Architecture News: The Latest Architecture and News

Studio Gang Architects and Kalamazoo College have announced plans to break ground October 9, at 4PM, on a new campus building to house the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in southwest Michigan. The 10,000 square foot, wood masonry center will be the world’s first purpose-built structure for social justice leadership development, integrating a study, meeting, and event space where students, faculty, visiting scholars, social justice leaders, and members of the public will come together to engage in conversation and activities aimed at creating a more just world.

Set to be completed in Fall 2013, the Arcus Center is targeting LEED Gold certification. Continue after the break to learn more.

An international jury has selected Capital Cities Planning Group (CCPG), an Anglo-American team including Gillespies, John Thompson & Partners and Buro Happold, as winners for the design and planning of the new Federal District in Moscow.

Earlier this year, the Russian Federal Government announced that it was doubling the territory of Moscow to enable it to grow into a competitive 21st century world capital. In response, Genplan, Moscow’s city planner, earmarked an area of 155km2 to the south-west of the city for a new Federal Government Centre, aiming to relieve inner-city congestion through the relocation of the capital’s major employer. Ten international teams were invited to develop strategies and designs for the region during a six month, three stage competition. Continue reading to learn more.

Contemporary Athens is a city of strong contradictions: It is a city whose particular identity was shaped during post-World-War-II reconstruction. A city which has at its disposal an exceptionally talented cadre of young architects, international in orientation, well educated and with a wealth of professional experience. It is, however, the city that was most stricken by the current economic crisis. Currently the Athenian urban space is decomposing and there are increasingly frequent and greater disruptions of the social web. The younger generation of architects benefited from the positive aspects of globalization and today has come face-to-face with the harsh aspect of the global financial crisis, a plummeting standard of living and the need to redefine the priorities of architectural design.

These contradictions are shaping a particular dynamic in the city. Conditions are being created in Athens to expand the links between architecture and the city, both during the economic downturn, but also after it has passed; furthermore conditions are being created to bring to the forefront new ways of viewing the role of architecture, removed from the standards of well-being of the previous decade.

The Greek participation presents this idiosyncratic Athenian urbanism within two themes.

Deborah Berke, a New York City-based architect known for her design excellence, scholarly achievement and commitment to moving the practice of architecture forward in innovative ways, was selected as the first recipient of the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED) inaugural 2012 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize.

The Berkeley-Rupp Prize will be awarded biannually to a distinguished practitioner or academic who has made a significant contribution to promoting the advancement of women in the field of architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community.

The announcement was made by Jennifer Wolch, William W. Wurster Dean of the College of Environmental Design. Continue reading for the complete press release.

The World Architecture Festival is around the corner! On October 3rd-5th, hundreds of architects will gather in Singapore for an intense dose of architecture, in the form of panels, lectures, live crits, and more. You can see all the shortlisted projects here.

Through this installation, Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati explores the ambiguous and complex “common ground” of inspiration and imagination in architecture. Images, selected by architects from around the world, represent the infinitely varied forms of visual material that are collected in their imaginations and subsequently transformed through the creative process.

During the opening of the Venice Biennale, we had the chance to sit down and talk with the curator and participants of the Japan Pavilion, awarded with the Gold Lion.

In the following videos you can see Toyo Ito, curator of “Architecture. Possible Here? Home-for-all”, along with collaborators Akihisa Hirata and Sou Fujimoto, discussing what Architecture means to them, the role of architects in our society, and how they approached the Biennale’s theme “Common Ground” on this particular exhibition, which reunites Japanese architects and an architectural photographer collaborating on the design of houses for those affected by the 2011 tsunami.

We thank the Japan Foundation for this interview.

Akihisa Hirata and Sou Fujimoto videos after the break:

After a long struggle for independence, Kosovo became a new European country in 2008. Much of it’s urban landscape consists of Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Communist era architecture that has been mostly remained untouched by the war. As wealth returns and the economy slowly grows, a new building spur has ignited, covering the city with a sprawl of store fronts, apartments and office buildings.

The Kosovan Pavilion takes a step back to reflect on the current state of their urban landscape, asking important questions on how architecture will effect the future of Kosovan identity and, more importantly, the emotional state and behaviors of the individuals that inhabit its cities. With the exhibition, The Filigree Maker, visitors and participants world-wide are given the opportunity to help shape the future Kosovo by sharing their emotional response to images of existing architecture. Find out more and learn how you can participate, after the break.

The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) will host the exhibition Louis Kahn, The Power of Architecture from September 8 to January 6, 2012. Louis Kahn is known to be one of the most influential architects of the 20th century and has inspired generations with his masterful use of space, light and material.

In an article published by the New York Times, Philip Nobel laments the time taken to construct architecture. As architects, we have the passion to shape space and craft environments. For most, that translates into physically constructing such visions, but the path from drawing board (or computer screen) to realization is often times a long and arduous path.

In the past few years, such difficult financial times have challenged architects to fight for their buildings; namely, asking the designer to find ways to make the buildings work – whether with a changed material palette, smaller footprint, or shortened height.  Yet, apart from finances, we’ve also reported dozens of projects which narrowly clear other obstacles, such as attaining community consent.  And, of course, we have seen scores of great awarded competition proposals that do not incur the same luck, and slowly dwindle to non-existence.

One of our favorite parts of ArchDaily is our InProgress section, where we keep track of the progression of the original architectural vision through actuality. After the break, we share a few projects that haven’t had the most direct route through completion. Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on which project you’ve been waiting to see complete.

As a contribution to the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, Noero Architects showcase two powerful works of art in their exhibition Common Ground / Different Worlds to reveal that architects, and artists alike, work to reinterpret, reinvent and transform preexisting ideas and forms. However, Jo Noero, Principle of Noero Architects, believes that the “difference between good and bad work lies in an understanding of that which is shared and common and the ability to transform these ideas into forms and spaces which are both useful and satisfying within the community in which the work is located.”

Noero spent six months hand drawing a 1:100 plan of the historic shack settlement in Port Elizabeth, known as the Red Location District, as a protest against contemporary architecture’s abandonment of the plan, which Noero describes as the common ground for all architects. Featured alongside the 9m-long drawing is the artwork Keiskamma Guernica, a tapestry made by fifty women from the Hamburg Women’s Co-operative from the Eastern Cape that reinterprets Picasso’s Guernica to illustrate their anger towards AIDS/HIV’s impact on South Africa. The featured film above, titled “Red Location Precinct”, supplements the exhibition by revealing the surrounding context of the district and taking viewers inside the Museum of Struggle, the digital library, an archive and an art gallery that are all part of a complex, designed by Noero Architects, that honors the settlement’s turbulent past and provides surrounding community with opportunities for education, employment, and artistic expression. Continue after the break to learn more.

Jean Nouvel and Mia Hägg presented “Meetings Lines” at the Venice Biennale. For ‘Common Ground’ they decided to show their finalist project for the Slussen Masterplan competition, an ambitious urban design project that seeks to replace much of the degenerated water and transportation infrastructure in the heart of Stockholm. The project proposes three different public spaces, designed as living links for the city, inspired by infrastructure such as the Rialto Bridge in Venice.

More about the exhibit after the break.

The International Jury of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale has awarded Cino Zucchi Architetti (CZA) a special mention for their installation, Copycat. Empathy and Envy as Form Makers. Their contribution is based on the notion that “we are all a bit copycats”, understanding that cultures are propagated by following “infectious” processes that combine imitation and innovation. CZA presents a collection of “almost-alike” objects and images with the idea that “similarity” rather than “originality” is where people find common ground.

Inhabitable Models presents the work of three practices -Eric Parry Architects, Haworth Tompkins, Lynch Architects- who find their common ground in an engagement with London, as a city of found fragments. Perhaps uniquely among world cities London exists as a series of largely unplanned, independent, layered fragments which nonetheless come together for a host of legal, political, and economic practicalities. In responding to this conception of London, each practice seeks to resist the temptation of “hallmark” architecture in favor of one which is contextually sensitive and rigorously place-specific. Indeed, the practices’ appreciation of the fragmentary and unplanned applies both to the London that they find, as well as to the London they leave behind.

SCI-Arc Trustee Frank Gehry and his wife, Berta, have donated $100,000 to the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). The noteworthy contribution will go towards the establishment of the Gehry Prize, which will be annually awarded to the best thesis projects selected by critics and jurors at the Graduate Thesis Weekend hosted in September. The first Gehry Prize will be awarded at the 2012 graduation ceremony on September 9th.

Politicians caught on camera say the darndest things. Like – if you’re Esperanza Aguirre, President of Madrid – that architects “should be killed.”

The Politician was unknowingly recorded while speaking with the Mayor of Valdemaqueda, a municipality of Madrid, about their town hall. The building, known as Casa Consistorial de Valdemaqueda (1998), designed by Paredes Pedrosa, was an award-winner at the Spanish Biennale of 1999. Their conversation (translated by yours truly) went as follows:

Mayor: The town hall? Oh, that thing. Well, it’s gotten prizes, president. Architecture prizes.

Esperanza Aguirre: That’s the only positive thing that’s come from the Crisis, that that’s all over. I have never seen anything uglier.

Mayor: You don’t like it?

Esperanza Aguirre: How could I like it, hidden at the end of a plaza like this!

Mayor: Well, because they’re the architects of the Community.

Esperanza Aguirre: Well, they should be killed.

Mayor: They’ve gotten awards.

Esperanza Aguirre: Mario, it’s so stupid (addressing a person next to her). Do you know why we should have the death penalty? I dislike architects because their crimes last longer than their own own lives. They die and leave us with this.

Find out what Ms. Aguirre has had to say for herself since, and take a peek at the original video footage after the break …

Norwegian-based architecture firm, Snøhetta, has just been announced the winner for the Ordrupgaard competition to design an underground extension to the existing museum in Denmark. In addition to the necessary gallery space to hold the Ordrupgaard’s expanding French collection, Snøhetta’s proposal creates a new solution for landscape and building integration. By adapting existing buildings, and adding landscape elements, the proposal maintains the existing entrance to the building, designed by Zaha Hadid, and creates a circulation new route which the public comfortably flow through as they visit the different exhibition halls. Hadid’s building was originally conceived as a continuous flow of spaces between building, galleries, and gardens, so Snøhetta’s newest addition will build upon such a foundation.

“Forty years ago the public cause proved a powerful source of inspiration. Given the numbers of architects that chose to serve it, one might even speak of a common ground. In the age of the ‘starchitect’, the idea of suspending the pursuit of a private practice in favor of a shared ideology seems remote and untenable. In the context of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, this exhibition hopes to provide a small contribution towards finding that common ground once more…” – OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf, August 2012

Throughout Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s, large public works departments employed architects to design a multitude of public buildings in an effort to serve the public cause. Reinier de Graaf describes this “heyday of public architecture” as “a short-lived, fragile period of naïve optimism – before the brutal rule of the market economy became the common denominator.”