This article was originally published on Common Edge.
Shortly after the millennium, Vanity Fair, a magazine that purports to follow every kind of cultural milestone, asked a select group of 52 “experts” to pick the five best buildings since 1980. The selections were bizarre; almost every building was by one of the chosen architects, which made up the vast majority of those asked for their picks. Few choices received more than five votes.
Zaha Hadid Architects have presented "NFTism", a virtual art gallery at Art Basel Miami that explores architecture and social interaction in the metaverse. The gallery features spatial designs created by ZHA that focus on user experience, social interaction, and "dramaturgical" compositions, combined with MMO (massively multiplayer online game) and interaction technological services.
In downtown Kuala Lumpur, Merdeka 118 topped out at 678.9 metres tall and 118 storeys, becoming the second-tallest building in the world. Five years after construction started, the tower’s final silhouette is revealed with the completion of the spire, redefining the city’s skyline currently dominated by the Petronas Towers and the Kuala Lumpur Tower. Designed by Australian firm Fender Katsalidis, the project features a triangular faceted glass façade inspired by patterns found in Malaysian art and, together with the surrounding park designed by Sasaki, creates a new layer of the city’s identity.
_MODEL.jpg?1627415949)
MAIO is currently building a five-story building with 40 social housing units in the Sant Feliu de Llobregat district, Barcelona. The project design urban connectivity, social equity, and sustainability. As the winner of a two-phase competition, the building will house hierarchyless, generic, flexible spaces to fit the inhabitants' needs.
Shape Tomorrow, a new exhibition at AEDES Architecture Forum in Berlin, is a reaction to both staid, self-serious architecture shows and to the staid, self-serious architecture profession. Taking the form of a miniature city, it turns buildings into named characters, encourages visitors to populate structures with miniature people, and leaves space for them to fill the room with their ideas and criticism.
The exhibition, on view through January 13, is the brainchild of German architect Matthias Hollwich, founder of New York-based HWKN—a burgeoning firm known for both its research and its sense of whimsy. The show centers on nine, 16-foot-tall white plaster towers whose glowing bases take on the forms of some of the firm’s playful, kinetic projects from around the world. These include 25 Kent, a fractured office building in Williamsburg, and Die Macherei, a jutting and terraced mixed-use business district in Munich.
