Ma Yansong of MAD recently presented a 600,000 square meter urban design proposal for the city of Nanjing titled, "Shanshui Experiment Complex," at the 2013 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture in Shenzhen, China. The concept takes into account the culture, nature and history of Nanjing while reconsidering the methodology in which Chinese cities are built.
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The concept of the new Shanghai Flower Garden Square by Real Time Architecture (RTA-Office) is a reinterpretation of a traditional Chinese home. Ten villas merge to form a series of sequential spaces, replacing the conventional building type of the single, stand-alone villa. The 45 square meter landscape, thus, finds its way throughout the units’ interiors, synchronizing interior and exterior user activities.
Mayor Bloomberg's decade long administration may be ending this January, but not before he ensures the approval of $12 billion worth of privately developed projects throughout New York City. Under Bloomberg, 40 percent of NYC has been rezoned, creating a hot-bed of new construction. From multi-million dollar research centers to multi-billion dollar neighborhoods — complete with luxury waterfront apartments, outlet malls and the western hemisphere's largest Ferris Wheel — each one of these megaprojects will undoubtedly transform NYC in the coming decades. Check them out here.
The Salem Harbor Station, built between 1948 and 1951, is a coal fired power station which occupies a 65-acre site in Salem, Massachusetts. One of the region’s dirtiest coal- and oil-burning power generators, the 748 megawatt station sits within the historical maritime hub of Salem’s waterfront. The facility is topped by three towering smokestacks that pierce the skyline, and can be seen from many parts of Salem as well as the neighboring communities of Beverly and Marblehead.
Learn more about the station's transformation after the break...
TC Design Architects have been announced as one of the four winners in a country-wide architectural competition to design the University of Mpumalanga in Nelspruit, the first public university in South Africa since the end of Apartheid. Of 147 architectural practices, the Department of Higher Education and Training has narrowed the pool of entries down to TC Design, Conco Bryan Architects, Cohen and Garson, and Gapp Architects & Urban Designers.
More on TC Design's proposal after the break…
Czech architect Ales Javurek has been awarded first prize in the [AC-CA] Architectural Competition for his design of a two-story, 340 square meter vacation home utilizing shipping containers in Sydney, Australia. The proposal situates the home on the edge of a 1500 square meter hillside to maximize the striking panoramic view of Bondi Beach. By preserving current trees and the slope's profile, consisting of "three platforms," the proposal successfully addresses the main brief: to design a contemporary, sustainable vacation house which sensitively fits into its context and considers Sydney's climate conditions.
Learn more after the break…
From the architects. Formlessfinder’s Tent Pile brings an intensely architectural intervention to Design Miami/, inventing a new building typology to provide shade, seating, cool air, and a space to play for the city’s public. The design practice, co-founded by Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi in 2010, approaches new projects with an interest in the specifics of geography — closely examining the spatial, social, and physical conditions of the location with which their structure will interact. They prioritize the use of available materials, committing to deploy them in ways that allow for reuse, an approach that produces what they refer to as “an architecture that can go from nothing to something and back again.”
Learn more after the break...
Alfonso Architects have been awarded the building project for the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement (MAACM) in St. Petersburg, Florida. Hundreds of objects from the early 20th century movement - including furniture, pottery and paintings - have been offered by the museum's patron, art collector Rudy Ciccarello, in collaboration with the Two Red Roses Foundation.
Galleries and exhibit spaces, says lead architect Alberto Alfonso, are inspired by the "detailing and customization of materials and joinery" characteristic of the era. The four-story, 90,000 square-foot museum "is a tremendous gift by Mr. Ciccarello for the city of St. Petersburg and our state," adds Alfonso.
The AIA just released its third quarter Design Trends Survey for 2013. Key findings have been made since the previous survey, specifically on neighborhood and community trends.
German architecture firm, GRAFT, has been selected as the winner of the "Apassionata" competition. Tasked with designing a temporary structure for the exhibition of horses, GRAFT proposed a complete wooden building that could be assembled, dismounted and reassembled at the convenience of the company.
Learn more after the break...
Winka Dubbeldam believes there is power in the people.
As a public intellectual, she has invested her efforts in researching the concept of "bottom-up" and "systems" design at academic institutions like Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania - where she now serves as chair of the department of architecture. As principal of the New York-based firm, Archi-Tectonics, she demonstrates how these concepts work in both theory and practice.
In between the consistent cadence of client meetings and academic functions, Winka has been vocal about the future of cities, traveling overseas and giving TED Talks. Her most recent project revolves around a bilingual website, Mi Ciudad Ideal (My Ideal City), which has led her to Bogotá, Colombia where she is leading efforts to crowdsource and document the opinions of hundreds of thousands of urban residents in hopes to better understand what makes the "Ideal City." ArchDaily recently caught up with Winka to discuss the project's foundation and how it works.
Form4 Architecture has been awarded first place in the 2013 WAN Civic Buildings Competition for a proposal that promises to be a "catalyst for metropolitan living" in Taichung, Taiwan. The new city center, titled "Luminous Moon-Gate," was selected out of 46 entries in the "Future Schemes" category.
The challenge of converting a sea of parking lots, that so often riddles auto-dependent suburbs, is in densification. Architects are introducing compact urban living models to small towns all across the country, retrofitting single-use zoning into more walkable, diverse and connected communities. Perhaps nowhere is this evolution more evident than Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood, home to the country’s oldest shopping malls. Learn how the town became denser and greener, transitioning to a transit-oriented development, “Gray, Green, and Blue: Seattle’s Northgate.”
UPDATE: Congrats to Susana Duarte of Portugal, winner of the "Lina Bo Bardi" giveaway! Thank you to all those who participated. Keep your eyes peeled for another fantastic giveaway, courtesy of Yale University Press, in the coming weeks.
HAO, together with community group, Williamsburg Independent People, hope to save the historic Domino Sugar Factory site and halt the current masterplan by SHoP Architects which proposes an additional 2,200 luxury apartments along the East River waterfront in Brooklyn, New York.
HAO's counter proposal seeks to adaptively reuse the existing factory buildings, including the iconic Civil War-era Domino Sugar Refinery — which has defiantly held its ground amidst heavy redevelopment in surrounding areas. Not unlike SHoP's proposal, HAO aims to regenerate these spaces into a "world-class cultural destination" that combines public and private programs.
From Atlanta's Beltline to Los Angeles' Spring Street "Parklets," architecture and design is increasingly more relevant in the fight against obesity and chronic disease, conditions which have reached epidemic levels in the United States. In the article, "Toward a Fit Nation," the AIA and FitNation identify 18 projects from around the country, ranging from large complexes to temporal installations, that encourage physical activity and healthy lifestyles. The AIA National Headquarters will be curating the FitNation exhibit till January 31, 3014. Read the article here.
"As Autumn Leaves" (AAL) is a spatial installation designed and built by students of the Laboratory for Computational Design (LCD) for Beijing's 2013 Design Week. Located in a historic hutong district in Beijing, AAL highlights the existing entrance to Dashilar Factory where emerging creatives exhibit their design. The concept is based on ephermerality of nature. As temperatures change, autumn turns to winter, and trees shed their leaves, AAL recalls the passage of time through changing seasons.
Cities are diverse places, home to a rich spectrum of people and lifestyles. Chris Downey, however, believes that there are only two types of people, "those with disabilities and those that haven't quite found theirs yet." Downey, a distinguished architect of over twenty years, lost his eyesight four years ago and found a new way of seeing the world. "If you design for the blind in mind, you get a city that is robust, accessible, well-connected...a more inclusive, more equitable city for all." Hear his story, contrasting his daily life before and after this newly found "outsight."