In his latest photographic journey, Paul Clemence explores the architectural essence of Swiss Museums at Le Salon Suisse, Miami Art Week. Delving into the architectural artistry of the region and the museum’s significance in today’s urban landscape, the photographer showcases a comprehensive exhibition. Titled “Shapes, Rhythm, Abstraction: Swiss Museums,” the photo series includes Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Zurich, and St. Gallen.
As the landscape of architecture and urban development adapts to the modern climate, the traditional notion of construction has been significantly modified and adjusted. Specifically, principles of reuse, recycling, adaptive reuse, and the power of transforming existing structures into something more meaningful and sustainable have gained much traction. Looking at these curated collections of unbuilt projects, one can begin exploring a different way of looking at buildings and heritage, which is significantly more sensitive to the built environment.
From the austere office buildings of the United Kingdom to the proposal to re-activate a skyscraper in Ostrava, these diverse contexts tell stories of resilience, innovation, and a profound commitment to the existing built environment. Offering a new way of looking at things, the projects champion adaptive reuse and activation concepts.
CPC concrete slabs are based on the technology of "carbon pre-stressed concrete," which originated from a long-term research project conducted by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur (ZHAW) and Silidur AG, Andelfingen. These panels are reinforced with thin, pre-stressed carbon strands, allowing them to be three to four times thinner and lighter while maintaining the same load-bearing capacity as traditional reinforced slabs.
CPC's innovative approach to concrete panel production reduces material usage by 75% and minimizes the carbon footprint of concrete production. ArchDaily interviewed Professor Josef Kurath from the Department of Architecture Design and Civil Engineering at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), who collaborated with CPC Construction in developing these concrete panels. We discussed his perspectives on decarbonizing architecture, the inspiration behind the development of CPC panels, a comparison with traditional concrete, and the potential for scalability and accessibility in the future.
For the second consecutive year, Vienna is the world’s most liveable city according to The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 2023 Global Liveability Index. Topping the ranking for the fourth time in five years, Vienna has excelled in stability, culture and entertainment, and reliable infrastructure. Copenhagen in Denmark maintained its second position while Melbourne and Sydney came in third and fourth position, rising to the top 5 where they previously had a consistent presence among the leading positions, before the pandemic.
Under the titles of Optimism and Instability, this year’s global index score has returned to pre-Covid-19 days, highlighting that the world has fully recovered from the pandemic. Ranking living conditions in 173 cities based on stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, the survey suggests that nowadays, “life in cities is a bit better than at any time in the past 15 years”, although Stability scores dropped on average in 2023, due to worldwide clashes, political disruptions, social protests, inflation, and wars.
From ending up by accident in architectural studies, to eventually falling in love with the complexity of the field and the multitude of its layers, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge was amazed by the dual nature of architecture; its intellectual aspect, and physical outcome. Founder of Meyer-Grohbrügge in Berlin, the architect, and her studio seek to spatialize content, create relationships, and find solutions for living together.
With Toshiko Mori and Gabriela Carrillo, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge is part of a new documentary titled “Women in Architecture”, premiering on November 3rd. The film by Sky-Frame, in collaboration with ArchDaily, and directed by Boris Noir is a catalyst for debate on one of the most pressing topics in architecture.
Vienna in Austria has topped the rankings of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 2022 Global Liveability Index, gaining back its previous position from 2019 and 2018, mostly for its stability and good infrastructure, supported by good healthcare and plenty of opportunities for culture and entertainment. Western European and Canadian cities dominated the top positions with Copenhagen, Denmark in second place and Zurich, Switzerland, and Calgary, Canada in third place. Adding 33 new cities to the survey, one-third of which are in China, bringing the total up to 172 cities, the classification excluded this year the city of Kyiv, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Classified across 5 categories, stability, healthcare, education, culture and the environment, and infrastructure, the index was largely driven by the covid-19 pandemic. While covid-19 restrictions have eased in big parts of the world, liveability rankings started resembling “those seen before the pandemic”, however, the global average score remained below the pre-pandemic time. Although covid-19 has receded, a new threat to liveability emerged when Russia invaded Ukraine this year.
Dock A, the largest dock of the Zurich Airport, was the subject of international competition. BIG forms the winning team as design lead with HOK as aviation architect, 10:8 architects, engineer Buro Happold, timber experts Pirmin Jung, and aviation consultant NACO. Their design proposal centers on passenger experience and movement through the airport. A pared-back material palette reveals the loadbearing system of the building: V-shaped timber columns provide both a structural function and a distinctive identity true to its place and era, according to the jury.
Paul Clemence’s capture of Zürich’s MFO Park is an evocative photo series for Archi-photo, demonstrating the juxtaposition between the metal shell of the man-made and the wild nature of the park itself. Vines intertwining themselves upon the skeleton of the structure create an attractive destination, replenishing the brownfield land and replacing it with a renewed and captivating image.
Zürich’s MFO park is a vibrant parkscape in Switzerland, previously a site used for around a century by the Oerlikon Machine Works (MFO). Saturated with construction debris and pollution during a long period of industrialization, it has been transformed into a green paradise with the nearby wooded Oerliker Park brimming with ash trees. Offering a diverse area of open space it is available to the public for a wide range of activities and events, with the presence of ‘Park House’, a large open hall, and trellis enveloped with climbing vegetation.
Global Finance's ranking of the world's best cities to live in, during 2022 has just been released. Centered on 8 different parameters that calculate and compare the quality of life of people living in urban areas such as economy, culture, population, environment, etc., this year’s edition also took into consideration Covid-19 deaths per thousand for each country, to reflect the new reality we live in. With data from the Global City Power index, Johns Hopkins University, Statista, and Macrotrends, the list seeks to have a complete vision, putting together traditional metrics with new factors.
Claiming the first position is London, U.K, a city that although didn’t get high rankings in its Covid-19 metrics, still topped the list, mainly due to its scores in culture, accessibility, and population growth. Tokyo was selected for the second position, showing weakness in one parameter, population, as its numbers have been declining for the past 10 years. Shanghai followed next, in the third position, because of relatively low Covid-19 death figures and strong population growth. Singapore and Melbourne came in 4th and 5th positions.
