The typical skyscraper is a nondescript tower constructed of a steel frame and glass curtain wall. Architects from the firm Fundamental are challenging this convention with “New York Tomorrow,” a proposal that earned them a runner-up place in Metropolis Magazine’s Living Cities Competition. This progressive design weds revolutionary structural technology with a unique programmatic layout to draw people from all walks of life to the city of New York.
Harry Gugger Studio and 6a Architects are among six practices shortlisted in a competition to design a new art gallery at Goldsmiths University in London. Selected from 80 submissions, the final teams, which also include Assemble, Dow Jones Architects, HAT Projects and Jamie Fobert Architects, will now have six weeks to submit designs. Once complete, the 400 square meter gallery will be a "significant showcase for contemporary art" that serves a combination of curated exhibitions, residencies and research projects. It will be built behind the Laurie Grove Baths, a Grade II listed 19th-century municipal bath that is currently used as fine art studios.
Vincent Callebaut Architectures have received honorary mention for their “Wooden Orchids” proposal in the International Union of Architects’ (UIA) Mount Lu Estate of World Architecture Competition. Based in Ruichang, China, the competition tasked participants with designing several cultural and commercial complexes near one of the world’s largest flower theme parks. Wooden Orchids consolidates these functions in a green shopping hub that speaks to the area’s demographic and climatic influences.
We’ve all traveled along an interstate overpass. In most cases they are constructed of bleak concrete, tattooed in graffiti, and built with the sole purpose of getting you across lanes of heavy traffic as quickly as possible. They are a bridge at the bare minimum, but what if they provide something more for the communities they connect?
In a recent ideas competition, AIA Portland called for creative proposals that would best bridge local neighborhoods divided by Interstate 405. The winning entry, “Five Bridges” by chadbourne + doss, posits that the best way to do this is with inhabitable overpasses.
The Mapo Oil Depot is a valuable industrial legacy of Seoul but has been forgotten for quite some time since its original purpose was terminated. In an era of economic growth in Korea, a fresh approach is needed regarding this industrial legacy, which, ironically can survive in having been forgotten.
Sokolniki Park of Culture and Rest and the ArchPolis Centre for Territorial Initiatives, with support from the City of Moscow Department of Culture and the City of Moscow Agency for Parks and Recreation (Mosgorpark), announce a competition to generate a conceptual framework for the development of Sokolniki Park.
The Dedalo Minosse International Prize for commissioning a building, which takes place in Vicenza, the city of Palladio, is promoted by ALA-Assoarchitetti, the association for professional architects, in collaboration with the Regione del Veneto.
The Science Museum in London has announced plans to expand with three new galleries, launching three competitions to find designers. Two of the new galleries will house new permanent exhibitions about medicine and mathematics, while the third will host an interactive gallery. The three extensions combined will more than double the museum's current size.
The museum hopes to complete the mathematics and interactive galleries in 2016, with the larger medicine wing scheduled for a 2018 completion date.
Read on after the break for more on the competitions
Roma-based Nemesi & Partners has designed a 13,000 square meter “urban forest” that will serve as the Italian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Enveloped within an intricate, branch-like skin, the six-story lattice structure will be made from 900 panels of “i.active BIODYNAMIC” cement that will “capture” air pollutants and convert them into inert salts.
The Design Trust for Public Space announces The Energetic City: Connectivity in the Public Realm, a new request for project proposals to redefine public space.
Project Baltia magazine and Yarky Hostel & Space have just announced the Open International Competition for the Design of Summer Residential Unit. Five winning projects will be implemented on the territory of the Hostel by August 2, 2014. The units should enable temporary accommodation for one or two persons. Functions of these units are similar to those of a hotel room.
J. Mayer H. has won an invited competition to design “Volt Berlin,” a new “shopping and urban experience” center near Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. The winning scheme offers a variety of experiential offerings, including multi-brand shopping, an indoor skydiving and event space, and a 7,500 square meter hotel, all within a single cubed complex whose organization is based off an uneven grid.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS) has been awarded first prize in a competition to design a new facility hub and two laboratory buildings at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Biological Sciences. The commission, FCBS’ first in Scotland, will also include the modernization of an existing 10-story laboratory tower which was built in the 1960s at the University’s Kings Building Campus.
Six teams have been invited to form interdisciplinary teams in Washington D.C.’s 11th Street Bridge Park competition. Envisioned as a “21st century play space,” the project intends to unify two disconnected parts of the city with a single, multi-use parkscape that will span the width of the Anacostia River. If approved, the Bridge Park will host array of programs, from an education center and performance space, to a cafe and water sport activity areas. Review the complete list of shortlisted teams, after the break...
Five young design graduates based in Britain have recently won a competition to design an artist’s residency in the south-western region of the United Kingdom. Titled "The Observatories," these residences are split into two separate volumes: a study and a workshop. Artists will be able to live in the private back section of the study, which has a fold-out bed and necessary amenities. The workshop will be more open, allowing artists to teach and engage with the public. Both volumes are capable of rotating 360 degrees, giving residents a fresh frame of view, and facilitating interaction between these residents and passerby.
In response to New York City’s rapidly expanding population, NBRS + Partners has proposed a 40 story tall skyscraper that could help the city embrace its rapidly shifting demographics and size. Entitled “VIVO on High Line,” the adaptable steel-frame tower is essentially the vertical extension of the city’s beloved High Line park.
“The podium screen engulfs the High Line folding it in and extending the lifeblood into the building base, like capillary action drawing it vertically,” described the team.
The winning design for the Austrian pavilion of the 2015 Milan Expo has been announced. Following the Expo’s theme of “Energy for Life,” team.breathe.austria's winning proposal focuses on social change for environmental protection. The enclosed, rectangular pavilion will be planted with an abundance of native Austrian vegetation. Titled “breathe,” the project will produce enough oxygen to sustain 18,000 people by the hour and advocates for a healthier bond between the urban and natural environment.
Danish firm C.F. Møller has won first place in a competition to design an extension and renovation of Vendsyssel Hospital in Hjørring, Denmark. This winning proposal will add 14,000 square meters to the existing structure, incorporating a new treatment center, a ward for mothers and children, and a rooftop children’s playground. The new facilities are arranged around large courtyards, and make use of large windows to display the path of travel through the hospital. This helps make navigating through the large building as easy as possible.
Non-profit organization DawnTown has chosen Design with Company as the winner of its second official design-build competition. The Chicago-based practice’s winning entry, Pavilion MMM (Miami Many-a-chair Monument), will tell the multicultural story of Miami through metaphor by constructing a temporary monument of recycled chairs collected from local yard sales on Miami’s Cultural Plaza.
The results of the 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space have been announced. The prize organized by the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) rewards both the designers and the facilitators (such as councils or community groups) that have contributed to the best urban interventions of the year. The award is given for ingenuity and social impact, regardless of the scale of intervention, meaning that small, relatively unknown practices can rub shoulders with some of the best-known practices in Europe.
See the 2 Joint Winners and 4 Special Mentions after the break
Danish architecture firm ADEPT has won first place in a competition to add three new buildings to the Danish Armed Forces Complex in Aalborg, Denmark. In keeping with the Armed Forces’ Green Establishments initiative, a project that encourages the lowering of energy use and CO2 emissions, the new barracks will be a visible model of sustainability.
The Hamedanian, a proposal by CAAT Studio in collaboration with TTBP, seeks to design a large scale commercial complex in the centre of one of the oldest streets in the Iranian city of Isfahan. If built, the mixed use development, half which is parking facilities, would feature commercial and office space.
Major natural disasters caused by climate change are becoming an unfortunate certainty worldwide. Prevention of these events is something that no single architect can accomplish, but preparation for them can be. To that end, Open Online Academy (OOAc) has challenged architects worldwide to design disaster-resistant architecture with their online course "Designing Resilient Schools." Architecture firm MAT-TER has responded to this challenge with a new design for Guiuan National High School in the Philippines, an area hit especially hard by last year’s Typhoon Haiyan. The design is a singular, compact structure designed to better withstand the forces of major storms, doubling as both a school and a community emergency shelter.
The winners of the international competition to design Berlin's new Natural Science Museum have been announced. The brief, which called for a large scale iconic building in the heart of the German capital, offered the opportunity for architects and students to design in a city founded in the 13th century.
Understanding that natural science museums are often simply seen as places for public spectacle, the organization behind the competition wanted to ensure that the "importance of the museum's specimen collections for documenting historical and present-day patterns of biological diversity cannot be overstated."
See the winning entry, along with the runners up, after the break.
