A room of audience erupts into a fit of giggles as a comical tramp with a short mustache, wearing a suit and tall hat slips on a banana peel. The couple embrace as the man makes her stand on the railing of the ship, grabs her arms and extends them out. "I'm flying" she says, as people swoon in unison over their romantic harmony and impending tragedy.
The NCC’s Urban Design Challenge 2020: Student Ideas Competition for Canada’s Capital is now on.
Urban Design Challenge 2020 is a competition that invites students from across the country to come up with design concepts for important sites in Canada’s Capital Region. The competition is organized by the National Capital Commission (NCC), the federal Crown corporation dedicated to ensuring that Canada’s Capital is a dynamic and inspiring source of pride for all Canadians, and building a legacy for generations to come.
Sasaki has been selected by the government of Ho Chi Minh City to conceive the innovation district in the eastern part of the city, in collaboration with enCity, an international planning practice based in Singapore and Vietnam.
ShopSmart on Redchurch is an ideas competition that will explore ways that placemaking and technology can bring character, activity, community and economic success to Redchurch Street in Shoreditch, London.
The 3rd International Placemaking Week is an intimate, four-day-long global gathering of public space practitioners, researchers, and advocates that combines hands-on learning, public space activations, and innovative social events. Sign up before the regular registration rate ends on August 30!
Berlin as we know it – with its centres, residential quarters, and suburbs – marks its 100th anniversary in 2020. A reason to celebrate, but also a spur to think about the future development of the region. After years of stagnation, dynamism is returning to the Berlin-Brandenburg region: population growth, new flows of commuters and goods, new quarters and housing developments, a new rail map, a radically new airport arrangement, and a growing public transport system. Berlin is a metropolis, its integrated hinterland extending far beyond its administrative boundaries. What we need now is a broad public debate ranging from sustainable planning of growth across the region as a whole to the specific role of individual neighbourhoods within the growing metropolis. Both politicians and representatives of business and civil society have repeatedly called for such a debate, and with good reason.
The 6th edition of Passages Insolites or Unusual Passages, has kick-started from the 20th of June till the 14th of October 2019, in Québec city. The public exhibition is a 4km walkable art path in the historic Petit Champlain and Saint-Roch districts, showcasing 14 artworks produced by 40 local and international artists and architecture collectives.
The AERIAL FUTURES: Living Laboratories Symposium examines the confluence of urban elements within the airport landscape—transportation, commerce, public space and technological interfaces—and how Asian airports introduce alternatives for life in transit.
Some assembly required for this vision of future urban living. Known for simple, well-designed, flat-pack furniture, IKEA is proposing expanding their DIY-model to a much larger scale: entire city centers. Democratic Design Days is an annual event where IKEA introduces its upcoming brands and collaborations, this year featuring The Urban Village Project, a collaboration between SPACE10 and EFFEKT Architects. After two years of research, SPACE10 (IKEA’s global research and design lab) is releasing their vision to the public for a new way to design, build, and share our homes, neighborhoods, and cities.
BRIEF
If skylines around the world are looking too much the same, is this because the new and important buildings are done by the big names (designers) from far away and not by the locals or the opposite is true? Not only skyscrapers but, museums, civic center, concert halls, bridges, libraries, opera houses all give cities part of their identity.
In 2017, the Portland Society for Architecture (PSA) asked citizens and visitors to provide their vision of Portland on blank maps of the city. PSA distributed these maps as a tool to encourage civic engagement in defining Portland. The completed maps offer unique perspectives and insight into how the city might grow and flourish.
Innovation and technology are often presented as inextricably linked ideas. Yet, when it comes to solving today’s urban problems, technology does not always represent the best way forward.
Innovation instead should come from a thorough understanding of the city’s functions and processes, including its municipal government and other local organizations. Technology can help, yes, but cannot be used as a panacea.
Urban design is a branch of design intimately related to urban planning and landscape architecture; it focuses broadly on interpreting the form and public space with physical-aesthetic-functional criteria. Different experts in the field such as Jane Jacobs, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, Jaime Lerner, Jan Gehl, Kevin Lynch have devoted themselves to studying the needs of urban societies within the common spaces to give adequate responses to different contexts. These questions are renewed with new generations and the public space is transformed according to technological advances but what always remains is the sense of belonging of these sites that are only successful when users adopt them as own.
Amidst efforts to revitalize and improve urban centers, the peripheral areas of cities are often ignored or forgotten. The intense focus on the downtown core means, in terms of land use, that only a relatively small area receives the majority of designers’ attention. "Dvorulitsa" (literally "Yardstreet" in Russian) is an urban development strategy proposed by Russian architecture firm Meganom, aiming to shift that focus. Taking the idea of the “superpark” from the 2013 study, "Archaeology of the Periphery," the yardstreet project presents an alternative method of viewing the periphery of a post-soviet city.
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How do designers think? How do they visually communicate complex ideas? What strategies do they employ to make a positive impact on the built environment? How does design change the way people see and experience the world?
This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "Game Changers: Architect Zena Howard is Using Design as Urban Healing." Metropolis' annual Game Changers series highlights those in design who are pushing the field forward.
Transforming urban centers can be slow going when the process is rooted in community engagement. But within the next five to ten years, historically African-American neighborhoods in Charlotte and Greenville, North Carolina; Miami; Vancouver; and Los Angeles will experience major change, thanks to architect Zena Howard, who leads Perkins+Will’s cultural practice in North Carolina.
Over the timespan of just one generation the planet’s pace of urbanization has dramatically increased. Through these dynamics and its resulting environmental threats, new challenges have emerged that deeply question the validity of the post-war planning paradigms. Dominant ideologies have been replaced by a problem-solving attitude, increased economic pressure and an urgent quest for evidence. What impact does this have on the work of the urban designer and planner, and how can the profession prepare for the future?
