Winners of the 2013 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards have been announced. From Norman Foster’s Atrium Champagne Bar in London to Norm Architects Höst resturant in Denmark, this year’s winners won’t disappoint. The award, now in its fifth cycle, has built a repuation for being on of the most prestigious in hospitality. See who was selected from 670 international submissions this year after the break.
The winners are (prepare yourself for some eye candy):
The Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark, The Danish Agency for Culture and the award winning architecture and design office SHL proudly announce a joint venture ‘Drawing of the Year 2013’.Entries are invited from all architectural students of drawings that inspire, communicate and engage. The internationally acclaimed jury will be looking to award drawings that focus on entries that express the architect’s aesthetic and conceptual approach as a dialogue with – and through the medium – of drawing.
A year ago, Nick Olson and Lilah Horwitz quit their jobs to build a cabin in the West Virginia mountains. Today, that gamble seems to have paid off: their cabin sits in the exact spot where they first discussed building it. However, while the interior of the cabin is like almost any other, a mix of old wooden furniture and more modern decorations, the front facade - is anything but.
The west-facing facade is made entirely of window pieces, stitched together; Olson and Horwitz wanted to be able to capture every inch of the sunset, without having to limit their view to the confines of a single window.
See more images and a video of this house made of windows, after the break...
Inspired by the dolls' house that Edwin Lutyens designed for The British Empire Exhibition in 1922, twenty British practices are each designing a contemporary dolls' house in aid of the disabled childrens' charity KIDS. Each version will sit on a 750mm square plinth to be exhibited during this year's London Design Festival (14th - 21st September, 2013) before being auctioned. Each design must contain "a unique feature to make life easier for a child who is disabled."
With the recent news that Rafael Viñoly Architects' 20 Fenchurch Street (or the "Walkie Talkie") in London has been producing an unusually hot solar reflection, dubbed the "Death Ray," we've put together a list of seven architectural blunders around the world - from the worrying to the downright absurd.
On September 14th two interesting architecture events will take place in Orléans, Paris: The public opening of the new FRAC Centre in Orléans, Paris, designed by JAKOB + MACFARLANE and the ninth edition of ArchiLab.
Jimenez Lai, founder of Chicago-based Bureau Spectacular has been selected as winner of the first Lisbon Triennale Millennium BCP Début Award. The award, presented by Millennium BCP president Fernando Nogueira, distinguishes a young architect or studio under 35 on outstanding work, development of original design thinking and the pursuit of critical ideas with a monetary prize of €5,000.
Cricklewood, a North London suburb devoid of public space, is finding a new lease of life through a series of pop-up interventions - including a mobile town square designed by Studio Hato and Studio Kieren Jones - put together by civic design agency Spacemakers. While the project might have a bit further to go before any benefits are truly felt by the local residents, the project is part of a wider scheme financed by the Mayor’s Outer London Fund which will hopefully lead to the rejuvenation of more of the capital's suburbs. Read Liam O'Brien's full article in The Independent here.
Sou Fujimoto has unveiled three design proposals for an extension to Philip Johnson’s Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany. Since its completion in 1968, the museum has built a reputation for hosting temporary exhibitions. However, with the construction of the new wing, Kunsthalle Bielefeld will expand their services to accommodate a contemporary art gallery.
Read on to review Sou Fujimoto’s three proposals...
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlist for the 2013 Stephen Lawrence Prize - an award that recognizes “fresh talent” working with construction budgets less than £1 million.
The 2013 Stephen Lawrence Prize shortlist includes:
Finnish architect Marco Casagrande of Casagrande Laboratory and WEAK! has been named as the recipient for the 2013 European Prize for Architecture. The annual award, presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, is known for honoring “rare architects who have demonstrated a significant contribution to humanity and to the built environment through the art of architecture.”
“Casagrande is a model for today’s young design professional of what an architect should be: visionary, aesthetic, intellectual, and socially responsible,” stated Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, the Finnish Museum President of The Chicago Athenaeum.
André Balazs, CEO of André Balazs Properties, has been tapped by Port Authority officials to redevelop the historic, Eero Saarinen-designed TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Balazs will transform the terminal into the “Standard, Flight Center” hotel and conference center, equipped with food and beverage space, retail, a spa and fitness center, meeting facilities and a flight museum.
The term 'green' is notoriously difficult to define, and even more so when it comes to architecture. An often overused and fashionable way of describing (or selling) new projects, 'green' design seems to have permeated into every strand of the design and construction industries. Kaid Benfield (The Atlantic City) has put together a fascinating case study of a 1,700 dwelling housing estate near San Diego, challenging what is meant by a 'green' development in an attempt to understand the importance of location and transport (among other factors) in making a project truly environmentally sustainable. In a similar vein, Philip Nobel (The New York Times) explores how 'green' architecture is less about isolated structures and far more about "the larger systems in which they function". Read the full article from Kaid Benfield here, and Philip Nobel's full article here.
From "Paper Architect" to employing over 400 staff working on 950 projects in 44 countries, Zaha Hadid has proven that her avant-garde ideas are not only buildable, but also the most popular architectural brand in the world. China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the countries first in line to commission Hadid icons. Rowan Moore, however, claims that her recent accolades have come at the cost of her original ideals, becoming trapped in her own public persona. Read the full article, Zaha Hadid: queen of the curve.
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the architectural firm behind Apple's iconic 5th Avenue store, has returned to the tech brand to design their latest store in Palo Alto, California.
Although the new store maintains the glass storefront typical of Apple, the new store - which will be the prototype for stores opening next year in Portland, Oregon and Aix-en-Provence, France - distinctively features a "floating" roof design as well as a stone wall that hides half the store.
The store's opening may be in preparation for the increase in sales that will follow the unveiling of two new iphone models (today, purportedly).
More info on the new Apple store design, after the break...
The World Architecture Festival is only a few weeks away. The intense architecture event will take place between October 2nd and 4th in Singapore, a young, fast city where architecture is everywhere, as you can see on the above video.
Dear readers,
With Birmingham's new public library opening last week, Mecanoo's latest large-scale public building has received mixed reviews from critics in the UK. Check out the critical responses from Hugh Pearman, The Telegraph's Stephen Bayley, The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright, The Observer's Rowan Moore, and The Financial Times' Edwin Heathcote after the break...
A team from the Moscow Strelka Institute - Izabela Cichonska, Nathan de Groot, Lindsay Harkema and Ondrej Janku - has been awarded first place in the TAB 2013 Vision Competition, Recycling Socialism. Challenged to propose a scheme for urban remediation that could diversify the concentric plan of Väike-Õismäe - one of Tallinn's three larger Soviet-era panel-apartment districts - to enhance quality of life, the winning team envisioned Dynamo: a radical plan that would reactivate the sleepy district by “recharging the ground.”
The Master Jury for the 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture has announced five deserving projects as winners of the prestigious, US$1 million prize. Since the award was launched 36 years ago, over 100 projects have received the prize and more than 7,500 building projects have been documented for exhibiting architectural excellence and improving the overall quality of life in their regions.
The 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture winners include:
The Waag Society, together with designer and software engineer Bert Spaan, have put the Netherlands back on the map - the data map. After several months of coding and design, the partnership has managed to account for all 9,866,539 buildings in the country, visualized in varying colors to identify old and new buildings. After a user clicks on a specific block, additional building and city information displays square footages, addresses, populations and programs, among other stats. Users can navigate from Amsterdam to the Hague experiencing hundreds of years of urban development along the way, from the pre-1800s to post-2005 buildings, indicated by the red to blue gradient.
Last June we covered some of the anti-government protests that were taking Turkey by storm - but the Turks are still making headlines! Last week, one Istanbul resident decided to paint a derelict public stair only to find it hastily covered up by government workers. In an act of “guerilla beautification” and silent protest, people across Turkey have once again taken to the streets to paint their stairs and public walkways in rainbow colors. For the full story, check out this article on The Lede by Robert Mackey.
In July the Office for Metropolitan Architecture's (OMA) competition proposal for a mixed-use development in the heart of downtown Santa Monica was recommended by City Council members after they "seemed genuinely wowed by OMA's theatrically-terraced design." City officials have since voted to re-evaluate the recommendation over concerns of a lack of affordable housing in the development, as well as issues "related to design [and] economics." They have also invited Related California, a team comprising of BIG, Koning Eizenberg Architecture, and Rios Clementi Hale Studios, to revise its original proposal that was shortlisted in March of this year.
The Rubens at the Palace Hotel in Victoria, London, has unveiled the city's largest "living wall" - a vertical landscape, composed of 16 tons of soil and 10,000 plants, designed to reduce urban flooding. Taking two months to construct and covering a 350 square foot area, the 21 meter high wall will beautify the cityscape year round with seasonal flowers such as strawberries, butter cups and winter geraniums.
Because of the lack of absorbent surfaces in the Victoria area of London, the Victoria Business Improvement District (BID) decided to step in with the design of this incredible wall that combats urban flooding with special water storage tanks. Designed by Gary Grant of Green Roof Consultancy, these tanks can store up to 10,000 liters of water that are then channeled back through the wall to nourish the plants. Not only will the wall do a great job of keeping the surrounding streets flood-free, it boosts the area's green appeal and attracts wildlife into the dense urban environment.
But you can browse the last one: 417