In 2018, Germany will be reunified for 28 years, the precise amount of time that the inner German border wall—which was active from between 1961 and 1989—stood between "East" and "West". With this in mind, the German State have announced "Unbuilding Walls" as the theme of the German Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Curated by GRAFT with Marianne Birthler, the exhibition will be designed to "respond to current debates on nations, protectionism, and division."
The Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum has selected Gehry Partners to replace Gluckman Tang as lead architects of their new museum planned for the town of North Adams, Massachusetts, reports the Berkshire Eagle.
Along with the change in designer comes a change in location to an 83,000-square-foot site on Christopher Columbus Drive (near contemporary art museum Mass MoCA) and a major increase in scope – while original plans called for a 45,000-square-foot museums, new figures project the building will total as much as 75,000 square feet.
The Guinness Book of World Records has crowned a new world champion sandcastle in a surprising location: the landlocked city of Duisburg, Germany.
Rising 55 feet (16.68 meters) into the sky, the sandscraper is formed from more than 3,860 tons of sand sculptured by a team of designers from 10 countries over a three week period. Stylized as a magnificent medieval city, the design also incorporates familiar structures from around the world, including an appropriately leaning scale version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The team of Foster + Partners and Branch Technology have been awarded first prize in the latest stage of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, a $2.5 million multi-phase competition designed to generate ideas and advance technology for the construction of sustainable housing solutions “for Earth and beyond.”
After printing three cylinder and three beams the first two levels of Phase 2, Stage 3 asked teams to design and print a 1.5-meter dome using indigenous Martian soil and recyclable materials, envisioning how future habitats could be constructed on the Red Planet. Teams were required to develop the 3-D printing technology itself as well as the structural design for each dome. The competition also dictated each structure be built within a 22-hour time frame, using the specific materials, geometric tolerances and autonomous performance that would be demanded by the Martian landscape.
McMurdo Station, the American Antarctic base, was never meant to be a permanent settlement when it was built in 1956, yet today it is home to 250 people full-time in addition to approximately 1,000 summer workers each year. Consisting now of over 100 buildings spread across 164 acres, the settlement acts as a logistical base for field science but is dysfunctional for the scientists and researchers who live and work there and inefficient in terms of meeting the demands of Antarctica’s harsh climate. OZ Architecture has recently unveiled a new master plan for McMurdo that aims to turn the station into a model of American leadership in science, engineering, sustainability, and architecture, condensing the current sprawl into a 300,000 square foot campus composed of 6 buildings.
Following an open competition, the Australian Institute of Architects have announced "repair" as the theme of the Australian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Baracco+Wright Architects, collaborating with artist Linda Tegg, will oversee the cultivation of "thousands of temperate grassland species" within the pavilion, alongside "large-scale architectural projections." According to the AIA, "visitors will enter a physical dialogue between architecture and endangered plant community, reminding us what is at stake when we occupy land."
Following an open competition, the Estonian Architecture Center have announced "Weak Monument" as the theme of the Estonian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa, and Tadeáš Říha will develop a project which views the "architectural environment as a layered and historically continuous system," focusing the exhibition on "projects from the recent and more distant past."
Undoubtedly, Virtual Reality has come to stay while offering very high contributions to Architecture and Design. The possibilities offered by allowing architects, collaborators, and customers to experiment within a virtual environment, is a design tool that allows better decision making.
While VR allows the viewer to experience what it is like to be inside an environment, the 360 rendering processes the idea mimicking it to real life experiences as much as possible, trying to match specifically what the eye sees.
No matter what software you prefer to render with, below you can find some common tips and concepts that you need to manage to get good results when creating three-dimensional panoramic images to be visualized on VR.
Constructed as part of Agrikultura—a triennial of public artworks and urban interventions in Malmö, Sweden—this installation, described by the designers a "maquette of a monument to the honeybee", is in fact home to an entire colony. It references—by design—the mysterious elements of 'bee orientation': verticality (gravity), geometry (the cell structure of the beehive), and the position of the sun relative to the hive. The project is, on the one hand, "a potential memorial for the bees" while, on the other, "a celebration of the sun on which all life depends."
Goodbye huddled masses, hello muddled cocktails.
This tongue-in-cheek tagline is one of a number quips featured on a satirical teaser site for what would surely be New York City’s most exclusive new development – a luxury community located within the city’s most famous symbol, the Statue of Liberty.
Created by New York comedians Connor Toole and Evan Krumholz, the trendily all-capitalized and unnecessarily punctuated “ONE|LIBERTY™” is a spot-on parody of the ever-growing number of ultra-luxury lifestyle developments popping up in the city – accurately lampooning the hyperbolic language and long amenity lists touted by developers and realtors.
Los Angeles’ beloved downtown icon Angel’s Flight has reopened for the first time in four years after undergoing extensive renovations to improve the safety and longevity of the attraction. Sometimes referred to as the “world’s shortest railroad,” the hillside structure is actually a funicular system – both cars share a single cable and are propelled forward in part with the potential energy afforded from the counterweight of the opposing car.
Danish practice 3XN’s ‘Playfully Logical’ proposal has been selected as the winner of a competition to design the new National Children’s Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, emphasizing the power of play as an integral part of medical treatment.
Working with Architema Architects, Niras, Rosan Bosch Studio and Kirstine Jensens Tegnestue, 3XN’s scheme for BørneRiget takes the form of two hands grasping together to support the various aspects of pediatric care. The hospital has been designed to allow children to stay close to their families while maintaining as much of a regular day-to-day routine as possible.
With more than five centuries of recorded history and many more years of pre-colonial traditions and customs, Brazil is listed in UNESCO's World Heritage List with 13 historical sites.
The website Viagem Turismo compiled a list with images and detailed information about each of the 13 sites. The list ranges from the Serra da Capivara National Park, "full of rocky caves covered with rock paintings" made more than 25 thousand years ago, to the modern capital of Brazil, Brasília, founded in 1960.
Zaha Hadid Architects has been selected as the winners of an international competition to masterplan the revitalization of the Old City Harbour in Tallinn, Estonia. Beating out an esteemed shortlist of 6 teams, including AZPML, KCAP Architects & Planners and Helsinki-based ALA Architects, ZHA’s proposal was lauded by the client for its “innovative and integrated approach to Tallinn’s maritime gateway.
The U.S. State Department has announced the individuals and institutions that will serve as curators and commissioners of the United States Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Selecting through an open competition and recommendations from the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions, the exhibition will be led by co-commissioners The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the University of Chicago and curators Niall Atkinson, Associate Professor of Architectural History at the University of Chicago; Ann Lui, Assistant Professor at SAIC and co-founder of Chicago-based architecture practice Future Firm; and Mimi Zeiger, a critic, editor, curator, and educator based in Los Angeles.
Under the theme of Dimensions of Citizenship, the exhibition will explore “the meaning of citizenship as a cluster of rights and responsibilities at the intersection of legal, political, economic, and societal affiliations.”
In December 2010, Manuel Peralta Lorca completed the work "Welcome Less Is More," a wooden reconstruction of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House that was installed inside the Patricia Ready Gallery in Santiago, Chile. This September, a new version of this work will be mounted in the hall of Santiago's Museum of Contemporary Art, under the name "Home Less is More."
In the following story, the artist tells us about the process of reinterpreting this icon of modern architecture in wood and how a team of carpenters—who agreed to immerse themselves in the philosophy of Mies—was fundamental to completing the challenge.
Last Saturday, after months of anticipation, the SESC 24 de Maio in downtown São Paulo was inaugurated, making it the newest unit of the franchise.
Designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in partnership with MMBB office, the project intervenes an old department store, transforming the interior spaces from the existing structure and creating a new central structure that supports a pool on the rooftop.
The week of Burning Man 2017 is halfway through, and glimpses of the event are starting to make their rounds through the social mediasphere. Under the theme of “Radical Ritual,” this year features as many impressive structures and sculptures as ever, including a central temple holding the wooden man built to commemorate the Golden Spike, the ceremonial final spike driven to join the rails of the United States’ first transcontinental railroad.
Check out our favorite structures from the event, below.
Developer Strategic Property Partners has announced plans for a new $3 billion 50-acre mixed-use neighborhood in Tampa, Florida. To be known as Water Street Tampa, the multi-phase project will create 9 million square feet of commercial, residential, educational, cultural and entertainment space on a site currently underused and occupied by highways and surface parking.
Demolition has officially commenced on East London housing development Robin Hood Gardens, bringing to an end any chance of a last-minute preservation effort for the Brutalist icon. Designed by British architects Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972, plans for the site’s clearing and redevelopment have been in the works for more than five years, before government indecision and a spirited protest campaign led by architects including Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Robert Venturi, and Toyo Ito put those plans in doubt.
LEGO has revealed the latest kit in their Architecture series, and it’s a bit meta: a 774-piece model of the nearly complete LEGO experience center in Billund, Denmark, designed by BIG to resemble a stack of LEGO blocks.
A collaboration between the British Library and Microsoft, titled Turning the Pages 2.0, made 570 pages of Leonardo da Vinci's' Codex Arundel available for free online. Now anyone can navigate the writings of one of the most inventive minds of the Renaissance. In the hundreds of digitized pages are ideas for airplanes, helicopters, parachutes, submarines and automobiles, centuries before they were developed and brought to the world.
During his lifetime, part of his ideas and reflections were recorded in his notebooks. Some of these manuscripts have been lost over the centuries, and those that remain have become rare objects accessed only by a select group of collectors and historians - until now.
Last time we checked in on the progress of the upcoming BIG-designed LEGO House experience center in Billund, Denmark, the structure had just topped out, with all of the major structural elements in place. Now, in drone footage released earlier this summer by LEGO, many of the building’s final finishes, surfaces, and colors can be seen as it prepares for its grand opening next month.
.gif)
Former architect Yannick Martin, who has previously confined architecture's most famous houses to a cube, is a graphic designer who explores line and geometric shapes to examine the language of the diagram. By fragmenting simple shapes, Martin seeks to offer new ways of looking at an icon so commonplace and ubiquitously used that, for most, the sheer potential and variety of its application can be overlooked.
