A3+ Architects recently finished an urban renovation project in Marsala, Italy for an international competition. The project is situated in Porta Nuova, where the historical center of the city is connected to the sea by an urban road and an archeological park.
More images and more about the project after the break. read more »
Jesus Robles, Dale Rush and Cade Hayes from DUST design build have designed a mountain retreat for a small family of three in Arizona. The home attempts to preserve as much of the land as possible as a way to hold on to the “history and mysteries of the Sonoran Desert.” Users must walk through a dense forest of saguaros, ocotillo and Paloverde trees before seeing the house unfold in the landscape and ultimately arriving at the sculptural entry stairs.
More about the home after the break. read more »
Bark Design Architects, a small Australian practice, have designed a studio for themselves that showcases their philosophy of design and provides a great space to work. The “workhouse”, an elevated steel, glass and plywood studio, “explores the notion of a mixed work / house typology.” The architects intended for the project to expresses lightness in its modular structural form, transparency, texture, and a seamless indoor to outdoor connection.
More about the studio after the break. read more »
Visiondivision’s latest entry for the Taiwan Pop Music Center competition aims to “transcend its visitors into a total escapism of pop.” With different districts that use the effect of the main tower and specific angles of light, the whole building expands dramatically in appearance, from a rather low key building in the distance to a spectacular body of light once approached.
More about the project including images and a further project description after the break. read more »
Konyk Architecture has created a renewed identity for the International Flavors and Fragrances Headquarters in New York. To uplift the corporation’s appearance, Konyk proposed a new laboratory addition entitled “Floating Gardens.” These gardens are composed of a series of overlapping roofs with a variety of flowering plants. read more »
LAN Architecture’s Mirror Tower contains more than 30,000 identical facets that reflect 14 of the city’s monuments and are orientated to produce smooth transitions between these panoramic viewpoints. “The starting point of the project was to imagine Beirut in all its complexity. We have imagined the city as an ‘un-finished’ superposition of histories, contexts, architectures and situations; Our project was conceived as an interface, an algorithm that generates new connections and that creates new view axis, ways of observing the history, the present and the future,” explained LAN architects. The building’s complex envelope reflects changes in surroundings, the seasons and light. The reflective façade works by globally defining the orientation of each facet of the cylinder’s surface to create the desired reflection. With the help of specialists, LAN Architecture produced an automated 3D tool that allowed the team to visualize different instances of the facade by changing viewpoints at will, both the reflective area and the position of the reflected images on the tower.
More about the tower and more images after the break. read more »
© Coop Himmelb(l)au
Coop Himmelb(l)au’s House of Music in Aalborg, Denmark is a shared hybrid space that becomes a center of inspiration, “both of the shared-synergetic behavior and of the form and expression of the architecture..” Cultural and educational functions are interspersed between shared public and performance spaces, creating a network of interaction among the public, artists, students and educators. Situated in a dynamic urban grid, the House of Music becomes a full extension of the city, linking the character of the city with the new opportunities the Music Hall provides.
URBANUS was awarded with the 1st prize on the competition for the new integrated teaching building at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. Entitled “Windows on Community,” the building strives the link the two parts of the campus together, while also providing a visual connection with those who approach. Through the implementation of a Moebius Strip, the design mixes the inner circulation of the building with the exterior circulation of the streets. “This loop of circulation and urban internal street for us is not only a vertical linkage but more the heart of the college-a lively community space at the center of it all,” explained the architects.
More about the University after the break.
CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES; Ningbo, People’s Republic of China; Architects: MCA Mario Cucinella Architects srl; Associate Architects: Ningbo Architectural Design and Research Institute
Ninety seven projects and urban schemes have been recognized as part of this year’s International Architecture Awards program. For the 2009 Awards, the jury received a record number of entries, from firms in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas. The International Architecture Awards has “become a global event of an unprecedented scale—an important barometer for the future direction of new architectural design and thinking today—celebrating, recognizing, and highlighting the world’s foremost architectural solutions for the designs of new skyscrapers, corporate buildings, institutions, arts facilities, airports, private homes, industrial structures, and urban planning projects from London to Singapore.”
Out of the 97 projects awarded, the United States received the highest number of thirteen awards, followed by China with eight, Japan and Great Britain with each seven and Germany having six awards. The Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, Canada won four awards each. The winning projects all an innovative approach to design while providing buildings that attempt to respond to the problems of environment, social context, improving quality of life, and sustainability.
More images of the winning projects after the break. read more »
The Jerde Partnership’s Namba Parks, in Osaka, Japan, was just named one of the winners of the Urban Land Institute’s 2009 Awards of Excellence: Asia Pacific competition. When asked to create a gateway to redefine Osaka’s identity, the architects responded with this project that would become a natural intervention in Osaka’s dense and harsh urban condition. The rooftop park offers a sloping park plane that is “bifurcated by a sinuous, open-air ‘canyon’ path that reinforces the connection with nature while forming the primary circulation pattern.”
More about the park after the break. read more »
The city council of Weilburg, Germany, a dense medieval city, organized a design competition upon the demolition of an existing parking structure. ACME’s terrace design is a contemporary spin on the Baroque terraced-landscape building typology found nearby in the Weilburg Castle Gardens. The form becomes an integrated part of the landscape, allowing the project to blend into the surrounding context while inviting inhabitation and managing to create “specific urban character towards some if its city context”.
This project won the first prize from the voting public and the second prize from the professional jury.
More images and more about the project after the break.
A young firm from São Paulo, Brazil received an Honorable Mention for their Paineiras Hotel Complex design in Rio de Janeiro. The architects, Alexandre Hepner, Denis Cossia, João Paulo Payar, Rafael Brych, Ricardo Gonçalves, and environmental design consultant Ricardo Messano, designed a complex that would be functional and “allow perfect fruition of the beautiful panoramic view and the close contact with nature.” The strategy reflects “the intention of harmonizing the intervention with the existing context, thought without denying the contemporary character of such intervention nor hiding its presence among the surrounding forest and the old hotel building.”
More about the hotel after the break. read more »
The flexible mixed use design of KLab architecture’s Emerging Landscapes allows the project’s function to change as the seasons progress. The project is a small convention center for the winter months, and switches to become a summer camp for children during the second half of the year.
More about the project after the break.
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© Koichi Torimura
Designed for an 80 year old woman, EASTERN Design Office’s Slit House, a reinforced concrete residential project, “presents her both a life space with a soft light and an interesting experience of scale unlikely in a house.” Situated in an old Japanese city on a site 50 meters by 7.5 meters, the home has long slits that run along a 22 centimeter thick wall, making the interior space open, while providing enough privacy.
More about the home and more images after the break. read more »
Graft Lab’s latest addition to Dubai, entitled Vertical Village, is a cluster of mix-use buildings that emphasize reducing solar gain and maximizing solar production. The buildings are self-shaded on the northern side and on the east-west axis to reduce long-angle sun penetration. Solar collectors on the south end automatically pivot to maximize solar-energy aggregation. The multi-use building, which is expected to earn a LEED Gold Certificate, offers an appealing aesthetic which will easily make its mark 0n Dubai’s dynamic skyline. The “futuristic” angular forms create a shared central space with large pools, while the compositional assemblage of the individual buildings form a cohesive whole.
More images after the break. read more »
© ACME
London-based architecture firm ACME was awarded third prize in a recent competition to design a United Nations memorial. Initiated by the city of Chungju in South Korea, the selected memorial will rest in the city’s UN Peace Park. ACME’s proposal is comprised of a 1,500 seating assembly, two conference halls, a theater and exhibition spaces. The organization of the memorial is metaphorically modeled similarly to the United Nations, where many parts make up the whole.
More about the memorial after the break.
Greeen! Architects have been awarded an honorable mention for their Eco Towers, an office building in Hamburg, Germany for the Building and Environment Authorities. The office will accommodate 1400 people and will include several public areas as well as green gardens to “give room to nature and a create a green ambiance to all workers and visitors.”
More about the Eco Towers after the break. read more »
UNStudio
After winning a limited competition, UNStudio will move forward with their design of a 38,500 m2 stadium for the Dalian Shide FC, China’s most successful club in the Chinese Super League. The new stadium will be located in the Shide’s hometown of Dalian, on the southern tip of Liaodong peninsula. Working with the idea of layering and overlapping, an aesthetic deeply rooted in ancient Chinese cuju football, Ben van Berkel has created a stadium where the articulation of the structure and its openings and overlapping moments serve as “the starting point for visitor experience”.
More about the stadium after the break. read more »
Amanda Levete Architects shared with us their submission for the extension for the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.
The form intends to compliment the 19th century gallery, yet still maintain its individuality as a separate element. The extension, then, becomes not “one building connected to another but as something more abstract: a gesture that merges landscape with building.” The urban gallery’s setting within Whitworth Park allows the building to merge with the landscape to “create a dynamic and inhabitable” space. “As the park becomes the folds of fabric, these folds are sliced, peeled, and pulled to house, expose, and articulate the new program of activities of that embodies the new Whitworth Gallery,” explained the architects. The park seems to be gathered together and drawn into the building, creating an extension that fosters a relationship between interior and exterior, object and landscape.
More images after the break.
MAD Architects shared their recently completed design for the Taichung Convention Center with us. Conceived as “a continuous weave of architecture and landscape that blurs the boundary between architecture, public space and urban landscape, proposing a futuristic vision based on the East’s naturalistic philosophy,” the convention center is the first project in Taiwan commissioned by the Taichung city government. The project is meant to surpass the traditional metropolitan landmark to become something that pushes Taichung “into the arena of world class cultural cities…. through unique architectural concepts and proposing a new kind of architectural philosophy.”
More about the convention center and more images after the break. read more »
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