Franca: The Latest Architecture and News

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Clarification Update 10/4/17: Populous and Egis were selected in 2016 to collaborate on the Paris 2024 bid; this news piece reflects the bid’s approval by the International Olympic Committee. However, the team to lead the next planning phase for Paris 2024 has yet to be decided. Stay tuned for further information.

The Paris 2024 Olympic bid, featuring planning for 38 Olympics and Paralympic venues across the city by the team of Populous and engineering consultants Egis, has received approval as part of the International Olympic Committee’s naming of the 2024 host city.

MVRDV and local architects Flint have revealed designs for a new riverfront mixed-use housing complex in Bordeaux, Ilot Queyries, as the project breaks ground. Located on the east bank of Garonne River, the site will house over 300 apartments, retail spaces, a rooftop restaurant, and a communal park in a densely mixed environment. The complex will integrate into the neighboring ZAC Bastide-Niel masterplan by MVRDV to create a lively urban neighborhood aimed at “combining the virtues of the historic city–intimacy, surprise and liveliness– with the density, ecology, light and comfort of the modern city.”

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Over the following weeks we will be sharing a selection of unrealized student projects, alongside realized schemes by practices who explore representational techniques, in collaboration with KooZA/rch. The aim is "to explore the role of the architectural drawing as a tool for communication" and, in the process, provoke a conversation about the contemporary use, format, and role of drawing.

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Architectural photographer Marc Goodwin, alongside Mathieu Fiol, has recently completed the fifth collection of his "ultra-marathon of photoshoots" – this time in la Ville Lumière, Paris. Following Goodwin's insight into the spaces occupied by Nordic architectural offices, his look at studios both large and small lived in by London-based practices, his lens on a collection of Beijing-based studios and, most recently, his and Felix Nybergh's study of studios in Seoul, the project has now focused on the French capital.

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BIG and Silvio D'ascia Architecture have released new images of their competition-winning design for the new Pont de Bondy metro station in Paris. One of a total of 68 new stations commissioned as part of Société du Grand París’ Grand Paris Express project, the Pont de Bondy station will “[continue] the Parisian tradition of utilizing bridges as social spaces and cultural landmarks.”

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Five European projects have been selected as finalists for the 2017 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award. Chosen from a shortlist of 40 projects, the five finalists were lauded by the jury for their ability to “respond to the concerns of today’s European society.”

“Our instincts could be summed up by the words of Peter Smithson: ‘things need to be ordinary and heroic at the same time,’” said Jury Chairman Stephen Bates. “We were looking for an ordinariness whose understated lyricism is full of potential’.”

Through April, the jury members will visit each finalist project to evaluate the buildings firsthand and to see how they are used by the public. The Prize Winner will be announced in Brussels on May 16.

The five finalists are:

This article, written by Svetlana Kondratyeva and translated by Olga Baltsatu for Strelka Magazine, examines the most interesting cases of the role of culture in sustainable urban development based on the UNESCO report.

UNESCO published the Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Urban Development in the fall of 2016. Two UN events stimulated its creation: a document entitled Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which emphasizes seventeen global goals for future international collaboration, was signed in September of 2015 at the Summit in New York. Habitat III, the conference held once in twenty years and dedicated to housing and sustainable urban development, took place in Ecuador in October of 2016. The question of culture’s role in urban development, and what problems it can solve, was raised at both events. To answer it, UNESCO summarized global experience and included successful cases of landscaping, cultural politics, events, and initiatives from different corners of the world in the report.

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Ateliers 2/3/4/ has unveiled its design for Jardins de l’Arche Tower, a 200-meter-tall building in Nanterre La défense, Paris.

An effort to “extend the great historical axis of Paris,” the 65,000-square-meter tower will feature a series of hanging gardens around superimposed volumes.

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