Landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander has won the 2015 Margolese National Design for Living Prize for her impact on Canadian cities. The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia, who awards the annual $50,000 prize, chose Oberlander for her "breathtaking, poetic, unforgettable, charged with meaning, and above all, Modernist" designs that have made "outstanding contributions to the development or improvement of living environments for Canadians of all economic classes."
Hong Kong- and Beijing-based Büro Ole Scheeren is expanding with the opening of two new offices in Berlin and Bangkok. As its founder, German architect Ole Scheeren says, the expansion will extend the practice's range of work with projects in Europe and North America. "Büro Ole Scheeren’s Berlin studio will act as a European base for work across the western hemisphere, while Büro Ole Scheeren in Bangkok, together with its subsidiary HLS, is charged with the further design development and construction supervision of the MahaNakhon tower, soon to be completed as Thailand’s tallest skyscraper," says the practice.
Thomas Heatherwick's controversial Garden Bridge in London has regained popular support amongst officials after a significant cut in funding. The Transport for London (TfL) – the authority in charge of the Garden Bridge program, which was approved last year – has reduce the amount of taxpayer money from £30 to £10 million, alleviating concerns over public cost. Now, all that's needed for the project to start construction is an approved amendment to the site's lease in Lambeth. It is expected to break ground next year, despite lingering concerns over maintenance costs and use restrictions.
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) has won an international competition to expand the Taoyuan International Airport - Taiwan's largest airport, formally known as Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. Their winning scheme for the airport's new Terminal 3 building won the jury over for its "outstanding and innovative planning and design and highly efficient circulation," according the airport's official press release.
"The most compelling feature of their design is an interior experience that fluctuates and moves up and down to reflect changes in the users," said the report.
As the Milan Expo 2015 comes to a close, the winners of its best pavilions are being revealed. Wolfgang Buttress' UK Pavilion has taken top honors being named the exhibition's "Best Pavilion for Architecture & Landscape." A crowd favorite, the pavilion caught the attention of the world with it's mesmerizing (and photogenic) "beehive" made of 169,300 individual aluminium components that allowed visitors to experience the life of a bee.
SOFTlab has been chosen as the second annual winner of the Flatiron Public Plaza design competition in New York. Their winning proposal, Nova will open to the public next month on Wednesday, November 18th. Its "crystalline" structure aims to intrigue the passer-by, welcoming them inside for framed views of the Flatiron Building and surrounding landmarks, including the Met Life Tower and Empire State Building.
"There is never a good time to leave an institution but I wanted to leave the Serpentine at a time of strength and success," said Peyton-Jones, as reported by the Architects' Journal.
Shade isn't hard to find in Jerusalem's Vallero Square, thanks to these giant urban flowers designed by HQ Architects that bloom in the presence of pedestrians. "Warde," as the installation is called, is a set of four inflatable flowers at the entrance of the city's market square and adjacent tram station that "open up" whenever pedestrians walk by or the tram is approaching.
The Chicago City Council has voted to approve zoning for George Lucas' controversial, MAD-designed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Planned for a lakefront site on Chicago's Museum Campus park, near the Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum, the "mountainous" design faced opposition from environmentalists who claim the building is a "confiscation of public land." Despite this, and according to reports on NBC News, the Star Wars director won the Council's approval by promising more parking and tailgating space to Chicago Bears fans.
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be an incredible addition to Chicago’s Museum Campus,” said Mayor Emanuel in an official statement. “The Lucas Museum will join the 56 other museums in Chicago to provide new cultural and educational benefits for generations to come. And the new parkland will add more open greenspace that will be enjoyed by residents across the city.”
The landscape architects of Gustafson Porter has shared with us their newest project in the center of Singapore's business district: Marina One. The massive mixed-use scheme is said to be "one of the first" to "integrate soft landscape into the fabric of the building," carving a public "Green Heart" in between the development's four towers - two residential and two commercial high-rises designed by Ingenhoven Architects and A61.
"The ‘Green Heart’ at the center of the Marina South towers evokes a rice paddy field, terraced into steep hillsides and made arable for the cultivation of rice, an essential crop of the East Asia," says Gustafson Porter. "Visitors and inhabitants ascend skywards from the Green Heart into Strata Terraces, a Cloud Garden, Green Screens and Rooftop Gardens that allude to the changing environments and habitats that one might experience whilst climbing a mountain."
Ten practices from around the world have been shortlisted in a competition that aims to transform Los Angeles' Pershing Square one of Southern California's top destinations. Located on a five-acre plot in the city's downtown, Pershing Square is Los Angeles' oldest park. Each semi-finalist has been challenged to develop proposals based off of experiences. A small selection of finalists will be selected in December to move on to the competition's final phase.
James Corner Field Operations has been chosen to design the National Building Museum's 2016 Summer Block Party installation. Just like its predecessors, including Snarkitecture's popular BEACH and BIG's massive Labyrinth, the installation will take over the Museum's Great Hall. With the design in its preliminary stages, little has been revealed. However, its mission is to "present innovative, interactive experiences that experiment with new ways of seeing and understanding the built environment."
“We are very excited about this opportunity to once again transform the Great Hall for summer spectacle and pleasure,” said James Corner, adding that “it will be a great challenge to surpass the genius of previous installations, but also an opportunity to explore something new and unexpected.”
Studio Dror has been commissioned by Brancott Estate in New Zealand to design a steel sculpture inspired by the winery's history. The result, "a flat matrix of CorTen steel" that "stretches open to become a nine-meter-tall volume of aggregated triangulations." Named "Under/standing," the installation was inspired by the winemaking process. It will be built in 2016.
"You cannot bullshit with concrete." - Kulapat Yantrasast
Kulapat Yantrasast is the latest to be featured on NOWNESS' In Residence series. Set within Yantrasast's home in Venice Beach, the Thai architect and founder of wHY shares his thoughts on how to create meaningful architecture, from the "process of making" to designing with a "sense of play" and how the building can form an "engaging" relationship with its user.
"Cities face a choice of building up or building out," says Renzo Piano, according to a recent article on the Daily Mail. Responding to backlash led by the Skyline Campaign, a campaign spearheaded by architect Barbara Weiss that "aims to stop the devastation of London by badly designed and poorly placed tall buildings," Piano is defending London's controversial skyscraper boom by saying it's giving the one thing the city needs most: "space on the ground."
SHoP Architects have unveiled plans to expand SITE Santa Fe, a contemporary arts venue in the city of Santa Fe. With a mission to serve as a "dynamic cultural hub" within the heart of Santa Fe Railyard (one of America's six Great Public Spaces according to the American Planning Association), the new design "draws inspiration from traditional Navajo patternmaking" and will be anchored in the "distinctive material qualities" of its historic site.
A consortium led by Sergey Skuratov Architects (SSA) was selected over Steven Holl Architects and Miralles Tagliabue EMBT to develop a concept for a multi use complex on Moscow's Sofiyskaya Embankment. Planned for a historic area on the Moscow-river bank, opposite Kremlin, the winning concept calls for three "longitudinal units with roofs of different types and heights" that produce a "picturesque outline" and offers a "gentle transition" from the "old buildings to new."
Read on for a glimpse of the winning and two runner-up proposals.
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