Setting the stage for Rotterdam Architecture Month this upcoming June, MVRDV have designed a temporary rooftop platform on the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The 600-square-meter event space titled The Podium will be elevated 29 meters and covered with a striking pink color, making it visible to all pedestrians on ground level. The installation will open to the public on June 1st, coinciding with the inauguration of the Rotterdam Architecture Month Festival, and will continue to be used for events until August 17th.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlisted projects for the 2022 RIBA London architecture awards. The list of 68 buildings includes projects ranging from individual houses to schools and office towers in the city centre, showcasing the best architectural interventions in London over the past two years. All designs will be assessed by a regional jury, and the winning projects will be announced later this spring. Subsequently, Regional Award winners will be considered for the RIBA National Award.
Videos
Courtesy of Design Center Baden-Württemberg
Last year, the International Design Award Baden-Württemberg celebrated its 30th anniversary. For this year's prize, designers and brands are invited to apply until March 18 with designs that are either ready for production or have been on the market for less than two years.
Courtesy of Menilmonde via screenshot from 2°C New York City video
Following an extensive report on the impacts of climate change last year, the second installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation's body for assessing the science related to climate change, addresses the current and anticipated impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities across the globe, along with action plans on how the natural world and human societies could adapt to these changes before reaching an "irreversible" state.
A new place for design - State of Address (SOFA) - is a world-first design community on the blockchain, shifting how design and architecture is made, owned and collected.
Founded by four Melbourne entrepreneurs - Chris Stribley, Domenic Cerantonio, AJ Batra and Anmol Sekhon - SOFA uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to turn products of architecture and design into tokenized and investable assets that are unique, scarce, and transferable. All of which provide a plethora of digital and physical utility and have the potential to be on-sold for longer term gain.
As OMA New York / Jason Long's Greenpoint Landing residential towers near completion, new renders have been released that showcase the amenities, interior spaces, and landscape of the project. Developed by Brookfield Properties and Park Tower Group, the Eagle + West Towers feature 745 units of mixed-income housing, 8,600 sq. ft. of retail space, along with recreational amenities such as a pool, lounge, gym, workshops, and test kitchen.
Farshid Moussavi (photograph: Anne Purkiss) and Mona Hatoum (credit: The Japan Art Association / The Sankei Shimbun / Mizuho Miyazaki). Image Courtesy of Architectural Review
Farshid Moussavi and Mona Hatoum have been named this year's recipients of the Jane Drew and Ada Louise Huxtable Prizes, two awards celebrating women's contribution to the architecture profession and the broader architectural culture. The 2022 Jane Drew Prize commends Farshid Moussavi for her achievements as architect, educator and writer, while artist Mona Hatoum, whose works take on an architectural scale, was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in recognition of her significant contribution to architecture.
Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Tate Modern’s Switch House was Tate Modern’s latest extension in 2016, radical in form and surface, yet intimately relative to the vast building to which it joins, which opened as London’s foremost modern art gallery in 2000. Shot recently by Bahaa Ghoussainy, the building that opened in 2016, is a model for museums in the 21st century.
In this powerful new visual from Spirit of Space, we are introduced to Ricardo Bofill’s headquarters ‘The Factory’ or La Fábrica, Taller de Arquitectura. Once a disused and decaying cement factory from the turn of the century, with 30 silos, machine room, and galleries, it is now a significant transformative project, satisfying the Architect's longing for space via adaptive reuse.
A haven in the urban sprawl, engulfed by a floury of palm, olive, and eucalyptus trees. Spirit of Space visits the former hive of activity, now a tranquil mid-city refuge, an immense contrast to the industrial grime that used to reside here. Through moving pictures and multi-sensory experiences it explores the Brutalist form; a concrete shell… a skeleton intertwined with nature itself.
Indiana University inaugurated a new shared facility for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, which materializes a recently rediscovered design by Mies van der Rohe. The 1952 project intended for a fraternity house on the same IU Bloomington campus was entrusted to New York-based firm Thomas Phifer and Partners to be adapted to contemporary building codes and its current academic function while preserving the intended architectural aesthetic. The two-storey, 930 square meter building has officially opened to students and faculty.
Architecture collective AKT and Hermann Czech will be collaborating on the concept and design of the Austrian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Titled "Beteiligung / Participation", the pavilion will be temporarily converted into a social experiment that explores themes such as public vs. private, accessible vs. inaccessible, and communal vs. individual through architectural interventions. The 18th International Architecture Exhibition will be held from May 20th until November 26th, 2023.
Seven decades after designing Lever House, SOM returns to the iconic modernist building to resume its restoration, continuing its long-lasting stewardship of the project. SOM previously revisited the building in 2001, restoring its façade using high-performance materials while preserving the original architectural image. This time, the intervention concerns the ground floor and the third level terrace, as well as the mechanical systems, to significantly improve the building’s energy performance. When complete in 2023, the renovation will become an important example of extending the life of the midcentury built environment.
First Place. Image Courtesy of Galiasgar Kamal Tatarian State Academic Theatre
The Open International Competition for the Development of an Architectural Concept for the Galiasgar Kamal Tatarian State Academic Theatre has announced its results. The consortium including Kengo Kuma & Associates was granted the first place, while the second place went to a proposal led by Asif Kahn Studio and the third place to Coop Himmelb(l)au and his team.
As part of the Desert X international contemporary art exhibition, the second edition of the Desert X AlUla features 15 contextual installations across the Saudi Arabian desert that explore "ideas of mirage and oasis". This year's exhibition is curated by Reem Fadda, Raneem Farsi, and Neville Wakefield, under the theme of Sarab (arabic for 'Mirage'), and invites artists to address the history and culture of the desert, its contemporary significance, and the dichotomy between the natural and man-made world.
Construction began at the Goethe Institute in Dakar, designed by Kéré Architecture. The project is the first purpose-built space for the German cultural association and exchange centre in its over 60 years of global activity. Located within a residential area and a lush garden, the two-storey structure is shaped by the canopy of trees on-site and is being built using bricks made of laterite, a residual local rock with insulating qualities that help to passively regulate the indoor climate. The project will provide spaces for a wide array of activities, ranging from exhibitions and language courses to concerts and gatherings, all while building on the cultural landscape of Senegal.
Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp Architects) have won the design competition for global smartphone producers Xiaomi's headquarters in Changping Future Science City in Beijing. Titled “Mi Cube”, the project reflects the company's philosophy of “Smart Technology, Minimalist Design” through an architecture that combines a geometric and structured facade with a multifaceted and dynamic interior sequence of spaces.
OPEN recently revealed the design of Sun Tower, a new landmark structure for the Chinese coastal city of Yantai. The project echoes the area's characteristic Ming dynasty watchtowers and proposes a cultural facility that re-establish the visitor's connection with nature. Comprising a semi-outdoor theatre, an exhibition space, a library and an observation deck at the top referred to as the "phenomena space", the structure is intended as a place "of reflection and contemplation".
Disney, the multinational entertainment and media conglomerate announced its new addition to its Signature Experiences Program. Titled "Cotino", part of its new Storyliving by Disneyventure, the master plan is Disney's first master-planned community project, and will feature distinctly-designed housing units and neighborhoods, along with commercial and civic amenities and man-made beaches in the heart of Rancho Mirage, California's Coachella Valley.
A consortium comprising developers Dream Unlimited and Great Gulf together with lead architects Alison Brooks Architects, Adjaye Associates, Henning Larsen and landscape design practice SLA were selected to develop Toronto's Quayside into a new neighbourhood containing affordable housing, robust public spaces and new business opportunities. The design for the 4.9 hectares site on Toronto's waterfront proposes over 800 affordable housing units, together with an 8,000 square-metres forested green space and an urban farm, accompanied by arts venues and flexible educational spaces.
“If you’re a painter, you need a canvas. If you’re a sculptor, you need marble or plaster. And if you build a house, you need a piece of land.” Welcome to the wonderful world of Not Vital, where the Swiss multi-faceted artist shows us his sculpture park, foundation, and castle in this video.
Louisiana Channel meets Not Vital in his studio in Sent, the town in Switzerland where he grew up and one of the places where he still lives. Building places to live have been with him since childhood: “My first work was more related to trying to build a house or a habitat. The first one was when I was only three years old in 1951. There was so much snow that my brother and I built a tunnel,” he says and continues: “I think that it was the first time I realized that I like to build my own habitat. Even though it was much more comfortable to live in the house, I spent the day in the tunnel. I remember the light, the smell of the snow. I just felt great.”
‘’We’re in a seismic area. Beirut has been buried seven times, so it has to resist any earthquake, and that’s why it also resisted the explosion in the port,’’ expresses Lina Ghotmeh in conversation with Louisiana Channel, in regards to the Stone Garden. A building constructed with resilience in mind, in a city that has been buried within rubble and rebuilt multiple times.
Lina Ghotmeh was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Paris in November 2021. Renowned for her Humanist approach to Architecture, the Stone Garden offers a very personal relationship as the first building to be constructed in Ghotmeh’s hometown of Beirut. Positioned on the edge of the city center, it is very much a form of vernacular architecture echoing the lives of the people who reside here.