Pompidou Centre, Paris / Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. Image via incollect
London-based practice Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) have announced the elevation of five associates to partner level while Mike Davies CBE, who has worked alongside Lord Rogers for more than forty years, will be reducing his roles. Davies has been involved in some of the practice's most significant projects including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Lloyd's of London, the Millennium Dome, and Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport. As a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Davies is currently the project director for Grand Paris, the masterplan for Greater Paris 2025 which was commissioned by former President Nicolas Sarkozy. According to RSHP, Davies "will remain employed in a part-time role."
Collective-LOK’s design for a circular pavilion made up of giant mirrored hearts has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Times Square Valentine Heart installation. Their "Heart of Hearts" proposal features a faceted ring made up of nine mirrored, golden hearts that will “create an alternative pavilion that reflects and multiplies the pulsating activity of Times Square.” Spaces within each heart will form “kissing booths where couples will find their activities mirrored, allowing both privacy and publicity.”
COBE and Lundén Architecture, the Danish-Finnish collaboration that has previously worked together on Tampere's Transport Hub, has revealed a plan to revitalize the Töölönlahti bay area in central Helsinki. Completed for the Finnish creative marketing agency N2, the proposal is a vision of what the area could become after a century of broken promises to clean up the polluted and underutilized area of the city. On their website, N2 estimates that the project would require an investment of €120 million, and if taken up by the government could be completed in time for the 100th anniversary of Finland's independence in 2017.
PLP Architecture has received planning approval for its 62-story tower at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London. 22 Bishopsgate, which will take the place of the high-profile "Pinnacle" designed by KPF and abandoned as a result of the financial crisis, will be the City of London's tallest building at a height of 278 meters. As reported by The Architects' Journal, the design of the project has been led by PLP co-founder Karen Cook, who worked on the design of the Pinnacle before leaving KPF in 2009.
Among the firm's several hundred realized projects, however, many lesser known proposals were drafted but never constructed. Arguably a fundamental component of the OMA's practice, the unbuilt projects contain some of the firm's most outlandish and important ideas with incredible potential to influence architectural design worldwide. As a tribute to Koolhaas and OMA's continued pursuit of the unconventional, we've rounded up fifteen of OMA's most unusual unbuilt skyscrapers. Read on to find out which ones made the list.
In a 'long view' piece for The Calvert Journal, Owen Hatherley tackles one of the most pressing cultural questions facing many former Soviet countries: should the Ukrainian capital of Kiev (or Kyiv) erase its Soviet past or learn to live with history? For a city which saw a popular revolution against "a grotesquely wealthy elite" last year, Kiev is developing a flourishing independent cultural scene. In this article Hatherley, who has taken part in the city's 2015 art biennial, expertly narrates the city's Soviet, post-Soviet and contemporary "oligarch-funded" architecture to ask: "if Soviet Ukraine can’t be wished away, what should be conserved, and what should be rejected?"
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has selected the architectural programs at Mississippi State University, Philadelphia University and the University of Florida as the recipients of the 2015 NCARB Award for the Integration of Practice and Education. The Award helps the selected universities develop "innovative curricula that merge practice and education." This year over $99,000 was awarded to the three programs to develop their proposed initiatives.
“What makes the NCARB Award different from other awards is that it is focused on fostering collaboration between the academy and practice,” said NCARB President Dennis S. Ward, AIA, NCARB in a press release. “This year’s proposals all go further to give students, practitioners, and others within the profession meaningful interactions that will raise awareness for the architect’s role and address issues that are central to practice.”
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Earlier this year the Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning (GSAPP) at New York City's Columbia University took to Instagram to showcase a collection of their "award-winning" student portfolios across a week of posts. Nineteen stop-motion films highlight the highly individual nature of the architectural portfolio, demonstrating a wide range of graphic styles and methods of book-binding. From hardback-bound theses to gold foil embossing and 'box-in-box' constructions, you can get a taste of some of what the school considers its finest work from 2015 graduates, after the break.
Model for 'Infinite Motive'. Image Courtesy of Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Chilean art and architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s “Finite Format” exhibition is currently on display at one of the most important cultural sites in the Czech Republic: The House of Art of Ceske Budějovice. Composed of more than 480 paintings (Finite Format) and six ink drawings (Infinite Motive), the installation aims to demonstrate the firm’s “underlying method to understand not only the artistic qualities in a work of architecture but also the architectonic attributes of a work of art,” according to the architects.
In parallel, Pezo von Ellrichshausen also carried out a workshop with 14 architecture students from the Technical University of Liberec to conceptualize and construct a twelve-square-meter scale model for the "Infinite Motive" installation. Using the circle as the basic element, the architects reflect on how “architectonic intentions may be diluted by means of the repetition of a single figure with a diverse range of dimensions.”
United States Artists (USA) has selected 37 artists for their 2015 “USA Fellows” – artists who will receive an award of $50,000 to fund their creative practice and development. Among the 37 artists, chosen across nine disciplines, two of the awarded fellows were architects: Jonathan Muecke, a USA Knight Fellow, and Chat Travieso, a USA Young Arts Fellow.
New York-based d3 has announced the winners of its international Natural Systems 2015 competition. The annual competition asked architects, designers, engineers, and students to “explore the potential for ecologically-grounded and sustainable design influences in urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.”
Three top prizes were awarded, with six special mentions. The jury included architects, designers, and academics from Shigeru Ban Architects, Syracuse University, and Studio Nguyen, among others.
The International Association for Sports and Leisure Facilities (IAKS) has created an All-Time Award to celebrate their 50th anniversary. The Award highlights outstanding examples of sports and leisure facilities that have become both landmark and influential projects over the last few decades. See the eight winners after the break.
Dubai, home of the Burj Khalifa and a significant number of the 21st century's tallest buildings, is set to match its futuristic skyline with an equally futuristic emergency response service. At the recent Dubai Airshow, the city's Directorate of Civil Defence announced a deal with New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft to bring jetpacks to their firefighting arsenal. Intended to be used in a "first responder role," the jetpacks will give firefighters access to higher locations and be able to navigate the tight spaces between buildings that helicopters can't access.
MVRDV, working alongside The Urbanist Collective and LLJ Architects, has been selected in a competition to transform downtown Tainan in Taiwan with their design for new green corridor and urban lagoon connecting the city to its waterfront. Transforming the area of Tainan known as the T-axis, the design will see the city's Haian Road turned into a public park and connected to the city's canal by demolishing the existing China-Town Mall, a commercial structure built alongside the canal in 1983 and described by MVRDV as a "rotten tooth of downtown Tainan."
For this episode of Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, Sophie Grove and the team explore the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Singapore, take a considered look at post-war buildings across England, as well as hear from some longstanding manufacturers in East London who are "bucking the trend of constant change" that’s come to define their ever-developing neighbourhood.
OMA's first ever building for a religious institution will be constructed with a little help from one of the United States' greatest 20th century artists. In an auction at Sotheby's in New York yesterday, Cy Twombly's 1968 "Untitled (New York City)" - one of the artist's notable "Blackboard Paintings" - sold for $70.5 million, $30 million of which will be donated to LA's Wilshire Boulevard Temple by the painting's owner, Audrey Irmas, to fund the temple's OMA-designed extension.
As reported by the LA Times, the synagogue's new "Audrey Irmas Pavilion" has been designed to be "clearly in dialogue" with the 1929 Byzantine revival temple, and will be used in the celebration of weddings and bar mitzvahs, as well as for meetings, conferences, and gala events by other nonprofit groups. Though the design has not yet been unveiled, the pavilion is currently slated for a 2019 opening.
The David Adjaye-designed Aishti Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon is nearing completion. Located in central Beirut, the building replaces former warehouses, housing both an art gallery and retail space. This unique “juxtaposition of art and shopping” inspired Adjaye and Associates “to create a design for an entirely new typology that would integrate two, often conflicting, worlds,” write the architects in a press release.
Set in the depths of rural Hungary, Hello Wood has emerged from the landscape for its 2015 edition, entitled 'Project Village'. Since 2010, the Hungarian-led collective of architects, designers, students and artists have gathered from around the world to create temporary wooden installations. Now in its sixth year, Hello Wood was realized with the help of 150 volunteers from 30 countries, and co-curated by Johanna Muszbek, with the shared vision to build a series of community-driven pavilions. Together the teams created fifteen unique wooden pavilions, each centred on a different component of the architecture of a village.
Manifesta—a nomadic, European biennial of contemporary art which "responds to the new social, cultural and political reality that developed in the aftermath of the Cold War"—emerged in the 1990s. For the eleventh incarnation of the event, which will take place in Zurich during the summer of 2016, Studio Tom Emerson have developed designs for a floating island which "will constitute a new temporary landmark in the city." Located on Lake Zurich and hosting an open-air cinema and integrated swimming pool, the Pavillon of Reflections will act as the central node for the 100-day festival. Designed and realised by a team of thirty students from ETH Zurich, the pavilion aims to offer a space for dialogue and reflection on the specific artworks created for the biennial.
Since the advent of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, materials experts have been in constant pursuit of the world's strongest materials. From stone to bricks, concrete to steel, innovation in building material has become a crucial element of architectural progression. For decades, steel has been considered the industry leader in building strength with applications in structures of all types. In a recent online documentary, researchers delved into the possibilities for alternatives to the strongest building materials on the market and arrived at some surprising results.
Could spider silk replace steel cables? Could carbon nanotubes become a substitute for rebar? Find out after the break.
RFR and Foster + Partners have released new images of One Hundred East 53rd Street, a 63-story luxury residential tower in New York next to Mies van der Rohe's famed Seagram Building. The skyscraper, which was announced last year, will contain 94 residences, a swimming pool, wellness facility, spa, library and sitting rooms, and its trademark Foster minimalism is intended to "provide a counterpoint to the Seagram’s bronze edifice," according to the developers RFR.
Overall, 42 projects received 46 awards in 14 categories, including commercial, public, and interior architecture. Winners were selected by a jury from the Chapter Architecture Awards, held earlier this year.
Read on after the break for a list of the winners.
"A spectre," writes Kevin McKenna for The Guardian, "thought happily to have been exorcised from the heart of beautiful Edinburgh, is stalking the city’s old wynds and crevices once more." To put it more bluntly, the "formal recognition of [the Scottish capital] as one of the world’s most beautiful cities is under threat, amid a battle for the soul of its most historic quarter." As the UNESCO inspectorate moves in to determine whether the city's World Heritage Status should be renewed McKenna laments, through a series of case studies, the potentially bleak built future of one of Britain's most loved urban centres.
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