Browsing: Rio de Janeiro

A young firm from São Paulo, Brazil received an Honorable Mention for their Paineiras Hotel Complex design in Rio de Janeiro.   The architects, Alexandre Hepner, Denis Cossia, João Paulo Payar, Rafael Brych, Ricardo Gonçalves, and environmental design consultant Ricardo Messano, designed a complex that would be functional and “allow perfect fruition of the beautiful panoramic view and the close contact with nature.”   The strategy reflects “the intention of harmonizing the intervention with the existing context, thought without denying the contemporary character of such intervention nor hiding its presence among the surrounding forest and the old hotel building.”

More about the hotel after the break. read more »

Rio de Janeiro just won the bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. If we add this to fact that Brazil is hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup, expect a major dose of architectural projects for these events. This will be another opportunity for the architectural brazilian scene to  show the world the high level of their works (see all the brazilian works in AD).

For this games, Rio will use a total of 33 venues, from which 8 correspond to facilities already built for the Pan-American games that will be renovated, such as the National Shooting Center by BCMF. There will be 11 new buildings (judo, wrestling, fencing, basketball, taekwondo, tennis, handball, modern pentathlon, swimming and synchronized swimming, canoe and kayak slaloms, and BMX cycling) and 11 temporal structures. A good opportunity for the local (or international?) architects.

The masterplan shown on the video shows that 4 clusters will concentrate this venues inside the city, connected by new transport systems.

Another aspect that is relevant for architecture, is that the city needs to build accommodations for 25,000 beds for the event. The government said that they can offer 8,500 beds in cruise ships.

The new facilities being built for London 2012 and the projects we saw in Beijing 2008 are good examples of architecture for this events.

As for the FIFA World Cup, I think that more then new stadiums we will see improvements on existant ones (such as the Maracana)… but maybe I´m wrong.

After the jump, the videos with the installations proposed in the Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo bids.
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Winner: Diller Scofidio + Renfro

A restricted competition for a new museum in the middle of one of the most iconic places in Rio de Janeiro, the Avenida Atlantica at Copacabana, has just been awarded.

The building will host the Museu da Imagen e de Som (Image and Audio Museum), that as of now is desegregated through the city in separate offices. The new building will host in one place facilities for the conservation and study of the brazilian visual heritage, along with a state-of-art museum.

The competition included the local practice Bernardes & Jacobsen, that has been previously featured on ArchDaily, along with Sao Paulo´s Isay Weinfeld (see his previous works featured on AD), Brasil Arquitetura and Tacoa Arquitetos. On the international side we have the regulars Daniel Libeskind and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, along with the japanese architect Shigeru Ban.

Just when I was writing this post, I found that the competition was awarded to Diller Scofidio + Renfro, at a ceremony held today.

I´ve heard a lot of buzz about this competition in Twitter and Facebook from our brazilian readers, it seems to be generating a lot of debate as of now. And it´s very obvious, as the building will be erected on a very iconic avenue, at a close distance from Museum of Modern Art by Affonse Eduardo Reidy and the Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum by Brazilian master Oscar Niemeyer.

Not much to say about the winning entry by DS+R, it´s just another project along their line. But it´s not just the jury who voted unanimously for their project, they also won a reader´s poll at the main Brazilian news site O Globo.

And Libeskind… seriously?

My vote goes to Isay Weinfeld. And yours?

Images from all the projects so you can be the judge, after the break.

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