ArchDaily: The world's most visited website for architects

The year 2011 was a great one for ArchDaily, and all thanks to you. In terms of web traffic, in our network we grew to more than 200,000 daily readers who viewed 350 million pages during 2011. Our social media reach has grown to nearly 500,000 Facebook fans, more than 60,000 followers on Twitter and an ever growing presence on Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest, all connecting with architects around our passion: Architecture.

ArchDaily is more than big numbers. It is recognized as the ultimate source of inspiration for thousands of architects around the world, who are covering new ground in architectural discussion, and generating new opportunities by being part of the world’s largest architecture network. During 2011, we participated in important events, such as the Pritzker Prize ceremony in DC, the AIA National Convention in New Orleans, among others, and visiting architects all across the US, in the UK, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. We’ve had the chance to interview renowned architects such as Steven Holl, Renzo Piano, Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, and a long list of people who are advancing this profession. We spoke at the AIA Arkansas Convention, Harvard GSD, along with other events and schools. We launched our first local version, ArchDaily Brasil (more to come during this year!) and introduced our first tool to help architects collect and order information: My ArchDaily. We will continue to work very hard during 2012, with all our passion, to keep you connected to everything that is happening in the architecture world and help you with tools, as you will be the responsible of the noble task to shape our built environment.

Since 2009 we have held the Building of the Year Awards, an instance in which all of you make your voice heard by nominating and voting for the best projects featured on ArchDaily during the year. This is a peer based award that recognizes firms of all sizes, trajectories and locations. You can check the results of the previous editions here: 2009 and 2010.

Once again we have partnered with HP to present the 2011 Building of the Year Awards, starting today Feb 7th, 2012 at the following link:

http://www.archdaily.com/building-of-the-year/2011/

The nomination stage will run for 2 weeks until Feb 21st, 2011. All buildings featured under the available categories during 2011 are elegible for this round. You can nominate one building (in one category) per day.

Like last year, we will authenticate the votes with the My ArchDaily platform, so we can assure that the nominating and voting processes are conducted by the community. You can nominate once per day, so you can propose your favorite projects from Feb 6th to Feb 19th, after which 5 buildings per category will continue to the voting round, between Feb 20st and Mar 4th. The winners will be announced on Mar 5th, 2012.

Given that you are in charge of the selection process, we have decided to give away 2 custom engraved iPads 2 during the nominating/voting stages (more details on the rules below). Also, the most voted firm will receive an HP Designjet T2300 eMFP printer (MSRP US$8,000).

Once again I’d like to thank all our readers for your support in 2011, and rest assure that we are working on new ways to improve ArchDaily in 2012. Our inbox is always open, so feel free to leave your feedback, recommendations and support on the contact page.

Rules after the break:

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Jacques Herzog, Ai Weiwei and Pierre de Meuron © Courtesy of Serpentine Gallery

Today, the Serpentine Gallery announced the team that will design the twelfth edition of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a special edition that will be part of the  London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad.

Every year the gallery invites a renowned international architects who has not built yet in the UK, to design a temporary pavilion that hosts public activities in at the Gallery’s lawn, in London’s Hyde Park between June and October 2012. The list of architects for the past editions includes several Pritzker laureates. More info of this program at our Serpentine Gallery Pavilion infographic.

This years teams includes Pritzker laureate architects Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (runner up of TIME’s 2011 Person of the Year). The trio has worked together in projects such as ORDOS 100 in the Mongolian desert and the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games. As a trio they don’t have any built projects in the UK, but Herzog & de Meuron have been involved in several, including the Tate Modern renovation and its current expansion.

Their design will explore the  hidden history of the previous installations (more info), with eleven columns under the lawn of the Serpentine, representing the past pavilions and a twelfth column supporting a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

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Recently we had the chance to visit Allied Works office in NY to interview the firm’s founder Brad Cloepfil. It was a great interview, and I really liked the atmosphere of the office: A young team, many abstract study models, beautiful drawings on the boards, and a subtle music playing in the background, it was like seeing the inside of a creative machine at work.

Established in 1994 by Brad Cloepfil, Allied Works Architecture is an awarding-winning practice known for their expressive design and pristine detailing. Portland, Oregon hosts the firm’s headquarters and maintains a close, interdependent relationship with the New York City office. Together the 50-person practice has completed a number of influential public, institutional, commercial, and residential projects worldwide.

Allied Works’ strong reputation started with the Maryhill Overlook in the Columbia River Gorge, followed by the Wieden + Kennedy Agency Headquarters. Currently Allied Works is involved in a variety of commissions, including the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, the National Music Centre of Canada, and the Vancouver Community Connector in Washington.

Architectural historian and critic, Sandy Isenstadt, describes Cloepfil’s work as “aiming to create oases of legibility, spaces that can look out upon the simultaneous contrasts of the modern world to appreciate them from a place no less complex, but one that unfolds over time, with repeated visits, rather than at the speed of a camera shutter, thereby rewarding continued occupation rather than just dazzling the eye.”

Allied Works projects at ArchDaily:

• Clyfford Still Museum
• Maryhill Overlook
• Wieden + Kennedy Headquarters
• Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
• Dutchess County Residence – Guest House
• University of Michigan Museum of Art
• National Music Centre (Competition, 1st prize)
• New Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Competition entry)
• Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec (Competition entry)

Architectural photographer Cristobal Palma shared with us this timelapse video of the Xi’an Expo, a project by Plasma Studio + GroundLab that we saw during several stages, from the award winning entry in 2009, to conceptual design and opening, when it was visited by more than 200,000 people on the first weekend.

The Expo embodies the idea of transformation as the site was formerly a sandpit where the water was severely degraded during the 1980s.   Efforts over the past two decades have restored the ecosystem and now the Expo is able to demonstrate what can be accomplished through the use of the most advanced technology, ideas, and materials.  As we reported earlier, the 37 ha complex includes three buildings that are interconnected with a dynamic landscape of unfolding paths and networks of water, circulation and foliage.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

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With only a few days away from the announcement of the this year MoMA PS1 YaP winner, architectural photographer Cristobal Palma has shared with us a timelapse video of the 2011 YaP installation in Santiago, Chile, designed by GUN Architects.

The Water Cathedral is a large, horizontal urban nave for public use. The structure is made up of numerous slender, vertical components, which hang or rise like stalactites and stalagmites in a cave, varying in height and concentration. The project incorporates water dripping at different pulses and speeds from these hanging elements, fed by a hydraulic irrigation network. When filled with small amounts of water, the stalactite components act as interfaces out of which water droplets gradually flow and cool visitors below. The stalagmites topography provides elements of shade, along with plants and water that collect under the Water Cathedral’s canopy.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

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Young dutch designer Jólan van der Wiel has been announced as the winner of the [D3] Contest for young designers at the imm cologne fair.

Using a magnetic plastic compounds, magnets and simple gravity, Jólan gives birth to the Gravity Stool, an expressive piece of furniture that is like a frozen moment of physics exposing the forces in action. You can see the full process on the above video by Miranda Stet.

© Jólan van der Wiel

The Gravity Stool thanks its unique shape to the cooperation between magnetic fields and the power of gravity.

Departing from the idea that everything is influenced by gravitation, a force that has a strongly shaping effect, I intended to manipulate this natural phenomenon by exploiting its own power: magnetism. The positioning of the magnetic fields in the machine, opposing each other, has largely determined the final shape of the Gravity Stool.

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Through our interview program, I’ve had the chance to meet with some of the world’s most renowned architects, while creating a moment to share their views about the profession with our readers.

During the 2011 AIA National Convention, I had the chance to meet Kengo Kuma, one of Japan’s most recognized architects, whose work I admire. His recent works use subtle elements with a powerful structural expression, and interesting spatial results for different programs of various scales.

Established in 1990, Kengo Kuma & Associates have become known for their expressive use of materiality and deep connection with nature. The mid-sized firm is involved in a wide spectrum of work, ranging from private residences, to Buddhist temples and art museums. Kengo Kuma & Associates consist of two offices located in Tokyo and Paris.

Principle Architect Kengo Kuma is a professor at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Tokyo. His goal is to recover traditional Japanese design and reinterpret it for the 21st century. Inspiration of light and nature guides the design process and influences his unique explorations with glass, wood, concrete and stone. Kuma strives to create architecture that coexists with the natural environment and works in harmony with the human body.

Kengo Kuma has won a multitude of competitions and received many awards, including the prestigious Architecture Institute of Japan Award (1997) and most recently the Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award (2002) and the AIA Honorary Fellowship (2011). Major works include the Kirosan Observatory, Water / Glass, Toyoma Center for Performing Arts, Stone Museum and Bato-machi Hiroshige Museum. Recent works include the Mesh / Earth terrace house, the Yusuhara Wooden Bridge Museum and the Suntory Museum of Art.

Projects by Kengo Kuma & Associates at ArchDaily:

• Casalgrande Old House
• GC Prostho Museum Research Center
• Lucien Pellat-Finet Shinsaibashi
• Momofuku Ando Center
• And more to come in the next days!

A few months ago I had the chance to visit and interview Architecture Research Office (ARO), just after they were announced as the recipients of the prestigious 2011 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture.

I was eager to meet this practice and share their projects at ArchDaily, especially because of the diversity of their work. Not only do they work at different scales (from master plans and institutional buildings, to a small recruiting station in Times Square), but they also strongly focus on research, with projects such as Rising Currents or Five Principles for Greenwich South -projects that invited other firms in a collaborative effort to share ideas for a strategic development of Manhattan- moving between a design practice and a research lab.

The firm was founded in 1993 and has become very influential in the NY area. It is led by Stephen Cassell, Adam Yarinsky and Kim Yao. I had the chance to sit down with the three of them for this interview, where they tell us about recent and ongoing projects. They share their views on innovation, collaboration and how to run a practice which is both what we know as the traditional practice, and a laboratory.

ARO projects at ArchDaily:

• Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics, Brown University
• Hudson River Education Center And Pavilion
• R House
• Princeton Architecture School
• MV House

And more to come in the next days!

Credits: JC Labarca (camera), JP Barrera (editing).

Photographer Cristobal Palma shared with us a dynamic view of the Memory Museum in Santiago, Chile, by Brazilian firm Estudio America.

More about the museum here.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

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Architectural photographer Cristobal Palma shared with us another clip of the Pabellon Ultraligero Centrifugo installation by Clavel Arquitectos, on view at the Shenzhen Civic Square. This is part of a series of installations for the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Urbanism / Architecture Biennale, open until February 18th, 2012.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

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Vitra, Ginger bread Vitra Haus

During these days we have received close to a thousand seasonal greetings from architects, photographers and editorials around the world. We are very grateful to have collaborated with an amazing group of professionals, who mixed creativity and humor on their e-cards.

Enjoy a selection of these e-cards, including this nice Ginger Bread Vitra Haus, along with Snøhetta, SOM, Richard Meier, BIG, CEBRA, and more!

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Architectural photographer Cristobal Palma has shared with us this video of the Chilean Pavilion at the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture.

“Gimme Shelter!”, designed and curated by Sebastián Irarrázaval and Hugo Mondragón, features projects and architectural innovations developed by local architects during emergencies and natural catastrophes in the last years.

The poetic expression of these emergency landscapes has also oriented the construction of the Chilean pavilion. To achieve this, we chose to overturn the conventional relationships of the elements that comprise it: mattresses positioned vertically become screens for projecting images; security cones and water bottles, cut up and then reassembled, become lamps; emergency tape and water bottles become tensors and counterweights. Once this mechanism was set in motion, we provocatively introduced certain conventionally used forms: a massive bed with mattresses placed in the center of the pavilion, and a window display with large water drums and dispensers at the far end of the pavilion, promising visitors a bit of rest and relief.

For the exhibition, we selected architectural works, visual pieces and technological innovations that experimented with the concept of the essential and the ingenious in precarious contexts. On the other hand, and in keeping with the project mechanism put into action through the formalization of the pavilion, we also decided to select projects that exhibited a certain degree of disruption to some element of the cultural or material patrimony of Chile.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

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Architecture photographer Fernando Guerra (FG+SG) posted this short video of the renowned Portguese architect and Pritzker laureate (1992) Alvaro Siza, while working and singing to The Beatles. He looks quite inspired!

Fernando and Sergio Guerra (FG+SG) have the largest photo archive of Alvaro Siza’s work. Prints can be obtained at their online store.

Architectural photographer Cristobal Palma shared with us this short clip of the Ultra Light Village installation by Clavel Arquitectos, on view at the Shenzhen Civic Square. This is part of a series of installations for the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Urbanism / Architecture Biennale, open until February 18th, 2012.

More videos by Cristobal Palma at ArchDaily:

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The last part of our Brazilian day, commemorating the 104th birthday of the renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and the launch of ArchDaily Brasil: An exclusive interview with Mr Niemeyer himself.

- How did you start your office?

My office in Copacabana -the only one that I have- was opened and organized to meet, since the early 50s, the ever growing demands.The last 13 years I have been the only architect here “at work”; the initial stage of the projects is done by me, up to the basic project, and then I trust its development by other architecture offices, specially the ones directed by my colleague and friends Jair Valera and my dear granddaughter, Ana Elisa.

- For you, what is Architecture?

In my opinion, architecture is invention. And under this prism is how I do my projects, always searching for beautiful, expressive, different and surprising solutions.

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© ArchDaily by Megan Jett - Click to enlarge.

ArchDaily’s Megan Jett did this amazing infographic resuming the highlights of Oscar Niemeyer’s career, who turned 104 years old today.

We continue celebrating this special day, with the launch of ArchDaily Brasil!

You can download it in PDF, so you can print it and hang it in your wall.

Dear readers,

Since the day we started ArchDaily back in 2008, we have stuck to our mission to become a hub of opportunities for architects, and to improve the profession by making architectural knowledge available to architects around the world.

To help keep you architecturally inspired, a passionate team of architects works hard every day to bring our readers from around the world the latest news, projects and any information that is relevant to the architecture world. Working on a global scale has required that we focus on broader aspects of the architectural world. While this has its obvious advantages, it can neglect one of the most important elements an architect has to deal on a daily basis: context.

We know that local issues and national contingencies have more weight over projects than global trends. While the Internet turned us into global citizens, it is now a tool that allows us to connect with the local in an unprecedented way. And at ArchDaily we wanted to provide our readers with the local information that is relevant to them.

We decided to start with Brazil, the cradle of one of the most powerful movements in architecture. The works by the Brazilian modern masters can be resumed into powerful structures with humble details, a constant that is now seen among the new generation of talented architects, who respect that tradition but are still able to innovate and give identity to Brazilian architecture. The country is also facing an unprecedented growth, and will host two of the largest events in the coming years, the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de janeiro, posing several challenges for architects and urbanists. In this context the local architecture scene has developed interesting projects in different scales, from where several lessons can be learned.

ArchDaily Brasil will have a special focus on everything that is happening in the country related to architecture, mixed with a selection of the best projects to keep Brazilian architects inspired and connected to a global network. Our editorial team of Brazilian architects and correspondants throughout the country strive to keep you informed in the best way possible, interviewing local architects, covering events and lectures, news, etc.

We invite our Brazilian readers to visit ArchDaily Brasil, and also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

We’d love to hear your feedback about ArchDaily Brasil, please leave any ideas, suggestions or recommendations in the comments section.

And stay tuned for more exciting news from ArchDaily.

Obrigado!

Architecture is all about passion. Sometimes it can be very complex, slow, even painful… but our passion will make us push until the end, to see our creations come to reality no matter what.  This passion turns into an entrepreneurial spirit, collaboration and the desire to use our knowledge to influence our society and to improve our built environment. For me, one of the best living examples of the passionate architect is the Brazilian master Oscar Niemeyer.

Today the master turns 104 years old, and he is still working at his office in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, from where we interviewed him, delivering projects in Brazil and around the world. So passionate about his work, that he can’t stop.

Devoted to architecture and women, he was able to express his passion for both.

mountains/waves/women = curves

It is not the right angle that attracts me. Nor the straight line, tough, inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free, sensual curve. The curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the clouds of the sky, in the body of the favorite woman. Of curves is made all the universe.

- Oscar Niemeyer

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ATHENS

National Technical University of Athens, School of Architecture

Cipher City, 01-07 April 2012

In today’s world of amplified social interaction and connectivity there is a need for the built environment to evolve beyond its current relatively static state. In 2012, Cipher City takes place in one of Europe’s most historical and ever-changing cities, Athens, offering a direct engagement with design models characterized by action. In the capital of Greece, where innovation has been always a force of creativity, the workshop will be hosted by the NTUA School of Architecture.

In its urban context, Athens presents a challenging mixture of historical diversity and current developing territories in the outskirts of the city. The act of reaching from one place to another in a continuous and fluid way therefore becomes the starting point in developing working kinetic prototypes energised by motion on horizontal planes. The workshop aims to bring out the dynamic qualities of the seemingly inanimate urban surroundings, such as urban paths, sense of orientation, topography, and bridge these with the animate qualities of the human body. During this process, participants will have the opportunity to experience the historical, contemporary, and geographical diversity of Athens during studio trips, while challenging the conventional design approach in order to break the dichotomy between the building and the urban realm. Capable of responding to external stimuli, the proposed structures will apply the concepts of motion and real-time reaction to various parameters.

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Forecourt and St Stephen Walbrook at night © OMA by Philippe Ruault

OMA recently completed their first building in London. The new 21,000sqm building is located in the narrow medieval alley of St Swithin’s Lane, in the heart of the City, a dense context where OMA’s precise intervention is able to blend and become an active urban piece.

The building, thanks to its structural steel design, is lifted from the ground exposing new situations, connections and views, detonator of a new  streetscape where the public realm is as important as the office space above.

You can see Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon discussing this project on a video posted earlier at ArchDaily.

More information courtesy of OMA after the break:

Project: Rothschild Bank Headquarters
Year: 2011
Client: NM Rothschild & Sons
Location: St Swithin’s Lane, City of London
Site: New Court, enclosed in cluster of buildings, adjacent to the 17th century St. Stephen Walbrook church; with main entrance on the narrow St. Swithin’s Lane
Program: Office headquarters: 13,000m2
Partners in charge: Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon

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