If you live in or plan to visit New York City during the month of October, we suggest you set aside some time to participate in one of Archtober’s many events. What is Archtober? Archtober is New York’s official Architecture and Design Month. Hosted by the Center for Architecture and the AIA New York Chapter, the annual festival organizes a plethora of architecture activities, programs and exhibitions to take place throughout city during the month of October. The goal is to raise awareness of the important role design plays in the city, celebrate the richness of New York’s built environment, and simply enjoy some great architecture.
FORA has been announced as winner of a competition for revitalization and renovation of the central square in Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city, built upon the remains of the ancient roman Forum of Philippopolis. The intervention spans an area of 57,000 square meters and exposes the intersection of several architectural and historical layers, from antiquity until the Socialist State.
Unbuilt Visions 2013 Grand Prize: Coastal Caretaker / Ursula Emery McClure, Michael McClure, Kristi Dykema Cheramie, Sarah Young (USA)
Unbuilt Visions promotes critical debate about architecture and design by acknowledging excellence in unbuilt projects. This annual competition provides an opportunity to engage with architecture, urbanism, interiors, and designed objects at the conceptual stage by recognizing work that offers a critical contribution to worldwide architectural discourse.
Global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK has recently been selected as lead designer and masterplanner for the redevelopment of Fort Regent, a former fortress turned community center in St. Helier on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands of the English Channel.
The redevelopment of the 22-acre (9-hectares) site will make Jersey’s largest leisure and entertainment venue a premiere destination, and includes a masterplan that aims to strengthen the economic value of the site and encourage public funding for the redevelopment.
CASMSB - View from Boulevard. Image Courtesy of adjkm
In 2011, adjkmwon an international competition to design the Simon Bolivar Complex for Social Action through Music (CASMSB - Complejo de Acción Social por la Música Simón Bolívar) in Caracas. Now, almost four years later, the Venezuelan practice has released their updated design for the “Caracas Symphony” in preparation for its groundbreaking at the end of this year.
The building is being constructed for the El Sistema project, an internationally distinguished program based on the premise that musical training can create great musicians and completely alter the expected life paths of children born into extremely impoverished circumstance.
Architects have been known to dabble in product design, but what about board game design? A team of Washington, D.C.-based architects, urban planners, and designers have come together to create a game with a comedic (yet somewhat serious) take on the nuances of city living. Cards Against Urbanity, a parody on the wildly successful Cards Against Humanity, is simultaneously a critical and satirical game designed to open a dialogue about the development of cities among those who influence them.
The walls of Oakland’s City Hall transcended their usual purpose during the city’s 2014 Art+Soul festival, becoming the stage for a beautifully choreographed dance by aerial dance company Bandaloop. Filmed with a GoPro, “Waltz on The Walls of City Hall” captures Bandaloop dancers Amelia Rudolph and Roel Seeber as they take dancing to new heights (literally).
Founded in 1991, the Bandaloop dance company is known for their vertical choreography and they have performed on skyscrapers, in atriums and in locations as diverse as Seattle’s Space Needle and the wall of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. Watch the video above as the dancers gracefully twirl, jump and glide on the side of the 320-foot City Hall building. Visit the Bandaloop website for more information on the dance team.
Text description provided by the architects. What happens when a designer decides to turn a classic Herzog & de Meuron masterpiece into a carnival space? That's precisely what happened when architect Gia Wolff was asked to create an installation - part of which doubled as a performance piece - for the show Up Hill Down Hall: An Indoor Carnival in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. How did she approach transforming such a cultural icon? Three words: red-pink rope.
How much impact can the configuration of an office have? Microsoft, Thames Valley Park by Perkins+Will. Image Courtesy of David Churchill
We spend a lot of time and effort debating and researching how to design the perfect office - perhaps too much time, according to Rachel Casanova, a Principle and Director of Workplace at Perkins + Will. In this post, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "When the Open Office Isn't Always the Problem or Solution", Casanova argues that we ought to be thinking about office design more holistically, taking into account not just the physical space of the office, but also how the client runs their workplace. At best, design can catalyse a more nurturing office environment, but for each company the way to achieve this may be different; there is no 'one-size-fits-all' office solution. Read on after the break to find out why.
Exploration of contextual, cultural, and life cycle flows offers a critical lens for visualizing new housing strategies for living in the future. The d3 Housing Tomorrow competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore, document, analyze, transform, and deploy innovative approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.
ArchDaily is continuing our partnership with The Architectural Review, bringing you short introductions to the themes of the magazine’s monthly editions. In this post, we take a look at AR’s August 2014 issue, which examines the tension between the often idealised world of the architecture media and the messy complexity of real-world buildings. Here, AR Editor Catherine Slessor meditates on "the uneasy relationship between reductivist beauty contests and architecture’s nuanced narrativesand complexities."
The recent announcement of the RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist has stoked up the usual feverish debate about what constitutes ‘good’ architecture and what should or shouldn’t win. But an awards scheme that can pit the Shard against the Everyman Theatre, thus perilously straddling an engorged spectrum of style, scale, client, context, user and urban contribution, is a fundamentally impossible proposition when you get down to it. One former editor of The Architects’ Journal despairingly remarked that judging the Stirling was like trying to compare a cookery book with a slim volume of poetry. Apart from both being printed on paper, they have nothing else in common. So do you plump for cookery or poetry?
About one month ago, three major figures in Portuguese architecture - Pritzker Laureate Álvaro Siza, architect Carlos Castanheira and one of today’s most prominent architectural photographers, Fernando Guerra - began an uncommon adventure.
During 22 days the architects traveled through many Asian countries inaugurating buildings, visiting new projects and meeting other architects like Pritzker Laureate Whang Shu. At the end of their trip, the trio visited the "Shadow of light - a portrait of Álvaro Siza" exhibition opening and vernissage, in Macau, realized by Fernando Guerra.
We were able to follow this intimate journey through the images taken by Guerra and published every day in his Instagram – a careful, spontaneous and delicate photographic narrative that shows a little bit of what were these weeks with Siza and Castanheira were like. Back in Portugal, Fernando Guerra published an interesting report on those last weeks and generously shared with us both his writings and his beautiful pictures.
Read the text and enjoy Guerra's photographs after the break.
"To meet the biggest challenges of the 21st century, city leaders must think creatively and be unafraid to try new things – and the Mayors Challenge is designed to help them do that," said Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Read on after the break to learn more about the proposals of Barcelona and the four runners-up
As part of the Semaine Digitale, in October Bordaux will host 1024 Architecture's Tesseract, an installation inspired by the so called "four-dimensional cube." Created from no more than ordinary scaffolding, a translucent fabric skin and a series of electronically controlled lights, the installation plays with complex geometrical compositions, as the light beams rapidly create and deconstruct shapes within the outer 10 metre cubic frame.
Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.. Image Courtesy of Adjaye Associates
On September 30, Mohsen Mostafavi will present David Adjaye with the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, Harvard University’s highest honor in the field of African and African American studies, at the Hutchins Center Honors. Since 2000, the Du Bois Medal has been awarded to individuals from across the globe in recognition of their contributions to African and African-American history and culture. Adjaye is one of nine luminaries receiving this year’s award, including Oprah Winfrey and the late Maya Angelou. More information about the ceremony can be found here.
The architects of Emerging Objectshave devised a scheme for a 3D printed house made from locally harvested salt and concrete. Known as the “3D Printed House 1.0,” the case study residence was commissioned by the Jin Hai Lake Resort Beijing. It integrates traditional construction methods with renewable 3D printed materials, manufactured by Emerging Objects, to build a house that is sustainable, structurally sound and beautiful.
The 2014 Restaurant & Bar Design Award winners have been announced! The award, now in its sixth cycle, is one of the most prestigious in hospitality. Projects from the UK to China and Australia have all been recognized as being some of the world's best designed restaurant and bars. See who was selected from 3000 international submissions, after the break.
How will sea level rise affect Metro Vancouver and what can we do about it? Take a look at the #RISEIDEAS competition from SFU Public Square – an open ideas competition with a Grand Prize of $35,000 to find innovative ways to address sea level rise. Form a team of one to four people, submit your idea online, and you could take home the cash, rub shoulders with experts at the October 19 public exhibition day, and win free event tickets. The deadline for competition submissions is October 6, 2014. Check out the website for all the details.
As part of CNN's Leading Women series, Sheena McKenzie explores the work of Turkish architect Zeynep Fadillioglu - perhaps the first female architect to design a mosque, now on her third. In buildings where men and women are traditionally separated for worship, and women are often given a smaller space, Fadillioglu "purposely placed the women's section in one of the most beautiful parts of the light-flooded dome" in Istanbul'sSakirin Mosque. McKenzie concludes that although "Fadillioglu might have made a name for herself designing mosques, you don't needn't be religious to admire their beauty."
The UK's National Trust has announced the 'pop-up' opening of a property in Ernö Goldfinger's famous Balfron Tower in London, offering public access to Flat 130 of the brutalist icon from the 1st to the 12th of October. Completed in 1967, the Balfron Tower was the first of Goldfinger's two distinctive London housing blocks (the other being Trellick Tower), and in 1968 Goldfinger himself lived for two months in Flat 130, to demonstrate the desirability of high-rise living.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced 13 Honorary Fellowships and 11 International Fellowships which it will award at an event on February 3rd, along with the recently announced RIBA Royal Gold Medal.
Among others, the Honorary Fellowships include Director of Architecture at the British Design Council Vicky Richardson and academic Dalibor Vesely; the International Fellowships include Pritzker Prize Winners Thom Mayne and Wang Shu and his Partner Lu Wenyu. The Honorary and International Fellowships entitle winners to use the initials 'Hon FRIBA' and 'Int FRIBA,' respectively after their names.
Read on after the break for the full Fellowship lists
BIG has unveiled plans for Bassin 7 (BSN7), a new civic-minded, mixed-use neighborhood in Denmark’s second largest city. The phased development will “breathe life into the harbor front,” placing importance on the public realm by organizing the site’s seven residential buildings with a series of recreational and cultural activities, including a beach zone, swimming pools, theater and cafe, along a public promenade.
Mecanoo, in collaboration with engineering consultancy Movares, has been chose to redevelop the Ede train station in the Netherlands. An important entry for the city and Veluwe National Park, the design hopes to transform the station into a “showpiece” and vibrant center for the Veluwse Poort.
“The vision of the design is defined by an unobtrusive appearance; the natural environment serves as a starting point for the characteristic materialization that connects the buildings and the station square, emphasizing the area’s built identity,” described Mecanoo.
Continuing recent research trends in the ways nature can inspire new architectural methods and typologies, London-based architecture practice Tonkin Liu in collaboration with engineers at Arup, have developed a single-surface structural technique called Shell Lace Structure. The innovative technique takes advantage of advanced digital design, engineering analysis, and manufacturing tools. Read on to learn about their upcoming book and exhibition that reveals the process behind this nature-inspired material.
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