Five practices have been selected to move on to the second stage of the Sydney Modern Project, a $450 million expansion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (NSW). Of the twelve firms invited to participate in the competition, the five that will advance are: Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA; Kengo Kuma & Associates; Kerry Hill Architects; RMA Architects (Rahul Mehrotra Architects); and Sean Godsell Architects.
During this year’s World Architecture Festival (WAF) held in Singapore, we had the chance to talk with keynote speaker Moshe Safdie. Standing inside the Marina Bay Sands, a massive mixed-use project by Safdie Architects and an example of the firm’s ongoing research on density, Safdie talked to us about Asia's urban environment and the challenges of working there. As the world's growth is happening in dense areas, this subject is utterly important, and Safdie has proven that these kind of mega-urbanism projects can be functionally integrated into the city. “Working in Asia at the intensity and scale that we do has been a paradigm shift for our practice because much of our work in the United States and Israel and elsewhere in recent years has been focused on institutions - on libraries, museums, airports - here we are involved with urban place, mixed-use mostly, extremely dense, working for the private sector, and having to reconcile the market forces with the architectural environmental demands, which is no mean task,” he said.
_Haus-Rucker-Co__Gerald_Zugmann.jpg?1419952561)
When fears regarding environmental pollution and potential catastrophe were at a high in the 1970s, Haus-Rucker-Co set out to develop a “new concept of architecture.” Based in Vienna, the group was known for their interactive exhibitions and their development of utopian architectural ideas, which showed how people could affect their own environment. Now, their work between 1967 and 1977 is the theme of “Architectural Utopia Reloaded,” the latest exhibition on display at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin.
The Portland Building will be saved from the wrecking ball and undergo renovation, Michael Graves, the architect behind the postmodern masterpiece, told A/N blog. “It’s going to be saved,” Graves said to AN. “They told me… They said they are saving the building and not only that but we want you to sit on a committee for the redesign. I would imagine in the next year we’ll do something.”
Made from 5,000 pieces of firewood, Hello Wood’s “Charity Tree” installation stretches 11 meters high, 4.5 meters wide and weighs 150 quintals (15,000 kilograms). Hello Wood worked with Design Terminal and the Hungarian Interchurch Aid to build the tree in one of Budapest’s central squares, and all of the firewood used in the temporary installation will be given to families in need in January.
In the ongoing battle to hold the Guinness World Record for the Most Lights on a Residential Property (aka the house-with-the-most-Christmas lights), the Gay family in LaGrangeville, New York has once again reclaimed their title. This year the family used 601,736 lights, spanning two acres and set to more than 200 songs. RITZ Crackers, part of Mondelēz International, helped the family top the record, providing 200,000 lights. The Gay family and the Richards family in Canberra, Australia, have been fighting for the title over the past three years. But not to be outdone, the Richards family took home the Guinness World Record for the Largest Image Made of LED lights for their Christmas light installation this year. The installation in Canberra used 1,194,380 lights to make a 3D image of three Christmas gifts spanning 3,865 square meters and raised money for the charity SIDS and Kids ACT. See more pictures and read more about the ongoing lights competition at City Lab and Guinness World Records.
In 2011, China had more people living in urban areas than rural areas for the first time in its history, and recent government statistics show that around 300 villages disappear per day in China. Yet in the face of rapid urbanization, a “back to land movement” is now also emerging. A new mini-documentary by Sun Yunfan and Leah Thompson, Down to the Countryside, looks at urban residents who, fed up with city life, are looking to revitalize the countryside, while preserving local tradition. The documentary follows Ou Ning, an artist and curator, who moved from Beijing to the village of Bishan, in Anhui province, in 2013. Ning considers himself part of China’s “new rural reconstruction movement,” and the documentary shows his quest to develop the rural economy and bring arts and culture to the countryside.
Learn more about the film on China File and check out an interview with the directors on CityLab.
Grimshaw Architects have received full planning approval for City Quays 2, the second building planned as part of their City Quays masterplan for Belfast Harbour’s Clarendon Dock. To be built on a former ferry terminal site, City Quays 2 will stretch nine stories high and provide over 95,000 square feet of flexible work space.
On the heels of its summer blockbuster indoor maze, which attracted more than 50,000 visitors, the international design firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) returns to the National Building Museum this January with a behind-the-scenes look at its creative process. The exhibition, HOT TO COLD: an odyssey of architectural adaptation, takes visitors from the hottest to the coldest parts of our planet and explores how BIG´s design solutions are shaped by their cultural and climatic contexts. More than 60 three-dimensional models will be suspended at the second-floor balconies of the Museum’s historic Great Hall in an unprecedented use of this public space.
Italian architect, philosopher, architectural theorist, visionary and design practitioner, Alessandro Mendini, has been selected to receive the 2014 European Prize for Architecture. Awarded annually by the European Centre for Architecture, Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, the European Prize for Architecture aims to recognize “influential architects that have changed and challenged the direction of contemporary architecture today and who have blazoned a more humane and intellectual approach to architecture.”
“Not since Frank Lloyd Wright has the world seen a more theory-driven and profound-thinking architect than Mendini,” said Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, the Museum President of the Chicago Athenaeum, in a press release.
The Architectural Review has selected the winners of the 2014 AR Emerging Architecture Awards. Now in their 16th year, they are one of the most prestigious awards for young architects and emerging practices. Past winners have included Sou Fujimoto, Thomas Heatherwick, Sean Godsell, Jurgen Mayer H. and Li Xiaodong.
Given to completed projects, entries can include buildings, interiors, landscaping, refurbishment, urban projects, temporary installations, furniture and product designs. This year the jury was comprised of Catherine Slessor, Hilde Daem, Li Xiaodong, Steven Holl and Will Alsop.
Read on after the break for this year’s Emerging Architecture Award winners.
The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have selected 420 projects to compete for the 2015 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. The nominations span 36 countries, with the most nominated projects coming from Spain. Twenty-seven percent of the shortlisted projects are housing related, while 24% are cultural facilities, 11% are education-related and the remaining 33% are sport, commercial, governmental, transport and urban projects.
Established in 1987 by the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe – Barcelona, the 60.000€ Mies Van der Rohe award is one of the most prestigious and important awards for European architecture. The prize is awarded biennially to works that have been completed in the past two years. Previous winners have included the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre in Reykjavik, designed by the Danish architectural firm Henning Larsen in collaboration with the Islandic practice Batteríið and the artist Olafur Elíasson, and the Neues Museum in Berlin, designed by David Chipperfield Architects and Julian Harrap.
An Emerging Architect prize for professionals beginning their career as well as the Young Talent Architecture Prize (YTAP) for the best European master’s projects from 2014 will also be awarded. In addition, this year for the first time the jury will include a client who has supported high quality architecture and commissioned projects to European architects. The jury will select the shortlisted projects by the end of January 2015.
Read on after the break for the members of the jury, the full list of all 420 nominated projects and ArchDaily's exclusive Mies van der Rohe Award infographic.
Inspired by the recent popularity of amateur photography in China, People’s Architecture Office (PAO) + People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO) repurposed reflective photography panels to create multipurpose Pop-Up Habitats. Incredibly lightweight and comprised of only flexible steel rings and a soft fabric, the Pop-Up Habitats can fold quickly and form self-supporting structures when expanded.
The Pop-Up Habitat has been exhibited in numerous architecture and design festivals around the world -- including Beijing Design Week and the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen -- and in numerous forms. The Pop-Up Habitats have been turned into an auditorium, a gallery and a canopy, in addition to “an unintended but apt backdrop for selfies" at one exhibition. A consumer version has also been developed as a “weatherproof modular tent.”
Check out some of the exhibitions the Pop-Up Habitats have been featured in after the break.
Vacation just got a little bit sweeter with these Gingerbread BNBs. Looking for a luxurious getaway? The Gingerbread Modern Home is a gorgeous estate, made from gluten-free gingerbread and featuring a frosted stucco exterior and mid-century taffy furniture (but please don’t eat the artwork). The house is part of a fundraiser for New-York charity Robin Hood to provide shelter to homeless families in New York during the holiday season.
Fifteen images ranging from a close-up of Herzog & de Meuron’s Beijing National Stadium to a portrait of a graveyard-turned home in the Philippines, have been selected as the finalists of the Chartered Institute of Building’s (CIOB) 2014 Art of Building Photographer of the Year competition. The public will now decide who will take home the title and a £3,000 cash prize.
“There is a cornucopia of styles and stories in this year’s final,” said Saul Townsend, CIOB spokesman in a press release. “In a world full of high definition colour technology, black and white photography still inspires a host of photographers. Voters are in for a visual treat and will hopefully be inspired to look at the built environment in a new way and to take part themselves next year.”
The fifteen finalists were selected by panel of judges that included photography critic and editor Sue Steward, award-winning photographer Matt Wain and the editor of Construction Manager magazine, Elaine Knutt.
Take a look at the 15 finalists after the break and don’t forget to vote for your favorite before January 11, 2015 on CIOB's Art of Building website. The winner will be announced February 5.
London-based Avanti Architects, along with Glasgow-based ERZ Landscape Architects and NORD Architects, have released the first image of their design to revitalize one of Scotland’s modern masterpieces: St Peter’s seminary. Designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia in 1966, and built on the former Kilmahew estate, the Category-A listed Brutalist structure was voted as the best modern building in Scotland by readers of Prospect Magazine in 2005. However, the building has been abandoned for the past 25 years, leaving it dilapidated and facing numerous problems.
Public art charity NVA is leading a £7.3 million initiative to rehabilitate the building and its surrounding landscape to create an art, heritage and educational site. The designs include a performing arts venue with a 600-person capacity, informal indoor and outdoor teaching spaces across the 144 acre site and over 4 kilometres of woodland paths. In addition, the site will contain a heritage exhibition and a locally-led productive garden.
On her recent trip to Chile for the Finland-Chile Architecture Marathon lecture series we had the chance to chat with Juulie Kauste, the director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA) in Helsinki. “[MFA] has always had the dual mission of focusing on collecting the heritage of architecture in Finland as well as focusing on contemporary architecture both in Finland and internationally,” Kauste explained.
One of the oldest architecture-focused museums in the world, MFA is unusual in that not only do they archive the work of every Finnish architect, but they also play an active role in promoting Finnish architecture and participating in the global architectural community. At both the Shenzhen Biennale and the 2014 Venice Biennale, MFA hosted “Re-Creation,” an installation that used both traditional Finnish and Chinese construction techniques to explore the concepts of “copying” and “reinterpretation.”
“The key part of the role of the museum is to provide a platform for a discussion and debate around architecture and around the ways in which architecture matters to society,” Kauste said. “It’s very much about this idea of sharing information about architecture, making information about architecture available, but also understandable.”
See what else Kauste has to say about what the role of architecture museums should be, how the digital age is affecting museums and the benefits of cross-cultural collaboration in the full video interview above and check out some of our past coverage on MFA below.
The Rockefeller Foundation has announced the next group of cities that will be part of the 100 Resilient Cities Challenge, which aims to help prepare cities from around the world for the social, economic and physical challenges of the 21st century. After reviewing close to 350 applications from 90 countries across six continents, the Rockefeller Foundation selected 35 cities to join the 32 cities that were announced last year. The cities selected are addressing numerous challenges, ranging from flooding and extreme weather events to economic stress and strains on infrastructure and health systems, according to a press release.
“When you think about what makes a resilient city, you have to think in holistic terms. The reality is that resilience building is a multi-sector, multi-level kind of enterprise,” President of 100 Resilient Cities, Michael Berkowitz, told us earlier this year at the start of the inaugural Chief Resilience Officer summit in New Orleans.
Each city selected receives funding to hire a Chief Resilience Officer and assistance in developing and implementing a resilience strategy. Read on after the break to see which 35 cities were selected.
