UNStudio has designed the final portion of a 225,000 square meter (2,420,000 square foot) urban plan for the district of Oosterdokseiland in the city center of Amsterdam. Located at the tip of the island, the last sub-plan will consist of a lively social hub and 72,500 square meters (780,000 square feet) of public facilities, apartments and office space for Amsterdam-based company Booking.com.

“The design for this fully integrated new urban campus is envisioned as a highly multifunctional living and working environment, enriched with special amenity and public programmes,” said UNStudio Founder Ben van Berkel. “The urban gesture of the building weaves together with the existing streets, while the east side of the building will become a recognisable emblem for Oosterdok.”

The Arkansas Arts Center has selected five top architecture firms to compete for the design of a $55 million to $65 million museum expansion project in Little Rock, Arkansas. The project will include a renovation to existing theater and studio spaces, as well as new education facilities for families and gallery space to house the museum’s expanding art collection.

An advisory panel and selection committee named the finalists following a RFQ process featuring 23 local and international firms.

The 5 firms selected as finalists are:

Videos

The 2016 MPavilion, designed by Indian architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, has opened in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. Over the next four months, the bamboo structure will play host to a free public program of over 400 talks, workshops, performances and installations.

Bijoy Jain’s design joins the growing international trend of “handmade architecture” as it becomes the largest bamboo structure in Australia, utilizing 7 kilometers of Indian bamboo, 50,000 kilograms of Australian bluestone, 5,000 wooden pins and 26 kilometers of rope to cover a 16.8 square meter area. The slatted roof panels are constructed from sticks of the Karvi plant and were woven together by craftspeople in India over a four month period.

+ 1

Installation art collective Limelight has transformed the Parliament Building of Romania into a eye-popping, psychedelic light show for the iMapp Bucharest International Video Mapping Competition. Titled “Interconnection,” the video utilized projection mapping (also known as spatial augmented reality) techniques to render the world’s third largest building in a blaze of shape-shifting, technicolor graphics and animations. Taking home top honors at the event, the projection required the use of 104 video projectors to cast the 23,000 square meter surface of the Parliament’s front facade in over 1 million ANSI lumens.

According to its creators, “the projection mapping shows the interconnectedness of all things from micro to macro as well as the outer and the inner universe. Conjuring emotions and feelings, the amazing display of color, light and sound aims to reopen the dialogue between the internal and the external, through a cinematic journey from the state of separation to the state of eternal openness.”

Check out animation stills and the full video performance after the break.

+ 10

Videos

The winners of the 2016 Leading Culture Destinations Awards have been announced. Presented this past weekend at a ceremony in London, the LCD Awards are given annually to recognize the success of “museums, art organizations, and cultural destinations from around the world [that] are investing in iconic architecture, cross-sector collaborations, [and] audacious programming […] to diversify the experiences offered to visitors and establish their global reputations.”

This year, awards were presented in four categories: Leading Cultural Destination of the Year; Best New Museum of the Year (for museums opened in the past 15 months); Best Soft Power Destination of the Year (a new award for 2016, given to destination who exhibit 'excellence, relevance, transparency, accountability and sustainability'); and the Traveller’s Award for Best Place to Visit.

The overall winner for 2016 was Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Continue reading to see the full list of winners.

I want you to let me do all the ideas I still have in my head.

In the latest installment of the In Residence series, NOWNESS visits the last house designed by legendary Mexican architect Luis Barragán, Casa Gilardi. By the time current homeowner Martin Luque and advertising agency partner Pancho Gilardi approached Barragán to ask for a house design in 1975, the architect had already formally retired. He originally declined to take on the project – until he made a visit the site, where he was captivated by a remarkably beautiful jacaranda tree. Changing his mind, Barragán remarked, “Don’t chop down this tree, because the house will be built around it.”

Check out the video to learn the rest of the story behind the masterwork and to see the vibrant house as it stands today.

KCAP Architects & Planners in cooperation with Kunst + Herbert have won the international Fischbeker Reethan competition to master plan the Harburg district of Hamburg, Germany. The 70 hectare site is being developed by the IBA Hamburg (International Building Exhibition) as a new residential and business district with the aim of creating a “Garden City of the 21st Century.” The design will accommodate a total of 2,200 apartments, 100,000 square meters (1,080,000 square feet) of small industry space and nearly 200,000 square meters (2,150,000 square feet) of diverse public landscapes.

+ 1

The new Hunters Point Community Library, designed by Steven Holl Architects, has topped out. Located along the East River in Long Island City, New York, the 22,000 square foot library will add a new community-devoted space to the waterfront, while serving as a new icon that can be seen from across the river in Manhattan.

+ 1

The government of Lithuania announced today the 3 winning architecture firms of a competition to design a new National Science and Innovation Center, to be known colloquially as “Science Island,” in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. The competition, organized by Malcolm Reading Consultants, saw entries from 144 teams, making it the largest design content ever held in Lithuania.

Nestled in the heart of the UNESCO designated and celebrated university city, Kaunas, the science center will be located on a 13,000 square meter (140,000 square foot) site on Nemunas Island in the Neman River, adjacent to the Žalgiris Arena and within short walking distance to Kaunas’ historic Centras district. The new €25M complex will “celebrate recent achievements in science and global technologies with the aim of inspiring visitors to expand their knowledge and support innovation,” and will focus on research on the environment and ecosystems.

Continue reading to see the winners.

The iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) has announced the winners of the 2016 edition of the annual competition. Founded in 2007, the same year as the release of the first iPhone, IPPAWARDS is the first and longest running iPhone photography competition. Now in its 9th year, the awards continue to select the best images taken by iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from a variety of categories including Landscape, Animals, People, Still Life and Architecture.

This year’s architecture category was won by Jian Wang of Beijing China for his shot “China Red,” taken at the Beijing Olympic Park. Second and third prizes were awarded to Patryk Kuleta for two shots from his series, “Modern Cathedrals.” Kuleta was also selected as the IPPAWARDS Photographer of the Year for the series, which featured layered-exposure captures of historic cathedrals in Warsaw and Strasbourg.

Continue after the break to see the three winners and honorable mentions.

+ 28

André Chiote’s newest series of illustrations focuses on the seminal architectural works of Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the firm’s founding this year. Established in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1986 by architects Morten Schmidt, Bjarne Hammer and John F. Lassen, the firm has since grown into an award-winning, international practice (with offices in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Shanghai and London) whose design philosophy begins with the Nordic architectural traditions of democracy, welfare, aesthetics, light, sustainability and social responsibility.

To commemorate the important date, SHL selected a set of 6 emblematic buildings to be illustrated through Chiote’s personal vision. Check out the collection and links to the projects after the break.

+ 2

Danish firm COBE has been announced as the winner of a competition for the revitalization of Deutzer Hafen, the harbor district of Cologne, Germany. Unanimously selected over proposals from Lorenzen, Diener & Diener Architekten, Scheuvens + Wachten, and Trint + Kreuder dna, the winning design will transform the old industrial harbor into a vibrant, sustainable neighborhood through the addition of a new city landmark: a new public pool and huge waterfall at the end of the harbor.

The pool will be sustained through environmentally-friendly methods, utilizing collected rainwater and excess heat expelled from buildings to provide the public with an exciting new attraction.

The Serpentine Galleries has announced a new process for the selection of architects for its successful Summer Serpentine Pavilion program.

For the event’s first 16 years, the annual commissions were selected by program founder and former Serpentine Galleries director Julia Peyton-Jones, who left her position earlier this year to pursue independent contemporary art and architecture projects. Replacing her are the Serpentine Galleries new CEO Yana Peel and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, who will lead an advisory board featuring architects Richard Rogers and David Adjaye.

In this video, members of the engineering team behind the the world’s largest LED screen explain the process behind its installation on the facade of the Burj Khalifa last year. The massive screen required 72 kilometers of cabling and 10,000 connectors to cover a total area of 33,000 square meters.

“We faced sandstorms, we faced rain, we faced heavy wind, so quite often we had to wait until we had a good slot in terms of wind to go out and do the installation,” says Senior Project Manager Kris Vloemans.

The screen has been utilized for a range of different shows since it was first used to ring in the New Year in 2015. Earlier this year, the Burj Khalifa sent out an open call to artists to submit their own dynamic designs to be displayed on the building facade.

Also check out some videos of the screen in action, below.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced a team led by Brock Carmichael Architects as the winners of the Tristan da Cunha Design Ideas Competition, a call for proposals on how to create “a more self-sustainable future” for the island of Tristan da Cunha, the world’s most remote inhabited island.

The competition, run by RIBA on behalf of the Government of Tristan da Cunha, encouraged architects to submit “innovative and cost-effective proposals for the re-design and consolidation of Tristan’s government (community infrastructure) buildings” in the community of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the only permanent settlement on the island.

Update: We've added a gallery of renderings to the post!

Penn Station is finally getting its much-needed makeover. The transportation hub, the busiest train station in the country, has been the target of much ire and disdain ever since its Beaux-Arts predecessor, designed by McKim, Mead & White, was demolished in 1963, forcing the station to retreat into the dark, cramped passageways below Madison Square Garden. The ordeal lead critic and Yale University Professor Vincent Scully to memorably quip: “One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.”

But today, after years of scrapped schemes, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a fast-track plan that will give New York’s scuttling visitors and commuters some breathing room as early as 2020. Led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the design calls for a new 255,000 square foot train hall and retail space in the James A. Farley Building, also known as the General Post Office, across 8th Avenue from Madison Square Garden and the current Penn Station entrance.

+ 10

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Competitions has announced a shortlist of 5 teams in the competition for the Upper Orwell Crossings Project in Ipswich, England. The project brief consists of 3 new bridges spanning the Upper Orwell River that will enable the redevelopment and regeneration of several districts of Ipswich, as well as relieve congestion and improve connectivity for multiple forms of transportation.

“What we can see of this building, the towering glass, the artistry of the metalwork, is surely a sight to behold.”

These were the words spoken by President Barack Obama as he inaugurated the most recent addition to the National Mall in Washington D.C., the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, this past weekend. The opening ceremonies featured musical performances and celebrations, as well as a look at the museum’s place in American history.

“This national museum helps to tell a richer and fuller story of who we are,” said Obama. “It helps us better understand the lives, yes, of the president but also the slave, the industrialist but also the porter, the keeper of the status quo but also the activist seeking to overthrow that status quo.”