In a statement released last night, Glenn Lowry, the director of the MoMA, confirmed that the American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects, will be demolished in order to make way for a re-design and expansion spearheaded by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R).
More information - and the critics' reactions - after the break.
In an odd twist of fate, the architects of the soon-to-be-demolished American Folk Art Museum, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and the architects spearheading the MoMA redesign (that will require its demolition), Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will soon compete to design the Vancouver Art Gallery. Joining them on the impressive shortlist are Herzog & de Meuron, KPMB Architects, and SANAA. More after the break.
Architectural photographer Yohan Zerdoun has sent us this lovely video that explores the Peres Center for Peace, by architects Massimiliano & Doriana Fuksas, in Tel Aviv. With a keen eye for detail and an understanding of the building's human scale, Zerdoun sets up each shot so that the architecture - and its gorgeous context - can be truly appreciated. Enjoy!
Designers & Books editors Stephanie Salomon and Steve Kroeter sat down with Denise Scott Brown for a conversation centered around Learning from Las Vegas, the seminal work penned by Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour in 1972. The must-read interview reveals some fantastic insight into Scott Brown's personal and professional life - her unending love of neon (one which led her to Las Vegas), her distaste for the "tyranny of white paper" (which gravely afflicted the design of the first edition of Learning from Las Vegas),as well as her - rather surprising - position on awarding group creativity. Read the full interview here and check out some select quotes from the interview, after the break.
Think Space has now launched the second competition in its MONEY cycle: Culture & Society, to be jurored by Pedro Gadanho, the Curator of Contemporary Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Details about the competition - and how to participate - after the break.
The following 20 articles are what we at ArchDaily consider the Best of 2013. They may not have received the most traffic, but they posed fascinating theories about the state of architecture and urbanism today, they gave us insight into the creative processes of innovative architects (from Bjarke Ingels to Peter Zumthor) and, most of all, they provoked us to question: What does architecture mean? For us architects, and for the world?
It's that time of year again! The time when we round-up what you, our dear readers, most enjoyed this year. The following ten articles - from fun lists (30 Architecture Docs to Watch in 2013) to thought-provoking looks into the state of the architecture profession (Are Renderings Bad for Architecture?) - caught your attentions and provoked some great comments. See them all - including our record-breaking #1 article - after the break.
ArchDaily is in need of an architecture-obsessed, history buff to delve into the world of ArchDaily Classics for Spring 2013 (January 15th – May 15th)! If you want to spend your days researching/writing about the best architecture around the globe – and work for the world’s most visited architecture website – then read on after the break…
The prognosis does not look good for Foster + Partners' plan for an airport hub in the Thames Estuary. The Guardian reports that the Independent Airports Commission has released an interim report, revealing a shortlist of potential options for the UK - and the Thames Hub (with an estimated price tag of £112bn) isn't on it. Yet hope (however slim) does remain for the proposal, as its persistent defender, London mayor Boris Johnson, has managed to convince the commission to revisit the idea in early 2014. Get the whole story at The Guardian.
UPDATE: OMA has reportedly withdrawn from the competition.
The city of Arnhem, the Netherlands, has revealed an impressive shortlist of five firms who will compete to design a new cultural building for the city, The Arts Cluster, which will combine the Museum Arnhem and Focus Filmtheater Arnhem.
The five firms selected from 44 entries are: Architecture Studio HH with SO-IL (United States); ABT with the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG, Denmark) with Allard Architecture; Kengo Kuma & Associates(Japan); NL Architects; and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).
OMA has won an international competition to design Pont Jean-Jacques Bosc, a bridge across the river Garonne in Bordeaux, France, that will link the municipalities of Bègles and Floriac. The 44m by 545m bridge, which will act as "a generous new public space" and "an urban planning intervention" for the city, giving priority to pedestrian traffic, is the first to be realized by OMA. It is scheduled for completion in 2018.
According to Clément Blanchet, director of OMA France, the bridge "is not the ‘event’ in the city, but a platform that can accommodate events of the city [...it] may be the least technical, least lyrical, but [it is] the most concise and effective structural solution.”
The architect's description of the project, after the break...
UPDATE: OMA has provided more information and images of their proposal, see them after the break.
BIG, Büro Ole Scheeren, and OMA have been announced as the three finalists in the competition to design the new Media Campus for AXEL SPRINGER SE in Berlin, Germany, beating out Kuehn Malvezzi and SANAA. The final ranking will be released in January.
The new campus will be located on the historic site of the former Berlin Wall, what was once a no-man’s land. All three proposals address this contentious history as well as the demands of a 21st century workplace. President of the jury, Prof. Dr. Friedrich von Borries, proclaimed that: "All three projects show how fascinating architecture can be today. No matter which of the three proposals will be realised: The competition is already an enrichment of Berlin's building culture." See all three proposals, after the break...
French developer Christian Bourdais has enlisted eight architects to develop vacation homes on a 50-hectare nature reserve about two hours south of Barcelona. So far, so normal. However, each participant in the "Solo Houses" experiment was given what every architect dreams of (and hardly ever receives): carte blanche. The results, from the likes of Sou Fujimoto, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, and more, are stunning. See them all after the break...
Despite six months of steady increase, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) for November revealed a slight decrease in demand for design services. The November ABI score was 49.8, down from 51.6 in October (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 57.8, down from 61.5 the previous month.
“This slight dip is likely just a minor, and hopefully temporary, lull in the progress of current design projects,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD. “But there is a continued uneasiness in the marketplace as businesses attempt to determine the future direction of demand for commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings.”
More highlights from the November ABI, after the break...
The Parramatta City Council has announced Sydney firm Johnson Pilton Walker as the unanimous winner of the Parramatta Square Design Competition, beating a shortlist (curated from 73 submissions) that included Sydney based Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp, Bates Smart, and Italian practice Mario Cucinella Architects.
The 53-storey commercial towers will provide up to 140,000 square metres of office space to Parramatta's central business district as well as act as centrepieces for the future Parramatta Square, in the heart of the CBD.
See images of the towers, which feature a unique floating "public space in the sky," after the break...
The Morpholio Project, the team of architects and designers behind Morpholio (for building/sharing your portfolio) and Morpholio Trace (the app that lets you draw on top of images as if using tracing paper), have just launched Trace 2.0. The new version introduces three fantastic new tools that hope to "put [the design] process in hyper drive."
As Co-Creator Anna Kenoff puts it: “The goal of the app was to embrace and enhance the fast paced and messy process of idea building, bringing back hand drawing to a culture no longer beholden to the desktop computer.”
Check out the three new features of Trace 2.0, after the break...
Inspired by our wildly popular article "Why Japan Is Crazy About Housing," CNN has interviewed Tokyo-based author and architect Alastair Townsend in order to dig a bit deeper into why radical design has become more common in Japan. The video features interviews with the residents of House T by Hiroyuki Shinozaki Architects, who share what it's like to live in a multi-storied home with step ladders and no walls, as well as Sou Fujimoto, who takes us on a tour of his whimsical, tree-house inspired House NA. Watch the video after the break.
In her article for BlouinArtInfo, Janelle Zara wittily recounts her experience at an architecture event in which 70% of the audience left before the night's end. The event? A talk, held last week in Miami’s Design District, between Kanye West and Pritzker laureate Jacque Herzog. Despite the audience's clear lack of interest, Zara insists the skippers missed quite the conversation: "Herzog’s half of the conversation lent it its gravitas; Kanye’s token Westisms provided the candy-coated sprinkles on top." Read the full post here.
