Comte Vollenweider Architects shared their winning design for the extension of Cannes airport with us. The airport’s elegant construction focused on the functional side of improving the services offers concerning business aircraft, for both welcoming the crews and performances concerning plane’s maintenance. The structure is an open volume, allowing the space to be maximized, which offers complete freedom to the planes and their to maneuver.
The new King Abdullah II House of Culture & Art in Jordan designed by Zaha Hadid Architects has been announced this week.
The project comes after a competition awarded in June 2008, which included Snøhetta (Norway), Atelier Christian de Portzamparc (France), Delugan Meissl (Austria), Henning Larsens Tegnestue (Denmark) and Kerry Hill Architects (Singapore).
The project consists in a performing arts and cultural centre that includes a 1600-seat concert theatre, 400-seat theatre, educational centre, rehearsal rooms, and galleries.
As you can see on the renderings, the building is mainly a carved volume, with voids crossing it creating several visual relations.
On the outside, the volume looks very simple, contrasting with the carved spaces that express themselves on the facade.
More info about the project after the break:
Frédéric Haesevoets, a Beligan architect, recently won a competition for his design of a new city hall for Herstal. The international competition asked participants to design a new city hall to accommodate office spaces for central administration, archives and mixed use areas. The project is divided into two major forms that bookend a public open courtyard. Connected by a bright red bridge, the two arms house the major program areas and open to a landscaped area for the public to enjoy. The geometric form offers a break from the surrounding structures, emphasizing the importance of this communal structure. The faceted facade fuses the natural and the synthetic as sections of greenery are scattered among sections of glass. Inside, bright warm colors greet workers, a drastic change from the typical office color palette.
More images after the break.
We recently featured Preston Scott Cohen‘s Nanjing Performing Arts Center and, now, we share his winning competition proposal for the Taiyuan Museum of Art. Currently under construction, the building’s strong dynamic form is a geometric spin on the agricultural landscapes native to the Shanxi Province. The tessellated surfaces respond to contemporary technologies for controlling natural and artificial light, in addition to producing unexpected spatial conditions as the user circulates through and around the building.
More images and more about the project after the break.
Update: High res version of the drawings have been added.
Redevelopment of the Southern Terrace of Jabal al-Qal’a, designed by Dina Hadi, Mousa Shahin, and Hazim Samawi and supervised by Leen Fakhoury from the School of Architecture, University of Jordan recieved the award of The Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Excellence in Architectural Design.
More images and architect’s description after the break.
Studio Gang Architects, along with joint tenderer J. J. Pan and Partners received second prize at Taipei Pop Music Center Competition.
The idea of this project is to form a live music hub that creates richly diverse experiences reflective of Taipei’s music scene. The design knits together unique venues—large and small—with indoor, outdoor and semi-enclosed public spaces, forming a dense urban architecture connected through the live experience of music.
More images and full architect’s description after the break.
French architects Atelier Phileas have won a competition to design an elementary and primary school along with 150 students housing in Paris, France.
More images and architect’s description after the break.
HDA’s construction technologies used for the arch of the Turin Olympic Footbridge (previously featured on AD), have been further refined for their most recent award winning competition proposal, entitled Pylons of the future: Dancing with Nature. The competition, held by Terna, a private national electricity provider, asked participants to design pylons of the highest technical and aesthetic quality with a minimal impact on the environment. HDA’s design response was based on transforming the current ‘industrial soldier’ image of today’s pylons into an elegant shape whose form was inspired by nature.
More images and more about the pylons after the break.
d3 is pleased to announce the winners of the Housing Tomorrow competition for 2010. The program, developed by co-directors Gregory Marinic and Mary-Jo Schlachter, promotes investigation of housing typologies toward determining new architectonic strategies for living in the future. The competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore, document, analyze, transform, and deploy innovative approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.
The competition awarded three prizes and eight special mentions, with first prize captured by Liminal Projects for their project: Home Spun: Water Harvesting Prefab Urban Housing for the Great Lakes Region. See the three prizes after the break. Special Mentions projects can be seen in the competition’s official website.
UR Architects were awarded first prize for their design of a sports center in Antwerp. The center, which is intended for non-competition sports, is aligned with the existing sports hall along the main street of the new master plan development. The building attempts “to communicate” on all sides as the sports hall, dance hall and rental depot are positioned on the edge, interconnected by a T-shaped service area. This extroverted model opens the building to the community and the architecture reflects the modernism of the surrounding buildings. The roof is designed as a fifth facade to relate to the nearby housing blocks of Renaat Braem while the facades of the halls are made of multi-layered polycarbonate. Partly translucent, partly transparent, this material combines the dynamic spectacle of changing light and shade, with diffuse daylight admission and a high insulation value, resulting in a low energy building.
More images of the sports center after the break.
WORKac‘s design for a 1-kilometer section of Hua Qiang Bei Road in Shenzhen was awarded first prize. The design responds to the area’s growing commercial character which has unfortunately created traffic problems. For the proposal, the road becomes a series of “strategic interventions” where “five iconic lanterns”, (twisting bands of required program) create unique, visible destinations through a process of “urban acupuncture”.
More images and more about the design after the break.
The Tafoni Floating Home is a conceptual project from designer Joanna Borek-Clement. The primary goal is to change the attitude towards living on a houseboat and promote a lifestyle that limits disruption of the environment. Tafoni is spacious, yet compact. Typical houseboats have low ceilings and often feel cramped, which can detract from comfort many residents desire of their homes. In contrast, even though Tafoni has a relatively small floor plate, it is spacious because of the high ceiling and the minimal amount of full-height interior partitions.
The partial-height sculptural walls divide the space visually and increase the interaction between people without limiting views. Tafoni is a multi-purpose living pavilion that serves as a permanent house, a weekend retreat, a relaxing summer destination or a place to entertain friends and hold business parties. In the current era of overpopulation and decreasing greenfields, building houseboats is a solution we should consider. More after the break.
OMA in association with Leigh & Orange Architects have won the international competition for a 28,000m2 campus for the Chu Hai College of Higher Education in Hong Kong.
The project consists on two 8-stories tall parallel volumes with a rich public space in between, housing three faculties (arts, science and engineering, business), with 10 departments and 2 research centers.
What I like about this project is how OMA incorporated the multidisciplinary focus of this college, trough a rich public space between these two volumes, a topography with library, cafeteria, gym and lecture theaters, which given its ramps, steps and shaded platforms, generate several different spaces for socializing, meeting, studying, etc. So, students from this 3 faculties will flow into this central public space, mixing together.
This project is led by Rem Koolhaas, General Manager of OMA Asia (Hong Kong) David Gianotten and associate Chris van Duijn.
More images after the break:
John Vierra, an architecture student from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo sent us his winning entry for the AIAS Vinyl Competition.
The Bohemian Flats, located in an old residential area of Minneapolis, Minnesota has a long history of flooding. According to FEMA, the site has a 1% chance of flooding every year. To respond to this history and promote the longevity of the project, the entire structure rests on a PVC (vinyl) floatation system, allowing the building to move in sequence with the unpredictable nature of the site. The boat house also has the ability to move off site and become an extension elsewhere.
Full architect’s description and more images after the break.
Martin Angelov shared his funky concept for a new urban way of transportation dubbed “Kolelinia” with us . Kolelinia proposes that we ride our bicycles on a steel wire as a new type of bicycle lane. The idea was awarded first for the international “Line of Site” competition.
More about Kolelinia after the break.
Perkins+Will’s master plan for SANY Beijing was awarded first prize in the “Conceptual Design” category at the 8th International Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism due to the project’s strength in the categories of spatiality, connectivity, originality and sustainability. SANY is the largest heavy equipment manufacturer in China and one of the top 10 heavy equipment manufacturers in the world. The company wanted to achieve a higher degree of efficiency in their manufacturing process and create a memorable visitor experience.
More about the SANY project after the break.
Couple of weeks ago we launched a competition through our Facebook Fan Page to find the best architectural animation video you could send us. After looking at 34 videos and receiving more than 2,500 votes, we have a winner!
Armir Shapllo, with his Space Camp Nou video (see it after the break), received more than 800 votes to win a brand new iPod Touch. Matej Štefanac came second and Alex Roman third. Congratulations to Armir, and to everyone who participated. And remember to follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page for more competitions!
KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten was awarded first prize for their proposal for the Beijing Patent Office. Located in downtown Beijing, the site is near a new subway line and sits opposite the entrance hall of Caishikou Station. The proposal integrates the Patent Office into the site’s sustainable traffic infrastructure. The building is divided into a central hall, towers, bridges, open spaces and spacious rooftop gardens that creates an interconnected, communicative structure. A surrounding strip embraces the individual parts of the building, extending from the roof to the façade, spanning open spaces, thereby giving the Beijing Patent Office a specific identity in the urban context.
More about the proposal and more images after the break.