The Architectural Association has announced that Eva Franch I Gilabert has been selected as their new Director, following a public months-long search to replace former Director Brett Steele and interim Director Samantha Hardingham.
The AA School Community, consisting of students, staff and Council members, selected Franch i Gilabert from a shortlist of 3 candidates by a majority vote of 67%, the highest percentage received in a contested election since 1990. Over 1,000 total ballots were cast.
Nearly 8 months after the devastating fire at London’s Grenfell Tower resulted in the loss of 71 lives, the UK government has announced that they will be working together with the tower’s survivors, families and community to determine the future of the Grenfell Tower site.
A government document released with the announcement outlines the guiding principles for handling the future of the site and its memory. According to the document, the most likely results will be an on-site memorial and the renaming of the nearby Latimer Road station of the London Underground:
Zaha Hadid Architects has revealed a proposal for the pedestrianization of their home city, London, that would gradually transform the city into an interconnected system of walkable roads.
Named Walkable London, the research proposal has identified the arteries and areas of the city that would most benefit from pedestrianization. The transformation would be implemented over three phases: primary avenues, secondary avenues, and finally, entire districts. Notable avenues marked for alteration include Upper Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street.
The Architectural Association has announced a shortlist of 3 candidates in the running to become the new AA Director, who will lead the direction of one of the world's foremost architecture schools and institutions.
The Madison Square Garden Company, the eponymous group behind New York City’s iconic concert and events venue, has revealed plans to building two new arenas on opposite sides of the world that will both be shaped like giant spheres.
To be branded as MSG Spheres, the venues will be located in Las Vegas and in London, and will be designed by Populous, the Kansas City-based firm responsible for a large number of stadia and arenas across the globe.
Facebook is closing in on a deal to create a new London headquarters, and will be bringing along the design talents of Frank Gehry, according to reports from The Times and Architects’ Journal.
Described as a “growth space” that will allow the company to expand their European presence, the new headquarters would span four buildings in King’s Cross Central – the same part of the city where Google is building its own 11-story “groundscraper” campus designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studios.
.jpg?1517512410)
England-based Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios have completed their redesign of the Hayward Gallery which transforms the iconic cultural venue into a modern space which allows Southbank Centre to continue to provide “more access, to more arts, for more people.”
Herzog & de Meuron’s design for the new flagship building of the Royal College of Art’s Battersea campus has been granted planning approval by Wandsworth Council. Unveiled last fall, the £108 million building will mark an “important step” in the evolution of the RCA into a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics)-focused postgraduate university.
Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup’s Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. has been selected as the winner of the Beazley Design of the Year for 2017.
Presented by the Design Museum in London, the award is given to the project that best meets the criteria of design that “promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year.”
See more from the overall winner and each of the category winners, below.
Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled the design of a new mixed-use development to be located on the Vauxhall Cross Island site adjacent to Vauxhall Station in London. Aiming toward becoming a new public square for the neighborhood, the complex will consist of two towers connected by a street level podium, offering a variety of programmatic uses including a hotel, offices, residences, retail and public amenities.
A city’s monuments are integral parts of its metropolitan identity. They stand proud and tall and are often the subject of a few of your vacation photos. It is their form and design which makes them instantly recognizable, but what if their design had turned out differently?
Paris’ iconic and stunning Arc de Triomphe could have been a giant elephant, large enough to hold banquets and balls, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. could have featured an impressive pyramid.
GoCompare has compiled and illustrated a series of rejected designs for monuments and placed them in a modern context to commemorate what could have been. Here are a few of our favorites:
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced the six recipients of their 2018 Richard Rogers Fellowship program. Inspired by Lord Richard Rogers’ “commitment to cross-disciplinary investigation and engagement,” the Fellowship established last year to support individuals “whose research will be enhanced by access to London’s extraordinary institutions, libraries, practices, professionals, and other unique resources.”
The six winners will be given the opportunity to live and research at the Wimbledon House in London, which was designed by Rogers for his parents in the late 1960s. In 2015, Rogers gifted the home to Harvard for Fellowship use. This year’s winners will receive a three-month residency as well as travel expenses to London and $10,000 cash.
The City of London has released new visualizations showing how its fast-changing skyline will look by 2026, as 13 schemes are currently under construction or due to begin construction in London’s Financial District.
Budapest-based architectural firm Hello Wood has continued its annual tradition of constructing wooden Christmas trees, this year expanding the program with a total of 5 trees throughout Europe. In London and Vienna, trees made of sleds recall a design concept first used by Hello Wood in 2013; meanwhile, two locations in Budapest and in the Hungarian city of Kecskemét are witnessing the return of the firm's "charity trees," installations made of firewood which are later dismantled and distributed to families in need for the winter season.
.jpg?1513623530)
A month after its critically-lauded run came to a close, Francis Kéré’s 2017 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion has found a permanent home halfway across the globe.
As reported by the Star, the structure has been purchased by Kuala Lumpur-based Ilham Gallery, who are now searching for a permanent site of the pavilion in Malaysia.
.jpg?1513436169)
.jpg?1517512410 "© Morley Von Sternberg")
.jpg?1517512388 "© Morley Von Sternberg")
.jpg?1517512260 "© Morley Von Sternberg")
.jpg?1517512243 "© Morley Von Sternberg")
.jpg?1517512410)
.jpg?1517244654 "© Herzog & de Meuron")
.jpg?1513436115 "© Andy Stagg")
.jpg?1513436153 "© Andy Stagg")
.jpg?1513436096 "© Andy Stagg")
.jpg?1513435820 "© Andy Stagg")
.jpg?1513436169)