up to 35 years old to submit proposals for the construction of an affordable student housing complex in Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio (KM), an area in the historic centre of Athens, Greece.
Parasite Studio have shared with us their proposal for the competition. Their project, “Agora”, consists in complex living modules. Each module comprises a common space for six students and three bedrooms. Full architect’s description and more images after the break.
Sadar Vuga Architects have shared with us their design for the air traffic control centre for the Brnik Airport in Slovenia. The centre is conceived so as to provide security and enable high operativeness, 24-hour work comfort as well as comfort for the employees and visitors to the Centre. Furthermore, the Centre is designed according to all strict requirements of safety, operation and efficient functioning, but it is also envisaged as a special, memorable and symbolic building of the arrival in Slovenia.
The Centre is designed as a compact shell that uncloses where natural lighting is needed in the interior. The compact building with a pentagonal ‘head’ of the Centre, which is tied to two administration ‘wings’ by the vertical hall in the central area of the Centre, is situated, for safety reasons, in the centre of a plot along the central boulevard of the future Airport City. The Centre is separated from the edge of the plot in the north by a parking platform and in the south by the tall greenery of the Centre’s garden. The Centre’s interior is organized into zones of various safety degrees. The more we move from the perimeter with administration offices and resting areas towards the free centre of the building, the higher the safety level.
The Contemporary Design Details series takes a highly visual look at architectural design details that are more often dealt with in a technical textbook format. The books take readers on a tour of the best details designed by great architects around the world. The series provides a powerful presentation of the most challenging and evolving architectural and design categories.
Since we started with ArchDaily we’ve published many wooden houses. And our new readers may have missed more than one. So to start this week’s Round Up we bring you our second part (first one here) of previously featured wooden houses.
BIG is looking for a Project Leader to head up the BIG team responsible for developing the new Presidential Library in Astana, Kazakhstan, which we previoulsy featured in ArchDaily and got many comments from our readers.
The new library, named after the first President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, encompasses an estimated 33.000m2. Being one of the future cornerstones of Kazakh nation-building, and a leading institution that will represent the Kazakh national identity, the library goes beyond a mere architectural challenge.
The new Presidential Library in Astana, Kazakhstan’s new capital since 1997, shall not only accumulate history but also provide a foundation for new futures. It will serve as an intellectual, multifunctional and cultural center with the primary goal to reflect the establishment and development of Kazakhstan, its political history, and the Head of the State’s activities and roles in the development of the country.
The young office NORD Architects has won the competition for a new healthcare center for cancer patients in Copenhagen, Denmark. The winning design is founded by principles of healing architecture and at the same time it suggests aesthetics which are in contrast with that of a conventional health institution.
The design is an elaboration on the recognizable contour and scale of a house. At the same time the design becomes an iconographic building, as the small individual houses are interconnected by a sculptural roof structure. The building is enriched by the close relation to the surrounding landscape consisting of an inner courtyard, several terraces and themed gardens.
The design will be realised in collaboration with Hellerup Byg, Bravida Danmark, Wessberg Ingeniører and Metopos Landscape. More images after the break.
The competition-winning design of the main stadium for the 17th Asian games in Incheon, in South Korea, illustrates a new level of sustainable design in stadia in Asia. The stadium will hold 70,000 people for the main event in 2014 and will reduce down to a single sided grandstand for 30,000 afterward as a People’s Park for the city of Incheon. The global architecture firm, Populous, formerly HOK Sport Venue Event, is designing Incheon stadium with local firm Heerim Architects and Planners.
More information at Bustler. More images after the break.
Chinese jade culture through its 8,000-year history will take center stage at the Taiwan-based Aurora Group’s Expo 2010 Pavilion. Jade symbolizes the national character such as gentleness, perseverance and the pursuit of peace, and the Expo will provide a platform to help promote such hopes, Tan Baijuan, deputy director of the pavilion, said yesterday while unveiling the design.
The pavilion will feature rare exhibits such as a piece of 2.5-ton jade and Beijing Olympic medals made of fine jade from the Kunlun Mountains in Northwest China’s Qinghai Province.
The theatre inside the pavilion will show Chinese myths and about 30 rare jade relics from the Aurora Museum will also be exhibited. The biggest challenge now is to squeeze the soul of jade’s history spanning thousands of years into a short journey of 20 minutes, said Tan. More images after the break.
Rebuilding national infrastructure will drive U.S. economic recovery, and architects are critical to the effort to build and modernize our most basic source of future intellectual capital: our schools. “Designing Learning Environments to Rebuild Urban America” will explore the best opportunity in generations to strengthen educational facilities—with architects at the forefront.
Because health is very important for everyone, we bring you our second part of Health Architecture previously featured on ArchDaily. In case you missed it, check the first one here!
Some days ago we asked you, through our Facebook Fan Page, to submit your best render. After seeing more than 350 amazing renders, the ArchDaily team selected the best 10 (in no particular order). Also, as we told you before, we have a special category with the five renders that received more “likes” through Facebook. As we said in the rules, we only allowed one submission per person, so for the ones who submitted many, we only took the first one. Also, we asked for the programs used in the render, so we also left out the ones who didn’t told us.
Choosing 10 from 350 was extremely difficult and we are aware that we left some great renders behind, so we strongly recommend you to visit our Fan Page (if you haven’t already) and have a look at all the pictures submitted by our readers. Believe us, you will see some really good work. Remember to keep visiting our Facebook Fan Page, become a Fan if you’re still not one, and prepare yourself for more competitions. See the results, after the break.
