It’s hard to remember a time when there wasn’t a coffee shop perched on every corner. With the boom of coffee culture in the late 90s, mornings seem unbearable without the support of a caffeine kick. Emulating the cosmopolitan New York lifestyle of shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City, ambiance-inspired cafés that encourage its customer to linger were a big step away from the greasy spoons of yesteryear.
Bee Breeders has announced the winners of the recent Sydney Affordable Housing Challenge. The international architecture competition asked entrants to address the growing affordable housing crisis in Sydney. The challenge aimed at "garnering global attention to the important issue of housing in Sydney, Australia, where the economy is strong but the residential market is among the least affordable, according to surveys of major metropolitan markets."
Third-largest national park in one of Europe’s greenest country, Kemeri is a stunning and eclectic mix of forests, lakes, swamps and ancient raised bogs. Situated just a 1-hour train ride from Latvia’s capital, Riga, the park is home to a wide range of fauna including rare birds like the black stork, as well as moose, deer, elk, foxes, wolves, and wild cattle and horses. These were all reintroduced into this unique ecosystem with some help from the World Wildlife Fund.
Bee Breeders have announced the winners of the SKYHIVE Skyscraper Challenge. The purpose of the competition was to allow architects, design students, engineers, and artists from all over the world to "generate design ideas for iconic high rise buildings in cities around the globe."
Riga Black Balsam is an iconic traditional Latvian drink, created from a combination of 24 ingredients, including herbs, roots, berries, and fruit juices. Its smooth and versatile taste can be enjoyed any number of ways, though it is often taken neat, or mixed into a cocktail of choice. More and more lately, younger audiences have begun to recognize that Black Balsam is great when mixed into cocktails.
For a relatively small country, Ireland has a rich musical history which is incredibly diverse and spanning all musical genres. Connolly's of Leap is a venue which promotes all types of music; from traditional Irish folk music, to the most avant-garde electronic music of today. The IRISH MUSIC VENUE architecture competition focuses on breathing new life into an existing and iconic music venue in the heart of rural Ireland.
The Pape Nature Park in the south west region of Latvia is a birdwatching paradise, and home to some of the region’s most unique and majestic species found in the wild. In addition to being a home for some 50,000 migratory birds each year, the Pape Nature Park is now renowned for its reintroduction of several large herbivore species into the wild. Most notably was the reintroduction of wild horses, who had been driven from the area by human agriculture and settlements.
Bee Breeders have announced the winners of the Construction Container Facelift architecture competition. The competition jury received a wide range of work, but selected proposals which were based on a realistic implementation of a novel solution, maintaining the inherent durability and functionality of the shipping containers versus altering them strictly for aesthetics.
Bee Breeders have announced the winners of the Amber Road Trekking Cabins competition for the Latvian Baltic Coast. The competition sought proposals for low impact, transient and inhabitable infrastructure to support a planned hiking network along vast topographies of the Latvian Baltic Coast. The winning projects considered the various landscape elements of the site including pine trees, dunes, and white sand beaches while responding to programmatic requirements - economy, constructability, environmental sensitivity and utilitarian function.
The competition collectively provokes reflection of ecological conservation and its prescience in contemporary cultural and social practice, serving as an economic alternative to the commercialized, industrialized landscape definitive of global capital interests.
Bee Breeders have selected the winners for the Pape Bird Observation Tower competition, which saw participants submitting designs for a new bird observation station located in the Nica and Rucava Municipalities in the South Western region of Latvia. The competition is the first in a series organized by Bee Breeders in collaboration with Pasaules Dabas Fonds, Latvia's leading nature conservation fund. The competition asked for proposals for a tower that would replace a previous tower that was struck by lightening.
Iceland has a vast, wild landscape, with some of the most unique and incredible natural views in the world. Appropriately known as the land of fire and ice, Iceland’s volcanic fields blend seamlessly into gigantic glaciers and tumbling waterfalls. Iceland is also an ideal location to view the iconic Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights.
The Nemrut caldera sits cradled within the Nemrut Volcano in Turkey, formed by the collapse of the volcano into itself, creating a large, deep crater. This dramatic formation creates a unique micro-environment, becoming home to plants and animals that thrive in the harsh conditions. Nestled within the caldera is lake Nemrut, a half-moon crater freshwater lake that further adds to the unique biodiversity of the caldera.
Bee Breeders announced the winners of the Modern Collective Living Challenge, one part of their Global Housing Crisis competition series. Participants conceived new types of accessible housing for rural China’s relocated farmers. China’s fast-paced urbanization is causing millions of rural folk to move to cities. With no designated site, successful projects need to be versatile enough to work in a variety of sites and even be adopted as a standard for addressing relocation. Winning projects were held to a high standard in their answering of the question: how can we create modern community living situations where relocated individuals are not forced into changing their way of life? Common themes in winning projects are modularity and green space.
The competition winners are listed below.
Debate rages across the country, as experts and analysts go back and forth over the idea of an affordable housing crisis in Australia. One area that all experts can agree on, however, is that Sydney is in a league of its own when it comes to property prices. Sydney comes in second to Hong Kong as having the least affordable housing in a survey of 10 major metropolitan markets.
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Bee Breeders announced the winners of the Adelaide Creative Community Hub competition, challenging designers to propose an innovative, vibrant public space for the city of Adelaide, Australia. Participants were required to design either a temporary pavilion or fixed landmark within the frequented public park. Competition submissions seemed to focus on one of three things: a flexible open program, half building/half landscape, or a temporary pavilion. Judges looked for a clear concept. Winning projects have the potential to do more than merely bring people together; they go a step further sparking innovation in creative communities.
The SKYHIVE Skyscraper Challenge is looking to create an iconic high rise structure for an office tower with state-of-the-art facilities. Working in partnership with the Manipal Executive Education, winning entries will be showcased in their Global Tall Building Studio - Design Workshop in Dubai, where architecture students and in industry leaders collaborate to conceptualise the future of high-rise structures.
Bee Breeders have selected winners of the Hong Kong Pixel Homes competition, seeking to address the pressures of expanding populations and urban growth on existing housing markets. The competition asked for solutions which would reconsider our entrenched conventional forms of housing with “formal, technological, and material strategies predicated on modularity and repetition”. In announcing the competition results, the jury applauded the exploration of density, amenity and public/private adjacency in the winning schemes, recognizing their consideration for novel approaches to domestic culture and tradition.
The competition winners, including noted ‘Green’ and ‘Student’ schemes, are set out below.
Bee Breeders have selected the winners of the Mango Vinyl Hub Competition, challenging entries to marry architecture, music, industry, and design in the repurposing of a decrepit tin foil factory in Cesis, Latvia. With a focus on the revival of the vinyl record industry, “successful projects temper the impulse of retrojecting nostalgic hallmark or tradition, through revitalization of purpose of an artifact and history of a bygone era.”
Here are the winning visions of the Mango Vinyl Hub:
