Naples Event: An Architectural and Political Response to the Crisis
In the context of the ongoing financial crisis, cities and citizens are going through profound and as yet uncharted transformations. Tomorrow in Naples, Italy, UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum will bring together mayors, international organizations, governments and civil- society organizations to discuss the Urban Future.
This debate aims to blur the boundaries between designers and politicians; researchers and eco- nomists, to highlight new policies and practices which do not require funding from strained public coffers. Can new forms of city development be thought about without the contribution of private enterprise? Can the political and design worlds find “Common ground” in the face of urban decay and austerity? How can policy making and urban planning come together to bring about appropriate norms for improving urbanites’ lives? This will be one of the focus areas for the ANMA Architects’ new foundation ANMA-F. (more…)
Greenland Migrating / Henning Larsen Architects
We’ve already introduced you to the Danish Pavilion exhibition Possible Greenland, on display at the 2012 Venice Biennale, featuring possibilities that lay in store for Greenland in light of geographic changes caused by the increased rate of ice and snow melt. Henning Larsen Architects has now shared with us their portion of the exhibit, Greenland Migrating, a project developed in collaboration with David Garcia Studio and KITAA Architects. Curating the exhibit are Danish-Greenlandic Professor in geology Minik Rosing and Copenhagen-based NORD Architects.
Join us after the break for a closer look at the project. (more…)
Village Health Works 40-acre Master Plan / Louise Braverman Architect
The village of Kigutu in Burundi, Africa is on its way to rebuilding a rural, off-the-grid medical site designed by Louise Braverman, Architect in collaboration with Village Health Works. The 40-acre master site plan is a feature of sustainable design that includes several new buildings, all of which embody East African cultural elements. To feature the progress of the five-year plan, Louise Braverman will also be presenting “Kigutu in Formation” at the 2012 Venice Biennale as part of Traces of Centuries and Future Steps event at Palazzo Bembo between August 29th and November 25th.
Join us after the break for more on Village Health Works Master Plan and the upcoming exhibit. (more…)
Armi OPEN Workshop – Urban Brain Stream
Armi OPEN Workshop – Urban Brain Stream is an international workshop that aims to develop our urban environment. It is part of the program of both World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 and the Helsinki Design Week. In a series of workshops, to be held around the world in a span of 24 hours on September 6, professionals in architecture, art, business, construction, design, graphic design, media and traffic planning, together with city residents, discuss current challenges in urban planning in the context of each city involved. The workshops will discuss topics that have to do with movement and communication – the redesigning of the experience of moving and communal urban spaces. The findings of the workshops will be summed up in an open public meeting at the Huutokonttori information center in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki, on Septmeber 7, from 3pm to 7pm. For more information, please visit here.
‘Rethink Singapore’ Archifest
Organized by Singapore Institute of Architects, the annual month-long architecture festival is back for the sixth year running to celebrate the urban environment and the communities that make it alive. With the theme of ‘Rethink Singapore’, the event aims to consider the city in new ways – its people, spaces and the way we inhabit it. Taking place October 6-31, they hope to place Singapore under new light and be seen through new lenses, rethinking and re-framing it as an urban ecosystem, beyond singular architectural projects. For more information, please visit here.
SFMoMA presents “Field Conditions”
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be hosting an exhibition from September 1, 2012 through January 6, 2013 that features works of conceptual and theoretical architecture. Blurring the lines between the two, the “field” to frame these investigations into construction, representation, and experience of space entitled Field Conditions features works in a wide variety of media by artists and practicing architects. Some of the notable names that will have their work on display include Tauba Auerbach, Daniel Libeskind, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sol LeWitt, and Lebbeus Woods. More snapshots of the work after the break. (more…)
6th Annual National Tour Day
Docomomo US welcomes all to their 6th annual Tour Day, which has become one of the largest national events devoted to the appreciation of American architecture, which will be taking place October 6 and continue throughout the week. Featuring architectural tours of buildings and interiors of the Modern Movement, the event seeks to raise the awareness of and appreciation for buildings, interiors, neighborhoods and landscapes designed in the United States during the mid-20th century. For more information, please visit here.
AA Muscat Visiting School
Taking place September 4-15, the AA Muscat Visiting School, held by Kamvari Architects, will generate new architectural and urban solutions based on an investigation of patterns – which are seen as a means to translate the performance or appearance of historical structures into new concepts. Proposals will also take into account issues such as manufacturing, assembly and constructability. The aim is to apply these solutions to various scales, from facades and buildings to cities and regions. The workshop, taught in collaboration with professor Nikolaus Knebel of the German University of Technology, will end with a public exhibition of projects which will enable the students to present their ideas in a public forum and to discuss their views on the future direction of architecture in Oman. More images and workshop information after the break. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Croatian Pavilion
This year’s Croatian pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Exhibition presents different struggles currently taking place in various Croatian cities. The exhibition, Unmediated Democracy demands Unmediated Space, interprets the topic of common ground by directly asking the protagonists of those collective conflicts how they imagine a common future across and beyond market or state, private or public mediation. The “desires, constrains and potentials expressed in these sites of conflict” are a part of the wider wave of international protests that are demanding a real direct and unmediated democracy. The demands, gathered on the ground through a series of investigative interviews, form the basis for a possible planning strategy, while their resistance tactics become patterns that could shape a common territory.
The Croatian pavilion focuses on how these demands could allow us to imagine the configuration of possible unmediated spaces. It is organized around three sections: Context, Map and Devices.
Continue reading for more details. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: FAT presents ‘The Museum of Copying’
Invited by David Chipperfield, director of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, FAT has contributed an exhibition to the Arsenale titled The Museum of Copying. Responding to the curator’s theme of “Common Ground”, The Museum of Copying explores the idea of the copy in architecture as an important, positive and often surreal phenomenon. The exhibit will be centered around FAT’s installation, “The Villa Rotunda Redux” – a five meter high facsimile of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda that explores the Villa as both a subject and object of architectural copying.
Sam Jacob, a director of FAT said: “There is a history of copies of the Villa Rotunda that have been important staging posts for architectural culture. We hope to extend this history and explore how copying something is, strangely, a way of inventing new forms of architecture. It also seems sweet to return a bastardised form of the Villa to its original home in the Venito.”
Alongside this, the London-based practice will also present San Rocco’s “The Book of Copies”, an investigative look into four architectural doppelgängers (remember this fake Austrian village in China?) , and Ines Weizman’s “Repeat Yourself”. Continue after the break to learn more. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Estonian exhibition looks into the fate of Linnahall
The Estonian exhibition for the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale investigates the relationship between time and space by discovering how venues once important have been abandoned and how these tendencies may carry on today and in the future. The exhibition poses a question as its title: “How long is the life of a building?”. The answer is sought based on the example of Linnahall – a dignified Modernist legacy in the heart of Tallinn that only a few decades ago was a renowned and requisite construction, yet is closed today. What’s happening to Linnahall speaks volumes in a more general context as well – similar tendencies are becoming prominent everywhere in the world where multitudes of architectural masterpieces less than 50 years old stand unused.
Continue after the break to learn more. (more…)
Palladio Virtuel Exhibition
The 2012–13 season at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery opened on August 20 with Palladio Virtuel. The exhibition, which is on view until October 27, presents a groundbreaking new analysis of the work of Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio by Peter Eisenman, renowned New York architect and Charles Gwathmey, Professor in Practice at Yale. It represents the culmination of ten years of study of Palladio’s villas by Eisenman, adding an important contribution to the sixteenth-century master’s already robust legacy. The exhibition proposes a reading of the buildings that undermines the traditional view of Palladio’s architecture as founded on ideal forms. For more information, please visit here. More images and information on the exhibition after the break. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Strelka Institute to host discussions on shaping tomorrow’s cities
Russia’s leading creative think tank, Strelka Institute, is hosting a series of discussions with preeminent voices in architecture and urban design in the pre-opening days of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale. Inspired by the Biennale’s theme of Common Ground, the conversations will focus on how architecture and design can drive the physical, social and economic regeneration of urban environments. Using Russian cities as a starting point, the talks will explore wider issues in urban design around global metropoles. Featured speakers include OMA’s Reinier de Graaf, Teddy Cruz, Stefano Boeri, and more.
The discussions will take place on August 27 and 28 at the Strelka Palazzo. All events are free to attend, but space is limited. Please email venice@strelka.com to reserve a seat.
Strelka Palazzo Program: (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Design Onscreen Film Festival
For the first time ever, Design Onscreen – the Initiative for Architecture and Design on Film – will present the Design Onscreen Film Festival at the Venice Architecture Biennale, August 27 through the 29th at the Arsenale’s Teatro Piccolo. All sixteen screenings are free and open to the public and most will be followed by dynamic in-person discussions and audience Q&As, featuring top architects and design experts from around the globe, including Lord Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman, Rick Joy, Steven Holl, Vittorio Garatti, Deyan Sudjic (Director, Design Museum London), Barry Bergdoll (Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art); Moshen Mostafavi (Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Design), Mark Wigley (Dean, Columbia Univ. School of Architecture), and David Chipperfield (Curator and Director of the 13th Annual International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale).
Continue after the break for trailers and more information. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: “Lars Müller Publishers – Book Fever”
Join the authors and editors of Lars Müller Publishers for a rare book signing opportunity with architects Wang Shu, Sou Fujimoto, and Steven Holl on August 28th at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale! This event will kick off the exhibition Lars Müller Publishers – Book Fever, which will feature sixty publications – new releases, bestsellers, milestones from the past, and rare treasures – for the public to explore.
Founded thirty years ago, Lars Müller Publishers’ carefully edited and designed publications on architecture, design, and contemporary art has lead them to become a renowned international publisher. One milestone you may remember was their release of Peter Zumthor’s Works (1998), which was the first survey of the oeuvre of the architect now known worldwide that set new standards for the monograph as a book genre.
Continue after the break for more details on the book signing and exhibition. (more…)
Advancing Sustainability 2012 Business + Design Symposium
Taking place October 6, Woodbury University in Burbank, CA is hosting the Advancing Sustainability 2012 Business + Design Symposium that focuses on the “cardiovascular system” of a city—its infrastructure. The discussion will investigate how various infrastructures—providers of core operational supply (transportation systems, energy and water supply, communications, built environment)—perform, exchange, and are incorporated into the natural environment. The discussion will address the extent of their influence on lifestyle and the overall dynamics of the city, as well as their management and opportunities for advancement. The event will curate a conversation amongst the most innovative minds within the fields of architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, engineering, and design to investigate the potential of sustainability within lifestyles and soft infrastructures. For more information, please visit here.
Venice Biennale 2012: ‘Freeland’ and ‘Porous City’ / MVRDV + the why factory
By invitation of Director David Chipperfield, MVRDV and The Why Factory will participate in the 2012 Venice Biennale. The main contribution consists of the collaborative project ‘Freeland’ forming part of the single exhibition in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini. Further contribution is made by Winy Maas and The Why Factory with ‘Porous City’ to the EU CITY Program, initiated by the European Forum for Architectural Policies (EFAP) representing Europe for the first time at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
More details on the two exhibitions after the break. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Nordic Pavilion
In celebration of the Nordic Pavilion’s fiftieth anniversary, thirty-two architects born after the year 1962 have been invited to present a model of a conceptual “house” that reflects their personal philosophy of architecture at the 2012 Venice Biennale exhibition “Light Houses: On the Nordic Common Ground”. Eleven architects from Finland and Sweden, along with ten architects from Norway will each respond to the sobering economic constraints and diminishing environmental resources that challenge architects today.
Contemporary Nordic architectural culture offers both exemplary approaches and significant constructed works addressing these challenging circumstances. The classic hallmarks of Nordic architecture – simplified form, frugal use of materials and sensitive treatment of daylight and the natural setting – embody the basic principles of responsible, sustainable architecture.
Continue after the break to learn more. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Finnish Pavilion presents “New Forms in Wood”
Wood has always been Finland’s preferred building material, as both nature and the forest has long provided a livelihood and enduring source of inspiration for Finnish artists and architects. Now, with the use of modern technology and new treatment methods, Finnish architects are pushing the boundaries of this conventional material to unleash new creative potential. To celebrate the reopening of the newly restored, Alvar Aalto-designed Finnish pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale, “New Forms in Wood” will highlight the work of young Finnish architects who have used wood inventively in their recent works.
Continue after the break to review the exhibition’s featured projects and architects. (more…)
Venice Biennale 2012: Danish Pavilion presents ‘Possible Greenland’
The Danish Pavilion for the 2012 Venice Biennale will feature a collaboration between Greenlandic and Danish Architects called “Possible Greenland”. The exhibition will address the current development of the Arctic Region as Greenland undergoes a shift towards political independence and business development in the midst of dramatic climate changes. “Possible Greenland” attempts to look optimistically at the climate changes that are causing ice melts throughout Greenland. The shifting planes result in the exposure of vast mineral resources that can kickstart new industries and allow new urban cultures to emerge. The team of architects that designed “Possible Greenland” were led by internationally renowned Professor in geology at the University of Copenhagen, Minik Rosing and the young Danish architect firm NORD Architects of Copenhagen.
Explore the possibilities with us after the break. (more…)
Spotlight on Design: Intensities: Recent Work by Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis
Taking place September 24th at the National Building Museum, the Spotlight On Design: Intensities: Recent Work by Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis event highlights the firm’s ability in using the constraints of small budgets, awkward spaces, and strict zoning to generate innovative architecture. Marc Tsurumaki, AIA, one of the founding principals of the New York-based studio, shows how this “opportunistic architecture” results in compelling projects that include Austin’s Arthouse at the Jones Center and the Claremont University Consortium Administrative Campus Center. For more information, please visit here.
