Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde of Studio Roosegaarde, in collaboration with Environmental Nano Studios and professor Bob Ursem, has created the world’s largest smog vacuum cleaner in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Dubbed Smog Free Tower, the 7-meter-tall vacuum acts as a filter that uses patented “ozone free ion technology” to clean 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour using only minimal wind and electrical energy.
Bakpak Architects and EovaStudio have won a competition to design a multifunctional building in Rzeszow, Poland. The design—called The Pottery Courtyard—is based upon the local tradition of ceramic artisans, thus restoring a sense of heritage to the region and city.
Blank Space has announced the winners of its “Dear Architecture” competition, which called designers and architects from around the world to address architecture, as a concept, in a letter of no more than 500 words and one image.
The contest was reviewed by a 17-person jury, including Fernando Romero, Diana Balmori, and ArchDaily’s co-founder David Basulto and executive editor Becky Quintal. The work of the three winners, who were awarded a total of $3,000, as well as 12 honorable mentions will be published in Blank Space’s third book, also called Dear Architecture.
Read on to see the three winners.
HMMD Competitions has announced the winners of its Triple Bridge Waterfront design competition, which called for designs to transform the Liepaja Canal coastline into a leisure avenue in Liepaja, Latvia.
Divided into four individually functioning zones, the site in question connects the famous Fontaine Palace, Great Amer symphony concert hall, Libava Hotel, the former railway bridge, and the newly proposed park in Zirgu Sala. In their submissions, designers thus had to include a “restaurant/café, nightclub/bar, exhibition space/conference hall, and an unprescribed tourist attraction.”
Entrants were additionally asked to consider the relationship between modern and historic developments and influences, as well as sustainable growth.
“Successful entries to the competition were refined, yet nimble to accommodate a vast site flanked by historic building and exposure to a canal.”
The winners of the competition are:
“Students who enter schools of architecture today are entering it at a very young age, perhaps when their total world experience and awareness is relatively narrow, and they’re making the decision to become a practicing architect, and putting aside those studies—general ed., liberal arts studies—that might actually, in the end, make them more contributing architects. […] Fewer and fewer people are having that basic liberal arts, general ed. knowledge in the profession. And it’s a serious problem.”
First-year architecture and urban planning students at the Estonian Academy of Arts have designed and created READER, a shelter based on the concept of removal from daily life, and focusing on oneself. Passers-by are invited to enter the shelter and “escape from the real world of problems into the fictional world of books.” And for those who don’t have a book on hand, the structure is meant to evoke the pages of a book through its ribbed wooden structure.
As a part of the flagship project for the EU-China Urbanization partnership, the Shenzhen Institute of Building Research Co., Ltd. (IBR) has announced its "Demand▪ Technology▪ Space Creative Competition" for the Future Low Carbon Building and Community Innovation New Experimental Center, also known as the Future Center.
Located in the underdeveloped Pingdi Subdistrict of Shenzhen, the project site is a part of the Shenzhen International Low Carbon City, a roughly 53 square kilometer area less than two hours away from Hong Kong with the goal of utilizing low-carbon and carbon-zero technologies in order to significantly boost sustainable development.
IBR is calling for submissions from individuals, teams, and even research institutes, design institutions, and any others, to participate in one, two, or all three of the competition’s categories.
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in partnership with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, has announced the winners of the US Tall Wood Building Prize Competition. The two winning projects—Framework, by Framework, LLC, and 475 West 18th, by 130-134 Holdings LLC—will each receive $1.5 million in funding for their development in Portland and New York, respectively.
Each of the projects took a unique perspective on wood building systems, fulfilling the competition’s call “to showcase the safe application, practicality, and sustainability of a minimum 80-foot structure that uses mass timber, composite wood technologies, and innovative building techniques.”
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has designed a speculative system of interventions for the Los Angeles River that “examines the relationship between urbanization and water use to develop new models of densification that recognize and tap into existing ecological and infrastructural patterns.” Called WATERshed, the design is part of the A+D Museum’s ongoing “Shelter: Rethinking How We Live in Los Angeles” exhibition that explores new typologies of housing in Los Angeles.
With their model for urban regeneration, LOHA hopes to address issues like the ongoing California drought, as well as the United Nation’s prediction that by 2030, nearly half of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress. Thus, the plan utilizes the Los Angeles River as a resource for water use and management in order to provide a path for sustainable growth in Los Angeles, and an example for other cities.
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced the shortlist for its Colour Prize, which is supported by three-time Headline Sponsor AkzoNobel. Last year, the Innovative Use of Color on Exteriors Prize was awarded to the Vienna University of Economics and Business’ Department of Law and Central Administration, for its use of Copper Orange in a 200-meter-long pairing of buildings.
This year’s Color Prize shortlist includes nine projects that span the wide spectrum of WAF award categories:
Utah-based community project Summit has announced Mountain Architecture Prototype (MAP), an SPM Design Competition, "to select the design of a cabin prototype in an effort to push forward the conversation around what it means to build responsibly at 8,400 feet in the Wasatch [Mountain] Range.”
The competition seeks submissions for a structure of up to 2,500 square feet, which will be located on a 12 degree sloped site at Summit Powder Mountain. Sustainable designs are highly encouraged, particularly with the use of natural materials.
Russian artist Nikolay Polissky has completed yet another of his impressive, handcrafted installations. Located in Zvizzhi Village, in the Ugra National Park in Russia, Polissky’s newest creation—called SELPO, which stands for The Rural Consumer Association, in Russian—wraps around an abandoned soviet building, which used to house the village shop.
The project utilizes off-cut materials from Polissky’s previous work, which has ranged “from temporary pieces of landscape proportions, collectively created […] to public art works in city parks or sculpture parks […] in Europe and in Russia, as well as museum installations.”
“What makes a livable city is the place where the resident—the occupant—feels in charge. So, for a child, a neighborhood that’s child-friendly. Or for citizens, a place that is physically beautiful, and handsome, and nourishing, and inspirational—a place where there is [a] substantial [amount] of public realm.”
HHF architects has created a temporary pavilion for the first biennial for contemporary music and architecture ZeitRäume in Basel, Switzerland.
At nearly six meters tall, the installation is constructed of simple parts: “a large drum made of bamboo poles, with a roof of scaffolding brackets.” While seemingly basic in construction, the pavilion additionally features movement in the roof portion, when blown by the wind.
On September 10, the Flight 93 National Memorial opened the doors to its new visitor center complex. Designed by Paul Murdoch Architects, the memorial honors the victims of United Airlines Flight 93, which was one of the four hijacked planes during the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In partnership with EarthCam, the National Park Service, the National Park Foundation, and Friends of Flight 93, a time-lapse video has been produced to document over 1,800 days of construction in under two minutes.
South Korean Haeahn Architecture, in collaboration with New-York-based H Architecture, has won a competition to design the Smart Work Center and Press Center at the historic site of the National Assembly Complex in Yeoido, which is the largest island in the Han River in Seoul.
The 23,750-square-meter building will be flexible in its uses and support "legislative functions of the National Assembly." Overall it will “house five distinctive programs: a press center with a briefing room alongside a small broadcast facility with a workplace for reporters; a highly-equipped smart work center which serves as a remote workplace for commuting officers and Ministers for the government; supplementary office spaces; underground parking; and welfare facilities which will include a restaurant, a banquet hall, and a retail component that will be accessible to both government workers and the general public.”
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The Australian Institute of Architects’ International Chapter has announced the winners of its 2015 International Architecture Awards, which honors projects by Australian architects abroad.
Out of 26 entries, the jury, chaired by Grant Marani, awarded five projects, and commended four more in the interior, public, residential, and small project architecture categories.
Awarded projects are now also in the running for the 2015 Jørn Utzon Award for International Architecture, to be announced at the National Architecture Awards in November.
Read on for the full list of awards and commendations, after the break.
Denmark-based architects CEBRA have won a competition to design a Smart School educational complex in Irkutsk, Russia. Their winning design, dubbed Smart School Meadow, fulfills the competition’s call for a new typology of school that combines architecture and landscaping into a learning environment and local community center.
The design integrates buildings and landscape together through a ring of individual structures connected by a large, ridged rooftop. With this roof, spaces between the buildings can be used as multifunctional, semi-covered learning spaces, activity zones, and flow areas, all of which diffuse into the central and outer landscaped areas.
