Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Albers, Klee, and Breuer are all names that bring to mind the exceptional artistic talent of the Bauhaus school. But an exceptional yet lesser-known aspect of the Bauhaus is that the early 20th-century experimental German art school was one of the first educational institutions that would openly accept qualified women into the program.
Once entered into the program, women were not exactly treated as equals to their male peers, but in 1919 the acceptance of these passionate women was the beginning of a wave of modern female artisans who made significant, yet not as recognized contributions to the Bauhaus movement. An introduction to seven of these women can be found below:
The author or editor of over twenty books, Michael Sorkin was a renowned architect, urbanist, and writer. Principal and founder of Michael Sorkin Studios and president of the non-profit research group Terreform, a nonprofit urban research and advocacy center, Sorkin was especially famous for his writings for the Village Voice and the Nation. The Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York who passed away earlier this year due to complications resulting from COVID-19 wrote the forward for Miró Rivera’s MonographMiró Rivera Architects: Building a New Arcadia.
Landscape architecture practice Studio-MLA has been selected to design the new Community Park as part of the Fair Park Master Plan in Dallas, Texas. Replacing over one thousand parking spaces, the project will feature an 11-acre park with free programming for children, adults, and seniors. The team was chosen by Fair Park First, Spectra, and Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, and the new park will be the first project to come out of the Master Plan Update.
The shortlist for the design of a 111-acres observatory urban park covering the Calan Hill in Santiago, Chile, has been officially released by a jury of experts.
Organized by the Municipality of Las Condes in collaboration with the University of Chile and the Cerros Isla Foundation, the competition seeks to choose the best architecture and landscape proposal for the design of a new urban natural park in Santiago: the Cerro Calan Observatory Urban Park (Parque Observatorio Cerro Calán)
In order to create vibrant public spaces, people need to have a constant presence in these locations, whether they are on their own or in groups. In fact, they need to linger in these places and establish social interactions. To do so, one major element has to be incorporated into the urban setting: the bench.
This seating feature, simple or high tech, insures firstly the comfort of the passersby and animates the area consequently, through the addition of the missing human aspect. Sometimes, this is all it takes to revive a space that became a dull passage. The most basic urban design component can take many forms and can be created from different materials, always generating a statement and serving its purpose.
Courtesy of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced that Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) has won the competition to design its expansion in downtown Cleveland. Designed to help preserve rock and roll history, the extension includes internal and external gathering spaces for the community to learn and celebrate together. Serving as a connector to the Great Lakes Science Center, the expansion will bring more space for visitors, concerts and community events.
Argentine environmental artist Tomás Saraceno has recently unveiled his latest venture at Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. On view and remaining until February 14, 2021, the installation entitled Moving Atmospheres, is a partially mirrored sphere suspended midair in the museum’s atrium, made from ETFE.
Design collective Mutual Atelier has won the competition to create a new Central Square in Rahovec, Kosovo. One of numerous proposals that explored new solutions to the square, the design was selected for its elegant formal solution and careful consideration of Rahevec’s city center. The scheme's circular form was made to provide a memorable identity for Rohevec’s city center and encourage public life to thrive.
ELEMENTAL presents a sneak peek of its contribution to "How will we live together?" at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021. Recently, violence has increased in the historical Mapuche-Chilean conflict, that is why the architectural office proposed to build places that recover the old tradition of parleys, spaces to meet in order to settle differences and discuss terms for an armistice.
Architects, not Architecture is turning five and is celebrating it with a Virtual World Tour. With its new event series, „AnA“ brings the architectural community a bit closer together by taking participants on a tour around the globe to “visit” selected cities and virtually meet some of their most relevant architects.
Vincent Callebaut Architectures has created “The Green Line”, an inhabited garden footbridge prototype that “generates its own energy from renewable sources, recycles its own waste and wastewater, and optimizes its needs thanks to Information and Communication Technologies”. Inspired by a fish skeleton, the proposal links the Bercy Village to the Masséna district in Paris, restoring urban connections and connecting the 12th and 13th arrondissements.
New York Wheel, Staten Island. Image Courtesy of Perkins Eastman
The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has released a Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking plans to build 100 percent affordable housing in Stapleton on the North Shore of Staten Island. The City-owned site provides over 100,000 square feet of land for affordable housing, community amenities and other improvements as part of the island's mixed-use development.
The board of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIMA) has announced that the dormitories, built by Louis Kahn and part of the overall campus design, will be demolished and replaced. In fact, the administration plans to “bring down at least 14 of 18 dorms which were built between 1968 and 1978" for showing "problems of leakages from the roof, dampness in walls, leakages in toilet walls, slabs, etc.”, according to the Indian Express.
St. Petersburg-based Rhizome has won the competition to reimagine the Dostoevsky drama theater in Veliky Novgorod, Russia. The renovation design aims to enhance the theater's iconic features and make room for a range of new cultural functions and programming. The idea is to transform the theater into a cultural cluster for locals and the tourists alike while highlighting the value of late 20th century modernist architecture.
An autographed, 24k gold leaf sketch of the Abrahamic Family House by David Adjaye. Image Courtesy of ARCH
Architecture for Change (ARCH), a newly launched nonprofit initiative dedicated to addressing systemic racism in the architecture and design industry, is kicking off with an online auction featuring donated works—sketches, models, plans, photographic prints, and more—from a host of notable architects including Sir David Adjaye, Daniel Libeskind, Michel Rojkind, David Rockwell, Jennifer Bonner, Trey Trahan, and others.
French architect Marc Leschelier created Black Mortar as one of 10 artists participating in the 7th Artishok Biennial in Tallinn. Presented at the EKKM, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Estonia, the project is part of the COPY theme where each artwork premiered at a specifically-chosen location in Tallinn. Curated by Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa, the biennial included a range of work in addition to the indoor pavilion that explored imitation, simulation and copying.
Courtesy of Nordic - Office of Architecture, Grimshaw, Haptic Architects, with the support of STUP Consultants.
Zurich Airport International, the developer of the Delhi Noida International Airport (DNIA), has selected a consortium consisting of the Nordic Office of Architecture, Grimshaw, Haptic, and STUP to design the passenger terminal. Imagining “India’s greenest airport”, the winning team took the commission after a three-phase, design competition between June and August 2020. Other shortlisted teams include Gensler / Arup and SOM / Mott McDonalds.
Interdisciplinary design practice Sasaki has unveiled new details of the 660-acre Greenwood Community Park and Baton Rouge Zoo Master Plan. The Parks and Recreation Commission of East Baton Rouge Parish (BREC) approved the first phase of the plan to move into design and implementation, and since then the team reached out to over 4,000 Baton Rougians over the course of nine months. The masterplan and park proposal aims to be reflective of the community’s needs as they imagine a new future together.
Archi-Tectonics has designed the master plan for the HangzhouAsian Games Park for the 2022 Asian Games, as well as two arenas. Nearing completion, the tennis table and field hockey stadiums have topped out bringing the 116-acre complex into its final phases. Once the Games end, the new interventions will adapt to new uses, “becoming a signature public recreation complex for the city”.
The Initiatives for Development of Armenia (IDeA) Foundation has announced the winners of the Friendship Park competition for Gyumri, Armenia. Based on results of the second round, the jury selected 19 finalists in three categories. Located in the northern part of the city, the renovated park aims to become the first modern green area for locals and tourists alike through a series of design interventions.
After the Wadden Sea Center in Denmark and the Trilateral Wadden Sea World Heritage Partnership Center in Germany, the Wadden Sea World Heritage Center marks Dorte Mandrup’s third project in this unique environment. Created as a spiraling movement upwards and around, rising from the harbor, the Wadden Sea World Heritage Center is a “working field station that wants to engage visitors and aims at making them active participants”.
ZJA Architects has designed a project for an underwater museum around a ship previously beached in the English town of Hastings. The proposal would see the shipwreck preserved and moved to the city of Amsterdam, its namesake, within a fully enclosed dock with transparent windows. The proposal would allow researchers to investigate the wreck, and at the same time, the public could experience the ship and treasures within.
Miralles Tagliabue EMBT studio, led by Benedetta Tagliabue, has won an international competition to transform Century Square into a new green landmark in Shanghai, China. The first prize proposal, won against David Chipperfield Architects, offers to renovate the plaza located in one of the busiest commercial areas in the world, “re-naturalizing” the city center and introducing green spaces to improve the urban microclimate.
Architects and urban designers CHYBIK + KRISTOF have announced the ground-breaking of their redesign of Brno’s Zvonařka Central Bus Terminal in the Czech Republic. Self-initiated by the architects in 2011, the project involved preserving the existing Brutalist heritage structure while addressing the need to rethink the terminal for contemporary needs. The project reimagines an iconic landmark and its role within the city.