Tonight, Kengo Kuma will be lecturing at the Woodbury School of Architecture in San Diego at 6:30pm. Shortly following his Woodbury appearance, the Japanese architect will then make his way across the country to Columbia University’s GSAAP (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation)Wood Auditorium in New York City to present his lecture, Minimize: Small Architecture after 3/11, on Wednesday the 10th at 6:30pm. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
Cinematographer Tomas Koolhaas, son of notorious Rem Koolhaas, has shared with us his latest clips from the feature length documentary film, REM. Set to debut in 2013, the motion picture breaks away from conventional approach to filming architecture and exposes the raw, human experience of Dutch architect’s most famous projects. As Tomas describes, REM gives the audience “a rare insight into the reality of the hidden internal life of the buildings”.
ArchDaily had the chance to discuss the film with Tomas. Continue after the break for the complete interview and another small preview of the film!
Close to the Port of Rotterdam docks, MVRDV has completed the Spijkenisse Book Mountain, a public library in Spijkenisse’s market square. It features a 480 meter route, lined with bookshelves, that wraps around a stacked, pyramidal form as it is showcased through the library’s glass structure. The “mountain of books” illuminates from within and serves as both an advertisement and an invitation to reading. The adjacent Library Quarter consisting of 42 social housing units, parking and public space is also a project by MVRDV. Together, with the Book Mountain, it strives to form an “exemplary eco-neighborhood”.
Continue after the break for the architects’ description.
The New York-based branding and creative agency dbox has won an Emmy for its CGI and Branding work on the Discovery Channel’s six part mini-series Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero. From executive producer by Steven Spielberg, the series chronicles the activity of the Ground Zero site and the personal stories of the construction workers, engineers and architects who have made the rebuilding vision a reality.
The Ministry of Information and Culture of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, in collaboration and sponsorship with the Government of the United States of America and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, has awarded AV62 Arquitectos first prize for the National Museum of Afghanistan Competition. The Spanish team was selected over 72 other design proposals from 31 countries.
A second and third prize winner, along with three honorable mentions, were also recognized at the awards ceremony in Kabul. More details after the break.
ARCHITECT Magazine has released their fourth annual ranking of the most “powerful, philanthropic, talented and profitable” architecture firms in the United States. Don’t be fooled, this doesn’t necessarily mean the biggest firms, as the survey uses the broadest possible criteria to allow practices, both small and large, the opportunity to compete and be recognized.
Firms are ranked by profitability, sustainability and design quality. For the first time this year, the survey included pro bono work and water modeling in response to the challenging realities of the economy, natural disasters and drought.
Additionally, the survey revealed that 66% of the firms reported an increase in their net revenue from 2010 to 2011. No surprise there, when considering the slow, overall improvement of the ABI (check out the latest ABI report here).
Born in Finland, Eero Saarinen (1910 – 1961) is recognized today as one of America’s most influential architects of the 20th Century. The exhibition Eero Saarinen: A Reputation for Innovation, opening tomorrow at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, will highlight his short but brilliant career bookended with two iconic buildings: the unbuilt Smithsonian Gallery of Art which was to be Washington, DC’s first museum of modern art and Dulles International Airport which was designed as the nation’s first jet airport.
Opening tonight in Los Angeles at the WUHO Gallery: Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and Andreas E.G. Larsson.
For more than two years, Iker Gil and Andreas E.G. Larsson documented the lives of residents in the non-Euclidean geometries of architect Bertrand Goldberg’s iconic Marina City (1959-67) in Chicago. Celebrating Goldberg’s original vision for affordable apartments in a central, high-density location, this revealing series of photographs provides a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of the diverse array of people and living spaces within these popular cylindrical residential towers.
OMA has been selected from four competing international architectural practices to design the new École Centrale engineering school and its surrounding urban development in the research and innovation zone of Saclay, southwest of Paris.
Spearheaded by Clément Blanchet, director of OMA projects in France, the winning “lab city” concept contrasts the corridor linearity of the typical laboratory. The design proposes a low level, glass-roofed superblock that contains an interior open plan grid, where various activities can interact and be overlooked simultaneously. Continue after the break to learn more.
PAX.ARQ, in collaboration with Vazquez Junqueira Arquitetura, designed this concept for the CAD SP (Digital Arts Center of São Paulo) as a study for São Paulo’s secretary of culture. The transparent, prismatic cube arises from the concepts of inter-connectivity, transparency and respect to pre-existing architectural surroundings. Learn more after the break.
Foster + Partners is about to break the mold of New York’s static Park Avenue skyline, as they have been announced as winner of the highly publicized competition to replace the aging tower of 425 Park Avenue with a new world-class, sustainable office tower.
Lord Foster said: “I have a personal connection with New York, which has been a source of inspiration since my time at Yale, when the new towers on Park Avenue and its neighborhoods were a magnet for every young architect. Seeing first-hand the works of Mies van der Rohe, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen and Philip Johnson was tremendously exciting then – I am delighted to have this very special opportunity to design a contemporary tower to stand alongside them. Our aim is to create an exceptional building, both of its time and timeless, as well as being respectful of this context – a tower that is for the City and for the people that will work in it, setting a new standard for office design and providing an enduring landmark that befits its world-famous location.”
Continue after the break to learn more about Foster’s winning proposal and to review the existing condition of 425 Park Ave.
With a 3-2 vote, Seattle’s Downtown Design Review Board has voted in favor of Amazon’s plans for a three-block, high-rise complex in the Denny Triangle. The board voted after conducting five, comprehensive meetings over the last six months to review Amazon’s evolving NBBJ-designed proposal. Although this design review approval is simply a recommendation to the city’s Department of Planning and Development, it is still a milestone for the ambitious project.
The five acre site, roughly located between Sixth Avenue, Blanchard Street and Westlake Avenue, is currently occupied by expansive parking lots, the Sixth Avenue Inn and the King Cat Theater. Continue after the break to learn more.
In Western thinking the notion of void, or emptiness is a usually considered a negative state of affairs, absence or lack of something. As an existential term emptiness, coupled with our contemporary condition with unforeseen wealth, is associated with the sensation of uneasiness and alienation in the midst of our plenty. This spiritual emptiness may be filled on its surface with busyness and entertainment, cultural hipness and formal styles. This obsessive behavior or fear of emptiness, well exploited by commercial interests, is a trap that enforces us to produce, to consume and to fill the seemingly meaningless gaps, rather than allowing things to evolve in a natural and sustainable way.
David Mirvish, founder of Mirvish Productions, and Toronto-born starchitect Frank Gehry have officially unveiled a massive, mixed-use project that will transform Toronto’s downtown arts and entertainment district. The multi-phase project will significantly alter the city’s skyline with three, “sculptural” residential towers perched atop two, six story podiums.
Mirvish describes, “I am not building three towers, I am building three sculptures that people can live in.”
Continue reading to learn more.
Andreas G. Gjertsen and Yashar Hanstad, principals of the architecture cooperative TYIN tegnestue Architects in Trondheim, Norway, have been named as this year’s winners of The European Prize for Architecture. The young Norwegian architects were honored for their humanitarian work designing and building with community participation in poor and underdeveloped areas in Africa and Asia.
Annually presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, the prize is awarded to influential European architects “who have demonstrated a significant contribution to humanity and to the built environment through the art of architecture”.
Continue reading for more information and a sample of TYIN tegnestue Architects’ work.
The government of Turkey is considering the possibility of constructing a second canal in Istanbul that would result in carving out one billion cubic meters of soil from Turkey’s main land. In response, Turkish developer Serdar Inan has commissioned New York designer Dror Benshetrit to design a proposal that would reconstitute the soil into an innovative, net-positive community for 300,000 residents off the shore of Istanbul. Inan’s only wish is that the proposal blends “innovative design ideas, state of the art technology and cultural legacy with inspirations from the work of chief Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan”.
After six months of exploratory, interdisciplinary discourse with a team of experts – such as the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Buro Happold, Shoji Sadao from Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects – Dror has unveiled his radical vision this weekend at Istanbul Design Week. Check it out after the break.
Foster + Partners has broke ground on the Hongqiao Vantone SunnyWorld Centre, new dynamic mixed-use community centered on a four-hectare public park in the heart of Shanghai Hongqiao CBD. The large-scale urban plan that extends from Shanghai’s main station and brings together highly efficient, flexible office buildings, animated at ground level by shops, restaurants and a range of new civic spaces.
Continue after the break to learn more.
Today, the Southbank Centre announced its appointment of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS) as lead architect to refurbish and renew the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex. The UK-practice beat OMA, Heneghan Peng, Allies & Morrison, Eric Parry, van Heyningen & Haward and Grimshaw Architects to the job (see shortlist here). A formal appointment will be made after the statutory 10-day standstill period in accordance with EU regulations.
Rick Mather, Southbank Centre’s Masterplan Architect and a member of the selection panel, said: “We heard a huge amount of high quality and serious thinking demonstrating six quite different approaches to this part of the site. Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio’s proposals won because they best understood the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex and how it can be enjoyed and used more effectively. I look forward to seeing their designs develop over the coming months.”
Learn more after the break.
