One of the United States’ most recognizable skyscrapers, the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), is set to receive a $500 million renovation designed by the Chicago office of Gensler. Announced by Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel with real estate holders Blackstone and Equity Office, the project will transform and reinvigorate the 43-year-old building, which held the title of world’s tallest building for nearly a quarter century.
The Architectural Review (AR) has announced the shortlist of 9 female architects in the running for its 2016 Woman Architect of the Year and the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture awards. This year’s candidates come from a wide range of backgrounds, operating in UK, Mexico, France, the USA and Canada, and have been lauded by the AR for their “projects demonstrating exceptional design and awareness of geographical and political contexts.”
Yesterday evening, in a ceremony at the National Building Museum in Washington DC, Blank Space announced the winners of their annual Fairy Tales competition. Representing the best the architectural imagination has to offer were 4 winners and 10 honorable mentions, selected by a jury of high-profile judges including Dan Wood, Michel Rojkind, Marion Weiss, and Stefano Boeri, among many more.
“The winning entries in this year’s competition include oblique references to current events, mundane daily activities and human emotions that we all easily relate to—they make visible how we shape space, and in turn, how space shapes us,” said Executive Director of the National Building Museum and jury member Chase W Rynd. “The images and narratives are so wildly outlandish, and yet, so grounded that it seems like we could mistakenly stumble into any of them.”
The winning entry this year went to Mykhailo Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian architect whose sci-fi landscapes and painterly presentation provide the backdrop for a surprisingly relatable tale. Read on to find out more about this Fairy Tale, as well as the remaining 3 winners and 10 honorable mentions.
The first 3D printed pedestrian bridge in the world opened to the public on December 14 in Madrid. Led by the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in a process that took a year and a half from its conception, the structure crosses a stream in Castilla-La Mancha Park in Alcobendas, Madrid.
Although similar initiatives have already been announced in the Netherlands, this is the first to have finished construction. The structure is printed in micro-reinforced concrete, and measures 12 meters in length and 1.75 meters wide.
One of architecture’s greatest tales – the commission of Mies van der Rohe’s seminal Farnsworth House – is set to receive the Hollywood treatment. As reported by Showbiz 411’s Roger Friedman, the story of the home’s construction will be taken on by actors Jeff Bridges (as the architect) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (as Dr. Edith Farnsworth), who last teamed up for 2009’s acclaimed Crazy Heart.
AART Architects has won a competition to design a significant new residential and commercial complex in the heart of Aarhus Ø, the newly developed port district of Aarhus, Denmark. The winning proposal, dubbed the Nicolinehus, focuses on “injecting life and authenticity into the new port district and [paving] the way for the unique opportunities the setting provides.” Its design draws inspiration from the old residential blocks of the city center, rethinking the courtyard block typology into a “hybrid of classic residential block and terraced landscape.”
An eclectic stacked skyscraper may become downtown Los Angeles’ newest landmark. Designed by Gensler, the 52-story tower at 1600 South Figueroa would add to Central LA’s current development boom, contributing a mix of housing, retail, offices and a hotel to the area located near the Staples Center and LA Live Entertainment district.
A little over two years since a fire devastated parts of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, which was deemed to have been caused by fumes from a can of spray foam entering a projector fan, appointed architects Page\Park are making headway in their restoration of the building's iconic library. As part of the project, and alongside Edinburgh-based joinery firm Laurence McIntosh, the practice will create a full-scale prototype of one of the library bays in order to "test the materials and techniques used to construct the original library."
The results of a competition to propose an openable roof over the Arena di Verona, Italy have been announced. Three winners were chosen out of eighty-seven proposals to cover the famous amphitheater, a defining symbol of the city of Verona. The competition was announced in March 2016 in order to protect the Roman monument from the elements and to ensure that it continues to provide quality entertainment to spectators two thousand years after its construction.
Preliminary Research Office has recently been selected to design a pedestrian bridge in Shenzhen, connecting the two tower buildings, each 210 meters (689 feet) high, which will serve as their client’s future headquarters.
The bridge’s formal composition is the result of two intersecting conic masses, positioned about their common axis and directed towards the towers’ core. Perpendicular cones are split by these larger cones at two points on the bridge’s axis, extending to form observation platforms for flying and viewing drones, while also serving as meeting spaces.
Design Forum International has unveiled Dakshineswar Sky Walk, a 380-meter long pedestrian intervention designed to improve traffic and movement leading to the Dakshineswar Kali temple in Kolkata, India.
Located on the banks of the Ganges River at the northern tip of the city, the Dakshineswar Kali temple is one “of the most revered places of worship in Hinduism, the seat of divine female power, Shakti,” and draws in a large number of devotees year-round. Because of its popularity, the roads leading to the site have become congested due to increased vehicle traffic, foot traffic, and the appearance of small shops and kiosks.
Taking these existing conditions into account, Dakshineswar Sky Walk aims to become a dynamic solution to the site’s problems. At 10.5 meters wide, the skywalk will connect a nearby traffic rotary with the gates of the temple compound, with 12 escalators, four elevators, and eight staircases to allow users to embark and disembark.
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Amongst the rapid materializing of telecoms, media and tech companies within the Blackfriar’s Southbank region, PLP Architecture has been chosen for the design of a new office building with the challenge of successfully integrating into the ever-changing local fabric.
“Our proposal speculates on the nature of the contemporary office tower,” explained the firm. “What is the architectural expression of today’s high-density workplace? How does the building acquire an identity specific to its media/tech occupiers and how is that identity conveyed to the city?”
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At Autodesk's 2016 conference in Las Vegas, a team from Autodesk's BUILD Space led by principal research engineer Andrew Payne collaborated with manufacturer Quarra Stone, engineers Simpson Gumpertz and Heger, and University of Michigan assistant professor Sean Ahlquist to unveil its new Generative Design Pavilion. The project is an exploration of materiality, with stalagmite stone forms that rise up from geometric floor panels to meet fabric that stretches down from a canopy above. The junction of textile and stone aims to emphasize the distinct behaviors of the two materials.
You've seen the floor plans of famous TV homes, but this fun new endeavor from Drawbotics is something a little different. With detailed 3D models of offices from Parks and Recreation, Suits, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Mad Men, The IT Crowd, Silicon Valley, and, yes, The Office, the marketing agency provides a new level of familiarity with the sets of these cult workplace TV shows. Take a break from your own office and check out each model after the break.
The team at TwoEyes Tech made up of HunJoo Song, SeonAh Kim, and Vivek Soni has launched a kickstarter campaign for its TwoEyes VR 360 camera, which is the first binocular 360-degree VR, 4K camera that mirrors human eye sight.
Using two pairs of 180-degree lenses that are placed 65 millimeters apart—the average distance between a person’s eyes—the camera captures 360-degree footage, “just like your natural eyes would view the world.” This footage can be uploaded to 360-degree-compatible social media platforms like YouTube 360, Facebook 360, and Twitter 360, or enjoyed through virtual reality binoculars or 3D television.
In honour of its 10th anniversary, the Curry Stone Design Prize will recognize a large group of the world’s most socially conscious and active design practices, in what the Foundation has coined as the Social Design Circle.
Over the course of the year, 100 firms will be added to the Circle for their sustainable, socially inclusive and impactful design work, under twelve specific themes. Each month, select firms’ work will be highlighted individually on the Prize’s website, while also featuring on the Curry Stone Foundation’s new podcast, Social Design Insights.
The following seven practices were selected for the month of February, in response to the theme “Is The Right to Housing Real?”:
Furniture and design retailer XTRA's new flagship store in Singapore's Marina Square includes a Herman Miller "Shop-in-Shop" that draws inspiration from the furniture it showcases. Encircling the space is a 20-meter arched structure that, from a distance, gives the appearance of tufted fabric pulled taught over a frame. But in fact, this structure is built from a plywood "skin" that designer Pan Yicheng of PRODUCE Workshop has dubbed "fabricwood."
Dutch firm de Architekten Cie, in collaboration with Felixx Landscape Architects and Planners, has won an international competition to transform the historic Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The winning masterplan, chosen by the City Administration of Chelyabinsk from five proposals, seeks to activate the city’s existing grid structure and to use it as a vehicle for spatial transformation.
Construction is now underway on Columbia University’s new University Forum and Academic Conference Center, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Dattner Architects. Located at the school’s new Manhattanville campus at the corner of West 125th Street and Broadway, the 55,980 square foot building will serve as a new home for academic conferences and a meeting place where scholars from many fields can gather to share ideas.
In a recent episiode of Section D, Monocle 24 visit a new exhibition at London's Serpentine Galleries presenting the paintings of Zaha Hadid. The show, first conceived with Hadid herself, "reveals her as an artist with drawing at the very heart of her work." According to the gallery, it "includes the architect’s calligraphic drawings and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches that reveal her complex thoughts about architectural forms and their relationships." This episode takes the listener on a tour of the display with commentary from the exhibition's curator.
The District of Columbia Public Library authority has unveiled a fly-through video tour of the final design for the renovation and intervention of its main downtown branch, the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library. According to the architects, Mecanoo and D.C.-based Martinez+Johnson Architecture, it shows "a modern library that reflects a focus on people, while celebrating the exchange of knowledge, ideas and culture." Slated for reopening in 2020, the designs will add 9,300 square feet of additional space for the public, including a rooftop event space and a landscaped terrace.
A giant, smooth coral? A cloud-like barnacle? A woman's floral swimming cap?”
Such phrases are how art and architecture studio Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY attempts to describe it’s latest curvilinear project, Under Magnitude.
Suspended within Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center, the installation is a two-storey structure, formed from a network of branches that are synthesized by a single, smooth white surface. The form expresses the studio’s aim to “unite surface, structure, and space in order to create a new kind of experience.”
The Toronto Winter Stations design competition has selected the five professional and three student teams that will add sculptures to the Toronto beachfront this winter for the third edition of the annual event. Under the theme of “Catalyst,” the jury sought installations that “open up the waterfront landscape and reinvent the space for visitors,” while considering how materials may be repurposed or reused for future iterations.
Snøhetta has been selected as the winners of an invited competition for the design of a new hotel to be located on the Hakaniemi waterfront in Helsinki, Finland. Aimed at becoming a “new beacon of Helsinki,” Hilbert’s Hotel will provide new public space for the city while increasing accommodation for visitors.
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.jpg?1486048343 "Prototype of the Fabricwood system. Image Courtesy of PRODUCE Workshop")
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.jpg?1486133367 "Inside the lobby. Image © Mecanoo")
