Urban Design: The Latest Architecture and News

Soon the people of Stavanger, Norway will get to see the LERVIG beer brewing process at the new 11,000 square meter visitor center and brewery designed by Danish architects COBE. An iconic focal point on what was once an industrial pier, the building will offer many new amenities to central Stavanger. The brewery will be encircled by public spaces such as a harbour bath and Norway’s first west-coast ‘street-food’ market, complete with a green roof above. From these periphery spaces, guests will be able to view the brew tanks and fermentation process happening in the heart of the building.

Due to rapid population and economic growth, Indonesia is facing issues such as land subsidence and rising sea levels. To combat these problems and more, SHAU Architects created a master plan for the Jakarta Jaya Foundation focused on large-scale land reclamation to integrate green space. By addressing impending challenges, SHAU Architects proposal, Jakarta Jaya: the Green Manhattan, won a Smart Cities prize at the World Architecture Festival 2017.

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Concéntrico 04, the International Architecture and Design Festival in Logroño, arose with the intention of prompting reflection on the city through proposals in architecture and design. The latest edition will be held from 27 April to 1 May 2018. 

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In their video series for the November 2017 World Architecture Festival, PLANE—SITE delves into contemporary concert hall design. The five films highlight major themes in today’s musical architecture through an interactive, multimedia panel. Using Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Wroclaw’s National Forum of Music, and the Philharmonie de Paris as examples, the videos show how contemporary concert halls are more technological and multi-functional than ever before, demonstrating how architecture redefines the modern-day musical performance experience.

The series acted as a starting point for a conversation between the WAF audience and panelists, moderated by PLANE—SITE’s Andres Ramirez. Panelists included Michel Cova of dUCKS scéno, Tateo Nakajima of Arup, and Jacob Kurek of Henning Larsen.

Cities are universes in themselves; furiously spawning, spewing, hissing through time and space. They are cudgeled, raked, plastered, worshipped, fought over, set on fire; they are slippery wombs that cradle wars, victories, blood and brilliant storms. The built environment has always been indicative of its inhabitants’ fears, desires, and ideals. As such, it is one of the earliest, most powerful forms of human expression. For World Cities Day 2017, the new BBC Designed section of the BBC Culture website commissioned motion graphics designer Al Boardman to create The Perfect City, an animated video covering a brief history of humankind’s quest for the "ideal" and the "perfect" in urban design. With a voiceover and script by renowned architecture critic and writer Jonathan Glancey, the video is a remarkable 2-minute overview of some prominent examples in city planning, both old and new, successful and unsuccessful.

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Concéntrico 04, the International Architecture and Design Festival in Logroño, arose with the intention of prompting reflection on the city through proposals in architecture and design. The latest edition will be held from 27 April to 1 May 2018.

Cities around the world are growing at an unprecedented rate, and for the first time in recent history represent the preferred place for people to live. Urbanization has historically aided millions in escaping hardship through increased employment opportunities, better education and healthcare, large-scale public investments, and access to improved infrastructure and services. The city has been the ideal for heightened livability for people worldwide.

The New York Power Authority and the New York State Canal Corporation launched a competition seeking ideas to shape the future of the New York State Canal System, a 524-mile network composed of the Erie Canal, the Oswego Canal, the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, and the Champlain Canal. Selected ideas will be awarded a total of $2.5 million toward their implementation.

In Warsaw, Poland architecture firm WXCA wins the masterplan proposal for a stretch of riverfront along the Vistula River. The Vistula River Boulevards are among the most frequented public spaces in the city, and gaining popularity as entertainment and cultural offerings become available. WXCA’s winning design for Kahla Square aims to resolve the disconnect between the river banks and to provide amenities to support waterfront activities.

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Global design firm, Hart Howerton, is now accepting applications for its 2018 Travel Fellowship Program. Open to undergraduate and graduate students in planning, architecture, landscape architecture or urban design, Hart Howerton’s Fellowship program offers students the advantages of professional office experience, collaborative interdisciplinary design and global travel and research. Fellows receive a competitive salary during their internship and a generous stipend for housing assistance along with living and travel support.

Urbanism in a Digitalizing World.

Since 1989, the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation has been in the vanguard of historic preservation practice and theory. The mission of the Fitch Foundation is to support professionals in the field of historic preservation, and to achieve this we provide mid-career grants to those working in preservation, landscape architecture, urban design, environmental planning, materials conservation, decorative arts, architectural design and history, and allied fields.

Great Rivers Greenway is leading a major public-private partnership to establish the conceptual plan for the Chouteau Greenway in St. Louis through this design competition. The goal of the project is to connect the areas of Washington University and Forest Park to Downtown and the Gateway Arch and Mississippi Riverfront. With spurs north and south and many other destinations along the way, the greenway will connect area neighborhoods, employment centers, parks, transit, and dozens of cultural and educational institutions.

In the summer of 2017, Fredericia, Denmark was touched by EASA [European Architecture Students Assembly]. The largest network of architecture students in Europe, EASA is a diverse community where the common language is architecture. The theme for EASA 2017 was: Hospitality - Finding the Framework. Hospitality was the foundation for the 30 different projects the groups of students worked on for two weeks.

The EASA community includes 500 students representing over 40 countries and 200 different architecture schools. Run by students, for students, EASA had an organizing board of 12 international architecture students this year who were chosen by EASA.

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As part of the series of new urban developments sprawling up in Moscow, Zaryadye Park is the latest to open this month in a bid to improve the city’s green space. Commissioned by Moscow Chief Architect, Sergey Kuznetsov, an international consortium led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Hargreaves Associates and Citymakers has designed this new public space that encourages integration and celebrates the amplitude of regions across Russia by artificially emulating each of their climates: the steppe, the forest, the wetlands and the tundra.

As Earth’s population continues to grow, so does car traffic and issues related to climate change. It has been estimated about 30% of urban roadway congestion are drivers searching for a place to park. Car culture puts the pressure on cities to build more parking garages, which usually win out over green parks. Meanwhile, climate change continues to challenge cities to handle a great deal of stormwater. The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is proof of this - as of Monday, 13 named storms have formed in the Atlantic ocean, costing 210 lives and counting.

THIRD NATURE, a Danish architecture firm, designed a solution for the modern-day urban issues of flooding, parking and lacking green spaces with their project, POP-UP. A stacked green space, car park, and water reservoir, from top to bottom respectively, POP-UP uses Archimedes’ principle to store water and create floating space to store cars.

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Raubdruckerin – German for pirate printers – have been traveling around Europe turning city streets into printing presses to develop a range of t-shirts, hoodies and bags. The result is fashion not just for the street but from the street.

Taking inspiration from the urban landscape and the often over-looked surfaces of the city, Raubdrucken apply their eco-friendly ink to man-hole covers, grids and patterned streetscapes and relief-print the outcome directly on to the fabric of their line. It is proof that everything can be inspiration for good design, and that beauty and richness can be found in the mundane, the utilitarian or perhaps in this case, the misunderstood.

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Netherlands-based architectural firm KAAN Architecten, in partnership with ABT, Estudio Lamela and Ineco has been selected to design the new Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Terminal, with the help of Arnout Meijer Studio, DGMR and Planeground. Soon to be located south of Schiphol Plaza, at Jan Dellaert Plein, the new 100,500-square-metre terminal will implement futuristic and sustainable design trends.

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