Awarded Competitions: The Latest Architecture and News

Architecture competition organizer Bee Breeders has announced the winners of the international Iceland Trekking Cabins competition, which called for entries to design a cabin with provision for enclosure, place, and social collectivity. As a structure for nomads and backpackers, Iceland Trekking Cabins are associated with cultural folklore and exist within the context of fjords, lava fields, glaciers, mountains, and the respective trekking ethos.

The competition furthermore sought projects that are “a supple and dexterous yet protected architecture, sensitive to the landscape though guarded against its severity, accommodating for the community, but in the company of strangers.”

The winners of the Iceland Trekking Cabins Competition are:

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Clark Nexsen has won the international Activate Urban Housing Design Competition with its proposal for an urban dwelling on South Mint Street in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. The design, entitled Mint, focuses on connectivity and neighborhood and includes residential, retail, and open green spaces.

Conceived as a catalyst for a culinary district, Mint aims to create a new urban living and working space, in which the connectivity of food-centered entrepreneurial enterprises fosters a sense of community.

feld72 has won the competition for the design of the Neu Leopoldau, a Youth Living residential complex in Leopoldau, a post-industrial area on the outskirts of Vienna. Based on the idea of creating community, the project utilizes overlaying, staggered, and connected spaces and communication areas to facilitate the feeling of a village.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has announced the winners of the Timber in the City: Urban Habitats Competition, a student competition exploring wood as an innovative building material. Out of more than 850 architectural student entries, three winners have been selected, along with two honorable mentions, with prizes totaling $40,000.

The competition focused on a site in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and asked for designs for inhabitation, repose, recreation, and local small-scale commercial exchange, all while embracing the possibilities of wood and a variety of wood technologies.

Today, timber is being used in new, innovative ways to help address the economic and environmental challenges of the build environment,” said Cees de Jager, executive director of BSLC. “This competition brought to life the way the design community is recognizing the benefits of wood–from reduced economic and environmental impact to enhanced aesthetic value and structural performance–to design buildings and communities of the future.

The winners of the Timber in the City: Urban Habitats Competition are:

The collaboration of Seiyong Kim, Yongwon Kwon, Sungyeon Hwang and Wonyang Architecture has won second place in the International Ideas Competition for Establishing Busan Station as The Cub of Creative Economy in Busan, Korea. The competition sought out proposals to revitalize the original downtown area, Busan Station is the starting point for a larger Busan North Port redevelopment project.

MOR Architects has won first prize in the competition to design the Konaki Averof Cultural Center in Thessaly, Greece. The competition sought out proposals to convert an existing complex with historic importance into a modern socio-cultural multiplex.

In an effort to reinterpret the relationship between the building and its urban environment, the winning proposal reintroduces the horizontality of the landscape, before human intervention.

The design not only provides maintenance and restoration of the existing external shells of the complex but additionally creates a “new, free-standing longitudinal roof with extensive cantilevers on both sides.”

The National Trust for Historic Preservation and People for the Pavilion have announced the winners of the New York State Pavilion Ideas Competition in the Queens borough of New York.

Sponsored by Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, the competition called for creative ideas to reimagine Philip Johnson’s New York State Pavilion, a “forgotten star” of the 1964-65 World’s Fair.

Radar Architecture&Art has won second place in the ACTIVATE North Carolina 2016 Housing Competition, which sought out innovative ways to reinvent urban housing for the 21^st century.

Through its design, Radar proposes a “new way of inhabiting” and “a new sense of community” via a hybrid structure of public, semi-public and private space.

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Competition platform matterbetter has announced the winners of its Syria: Post-War Housing Competition for architectural students and professionals. The competition, initiated earlier this year, called for solutions to the housing scarcity crisis in Syria, “which will affect the country as more and more cities of the war-torn country will be freed and refugees will start to come back.”

With refugee camps around Europe and other countries in generally poor conditions, and Syrian towns in ruins, one solution to the housing crisis becomes the creation of living conditions that are attractive for once-displaced Syrians to return. The competition asked for a new housing concept that would be able to permanently accommodate people in need of a new home and new life in Syria.

Out of 245 submissions, matterbetter selected three winners, each of which was awarded a cash prize, there were also nine honorable mentions.

The winners of the Syria: Post-War Housing Competition are:

The team of CIRCOLO-A + LINEARAMA has won first prize in the AAA-Architetti Cercasi 2015 competition with its design, EPICICLO. As a mixed-use building, EPICICLO will feature apartments, alternative residences like student and social housing, common spaces, as well as both public and semi-private outdoor spaces.

The design is shaped after a ring so that it is open to the outside and comfortable on the inside. The design takes into account the relationship between public and private, not only creating a gradient from outside to inside but also varying public and private spaces within the building. Similarly, open and closed spaces are alternated, to create "spots of community life and moments of privacy."

Pliskin Architecture has been awarded as a finalist in the competition for the Mevaseret Music School, in Mevaseret Zion, Israel. The firm’s proposal centers on the site’s existing topography, as well as the idea of public space through the elevation of the classroom programs to the upper level, and the creation of a continuous open space at street level.

The new public space at the street level leads visitors to a partially covered plaza, which will act as the main access point for the various functions of the conservatory. A café will be located adjacent to the plaza, where visitors can be partially exposed to the school’s activity via the building’s massing.

TA.R.I Architects has won second place in the competition for a Women's and Family Facility Complex in Seoul, South Korea, with its proposal, Space Salim. Based on the idea of welcoming the community and fixing its problems, the proposal centers on a diffuse system to represent the complexity of society.

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Bernabe Labanc Architecture Urbanism (BLAU) has received fourth place out of 58 entries in the international urban planning competition for The Future of Brno-Center, in Brno, Czech Republic.

The competition sought out designs to integrate a transport hub into the cityscape of Brno, as well as integrate a design for the undeveloped southern area of the city.

International architecture non-profit Shelter Global has announced the winners of its second annual Dencity Competition, which highlights innovative solutions to improve living conditions for slum dwellers worldwide.

With over one billion people living in slums today, and this number expected to reach two billion by 2030, the Dencity Competition called architects and planners to “consider how design can empower communities and allow for a self-sufficient future.” Thus, the competition is a way to foster new ideas about how growing density in unplanned cities can be addressed.

The winners of the second annual Dencity Competition are:

Zeller & Moye, working alongside artist Albert Weis, have been selected to design the new Martin Luther Memorial in Berlin. The competition, initiated by the Protestant Church of Berlin and the Berlin City Administration, asked entrants to design a memorial to Luther in central Berlin at the former Neuer Markt next to the St. Marienkirche—in the same location as a previous memorial to Martin Luther that was constructed in 1895 and destroyed in the Second World War. The brief also required designers to incorporate the existing statue of Martin Luther that survived from the earlier memorial.

In response to this brief, Zeller & Moye has envisaged a memorial based on the mirroring of the 1895 memorial: a negative form of the original plinth is carved into the ground in medium-gray concrete, while the statue of Luther is joined by a second, slightly abstracted replica, cast in aluminium with a mirrored finish.

New York’s H Architecture, in collaboration with South-Korea-based Haeahn Architecture, has won a nation-wide competition, organized by the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation, to design the renovation of the 1988 Olympic Gymnastics Arena, which is located within the Olympic Park in Seoul, Korea.

The arena not only holds historic significance with its role in the 1988 Olympics but is also “the premiere cultural performance venue of Korea,” with its location inside one of the largest man-made public parks in Korea.

India-based Studio MADe has won the Suncheon Art Platform competition with its proposal, The Hidden Cloister. The competition, hosted by the City of Suncheon, South Korea, sought to revitalize the Old City area with an art square featuring an art center.

Through The Hidden Cloister, Studio MADe aims to create a “psychological ‘void’ in the midst of a high-density area by creating an open-to-sky quadrangle as a pure subtraction of ground.” Thus, the proposal creates a new link in the heart of the Old City by connecting the riverbank and public space.

KAAN Architecten has won the commission to design the New Amsterdam Courthouse. The new building will replace the current judicial complex at the intersection of Zuidas and Parnassusweg, which is slated for demolition. The Courthouse of Amsterdam is the largest in the Netherlands and handles 150,000 cases a year with a staff of 200 judges and 800 professionals. KAAN Architecten describes the building's design as both "stately" and "distinguished," stating that the intention was to create a facility that understands justice as an open process, and thus incorporates ways for the public to engage with the Courthouse.

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