After creating the perfect sketchbook, Architools is back with a minimalist notebook made for designers and architects alike. The project is now raising funds on Kickstarter, and aims to bring a subtle elegance to the humble notebook. Named the Dérive, or “drift” in French, the notebook embodies qualities of wanderlust and sensory exploration. Featuring refined materials and design, it was made to inspire the next project or adventure.
Woods Bagot and Peddle Thorp have been announced as the winners of the international competition to create a new high-rise tower in central Auckland. Drawn from five finalists including Warren and Mahoney, Cox Architecture, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Elenberg Fraser, the winning design will stand 180m high. The building design is inspired by New Zealand’s natural landscape and the country’s unique geology and fauna.
New images have been published of Grimshaw and Arup-designed stations for the UK’s ”High Speed 2” railway system. Connecting London to the British Midlands, the mega-infrastructure project will be the UK’s second high-speed rail system, with HS1 already connecting London and the South East to the Channel Tunnel.
The Grimshaw and WSP-designed Curzon Street station in Birmingham will be the first brand new intercity station to be built in Britain since the 1800s, while Interchange Station, designed by Arup, will serve as a gateway station to the West Midlands and Birmingham Airport.
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has been confirmed as designers for an “Urban Living Room” masterplan in the Qianhai area of Shenzhen, China. Formed on already existing reclaimed land, the scheme will feature a 1.2-kilometer elevated sky garden.
The scheme is envisioned as a “heart and a new horizon against which people can orientate themselves” in an emerging urban center.
This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "How a DIY Floating Universiity in Berlin Could Be An Unorthodox Prototype for Design Education."
On the north side of Tempelhofer Feld, an airport-turned-park in southern Berlin, lays a large ditch. Surrounded by lots and bungalows and noticeable only to those in the know, this 19th century basin holds rainwater drained from the airport’s defunct runways before it is fed into Berlin’s canal network.
Shanghai-based JYOM Architecture and GBL Architects have released new renderings of 601 Beach Crescent, the 'Gateway Tower' counterpart to Bjarke Ingels Group's Vancouver House project. As the Daily Hive reports, developer Pinnacle International recently submitted its formal rezoning application to develop the vacant site on the north end of the Granville Street Bridge in downtown Vancouver. Conceptually, the tower was designed to replicate the motions of the dancing female form.
Did you know that 64 million European children spend more time at school than anywhere else other than their home? European children spend approximately 200 days each year at their primary schools. With this information, how do we go about designing healthier classrooms that create productive learning environments? This question is perhaps more important than ever, as this will be the first time since the 1970s that Europe and the UK will see a boom in the construction and renovation of schools. What a tremendous opportunity this is for both architects and educators to rethink what an educational facility should be and how the physical environment can be designed to have a positive impact on learning.
Bjarke Ingels Group has been selected to design the Skypark Business Center South as part of Luxembourg's new Airport City plan. Located just outside of Luxembourg City, the project is the first development within the masterplan, and is expected to start construction during 2019. The new airport district aims to become an economic hub comprised of four floors of shops, restaurants, fitness activities, and offices. The news of Skypark Business Center South comes two years after the presentation of the airport district’s master plan.
WXCA and Bellprat will design the Polish Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai, having overcome more than 30 other proposals. The winning scheme seeks to create an “open, tree-like modular structure” inspired by Poland’s rich wildlife.
The pavilion will feature an integrated exhibition with “kinetic flocks of birds floating over visitors’ heads,” referring to the many migratory birds which settle in Poland each year “inspiring legends, connecting minds, and creating the future.”
Iranian architect and concept designer Nasim Sehat has developed an alternative living module driven by adaptability for the gig economy. SLICE is described as a “sustainable, people centric, connected, self-contained, and flexible plug’n-play urban solution” targeted at future city dwellers.
SLICE consists of a layered module of functional plugins, combined to create basic spatial configurations. In tandem with the design of SLICE’s spatial profile, Shanghai-based Sehat has proposed a shared, on-demand digital service for module rental, maintenance, and payment.
How does the built environment--whether fictitious or entirely founded in reality--impact how we experience and process film? From lesser-known indies to blockbuster movies, the ways in which architecture and the built environment inform everything from scene and setting, to dialogue and character development has far-reaching effects on the audience’s cinematic experience. Below, a roundup of everything from recent releases to classic cinephile favorites uncovers the myriad ways in which film utilizes architecture as a means of achieving a more authentic and all-encompassing form of storytelling.
Andres Gallardo, the self-taught Spanish photographer, recently traveled to Paris to capture the city’s urban architecture, documenting the spirit of the buildings, the city’s rich architectural history, and international design influence.
Gallardo describes the city as “magical,” which he chooses to document in both monochrome and color photographs, incorporating overall perspectives and small structural details that often obscure the structures’ overall identity.
Culled from our annual documentaries posts, these films feature architecture and architects in more informative and intimate ways. With more and more film festivals dedicated to architecture itself, you can likely catch these on the big screen in a city near you!
British designer Paul Cocksedge's ‘impossible’ living watercolor design was selected as a finalist for the UK National Pavilion during Expo 2020 in Dubai. Every color in the pavilion comes from the flag of a nation exhibiting at the event, expressing unity, partnership and possibility. The overlapping shades reflect the theme of the Expo – Connecting Minds, Creating The Future. At the heart of the building, a sculptural centerpiece envelops visitors in color and light, giving the sense of an ‘impossible’ structure.
After a season packed with significant architecture news, Melbourne has announced the opening of the 2018 MPavilion designed by Carme Pinós. The pavilion is widely considered to be the southern hemisphere’s answer to the Serpentine Pavilion, and has featured designers such as Rem Koolhaas, Bijoy Jain, and Amanda Levete.
This year’s design, from Spanish architect Carme Pinós, takes its inspiration from origami, with wings opening out to welcome the city into the pavilion itself. The roof, made of two distinct halves, is perched upon three mounds incorporating public seating.
José Esparza Chong Cuy has been appointed as the new Executive Director and Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture. Following the departure of former director Eva Franch i Gilabert to London as the new Director of the Architectural Association, the extensive international search to fill her shoes began. An architect, curator, and writer, originally from Mexico, Esparza Chong Cuy was named and will assume the position starting November 1st.
Storefront, a non-profit organization based in New York City, engages in the advancement of design and architecture with interdisciplinary dialogue through exhibitions and projects that aim to transcend geographic and ideological boundaries. Charles Renfro, President of Storefront's Board of Directors, remarks, "We are thrilled to welcome José to the helm of Storefront, the very institution where he began his curatorial career over a decade ago."
From the beginning of time, human beings have gathered around the fire. The first settlements and huts included in their interior a small bonfire to cook and maintain the heat of its inhabitants. This tradition has continued to the present, and chimneys and fireplaces have developed into the most varied designs and forms, providing possibilities both inside and outside a home.
To give you ideas for materials, structures, and spatial configurations, we present 35 remarkable meeting places around the fire.
At first sight, when approaching CDMX from the sky, is overwhelming. A sea of buildings indicates an arrival to the fifth most populated capital in the world. The size of the city, makes it difficult to recognize its limits, so it is inevitable to use urban and suburban landmarks such as the Zócalo square (downtown), Tamayo Museum in Chapultepec Park (West), University City, the Frida Kahlo Museum (Coyoacán), and Ciudad Satélite (north exit), to orient yourself.
Located in a strategic geographical position within the traditional routes of design, the city benefits from the connections and close interactions with North America and Europe. Fortunately, these external tendencies are refined within the "local" filter; the vast history and tradition of indigenous Mexican cultures permeate foreign influences making them unique creations, with a marked interest in native materials and working techniques.
The history of Venice’s architecture, as seen today, is a semblance of styles centuries old. A destination rich in culture, many of Venice’s existing buildings, from homes alongside the thin interior canals to the grand domed churches of Palladio, have remained stagnant in their overall design and layout since the 16th century. Once a hub of Byzantine and European trade, the city now thrives on a steady stream of tourism and a foundational group of local residents.
The structures that make up the city’s compact matrix, once integral to its function as a commercial empire, have come to take on new functions through architectural intervention; notably, architects such as Carlo Scarpa, OMA, and Tadao Ando have had a large hand in this process.
The tale began with a simple idea - a toy that every child, regardless of age and ability, can play, dream, and learn with. But things turned out less than simple. Fights, lawsuits, and even a death all mark the road it took to make a now-ubiquitous toy a reality. The object in question? Lego.
It’s tales such as this one that Alexandra Lange explores in her new book, The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids. Some may scoff at the seemingly trivial subject matter. Surely children, with their boundless imaginations and appetite for play, can discover ways to find fun in anything.
The mastery of stone is one of the most impressive features of Portuguese architecture. From the precise cut in fittings to beautiful floor designs, Portuguese architecture carries in its womb an almost born talent to manipulate one of -- if not the oldest material used in the history of construction.
In celebration of this material, experimentadesign, a research project focused on design and architecture founded in Lisbon, developed Primeira Pedra, or First Stone. This multimedia platform explores the characteristics and qualities of Portuguese stone.
In the next chapter of his ongoing Urban Geometry project, self-taught Spanish photographer Andres Gallardo captures the elements of color, form, and materiality of post-war architecture in Berlin. This photo series, with installments featuring the modern marvels of Beijing, Seoul, Copenhagen, and Tallinn, among other cities, has become representative of Gallardo's personal growth from his humble start in his career as a professional photographer.
The unfinished Tripoli International Fair, designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the Lebanese capital, could become a UNESCO's World Heritage Site. Conceived in the 1960s at the request of the then President Fouad Chéhab, the fair remained a symbol of projected modernity for the country.
Hot on the heels of its lavish breakthrough Milan store, Starbucks has opened yet another striking and innovatively-designed coffee house. However, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma's design associates an entirely different mood with the company's coffee beverages.
Starbucks Taiwan the company’s first location in the Asia Pacific, consists of 29 white shipping containers, shifted and stacked in a grid-like formation. Within the containers’ 3,444 sqft (320 sqm) of space are a variety of intimate and comfortable spaces. A drive-thru is also incorporated into the design to maximize the store’s convenience to its customers.
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