competition: The Latest Architecture and News

Section I: TOPIC

The competition topic is the preliminary design of a 40 sm one-floor building, located in an Italian municipality, to be announced later, employing straw bale and timber construction techniques. The building will consist of a single multifunctional area available to different associations to carry out conferences, meetings, and events. The building will be used periodically and in a discontinuous way, thus management costs should be minimized. Thanks to an agreement between Promopaglia and the Municipality of Caino (Italy), the two winning projects will be submitted to the Municipality as part of a public- private partnership in order to achieve their realization.

A competition for the interior renovation of the Alte Oper, one of the world’s most prominent opera houses in Frankfurt, has been won by German firm Buero Wagner, selected ahead of heavyweight runner-up Zaha Hadid Architects. The scope included the conversion of one of the building’s multipurpose foyers into a central social space, to be activated by the 450,000 annual visitors that attend the Alter Oper’s 400-plus concerts.

+ 3

Videos

Placing third place out of 69 entries in an international competition for a new cultural building in Shenzhen, China, Mecanoo’s proposal for the Bao’an Public Culture and Art Center aiming to re-evaluate the “inwardly focused identity of cultural facilities in Hong Kong," through the form of an elevated cube. Situated near the Bao’an Metro Station and the Binhai School, the Dutch firm responds to the site’s challenges by reconnecting the center with its adjacent infrastructure.

The metro station and cultural center are united by the large masses of people that are channeled by the former and engaged but the latter. In order to capitalize on this condition, the design combines the metro entrance with that of the museum, thereby connecting the wider community with the arts and creating a more appealing public network.

+ 3

The winners of the 2017 Land Art Competition have been announced, with submissions responding to the challenge of creating site-specific installations in rural Ghana, as part of a larger initiative to enrich the Abetenim Arts Village. The aim was to complement the village’s learning center with other creative spaces for communal living and working, thus “creating a truly unique experience that becomes emblematic of what an art village is and how it needs to function as a place.”

Selected entries will also have the opportunity to be fully realized onsite, through various land art workshops held by the Nka Foundation over the course of the next two years. Here are the winning entries:

A competition for the transformation of a former cemetery in Nikea, just west of central Athens, has been won by Greek firm Topio7, with a proposal that creates a revitalized public park as a result of “a mutual osmosis between the park and the city”. A number of green buffer zones – “the elastic limit” – are utilized to frame a procession-like journey from the bustle of the city to the calm of the park’s landscape.

Highlighting the importance of the site’s previous use, the architects explain that the “main objective of the project is the creation of an open, accessible public space, a contemporary urban park with ecological-bioclimatic character, with special emphasis on the social dimension and the site’s memory.”

+ 9

Since 1953, the 160-mile (260 kilometer) strip of land along the Korean Peninsula's 38th parallel has served as a Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. The DMZ is more than a border; it's a heavily guarded, nearly four-mile-wide (6 kilometer) buffer zone between the two countries. Each military stays behind its own country's edge of the zone, perpetually awaiting potential conflict, and access to the interior of the zone itself is unyieldingly limited. Apart from the landmines and patrolling troops, the interior of the DMZ also holds thriving natural ecosystems that have been the subject of studies on what happens when wildlife is allowed to flourish in the absence of human contact.

In a competition that asked participants to design an underground bathhouse near the Kaesong Industrial Park, a (currently suspended) cooperative economic project that employs workers from both North and South Korea, research initiative Arch Out Loud imagined a DMZ that accommodates non-military structures that are typically seen as out of place in areas of such sensitivity and tension. The winning proposal by Studio M.R.D.O and Studio LAM utilizes the performative element of a bathhouse, where visitors are both audience members and actors, to the address the tensions—both geopolitical, from its surrounding environment, and personal, from the related emotions visitors carry with them—between both groups.

Bee Breeders have selected the winners of the New York Affordable Housing Challenge, inspired by barriers faced by the global population in our contemporary culture of housing scarcity and economic deprivation. The submissions provide various multifaceted architectural responses to scattered sites of various scales around New York City, “redefining the culture, economy, and experience of urban domesticity by means of space, material, morphology, or structure.”

Below are the winners of the New York Affordable Housing Challenge:

+ 80

Utrecht University’s Urban Futures Studio have announced the 10 finalists for their Post-Fossil City Contest, judged by a jury which included MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas. Each of the successful submissions responded to the contest’s call for the design of a sustainable city no longer reliant on non-renewable energy sources. Designers and makers were invited to envision this new future, which “will reshape our cities and everyday lives so radically that it is hard to imagine what it might feel, taste, smell, and look like.”

Out of the 250 total entries, below are the 10 selected finalists along with a snippet of their proposed futures as described by the competition website.

Szczecin – a city in north-western Poland, inhabited by over 400,000 people, is searching for an original idea to develop an area of 200 ha located in the very heart of the City. To this end, its authorities have just announced the international urban and architectural competition “Łasztownia – the New Heart of the City”. The record-breaking prizes, totalling EUR 97,900, clearly shows how serious the Mayor of Szczecin is about the Competition results.

Applications for admission to the Competition, the idea of which is to create a spatial development concept for the Międzyodrze area in Szczecin, including Łasztownia, may be submitted up to 27 March 2017.

A competition for the expansion of the MCH Messecenter, Denmark’s largest exhibition hall, has been won by the team consisting of CC Contractor with Schønherr, Cubo Arkitekter, and engineering firm Midtconsult. Given the center’s importance within Herning, the competition called for a new approach to the site’s physical organization, to provide more coherent and functional relationships with the surrounding context in order to host larger events in the future and serve as an even bigger tourist attraction.

Within a masterplan created by Schønherr, a new admissions building designed by Cubo Arkitekter will incorporate a distinctive façade with a homogenous character to directs visitors from the new arrival area to the Jyske Bank Boxen arena, exhibition Hall M, and the arcade that extends towards the rest of the MCH Messecenter.

+ 2

The 2016 Venice Biennale may have officially closed in November, but many of its constituent parts continue to have a life beyond the confines of Venice. From Border to Home, the exhibit hosted by the Finnish Pavilion, showcased the results of an international architecture competition between October and November of 2015 that called for residential solutions for asylum seekers that offer both short-term shelter for refugees and long-term impact on the surrounding community. Three winners and four honorable mentions were featured in the exhibition, accompanied by a blog that offered sustained dialogue on the topic from architects around the world. On March 21st, Finland's contribution to the Biennale will finally be concluded with a review of the Biennale's themes and a seminar on the pavilion, hosted in Helsinki. Read on to find out more about the winners and four mentions from the competition that were featured in Finland's From Border to Home pavilion.

Entries are open for architects, designers and manufacturers to submit projects for this year's ICONIC AWARDS, organized by the German Design Council.

The Iconic Awards honor superb examples of the interaction of all disciplines in an independent architecture and design competition which focuses on internationally outstanding construction projects, innovative interior and product design as well as compelling communication in an architectural context.

Architects, designers, the building sector and industry are once more invited to participate in the ICONIC AWARDS with their contributions. Applications for the competition will be accepted through 18 May 2017.

+ 2

The main objective of this competition is to select a photograph which will be the main image for a sensibilization campaign named "Cities Without Architecture" alerting to the need of working towards the improvement of the habitat.

A -Theme Area

According to the Un-Habitat (United Nations) Urban Observatory, it is estimated that fifty million people will move from rural areas to the cities in western Africa over the next ten years. In Mumbay, the population has recorded a four-fold increase. Half of the population live in slums, 700.000 spend the night on the streets, 100 million people in the world, mostly kids, have no permanent home.

More than half a century has passed already since Bernanrd Rudofsky exhibited at the New York MOMA a collection of pictures he took during his trips. The exhibition would be named: Architecture Without Architect. This exhibition was shown in more than 80 cities during the following 11 years, and its catalog has become a true referent in what has been called vernacular architecture.

A question arises nowadays: what have architects learned from this famous Architecture Without Architects? But these days there is an even more important question: how much aware are we in the developed countries of the existence of cities without architecture?

Emphasizing a diverse combination of ecological, infrastructural and urban programs in their envisioned design, Istanbul and Madrid-based design practice Openact Architecture has been named the winner of the Bandirma Park Competition, which invited ideas to “introduce Bandirma to the world."

Titled ‘A Path of the Fields’, the winning proposal presents a layered approach to the revitalisation of a former military and industrial brownfield in the industrial Turkish city of Bandirma.

The area is defined by Openact as both “an open, interactive, collective and productive focal point locally and regionally” and “an idea factory in the city of factories”, allowing for the exchange of ideas between the public and professionals. By centering the park around a Design and Research Institute, the intent is to create an environment that will strengthen Bandirma’s socio-economic standing, and offer a new hub for the city’s future, while seamlessly integrating into the natural ecological identity.

+ 11

Envisioning the harbor front as an extension of the city center, “Pargas Maritime Limestone Landscape” designed by the young Danish practice Schauman & Nordgren Architects has been named the winning entry of a waterfront masterplan competition by the City of Pargas, Finland.

The proposal was selected for its “thorough analysis of the city, its history, structure, character, potentials and challenge”, in response to the area’s development as a new residential hub and functional harbor. The competition introduced the notion of maintaining Pargas’ dominant maritime identity, while simultaneously strengthening the city’s character with various urban elements, such as hotels, a beach, saunas, and offices.

+ 4

A’ Design Award is the World’s largest international design competition. The A’ Design Awards are organized in all creative fields to bring out the excellent designers from all countries in all disciplines. Entries to the A' Design Accolades are peer-reviewed and anonymously judged by an influential jury panel of experienced scholars, important press members, and experienced professionals. A' Design Awards promises grandeur, prestige, publicity and international recognition to The A’ Design Award Laureates through the Coveted A’ Design Prize which is given to celebrate all awarded designs.

Videos

YAC – Young Architects Competitions – and Corradi s.r.l. announce Wedding Oasis, an architectural competition aiming at the design of outdoor living structures to enhance the high potential of historical sites like the Castello of Rosciano (Central Italy). The international jury is made of outstanding personalities such as, among the others, David Chipperfield Architects and Will Alsop. A total amount of € 20,000 in cash prize will be awarded to the winner proposals.

+ 6

To shape or form - the word Aakriti traces its roots from the ancient Sanskrit language. Our ancestors believed in the design of the universe and infused their creations with ideas and designs of the world. And here's a chance to inspire the world with your designs.