Rotterdam-based practice BUBE has shared with us their third-place winning proposal in the Classic Siftung Weimar international competition for the New Bauhaus Museum. Three translucent cubes are clustered together in an effort to maximize open space and reorganize the site with a focus of intensifying the interactions between park and museum visitors. BUBE’s proposal is one of the final four designs still competing. The jury is expected to announce the winning design this summer. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Today we celebrate the 126th birthday anniversary of Mies van der Rohe! The German-born American architect and educator convinced us all with his glass-and-steel buildings that “less is more“. Mies helped defined modern architecture and is known as one of the 20th century’s greatest architects.
After many years spent fighting to preserve the famous Robin Hood Gardens social housing complex in East London, the architecture community mourns another loss. Tower Hamlets Council and the London Thames Gateway Development Corporations have approved the demolition of the 1960s Brutalist complex in an effort to make way for a new £500 million sustainable development comprised of energy efficient, mixed-tenure homes and an enlarged central park. The historic building was built by modernist architects Alison and Peter Smithson and remains an important piece to Great Britain’s architectural history. Continue reading for more.
In a single photograph, French photographer Franck Bohbotexposes the essence of each unique architectural masterpiece in a series entitled Respect the Architect that captures a telling moment within a variety of locations throughout Europe. Stylistically, the series embodies a homogeneous composition throughout while simultaneously revealing the unique story of each space. Bohbot embraces quasiperfect symmetry, creating a surreal quality and invoking a sense of curiosity with each image.
Inspired by the local materials and culture of Mahabalipuram, an Indian fishing village famous for sculpture, American Artist Janet Echelman stumbled upon a material that would change her art, and life, forever. One evening, while observing the fishermen’s nightly routine of bundling their nets, Echelman imagined a new type of sculpture – a volumetric form that could be the scale of a large building but remain light enough to ripple in the wind, constantly reshaping the net and creating ever-changing patterns.
With a sophisticated mixture of ancient craft and modern technology, Echelman collaborates with a range of professionals including aeronautical and mechanical engineers, architects, lighting designers, landscape architects, and fabricators to transform urban environments world-wide with her net sculptures.
Continue after the break to view some of Echelman’s most famous projects.
Whether you would like to admit it or not, most of us share a similar fetish for Legos, Tinkertoys and any other awesome “childrens” toy that most likely helped us create our first “masterpiece”. Well, you will pleased to know that F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab have created the Free Universal Construction Kit: a matrix of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten popular children’s construction toys. By allowing any piece to join to any other, the Kit encourages totally new forms of connections between otherwise closed systems – enabling radically hybrid constructive play, the creation of previously impossible designs, and ultimately, more creative opportunities. As with other grassroots interoperability remedies, the Free Universal Construction Kit implements proprietary protocols in order to provide a public service unmet—or unmeetable—by corporate interests.
The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego®, Duplo®, Fischertechnik®, Gears! Gears! Gears!®, K’Nex®, Krinkles®, Bristle Blocks®, Lincoln Logs®, Tinkertoys®, Zome®, ZomeTool® and Zoob®. Adapters can be downloaded from Thingiverse.com and other sharing sites as a set of 3D models in .STL format, suitable for reproduction by personal manufacturing devices like the Makerbot (an inexpensive, open-source 3D printer).
Yesterday, we announced the WTTW premier of the new 30-minute documentary, Architect Michael Graves: A Grand Tour. If you missed it, there is no need to worry. You can watch the documentary right here on ArchDaily! Host Geoffrey Baer takes you on a fascinating tour through Graves’ life and legacy, with in-depth tours inside some his famous works and commentary from many of his good friends, such as Peter Eisenman and Denise Scott Brown. Learn about the influences that shaped each chapter of Graves’ life, from the boy who aspired to be an artist, to modernism and The New York Five, then onto post modernism, product design and his most recent focus on health care.
The International jury, chaired by Prof. Jörg Friedrich (Hamburg), has awarded two second-place and two third-place prizes in the worldwide, open architectural design competition for the New Bauhaus Museum in Weimar. The purpose of the competition is to find an architecturally innovative, sustainable, energy-efficient and museologically sound solution for a new museum that takes full advantage of the urban-planning potential of the Weimarhallenpark. The announcement of the winners officially concludes the architectural design competition, in which 536 architectural offices around the world participated.
Designer: United Visual Artists Score: Scanner Client: The Creators Project Location: New York City (2011) and San Francisco (2012) Additional Audio Programming: Henrik Ekeus and Dave Meckin Producer: Keri Elmsly Photographer: James Medcraft
Today the world celebrates its most precious resource: water. Countries world-wide suffer from water shortages so extreme that they cannot produce enough food to support their basic needs. In an effort to protect the World’s largest source of surface fresh water, the City Design Practice of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is gaining international support in their pro bono pursuit to create a 100-year vision that will environmentally protect and economically revitalize the entire U.S. and Canada Great Lakes region, a vision known as The Great Lakes Century.
“The availability and quality of fresh water to sustain a radically urbanizing world is unquestionably a core issue of our time and requires holistic environmental thinking at an unprecedented scale,” said Philip Enquist, SOM partner in charge of urban design worldwide.
Continue reading for more information on this important cause.
Sana’a, Yemen is at risk of being the first capital city in the World to run out of renewable, reliable and clean water supplies. With seasonal rain, expensive bottled water and polluted reservoirs, the residents of Sana’a are constantly faced with waterborne diseases and severe drought hazards.
In celebration of World Water Day, we would like to catch you up with the progress Sabrina Faber who was selected as winner of the 2010/2011 Philips Livable Cities Award – a global initiative designed to generate innovative, meaningful and achievable ideas to improve the health and well-being of city-dwellers across the world. Although the project went on hold due to political unrest, The Rainwater Aggregations (RAINS) Project was still able to complete three sites just in time for World Water Day. Continue reading for more.
Premiering tomorrow on WTTW – one of Chicago’s PBS television stations – will be the new 30-minute documentary Architect Michael Graves: A Grand Tour. Popular Chicago TV tour host Geoffrey Baer profiles the life and work of the internationally acclaimed architect and winner of the 2012 Driehaus Prize for Classical and Traditional Architecture. The documentary will air Thursday, March 22 at 8PM.
Continue reading for more information on the documentary and view updated images of the Wounded Warrior Project.
Two days before lecturing at Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Wang Shu was announced as the recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Prize. In this interview, Wang Shu discusses his work with architectural historian Robert McCarter, the Sam Fox School’s Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture, and Seng Kuan, assistant professor of architecture. The interview takes place in the University’s Mildred Land Kemper Art Museum, designed by Pritzker laureate and former WUSTL professor, Fumihiko Maki.
In a letter presented at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Frank Gehry expressed his willingness to change the design of the controversial Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in order to resolve objections from the 34th president’s family.
“My detractors say that I have missed the point, and that I am trying to diminish the stature of this great man,” Gehry wrote. “I assure you that my only intent is to celebrate and honor this world hero and visionary leader.”
Continue reading for more information on the hearing.
With the realization that disasters are an unavoidable reality, Architecture for Humanity and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) have launched ArchitectsRebuild.org in an effort to eliminate “that first awkward and uncoordinated period when people, eager to put their talents into response and recovery, can’t find the means.”
As we announced last month, the two organizations formed a strategic partnership to better coordinate advocacy, education and training that will allow architects to become more involved in helping communities prepare, respond and rebuild after a disaster, known as the Disaster Resilience and Recovery Program. As promised, they have now completed the first task on their agenda, establishing a Disaster Plan Grant Program. Continue reading to learn more.
Winners of the National Exhibition of Migrating Landscapes have been announced! This nation-wide, open ideas competition is the main process for creating Canada’s official entry to the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture, entitled Migrating Landscapes. Themed around migration and cultural identity, entrants comprised of young Canadian architects and designers, ages 45 and under, where invited to reflect on their migration experiences and cultural memories, and design dwellings onto a new landscape that would be showcased through a series of seven regional exhibitions across the country. Together with the Winnipeg-based Migrating Landscapes Organizer (MLO), the jury has selected 18 winners out of 26 finalists to represent ‘Team Canada”. Continue after the break to review the winning competitors.
We announced last month that the LEGO® Architecture series will now include Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, the 12th building in this popular series. Thanks to LEGO® Architecture, four of our readers will win a LEGO® Architecture Sydney Opera House.
Due to the popularity of last weekends video exploring Little Big Berlin, we present to you this stop-motion video capturing a Spring day in the city of Kiev. Created by Tel Aviv-based artists Efim Graboy & Daria Turetski, MiniLook Kiev highlights the movement of the colorful city. Over a course of five days and two nights, the artist captured 25,000 images only to select 4,500 frames for the final edit.
