Images have been released of Melbourne's second annual MPavilion. Designed by British architect Amanda Levete of AL_A, the temporary structure will use the latest technology in nautical engineering to stimulate a forest-like canopy within the city’s Queen Victoria Gardens. A series of three- and five-meter wide petals made from ultra-thin translucent composite and carbon fiber will "sway" on top slender columns, mimicking the tree line to the site's east.
Tokyu Corporation has unveiled a new skyscraper planned will rise adjacent to Tokyo's Shibuya Station. A collaborative design by Japanese firms Kengo Kuma, SANAA and Nikken, the 230-meter mixed use tower will feature an unprecedented, 3,000-square-meter public sky deck that promises "views of Mt. Fuji" (on a clear day).
The Shibuya tower is planned to open in 2019, a year before the Tokyo Olympics.
Seven years after waking up without sight, San Francisco-based architect Chris Downey is helping to revolutionize the built environment with interactive technologies optimized for the blind. One of the world's leading blind architects, Downey intrinsically understands the issues facing blind and visually impaired people worldwide. As a consultant to a variety of organizations serving to advance universal access, Downey has played an integral role in the development and integration of new, non-invasive technologies designed to assist the blind.
In a recent article in Dwell, Downey illustrates the various technologies currently being tested and implemented in San Francisco - a city notorious for its topographical challenges to differently abled residents. See four takeaways from Dwell's interview with Downey on how technology can help bridge the gap between architecture and universal access after the break.
Designed by Odile Decq and Benoit Cornette, the BPO Building in Montgermont, France is now being threatened by a demolition permit. Inaugurated in 1990 and having won no less than 12 awards in its lifetime - including a Golden Lion at the 1996 Venice Biennale - the building has been widely lauded for its technical innovations, including a double-glazed suspended façade and panoramic elevators. It has appeared as the focus of theses internationally, and is featured at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine and Palais de Chaillot, illustrating its pivotal role in architectural growth. It was one of the first buildings in the 90s to demonstrate an acute response to the quality of workplaces, and stands as an example of conscious, thoughtful design.
In the latest edition of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," the team tackle the illegal city and look at how our cities are dealing with those who are bending the rules. From Portugal to Albania to Brazil, Andrew Tuck and his correspondents explore how crime and illegality have become ubiquitous in our urban environment, from informal settlements and illegal housing, street art and rough sleeping, to the more sinister impact of inner-city organised crime.
The St. Petersburg City Council has approved Rogers Partners, Ken Smith and ASD's "Pier Park" redesign, allocating funds towards demolition of the current pier and pre-construction work. The design, selected through a city-sponsored competition, will replace "an aging icon" - a 1970s inverted pyramid structure that occupies the pier's head - and focus on integrating flexible, community-oriented program throughout the site and surrounding area.
“Each of the pier’s past incarnations had its own set of programs and uses, some more ambitious than others,” commented John Curran, studio leader at ASD and lead project manager for the new pier. “The ones that succeeded appealed to both visitors and residents, and were active day and night, throughout the year. This flexibility was essential to our approach to the new design.”
As a result of a public competition, the Chilean Regional Government has commissioned Ennead Architects to collaborate with Chilean architects Cristian Sanhueza and Cristian Ostertag on the design of the Cape Horn Sub-Antarctic Center. Planned for a site within the UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in Puerto Williams, a town on Navarino Island in the Chilean Sub-Antarctic Province, the center will provide a home for the Biocultural Research and Conservation Program led by Dr. Ricardo Rozzi, Professor at the University of North Texas, the Universidad de Magallanes and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity.
The world of architecture is small. So small in fact, that Rem Koolhaas has been credited with the creation of over forty practices worldwide, led by the likes of Zaha Hadid and Bjarke Ingels. Dubbed “Baby Rems” by Metropolis Magazine, this Koolhaas effect is hardly an isolated pattern, with manifestations far beyond the walls of OMA. The phenomenon has dominated the world of architecture, assisted by the prevalence and increasing necessity of internships for burgeoning architects.
In a recent article for Curbed, Patrick Sisson dug into the storied history of internships to uncover some unexpected connections between the world's most prolific architects. With the help of Sisson's list, we've compiled a record of the humble beginnings of the household names of architecture. Where did Frank Gehry get his start? Find out after the break.
Article 25, the charity which designs, builds, and manages projects to provide buildings for some of the world’s most vulnerable communities, have announced that late last month "the Managing Director [...] was made aware by its bank of irregular account activity." They have stated that a full investigation was immediately launched and the trustees have since "uncovered what appears to be a systematic falsification of financial statements that have hidden multiple unapproved payments, which are believed to be in excess of £200,000" (€280,000 or $310,000 USD). They have announced that William Golding, the office manager and book keeper, "was absent on Monday June 29 and has been uncontactable since then."
Find out how you can help after the break.
The UK is in the midst of a housing crisis, the intricacies of which were detailed by Rowan Moore earlier this year. For decades the typical British housing stock has been of relatively poor quality, proliferated by developer-led consortiums and characterised by ruthless cost-efficiency for maximum profit. From this formula comes nothing but a monotony of off-the-shelf constructions which have, over time, become a national benchmark. These houses – often built of brick, boxy in form, and using as little space in the facade for openings – are commonly dark, spatially inadequate, and far below the standards that should be being aimed for. It’s like living in a well-appointed cave.
Sixty years ago Arne Jacobsen designed the Series 7 chair - the "Sevener." Unlike many other Jacobsen designs, the chair was not designed for a specific use, leaving it to interpretation. In light of the chair's 60th anniversary, Fritz Hansen commissioned "seven cool architects" - BIG, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Snøhetta and three others - to recreate the chair. The results, after the break.
British football club Tottenham Hotspur has released plans for a new stadium designed by Populous. Planned to be built in the London borough of Haringey, the "visually dramatic" 61,000-seat proposal is designed to host both English and American football. If approved, it will feature a state-of-the-art retractable pitch and a 17,000 capacity single tier end stand that will be the UK's largest.
Beyond the field, the new stadium will feature a permanent visitors center and arrivals hub with an interactive museum to celebrate club history and local heritage, a cinema, the club megastore, ticket office and café. At the top of the stadium will be a "Sky Walk" showcasing vistas of London.
New London Architecture (NLA) has named the winners of this years New London Awards, celebrating the best projects and architects shaping London today. Taking home top honors, Zaha Hadid was crowned "New Londoner of the Year" for her influential work, both in the UK and abroad. The jury commended Hadid for "her role as a champion of design to both the government and the general public alike," citing her success with the London Aquatic Center and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.
Out of the 51 projects awarded, Pringle Richards Sharratt's Black Cultural Archives (BCA) in Brixton was named London's best new building. The Grade II listed structure, which had been on the English Heritage's Heritage at Risk Register since 1992, was restored as a new home for BCA’s extensive archives, serving as an exemplar for preservation and reuse.
Reactive materials hold huge potential for architects and engineers in the near future, offering forms of interactive and customizable construction that could, if used properly, seriously alter the way in which people interact with their built environment. The massive expansion in the capabilities of touch screens and other glass based technologies have opened up user interfaces to levels where interactive cityscapes are becoming reachable - but creating materials which are themselves reactive is a much less-explored solution. Water Reaction, a project by Royal College of Art student Chao Chen, is an attempt at exactly that: creating a material that reacts to external conditions with no human input required.
On Saturday, July 4, designer Prada and AMO—a research studio subset of OMA architecture—hosted The Miu Miu Club, a pop-up event, featuring dinner, a fashion show, and several musical performances in Paris, France.
Inside of the 1937 art deco Palais d-Iena, Paris’ current CESE government offices, the one-night event was held in the Hypostyle, using a scaffolding ring to create a “room within a room.” Strip lighting, metal grids, PVC sheets, and arrangements of luxurious furniture were also used to enhance the space.
Alice Theodorou, a graduating masters student from London's Royal College of Art, has developed a project which attempts to combat the challenges that London is set to face over the next 10,000 years. Her scheme factors in projections for population growth and then decline, rising sea levels, stricter energy targets, material depletion, future space exploration and, most interestingly, language obsolescence.
The Musée du Louvre and the Nord-Pas de Calais region has selected Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) to build a new conservation and storage facility for the Louvre in Liévin, northern France (Nord-Pas-de-Calais). Built primarily for study and research, the 20,000-square-meter "landscape building" will feature a series of vaulted light-filled conservation studios and storage spaces topped with a lush green roof.
“The consortium of architects, headed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, has succeeded in taking the specific needs of properly preserving and accessing the Louvre’s collections, and turning them into a first-class architectural creation," said Jean-Luc Martinez, President-Director of the Musée du Louvre.
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Now through September 7, you can take a "swim" in a massive "BEACH" that has taken over the National Building Museum's Great Hall. Spanning 10,000-square-feet, the BEACH was created in partnership with Brooklyn-based Snarkitecture to offer the people of Washington D.C. a one-of-a-kind installation as part of the NBM's "Summer Block Party."
The "ocean" is essentially a ball-pit comprised of nearly one million recyclable translucent plastic balls. It is contained within a mirrored, all-white enclosure flanked by a 50-foot-wide "shoreline" that offers visitors the option to wade the "water" or sit back and relax.
"Form ever follows function." "Less is more." Architects have long been providing us with inspirational quips and reflections on our profession. And now, thanks to our friends at Princeton Architectural Press, you can win a set a notebooks that feature the compelling words of Le Corbusier, R. Buckminster Fuller, and Cesar Pelli. The gold-stamped, gridded notebooks are a companion to Laura Dushkes' best-selling book The Architect Says.
Read on to find out how you can win a set of The Architect Says Notebooks!
A competition proposal by Alexander Culler and Danny Travis, placed second in Blank Space's recent Fairy Tales competition, is now the subject of a Kickstarter campaign asking whether there is "a way to use architectural drawing to tell a story that was easy enough for everyone to understand?" The team behind the Beautifully Banal comic-zine are now seeking to transform their competition entry into a full-scale publication in order to "combine the intricacies of architectural drawing types with a form of story telling that allows those outside of the field to gain a new appreciation for the buildings and structures that occupy the world."
British architect David Adjaye is set to submit plans for new Studio Museum in Harlem. Designed to replace the 47-year-old museum's existing facility on Manhattan's West 125th Street, the new $122 million proposal will more than double the museum's space, allowing it to become a premier center for contemporary artists of African descent.
According to the New York Times, Adjaye was chosen to design the museum due to his sensitivity regarding the artists and surrounding neighborhood, which in turn inspired the project; the project's main space will feature a four-story, multi-use core marked by an "inverted stoop" that will act as an inviting "living room" and host for public programs.
“I wanted to honor this idea of public rooms, which are soaring, celebratory and edifying — uplifting,” he told the New York Times. “Between the residential and the civic, we learned the lessons of public realms and tried to bring those two together.”
After serving as curator for the past three years at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Portuguese architect Pedro Gadanho will be leaving his position to become the first artist director of the new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon. Scheduled to open in the fall of 2016, the new MAAT museum will be responsible for the EDP Foundation's cultural program.
"Pedro Gadanho’s profile and international experience are essential to our ambitions for MAAT, making it a distinctive space of contemporary culture in Portugal", says António Mexia, CEO of EDP. Pedro Gadanho adds that "MAAT will be a cultural institution of the quality and breadth seen in major European cities, offering an exciting contemporary program at the intersection of art, architecture and technology."
After renovations by Todd Schliemann of Ennead Architects, the New York Hall of Science’s (NYSCI) Great Hall has reopened to the public, reclaiming its place as the centerpiece of the NYSCI. Originally designed by Harrison and Abramovitz Architects, the Great Hall was the main exhibit space of the Hall of Science during the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, encapsulating visitors in an illusion of deep space with its irregular plan surrounded by undulating glass and concrete walls. Still one of the most formally interesting buildings in Queens, the Great Hall is one of the original World’s Fair’s last surviving structures and a landmark of mid-century modernism.
Filling Station(s), the latest ideas-based challenge organised by Combo Competitions, asked participants to "rethink refueling" in a competition which sought to re-imagine the ubiquitous filling station. The historical rise of this 20th century typology, from simple fuel dispensers to palatial rest-stops on the highway, grew with the proliferation of the car and became symbols for societal progression, personal status, and "a bright future." Although the number of vehicles worldwide "surpassed one billion in 2010, there has been a steady decline in filling stations since the end of the last century." As such, perhaps this is the time to start to rethink how these fragments of the international mobility infrastructure operate?
.jpg?1436251994 "An artificial pinecone proof of concept. Image © Chao Chen")
.jpg?1436252280 "The reactive surface when open. Image © Chao Chen")
.jpg?1436252336 "The reactive canopy when dry. Image © Chao Chen")
.jpg?1436252378 "The reactive canopy when wet. Image © Chao Chen")
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.jpg?1436284983 "© Noah Kalina")
.jpg?1436284958 "© Noah Kalina")
.jpg?1436284878 "© Noah Kalina")
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