Daniel Libeskind has unveiled designs for Vanke’s first ever overseas pavilion for the 2015 Milan Expo. Clad in a self-cleaning, air purifying, metalized tile, which was designed by Libeskind in collaboration with the Italian company Casalgrande Padan, the “red serpentine-like” structure reinterprets the traditional Chinese Shitang (dining hall).
Roma-based Nemesi & Partners has designed a 13,000 square meter “urban forest” that will serve as the Italian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Enveloped within an intricate, branch-like skin, the six-story lattice structure will be made from 900 panels of “i.active BIODYNAMIC” cement that will “capture” air pollutants and convert them into inert salts.
Mikou Design Studio has unveiled plans for the Africanews headquarters in Congo. Designed to “present a powerful visual impact” on Brazzaville’s skyline, the wood-clad tower will be hoisted on four “totem-like” pillars above a two-story glass base and topped with a panoramic restaurant sheltered by a vegetated rooftop terrace.
The winning design for the Austrian pavilion of the 2015 Milan Expo has been announced. Following the Expo’s theme of “Energy for Life,” team.breathe.austria's winning proposal focuses on social change for environmental protection. The enclosed, rectangular pavilion will be planted with an abundance of native Austrian vegetation. Titled “breathe,” the project will produce enough oxygen to sustain 18,000 people by the hour and advocates for a healthier bond between the urban and natural environment.
The honor of designing Thailand’s pavilion for the 2015 Milan Exposition has officially been awarded to The Office of Bangkok Architects (OBA). The firm’s winning design incorporates the Expo’s theme of “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” with the agrarian and religious qualities that define the Kingdom of Thailand. Located centrally on the Expo’s main avenue, the pavilion will be adjacent to a canal that will be used as a part of the exhibition, relating back to Bangkok’s informal title as the “Venice of Asia.”
Paris-based X-TU has envisioned a more cohesive, sustainable market where food is not only grown and harvested, but sold and consumed on the spot. Serving as the French pavilion for the 2015 Milan Expo, X-TU’s competition-winning scheme will celebrate the country’s “rich genetic heritage” and future in innovative food production with a timber “fertile market” that supports the growth of the produce it sells.
British based FaulknerBrowns Architects have proposed plans for "one of only two velodromes in recent memory being planned" in the city of Edmonton, Canada. In a place where winters are cold and long, reaching -20 degrees celcius, the facility can be adapted for both indoor and outdoor use throughout the year. Clad in Canadian timber and polished stainless steel shingles wrapping around the building like a "twisted ribbon resembling the twisted sinuous cycle track," the scheme will be only the second major indoor cycle track facility in the country.
MVRDV has begun construction on an adaptive reuse project that will transform a former warehouse in Hong Kong’s newly designated business area of East Kowloon - the Kwun Tong district - into a “luxurious loft style working environment” for creative companies. The 14-story structure will be stripped down to its raw concrete bones and reconstructed with glass and stainless steel to provide up to 37 naturally lit, affordable office units.
Tsinghua University, alongside New York-based Studio Link-Arc, has been announced as winners of a competition to design the Chinese Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Expanding on the Expo’s overarching theme, “Feeding the Planet - Energy for Life,” the pavilion’s “Land of Hope” is centered on the idea that “hope can be realized when nature and the city exist in harmony.”
Envisioned as a three-and-a-half-meter wide “wound” within the landscape, Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg’s powerful monument to those lost in the 2011 Utøya terror attacks has won Oslo’s July 22 Memorial competition.
“My concept for the Memorial Sørbråten proposes a wound or a cut within nature itself. It reproduces the physical experience of taking away, reflecting the abrupt and permanent loss of those who died,” described Dahlberg.
GRAFT Architects and penda are preparing to break ground on Myrtle Garden Hotel in the outskirts of Xiangyang, China. Nestled on a hillside site within the largest Myrtle Flower Garden in Asia, the wooden annular structure is designed to provide a “soothing harmony between the architecture and its natural environment.”
As we reported last week, The Menil Collection has unveiled details on the Menil Drawing Institute (MDI), designed by Los Angeles-based Johnston Marklee, in Houston, Texas. The building will be the first freestanding facility in the United States created especially for the exhibition, study, storage, and conservation of modern and contemporary drawings.
Situated in an extensive 30-acre masterplan designed by David Chipperfield Architects, the institute will be located amongst Renzo Piano's main museum building, Piano's Cy Twombly Gallery, the Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall, and the Rothko Chapel. More info on the design, and all the renderings, after the break.
Milroy Perera Associates, in collaboration with Mäga Engineering, has unveiled plans for the world's tallest residential vertical garden in Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka. The Clearpoint tower will house 164 apartments spread across 46 floors within 10 kkilometers from the centre of Columbo. Overlooking the tributaries of the Diyawanna Lake in Kotte, planted viewing terraces will encircle the entire structure fed by "inbuilt self-sustaining watering systems."
Kengu Kuma & Associates has unveiled designs for a small cultural complex comprising of two halls and a community centre located in Iiyama, Japan. According to the architects, "publicly funded cultural centers tend to be alienated from the rest of the town for their typically large volumes." As a result, they designed "the complex to be as open as possible toward the town and the landscape of Iiyama, so that all would exist in harmony."
Richard Meier & Partners has unveiled the “Reforma Towers,” a 40-story, mixed use development planned for Mexico City’s historic Paseo de la Reforma. Comprised of two high-rise towers, clad in Meier’s signature white concrete, the new development will bring high end office, hotel, and retail space, as well as restaurants and a fitness center to the city’s distinguished Boulevard upon completion in 2015.
Foster + Partners has released new images of their revised, 19-story luxury condominium tower planned for West Chelsea in New York. Named after its address, 551 West 21st Street, the cast-concrete and glass structure plans to open its 44 residences, and three penthouses, to occupancy in the Fall of 2015.
Naqsh,E,Jahan-Pars (NJP), in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Architettura e Design (LAD), has been named winner of an international competition for the Iranian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Based on “a living process narrative in the central plateau of Iran,” the winning scheme responds to the Expo’s “Feeding the Planet” theme by exposing the underground channels of water that give life to Iran’s many desert cities.
