Submit a Project Advertise Architonic
World
© All rights reserved. ArchDaily 2008-2024 ISSN 0719-8884 All images are © each office/photographer mentioned.
  1. ArchDaily
  2. Public Space

Public Space: The Latest Architecture and News

A Close Look at the Gehl Institute's Free Toolkit for City Planning

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "The Gehl Institute’s Toolkit for the Creation of Great Urban Spaces."

Jane Jacobs was arguably the most important “citizen” planner in the 20th century. If we were setting up a related category for credentialed planners, then the great Danish urbanist Jan Gehl might just top that list; inspired by the ideas of Jacobs, the architect and urban designer has spent nearly a half-century studying and writing about public space. He helped his home city of Copenhagen become a kind of model for walkable urbanism and has consulted for cities all over the world.

Two and a half years ago his firm, Gehl, launched a nonprofit arm, Gehl Institute, dedicated to public engagement, and the use and creation of public urban space as a tool of both economic development and political equity. Recently the institute published what it describes as “tools for measuring public space and public life, in the form of free, downloadable worksheets.” The toolkit is beautifully executed. Last week I talked to Shin-pei Tsay, executive director of the Gehl Institute, about the tools and what her group hopes to accomplish with them.

Heatherwick's Copper 'Vessel' Tops Out at New York's Hudson Yards

Heatherwick Studio’s glimmering staircase monument, ‘Vessel,’ has topped out after eight months of construction at New York City’s Hudson Yards development. Consisting of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings, the sculptural public space has now reached its full height of 150 feet, which will allow it to offer sweeping views of Manhattan’s west side when it opens in early 2019.

Heatherwick's Copper 'Vessel' Tops Out at New York's Hudson Yards - Image 1 of 4Heatherwick's Copper 'Vessel' Tops Out at New York's Hudson Yards - Image 2 of 4Heatherwick's Copper 'Vessel' Tops Out at New York's Hudson Yards - Image 3 of 4Heatherwick's Copper 'Vessel' Tops Out at New York's Hudson Yards - Image 4 of 4Heatherwick's Copper 'Vessel' Tops Out at New York's Hudson Yards - More Images+ 19

MVRDV Collaborates With School Children to Complete Graphic Public Play Space for Gwangju Folly Festival

MVRDV has collaborated with Korean school children to complete a new permanent urban installation tor the third edition of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation’s Gwangju Folly Festival.

Aimed at exploring how architecture contributes to urban regeneration through both decorative and functional means, the I LOVE STREET was developed through a participatory process that asked students from Seosuk Elementary School to contribute drawings expressing their desires for the street. The end result was a graphic, sensory-stimulating design featuring zones in multitude of materials including grass, fountain, sand, wood, a trampoline and a giant chalk board.

MVRDV Collaborates With School Children to Complete Graphic Public Play Space for Gwangju Folly Festival - Image 1 of 4MVRDV Collaborates With School Children to Complete Graphic Public Play Space for Gwangju Folly Festival - Image 2 of 4MVRDV Collaborates With School Children to Complete Graphic Public Play Space for Gwangju Folly Festival - Image 3 of 4MVRDV Collaborates With School Children to Complete Graphic Public Play Space for Gwangju Folly Festival - Image 4 of 4MVRDV Collaborates With School Children to Complete Graphic Public Play Space for Gwangju Folly Festival - More Images+ 5

Medellin’s Comuna 13 Shows Why All Great Public Spaces Should Be Kid-Friendly

Jaime Lerner defines urban acupuncture as a series of small-scale, highly focused interventions that have the capacity to regenerate or to begin a regeneration process in dead or damaged spaces and their surroundings.

Rather than urban acupuncture, the intervention that took place in the rugged geography of Medellin’s Comuna 13 was like an open-heart surgery, a large-scale action aimed at bringing about physical and social change of what was once one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the world’s most dangerous city.

The bilingual guides take us through the neighbourhood, showing us the escalators that gave the intervention worldwide fame. At the same time, in one of the many refurbished squares, a CNN team records interviews with locals and foreigners who visit by the hundreds what was, until recently, an unlikely tourist destination. A drone flies over the scene, we do not know if it is operated by the omnipresent police, CNN or tourists.

All-In-One Structure Solves Flooding, Parking and the Lack of Green Space in Cities

As Earth’s population continues to grow, so does car traffic and issues related to climate change. It has been estimated about 30% of urban roadway congestion are drivers searching for a place to park. Car culture puts the pressure on cities to build more parking garages, which usually win out over green parks. Meanwhile, climate change continues to challenge cities to handle a great deal of stormwater. The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is proof of this - as of Monday, 13 named storms have formed in the Atlantic ocean, costing 210 lives and counting.

THIRD NATURE, a Danish architecture firm, designed a solution for the modern-day urban issues of flooding, parking and lacking green spaces with their project, POP-UP. A stacked green space, car park, and water reservoir, from top to bottom respectively, POP-UP uses Archimedes’ principle to store water and create floating space to store cars.

All-In-One Structure Solves Flooding, Parking and the Lack of Green Space in Cities - Sustainability & Green Design, Facade, CityscapeAll-In-One Structure Solves Flooding, Parking and the Lack of Green Space in Cities - Sustainability & Green Design, Fence, HandrailAll-In-One Structure Solves Flooding, Parking and the Lack of Green Space in Cities - Sustainability & Green Design, Facade, Lighting, CityscapeAll-In-One Structure Solves Flooding, Parking and the Lack of Green Space in Cities - Sustainability & Green Design, Facade, CityscapeAll-In-One Structure Solves Flooding, Parking and the Lack of Green Space in Cities - More Images+ 9

Call for Entries - Student Design Competition: New San Francisco Federal Building Plaza

Continuing a legacy of outstanding public architecture, the General Services Administration (GSA) Design Excellence Program seeks to commission our nation’s most talented designers and artists to design federal buildings of outstanding quality and value. These projects are to demonstrate the value of true integrated design that balances aesthetics, cost, constructability, and reliability; create environmentally responsible and superior workplaces for civilian federal employees; and give contemporary form and meaning to our democratic values.

Dark Arkitekter Plans to Rejuvenate Oslo with National Theatre Rehabilitation

Oslo-based architecture firm Dark Arkitekter hopes to jumpstart the revitalization of the city’s cultural center with their proposed rehabilitation of the National Theatre and redevelopment of the surrounding public space. The government is currently planning to renovate the 118-year-old structure, but Dark Arkitekter was unimpressed with the minimal-effort plan and so put forth their design on behalf of the Theatre.

Dark Arkitekter Plans to Rejuvenate Oslo with National Theatre Rehabilitation - Image 1 of 4Dark Arkitekter Plans to Rejuvenate Oslo with National Theatre Rehabilitation - Image 2 of 4Dark Arkitekter Plans to Rejuvenate Oslo with National Theatre Rehabilitation - Image 3 of 4Dark Arkitekter Plans to Rejuvenate Oslo with National Theatre Rehabilitation - Image 4 of 4Dark Arkitekter Plans to Rejuvenate Oslo with National Theatre Rehabilitation - More Images+ 7

Paris Opens Its First-Ever Public Swimming Pools

On July 15, the city of Paris announced the opening of three natural swimming pools that receive their water supply from the Seine River, located in the La Villette Basin in the 19th arrondissement of the city. Spanning a total of 1,600 square meters, the new attraction is divided into a children's area, with depths of up to 40cm; an area of medium depth of 1,2m; and a larger pool, with depths of about two meters.

The swimming pools are part of the "Swimming in Paris" project, presented for the first time by the City Council of The French Capital in June 2015, with the goal of "encouraging the practice of swimming for Parisians and Tourists." According to an official statement from the city government, the project aims to allow, by 2020, the "modernization of water parks and the creation of new swimming pools and areas for bathing."

Winnipeg Railside Promenade Ideas Competition

The Forks Renewal Corporation has launched an ideas competition for the redevelopment of Israel Asper Way from a four-lane roadway into a unique public space. The project will be known as Railside Promenade, a key component for the Railside at The Forks plan. Railside is planned to become a vibrant mixed-use residential development located at The Forks in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support

This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support - Featured Image
The Origin of the World by Borondo, Lodhi Colony, Delhi. Image © Naman Saraiya

Last month, ArchDaily had an opportunity to speak with Akshat Nauriyal, Content Director at Delhi-based non-profit St+Art India Foundation which aims to do exactly what its name suggests—to embed art in streets. The organization’s recent work in the Indian metropolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, has resulted in a popular reclamation of the cities’ civic spaces and a simultaneous transformation of their urban fabric. Primarily working within residential neighborhoods—they are touted with the creation of the country’s first public art district in Lodhi Colony, Delhi—the foundation has also collaborated with metro-rail corporations to enliven transit-spaces. While St+Art India’s experiments are evidently rooted in social activism and urban design, they mark a significant moment in the historic timeline of the application of street art in cities: the initiative involves what it believes to be a first-of-its-kind engagement between street artists and the government.

This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support - Image 1 of 4This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support - Image 2 of 4This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support - Image 3 of 4This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support - Image 4 of 4This Street Art Foundation Is Transforming India's Urban Landscape—With the Government's Support - More Images+ 42

KOSMOS Creates 6 Speculative Public Space Interventions for Basel

Emerging international architecture office KOSMOS has unveiled 6 projects exploring potential collective spaces in the city of Basel, Switzerland. Unveiled during Art Basel, the speculative projects were featured in the Forum Basel exhibition curated alongside Museum Director Andreas Ruby and Stéphanie Savio, and emerging Chilean practice Plan Común. Held at the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM), the architecture exhibition was held “in reaction to the increasing commodification of urban space today” and dedicated itself to investigating new possibilities for public space in Basel. Check out the projects, with descriptions from KOSMOS, below.

The Driverless Future Challenge's Winning Entry Uses Plug-and-Play System to Reclaim Public Space for Pedestrians

Of the four finalists selected for Blank Space’s “Driverless Future Challenge”, which was announced last month, “Public Square” has emerged as the winning entry, with a plug-and-play scheme to transform New York’s public realm for its streets and pedestrians. Designed by FXFOWLE and Sam Schwartz Engineering, the proposal was selected by a panel of New York City commissioners, for its response to the competition brief with a flexible system that accommodates a variety of public space typologies, while creating a harmonious coexistence between pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles.

The Driverless Future Challenge's Winning Entry Uses Plug-and-Play System to Reclaim Public Space for Pedestrians - Image 6 of 4The Driverless Future Challenge's Winning Entry Uses Plug-and-Play System to Reclaim Public Space for Pedestrians - Image 8 of 4The Driverless Future Challenge's Winning Entry Uses Plug-and-Play System to Reclaim Public Space for Pedestrians - Image 9 of 4The Driverless Future Challenge's Winning Entry Uses Plug-and-Play System to Reclaim Public Space for Pedestrians - Image 10 of 4The Driverless Future Challenge's Winning Entry Uses Plug-and-Play System to Reclaim Public Space for Pedestrians - More Images+ 12

The Bench 2017 - International Design Competition

THE BENCH is an idea based design competition open to all ages and backgrounds. The challenge of the competition is to design and install a temporary structure on a street to transform the street environment to a form of public space. The challenge of THE BENCH 2017 is to design a seasonal seating- space along the street edge(s) defined by the competition. The competition will unfold in two phases: selection by jury and installation for seasonal use. Multiple entries will be chosen as winning entries and will be constructed for public use during the 2017 WINNIPEG DESIGN FESTIVAL.

8 Ways We Can Improve the Design of Our Streets for Protest

Once largely viewed as a fringe activity belonging to passionate extremists, protest is now—in the wake of a controversial new administration’s ascension to power in the US and a heightened interest in politics globally—a commonplace occurrence, with a much broader participant base in need of places to gather and move en masse. This revitalized interest in protest was perhaps most visible on one particularly historic occasion: on January 21st, 2017, a record-breaking 4.2 million people took to the streets across the US to exercise their first-amendment rights.

Women’s marches took place on the frozen tundra (we have photographic evidence from a scientist in the Arctic Circle) and even in a Los Angeles cancer ward. But for the most part, these protests happened in the streets. In the first few months of 2017, the streets of our cities suddenly took center stage on screens across the world. From Washington to Seattle, Sydney to San Antonio, Paris to Fairbanks, broad boulevards and small town main streets were transformed from spaces for movement to places of resistance. From the Women’s March on Washington to April’s People’s Climate March, protestors are looking for space to convene and advocate for the issues that matter most to them.

Curry Stone Design Prize Celebrates 11 Practitioners For Valuable Approaches to Public Space

The Curry Stone Design Prize has selected 11 honorees as part of June’s Social Design Circle, whose work responds to the question: Can Design Reclaim Public Space? From NGOs to design collectives across the globe, each winner addresses notions of usage, organization, and amenities within the realm of public space, and is featured on the prize’s website. In addition to a new circle of monthly winners, the prize hosts a weekly podcast, Social Design Insights, complimenting the featured work and expanding on the monthly themes with leading practitioners in social design.

Here are the 11 members of June’s Social Design Circle:

Open Call for Emergent Practices of Social Architecture

Emergent Practices - a joint project joint between XXI Architecture and Design Magazine and Faculty of Architecture, campus Sint-Lucas Brussels/Ghent, KU Leuven- launches an open call in search of everyday life impact of spatial practices. The open call is the first step of the research that aims to collect and generate critical content on the emergent practices of social architecture.

A selection of submitted projects will be used as case studies, observed and intervened during their implementation processes to generate a grounded discourse on social architecture and its impacts. A wider selection among submitted projects will be published accompanying the research entitled "Understanding the Emergent Practices of Social Architecture".

Call for Submissions: City Cook Book – Enhancing Public Spaces Through Food Culture

City Cook Book invites projects and initiatives worldwide that work with food dynamics and culture to enhance public space and foster social interaction to be part of its platform.

If you have developed or are actively engaged in any such initiatives we would like you to share your experience in our open repository. The projects will be presented both in a digital platform and a publication.

II International Ideas Competition Chair CIMC

The Chair of Innovative Construction Materials (CIMC) with the Higher School of Architecture of Málaga and Financiera y Minera S.A. announce the II International Ideas Competition for architects and students of architecture in their graduation project.