KSP Engel und Zimmermann Architekten has shared their winning proposal for the new Art Museum for Nanjing, China.  The museum lies near the cultural axis which is comprised of Changjiang Road to the south and the “revolution road”, Zhongshan East Road, to the north.   These roads are slightly angled toward one another creating a “trapeze-shaped plot of land”.    This distinct site inspired the team to respond  to its critical surroundings.   Components in the museum such as the Revolution Cube and the Culture Cube, are strategically placed to honor the project’s location.

More images and more about the museum after the break. read more »

Many great projects are a result of important competitions around the world. So to start this week’s Round Up, we bring you previously featured awarded competitions from Croatia, Denmark, France, Spain, and Norway.

Zamet Centre Competition
3LHD is a croatian office that has developed some interesting houses, sports facilities and urban projects. And now they just won the private competition for the Zamet sports and community centre in Rijeka, Croatia. Rijeka is an industrial harbour city on the Adriatic Sea and the new complex will provide it with a new civic hub for both business people and the general public (read more…)

New Incineration Line in Denmark Competition
Erick van Egeraat has won the international competition for the design of a new incineration line in Roskilde, Denmark for Kara/Noveren, a local waste management company. Due to its large scale, the incinerator is destined to become an outstanding structure in the wide and open landscape of the Roskilde area. After its completion in 2013, the facility will produce both electricity and heating for the Roskilde district (read more…)

New Market in Barcelona Competition
b720 just informed us that they won the ideas competition for the new Market dels Encants in Barcelona, Spain, commissioned by the city. Near the iconic Agbar Tower, the project develops as a continuous platform that deals with the topography of the site, covered with a big roof that unifies all the activities on this platform. The roof varies its inclination in order to reflect different views and daylight changes (read more…)

Tour La Signal at Paris Competition
The La Defense is a 160 ha business district in the west of Paris, currently under a renewal plan to strengthen its place among the great international business districts. The plan is managed by the EPAD (The Public Establishment for Installation of La Défense), an organization formed by local authorities, government and neighbors focused on developing the La Defense for the best interests of its 20.000 residents (read more…)

Oslo Central Station Competition
Norwegian architects Space Group won the competition for Oslo´s new Central Station. The project consists on demolishing a big part of the existing station, to build a 4 stories tall structure that will unify the station. It will include 2 floors for offices hanging over the station. Also, an adjacent U-shaped building will be occupied by the biggest conference hotel in Norway (read more…)

Adaptable Hillside Classroom

After 6 months and 4 rounds of jurying, Architecture for Humanity, a charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings professional design services to needy communities, just recognized eight team finalists for the 2009 Open Architect Challenge: Classrooms.  The competition attracted 10,000 architects, teachers and students who came together to develop designs for more than 500 schools in 65 countries. “This initiative invited the architecture, design and engineering community to collaborate directly with students and teachers to rethink the classroom of the future. Designers entering the competition were given a simple mandate: collaborate with real students in real schools in their community to develop real solutions,” explained Cameron Sinclair, the co-founder for Architecture for Humanity and this competition.

The finalists include: Adaptable Hillside Classroom by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios & Architecture for Humanity UK, Bamboowood School by Petr Kostner, Martina Sobotkova, Sona Huberova, Classroom for the Saltpan Community by Cohesion Foundation: Rajesh Kapoor, Prashant Solanky, Bharat Karamchandani, Kiran Vaghela,  Teton Valley Community School
by Section Eight Design, A Sustainable Community Classroom by Gifford, House In The Wood by Built Form, LLC / Northwestern University Settlement House, Justified Architecture in a Landscape of Transformation by Arquitectura Justa: Wolfgang Timmer, Fabiola Uribe, T. Luke Young, and Blurred Classroom by Gensler.

We would like to congratulate not only the eight finalists, but all participants who dedicated their time, effort and design skills for such an importance cause.

Project descriptions and images of the eight finalists after the break. read more »

Our friends from 3LHD shared their awarded competition proposal for a private medical center for Firule in Split, Croatia.  The Polyclinic is situated close to the sea and its fresh air, near an existing hospital complex.

More about the clinic after the break. read more »

Albert M. McDonald, an associate architect from PBC+L Architecture, just shared his winning entry for the AIA 2009 COD Competition, Listening to the Past, Looking to the Future: A House for Today. The sketch competition asked participants to design a sustainable home to replace the demolished Rachel Raymond House designed by her sister Eleanor Raymond, FAIA.  The new 2,500 sq ft home would be placed on the original site using the same program brief as the original, yet it would be a contemporary interpretation and implement sustainable strategies.

The jury noted that McDonald’s proposal was ”the most thoughtful and sophisticated text considering the history of the site and the original Raymond House. This submission had the best integrated sustainable strategies in terms of the Living Building Challenge and was very thoughtfully done with the site in mind. This project created a sense of place and a place that could be enjoyed for both communal and individual experiences.”

More about the winning proposal after the break. read more »

UNStudio’s design has won a competition to build a 21,000 square meter dance theatre in the historic centre of St. Petersburg, Russia. The new complex houses the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, headed by choreographer Boris Eifman.

From the four projects presented (Jean Nouvel, UNStudio, Snøhetta & Zao), UNStudio’s design was yesterday unanimously chosen by the jury for realisation.

Seen at designboom. Architect’s description and more images after the break. read more »

KSP Engel und Zimmermann Architekten was awarded first prize for their Tianjin Art Gallery proposal.  The Chinese government has been investing in new cultural buildings in an effort to battle the economic crisis by creating this new form of investment plan.  The 33,000m2 art gallery will be one component in the city’s 90 ha cultural and leisure quarter, which will also include an opera house and other recreational centers.

More about the gallery after the break. read more »

We shared Aboutblank‘s honorable mention housing project for the Istanbul Kayabasi Housing Design Competition earlier, yet the firm was also awarded first prize for their second design scheme.  Aboutblank created “a non-centralized rhizomatic urban tissue” that promotes interaction between users by providing large green areas running the length of the building complex.

More about the housing project after the break. read more »

Turkey based Aboutblank Architects have been awarded an honorable mention for their housing project for the Istanbul Kayabasi Housing Design Competition.  The young firm focuses on urban design approaches, while working on a multidisciplinary level.

More about the housing project after the break. read more »

BAY Arc by SOM - Winning entry

When driving between SFO Airport and San Francisco on the edge of the Bay Area, I have always wondered what would happen when the sea level starts to rise.

Recently, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) organized an ideas competition (open to any professionals, not just architects) to address the sea level rise in the Bay Area, looking for innovative and creative  solutions to bring forward a  vision of a future estuarine shoreline applicable to the San Francisco Bay and beyond. 130 entries from 18 countries were submitted.

Six teams were announced as the winners, splitting a cash prize of $25,000. Among these entries we find interesting ideas, such as Faulders Studio’s laser light barrier that measures the sea level, powered by tidal energy,  Kuth Ranieri Architects’s ventilated levee to balance the sea/bay water levels, or SOM’s smart membrane under the golden gate bridge.

But, as usual in some competitions, the honorable mentions bring more disruptive ideas, embracing a vision on a post-flood city instead of preventing it. There’s also humor among the honorable mentions, “Failure: Bring your boots” or “About Rising Tides: It´s the Delta, you stupid”.

Will our future be amphibious?

All the awarded entries after the break:
read more »

The winners of the idea competition for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) 2009 in collaboration with Ikatan Arsitek Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of Architects Jakarta Chapter) have just been announced.   The IABR introduced this competition to ‘explore to what extent architects, with their knowledge, skills, and imaginative powers, can contribute to solving urgent problems in contemporary society. It therefore challenges the design disciplines, using the specific expertise of architecture, to conduct “research by design” and to develop concrete proposals, based on the Biennale’s theme’.  The theme of this year’s competition  Gotong Royong City (translated to be “mutual assistance”) is took create an “urban condition that enables diverse cultures and lifestyles to coexist….in the context of the extended metropolitan region of Jakarta.”

First prize was awarded to Jakarta Bersih!, second place was awarded to Let’s Catch the Water! Jakarta Sponge City, third place for Field Estate: A Platform for Symbiotic Urbanism, and special mentions to Ojek City: Permeable Mobility, Stitching the Strip, and Eco Gate as Border Device.

Winning project descriptions and images after the break.

read more »

Polish office Toya Design shared with us their latest project, which won the First Prize in the competition for Architectural Concept of Modernisation of Grand Hall complex at “Zamek” Culture Centre in Poznan, Poland. The project will be realized in the years 2009-2011 with the 70% European Union fund.

The concept is based on the idea of extending the first floor hallway in front of the Grand Hall to form the central ATRIUM, where all functions of the Castle concentrate, and where paths of its visitors meet.

Architect’s description and more images, after the break. read more »

In addition to the temporary pavilions by Hadid and UNStudio (As we reported earlier)  the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Chicago will also include a permanent memorial.  For the memorial, which will honor the legacy of Burnham and his plan,  Richard H. Driehaus Charitable Lead Trust and the AIA Chicago Foundation funded and organized, respectively, a small design competition consisting of 20 invited competitors.  The jury unanimously selected Chicago-based architect David Woodhouse’s proposal noting, “it has elegance, simplicity and, in the end, it’s a modern solution. It almost looks evitable. It’s that appropriate to the site.”

More images and more about Woodhouse’s  memorial after the break. read more »

In addition to the Benetton competition providing participants with the possibility to redefine the influence of retail in an urban landscape, the competition also provided participants with the choice to design “Building A” or “Building B”.  While we shared some of the winning proposals for Building A (Grzegorz Witold Woronowicz and Giuseppe Iodice), we now share Maarten Scheurwater and Oliver van den Hoven‘s proposal for Building B, which placed second in the competition.

More about the winning proposal after the break. read more »

The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association recently announced the winners for the 2008 Western Red Cedar Architectural Design awards.

The winners were chosen by a panel of esteemed architects, and the results were announced at the AIA 2009 National Convention in San Francisco.

The complete list of winners after the break. read more »

C. F. Møller Architects, in collaboration with Kristin Jarmund Arkitekter, have won a major competition to design a new landmark for Oslo.  Their project, entitled Crystal Clear, consists of three towers, which are composed of stacked, prismatic volumes that will provide a dynamic new addition to the city’s skyline.

More about the towers after the break. read more »

Architectural Design Competition d3 is pleased to announce the winners of the Natural Systems competition for 2009. The program promotes investigation of natural systems from microscopic to universal toward determining new architectonic strategies.

The competition invited architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore the potential for analyzing, documenting, and deploying nature-based, sustainable influences in urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.

The competition awarded seven prizes, with first place captured by London-based Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui and Lorene Faure for their project: “Urban Agriculture: Hybridized Farm Bridge as City Garden”. Some of the awards, after the break. read more »

The Netherlands-based Cepezed Architects were recently appointed by the offices of the Hague Capital of Culture to design a temporary theater.   The city strives to be named the European Capital of Culture in 2018, so the architects have created a contemporary version of the Roman Colosseum to become an important icon for the area.  

More about the Colosseum after the break. read more »

HOK‘s Los Angeles office, with Parsons Brinckerhoff, was just announced the winner for the ARTIC (Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center) in Anaheim, California.  This new transit center, featuring a high-speed rail network, will update Anaheim’s public transportation system and ignite further development in the city.  “We’re getting the critical infrastructure in place where you can actually envision a day in the future where you can reliably get around without a car,” added Todd Osborne, vice-president at HOK.

More about the ARTIC transit center after the break. read more »

As we shared earlier this week, the Desiging in Teheran international competition urged designers to creatively rethink the potential a retail area can have upon an evolving metropolis (Grzegorz Witold Woronowicz‘s won as we reported earlier on AD). Giuseppe Iodice‘s proposal placed third as it aimed to create an architecture that  ”would investigate a social, political, cultural function and become an element of dialogue between different cultures…thus assuming a role of balanced mediation between western and eastern culture without renouncing its expressive identity.”

More about the proposal after the break. read more »