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The Liget Budapest Competition has recently announced its winners, and Kengo Kuma and Associates has taken home honorable mention for their House of Hungarian Music design. Conceived as a house in the woods, the proposal seeks to embed itself in the landscape, having a low impact on the natural environment while becoming a focal point of Budapest’s urban environment.

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The Liget Budapest Architecture Competition has recently announced the winners for Budapest’s new Hungarian House of Music museum design. Coming in second place is architecture firm ARCVS Projektni biro. Their proposal takes the form of an 8-pointed star-shaped dome, held up by a veritable forest of columns. This uncommon shape provides numerous places, both indoors and out, for education, leisure, and exhibition, establishing itself as a prominent destination for the people of Budapest. Learn more, after the break.

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Atelier Thomas Pucher has won first prize in an invited competition to realize a cluster of “Urban Terraces” in Vienna. Described as a product of the “modern patchwork city,” the project is designed to connect its residents to the surrounding districts and open space through the “countless sight lines” preserved by the circular nature of the mid-rise buildings. This is intended to achieve a sense of “urban porosity” within a stacked residential landscape.

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A few days ago, the winning design for the new Liget Budapest Museum of Ethnography was revealed. BFarchitecture, awarded second place, has just released their design proposal, which weaves the city and park of Városliget together by flowing the public along the Dózsa György út through the procession of the building.

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This past spring, the Liget Budapest competition was launched in the interest of finding new designs for planned cultural buildings in the Hungarian capital. One of these, the House of Hungarian Music, is to be a museum as well as a performance space set in Budapest City Park. Over 170 entries were submitted for the building, and of those, Andrea Vattovani Architecture’s proposal has taken third place. This gently curving and folding sculpture of a building aims to present the history of Hungarian music in an engaging setting, while creating an iconic landmark for the city of Budapest. Learn more, after the break.

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Friis & Moltke has designed a new housing project in Aarhus inspired by a Scandinavian forest. Just as “moss-covered hillocks and majestic towering trunks with crowns filter light and create shimmering patterns on the forest floor,” says the architect, the Løvhusene housing complex adapts to its natural surroundings as circulatory “boardwalks” weave between a “forest” of clustered wooden residences, all centered around a shared community “clearing.”

Allied Works Architecture has released designs for the Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus. Set to complete by 2016, the billowing museum will be constructed on the banks of the Scioto River, directly across from downtown, as part of Scioto Peninsula’s 56-acre redevelopment masterplan. It will host a variety of galleries, education and interpretive spaces that will house exhibitions and artifacts that serve as a testimonial to the 250 years of military service of Ohio Veterans.

“The Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum is conceived as an architecture of two acts. The first is an act of landscape, where the surrounding parkland is cut, carved and lifted into the sky, creating a processional path to the sanctuary, a place of ceremony, celebration and reflection - a civic room for the city of Columbus,” explains Allied Works. Continue reading to learn more.

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CREO ARKITEKTER A/S and WE Architecture has been selected as one of three winners in the first phase for a new psychiatric hospital in Ballerup. “Reminiscent of a small village,” the prize-winning scheme steps away from the typical hospital typology to propose a dense cluster of gabled structures connected by therapeutic green space.

“The proposal fits the extension subtly and respectfully into the existing context… It adds a gable motif that opens the communal spaces towards the surrounding park and landscape and at the same time frames terraces and balconies. The committee finds that this simple move adds a subtle, non-institutional appearance with strong positive references to low-dense housing projects of very high quality,” stated the jury. Read on to learn more. 

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REX has shared with us their competition proposal for Calgary’s New Central Library (NCL). Though Snøhetta and DIALOG ultimately won the competition, REX was shortlisted as a finalist with an unconventional scheme that was based on adaptability, serendipity and treating the librarians as curators. By literally stacking the library’s program according to the client’s desired sequence, REX formulated six typological clusters hoisted on top an illuminated plinth.

Check out the complete proposal, after the break. 

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Four years after winning a competition to rebuild 71 Via Boncompagni in the heart of Rome, MAD Architects has been awarded approval and will now enter the implementation phase of their first European project. This approval will allow the Chinese practice to transform an incongruous 1970s commercial courtyard building into a 145-unit residential complex that reutilizes the building’s “bookshelf” structure by stripping away its facade and inserting new living quarters, giving it an entirely new look and function.

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SYAA has just been named first prize winners for their design of a new Natural Science Museum Complex in Constanta, Romania. Proposed at an unprecedented scale for the region, the design seeks to become a significant destination in the Black Sea tourist industry. Incorporating features of an amusement and leisure park into the program of a science museum, SYAA proposes a building equipped to adapt to a diverse variety of public activities and events. Some of the primary functions will include an aquarium, dolphinarium, exotarium and tropical greenhouses, planetarium, and observatory.

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Kjellander + Sjöberg has won first place in a land transfer competition for Uppsala Municipality. Tasked with the transformation of a city block next to Uppsala’s central square, the architects created an inviting complex of timber apartments surrounding a communal courtyard. Designed to foster a sense of community among residents, the Rosendal complex is, as the project’s architects state, “full of character and unlike anything else.”

Conceived as a natural extension of the existing pathways at Montreal’s Botanical Garden, Saucier + Perrotte architectes’ proposal for the “Espace Pour la Vie Glass Pavilion” competition was envisioned as an immersive glass shelter “eroded” within a lush landscape. The architects, who were also responsible for designing the garden’s 2001 First Nation Garden Pavilion, were among the competition finalists. You can learn more about their proposal, after the break.

Moscow-based architectural studio Nefa Architects (Nefaresearch) have been chosen to redesign the Solntsevo metro station. Their project, which is designed to “create a solar spray effect” on the station’s subterranean platform, won an international competition whose winners were ultimately chosen by Moscow’s citizens.

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C.F. Møller and TRANSFORM has won an international competition to design a new campus extension for the Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark’s principle business university. A collaboration with C.F. Møller Landscape, Transform and Moe, the project aims to become the “world’s best city-integrated campus.” The masterplan, organized around four new public parks, will transform a significant, 31000-square-meter site in the city’s Frederiksberg district on top a nexus of old and new metro lines.

Awarded Special Mention "for its original concept and daring in thinking beyond the set bounds," OFIS Arhitekti's proposal for the Arvo Pärt Center, "MEIE AED" (Our Garden), is a combination of a pine tree, tree house, traditional house, nest, observatory, and floating bridge. A cultural center that incorporates a multitude of programs including concert space, archives, creative space, and a chapel, the building was conceived to converse closely with its forested natural surroundings.

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French firm Thibaudeau Architecte & Agence d'Architecture Guiraud-Manenc has earned second place for a competition to design the new tourism office for "Les Pays de Fontenay le Compte France." Designed to encourage tourism in South Vendée, the design merges a contemporary style with a consideration for the historic and artistic identity of the area.

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Kuehn Malvezzi, Pelletier De Fontenay, Jodoin Lamarre Pratte, Dupras Ledoux, and Nicholet Chartrand Knoll (NCK) have won one of three first place positions in Montréal’s Space for Life International Architectural Competition, which seeks to reinvent mankind’s relationship with the natural world for the city’s 375th birthday, with their proposal for the redesign of the Montréal Insectarium. Titled Insectarium Metamorphosis, the project provides new spaces for visitors to get up close and personal with the multitude of insects housed in the museum.

The Space for Life International Architectural Competition of Montréal has recently announced its three winners. The competition prompted designers to rekindle an interest in the natural world through an architectural intervention at a pre-appointed venue. Located in the city’s Botanical Gardens, this winning proposal by Lacaton & Vassal, Frédéric Druot, FABG, and SNC Lavalin does so in a simple, elegant way, with a glass pavilion for the Gardens that serves a variety of purposes. Learn more, after the break.

The Downtown Q 2025 Design Ideas Competition, aimed at revitalizing Queanbeyan, New South Wales’ downtown area, has just selected its first place winner. A collaboration between STEWART ARCHITECTURE, Stewart Hollenstein, and ASPECT Studios, the winning proposal focuses on increasing pedestrian traffic, creating more green spaces, and taking full advantage of the town’s riverfront property.

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Montréal’s Space for Life competition has recently announced its winners, with design firms AZPML and KANVA named as one of three first winners with their joint design. The competition demanded that entrants reinvigorate the relationship between humanity and the natural world through an intervention at Montréal’s Biodome. The two firms’ winning proposal, Migration du Biodome, does that with the installation of a series of undulating walls.

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Designing an architectural homage to someone like Ludwig Van Beethoven is no easy feat. Yet that’s exactly what architecture firm Jahn has attempted to do. Their design is a submission for a privately-funded competition being held for Bonn, Germany’s new “Beethoven Festspielhaus.” Chosen from a group of over 50 candidates, Jahn’s project was among ten advanced to the second round of consideration. The proposal, a glass exterior encapsulating a concrete interior, exhibits “Beethoven’s own dual character which is described as both extroverted and introverted,” as described by the firm. Learn more about this inventive design, and the competition, after the break.

More than 300,000 Moscow citizens have chosen U-R-A | United Riga Architects to redesign the Novoperedelkino metro station. Aiming to revive the tradition of unique designs for Moscow metro stations, the winning scheme plans to illuminate the underground station with a series of lighted metal panels perforated with archetypal Moscow motifs.

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JAJA Architects has won second prize in an open competition for a combined affordable housing and market hall in the heart of Katrineholm, Sweden. Designed for a site currently occupied by an arcade and bus stop, the hybrid proposal, known as "Torghallen," focuses on reconnecting two open plazas by devoting the ground floor to the public.

The jury, which selected JAJA’s design ahead of 135 other proposals, stated: “The clear concept of a light building that touches the ground in few points creates a strong connection and transparency between the surrounding urban spaces.”

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