Despite the controversy, the South Korean developer plans to move forward with MVRDV‘s design of The Cloud. The Dutch firm has received harsh criticism after releasing their design for the two residential towers that will be built in Seoul’s redeveloped Yongsan business district. Unconvinced by MVRDV’s sincere apologies, critics remain outraged, claiming the design resembles the collapsing World Trade Center following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The second year of the AIM Competition invited participants to implement Green Transformation to the Shougang Group, the yin of dialectics of Beijing’s urban development. The design was to play an equally as significant role as the CBD (Central Business District) in making Beijing a healthy, balanced, and attractive city. It shall become a “Central Recreation District”, differentiated from the Central Business District. Due to the vast area of the Shougang Group site, this year’s focus was on the redevelopment of Er-Tong. Because green transformation spans the multidisciplinary layers of architecture, landscape and urban design, this year’s AIM competition recognized five different awards for outstanding performance. More images and information on the awarded projects after the break.

We are continually impressed by the variety of projects from UNStudio’s office. The firm just unveiled a new vertical city highrise for Singapore previously featured on AD, and recently, the Dutch studio’s international air terminal and traffic control tower for Kutaisi was officially presented by Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia. The country is growing quickly and changing rapidly, with new tourist and economic activity, plus different political developments. As such, the design for the new airport seeks to showcase Georgia new identity by providing a contemporary gateway to the country.

More about the airport after the break. 

The Ghalemorghi Airport, the first airport established in Iran, was opened in 1922 on 300 hectares of land in the south of Tehran and the first ever flight in Iran took place from this airport. When Tehran municipality decided to demolish the walls of this military airport in order to change its function to a public space and theme park, a competition was announced for designing the main entry gate of the project. The aim of this new gate by Ali Ghorbani, Ali Kashfi and Hosein Shirazian is to create a space to establish a strong link with the park away from the traffic and chaos of the nearby highways. This new gate has to correspond to the scale and atmosphere of the park. More images and project description after the break.

The Planning Exhibition Hall by Khoury Levit Fong is a new urban institution with a particular spatial constitution and purpose. While most are based on familiar building precedents, such as museums or convention halls, they believe that the unique dedications of this institution demands a formal and typological invention: an ocular device or camera transformed into a building. So they place the large-scale city model (1:600) on a plinth that seamlessly extends the public realm into the building by sloping up from the street. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and PWP Landscape Architecture shared with us their proposal for the 8 Washington development in downtown San Francisco. The plans will continue the revitalization and support enjoyment of the historically under-utilized northeast waterfront by reconnecting the City with the Bay and providing housing and community amenities which include: dynamic pedestrian corridors linking Pacific Avenue and Jackson Street with The Embarcadero; a children’s play area featuring interactive sculptural gardens; an expanded health and aquatics center; cafés, restaurants and retail; and centralized underground public parking for the Ferry Building Waterfront Area. More images and project description after the break.

A recent study released by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce states that students who have recently graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in architecture have experience the highest rates of unemployment. The information was gathered using 2009 and 2010 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Continue reading after the break for more detail information about the study.

Vacant land is a looming problem for many cities, especially when it remains undeveloped for years or is transformed into garbage dumps and parking lots. But when designers begin to notice these voids within the activity of a city they are able to unlock the inherent potential in the land. That is precisely what “Not a Vacant Lot”, as part of DesignPhiladephia, did this October. Philadelphia’s 40,000 vacant lots are both a challenge and an opportunity for young designers, artists and architects to tranform these under-utilized spaces into experiences within the fabric of the urban environment. The focal point of the design intervention was at the University of the Arts lot on 313 S. Broad Street, just a few blocks from Philadelphia’s center. It featured a reinterpreted map of Philadelphia by PennDesign students and Marianne Bernstein’s Play House, an 8′x8′ aluminum cube which, in its simplicity, could unlock the potential of this particular lot. But this engagement of vacant land was just one such intervention in a series artist installations throughout Philadelphia. Another such intervention, GroundPaper, was designed by two collaborating artists, Mike Ski and KT Butterfield. The site of their choosing was along the banks of the Delaware River in Fishtown, a neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Read on to see what artists can accomplish with no budget, a vacant lot and an inspired idea.

The quaint and picturesque suburbs have insulated themselves against the urban environment with miles of highways, strip malls and the traffic between endless sprawl. To get to the artificial nature of surburban streets and parks you must first make an exodus out of the city, arriving in an area that is usually unwalkable: no sidewalks, large streets impossible to cross and large distances between destinations. Kaid Benfield looks at Montgomery County, Maryland’s streetscape initiative to address some of these issues in his article “Fixing Suburbs with Green Streets that Accommodate Everyone”.

Follow us after the break for more.

EASTERN design office + KAWAGUCHI & ENGINEERS shared with us their project, Light Thread, China Agricultural University’s Gymnasium / Wrestling Arena for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. During the Olympic Games, the wrestling arena has a 10,000-person capacity. After the Olympic Games, 4,000 temporary seats can be taken out and the interior can be refitted with three arenas, a pool, and 6000 seats to transform the space into a gymnasium complex. Since this building will come into the possession of the Chinese Agriculture University, they sought to create a condition that allows the special requirements of the Olympic Wrestling Arena and the functional features of a building for the Chinese Agriculture University to both be fulfilled in a single construction. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The new municipality building of Netanya, located in the old part of the city introduces a unique public park for the city – a green heart – that like a ribbon gradually transforms from a horizontal landscape to a vertical climatic structure. Designed by the Dutch office ShaGa Studio in collaboration with Shyovitz Architects, they define Netanya’s future identity as a coastal city which truly embraces an urban sustainable lifestyle for its residents, workers and visitors. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Held every five years, the competition for this year’s pavilion called for a temporary building which may be easily disassembled and relocated to another site. The modular pavilion by Prechteck exists of different parts, housing different functions, all singular cells, but the strongest in coexistence with its neighboring parts. The main concept is that during the 5 years, each cell can be assembled in a different German city and serve as an info booth to the next. At the beginning of the next five years, the parts get transported back and get reconnected on site. More images and architects’ description after the break.

MY- AMI, A virtual and digital exhibit of architectural photography by Paul Clemence, has been extended to be on view until January 17th as part of the Design into Miami event, which started in November. A look at Miami’s unique urban landscape can be seen through Clemence’s refined eyes.

From the mundane to the exquisite, from “starchitects” to ” anonymous”, from glamourous Lapidus to cutting edge Herzog & de Meuron and contemporary Arquitectonica and Chad Oppenheim. From dyzzing glass atriums to swimming pools ( a most Miamian architectural “equipment” ), Clemence gives us his take on how he perceives the city. The photos selected for the show speaks of details, of moods and brings us a feel of what is to be in that constant evolving, cosmopolitan, creative and liberating city, its colors, its shapes and even a little splash.

The exhibit will be partially in display at the RS showroom and continuing online at here. More images after the break.

On December 17, 2011, the New York Chapter of the AIA held a panel discussion about the Occupy Wall Street events that have spurred people from all over the country into political involvement. The discussion featured nine panelists with introductory remarks from Lance Jay Brown and Michael Kimmelman and closing remarks by Ron Shiffman (all listed below). It focused on aspects of the built environment, public spaces and how they reflect the way in which people assemble.

Follow us after the break for more about this discussion, including video.

The award recognizes “private-sector architects who have established a portfolio of accomplishment in the design of architecturally distinguished public facilities (category 1); public-sector architects who manage or produce quality design within their agencies (category 2); and public officials or other individuals who by their role of advocacy have furthered the public’s awareness and/or appreciation of design excellence (category 3).”

Follow us after the break for more on the recipients.

Hey Architecture,

Let’s be honest, 2011 could have gone better. For me, the wind came out of my sails somewhere around June (or February, whatever…) I did not do the best work of my career in 2011. I didn’t define the character of my generation in elegantly proportioned board-formed concrete, mainly because I was exhausted. Somehow, my highly held ideals seemed beside the point in 2011, so, I put them down for a while, and decided to feed my family instead. My work in 2011 was not the most innovative of my career, to say the least. Except for the restroom addition I just finished, that was epic. In 2011, I could have been the poster boy for the recession, or the new normal, or whatever they’re calling it now.

In 2011, I put my passion aside, lowered my head, and pushed forward.

augmented reality

“In order for a pain to be healed… you have to acknowledge the fact that this pain has occurred” Maya Lin. Construction of the first memorial began in 1966 (during Soviet times) in response to the 1965 Yerevan demonstrations during which one million people demonstrated in Yerevan for 24 hours to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Genocide.

Inspired by the above events as well as the specificity of this memorial regarding the site conditions, the winning design of the project by Etienne Bastormagi Architects had to undergo a conceptual brainstorm. The design proposes a space – not only to remember the ones that died through the act of genocide-that is designed to celebrate the ones that have survived and helped us reach to our existing status. More images and architects’ description after the break.

In early December, Ben van Berkel unveiled his firm’s latest design for a 31-storey residential tower in Singapore. The tower presents a new take on functional and flexible space, as the structure is conceived as a framework for a vertical city complete with landscaped gardens, sky terraces, roof gardens and recreational facilities. ”An interesting facet of the Scotts Tower is the way that it reacts to the urban context of Singapore. Instead of the more usual means of planning a city horizontally, we have created neighborhoods in the sky; a vertical city where each zone has its own distinct identity,” explained van Berkel.

More about the tower after the break.

In approaching the design for the new Kimball Art Center, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) found great inspiration in the urban development of Park City, the Kimball site, and the city’s mining heritage. They feel the form of the new Kimball Art Center emerges where these rich stories overlap. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The project ‘housing with a mission’, featured at the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Biennale on architecture and urbanism, is designed as a co-production by five Chinese and five Dutch architectural offices and aims at building 1000 dwellings for the ‘Ant Tribe’ in Beijing. This is the Chinese name for the generation of millions of young graduates who live in cramped conditions in the outskirts of cities and work in low-paid jobs.

The Chinese offices include Standard Architecture, Urbanus, O-Office, Node and CAFA. The Dutch firms include aronsgelauff, Next, KCAP, NL architects and Barcode. More images and project description after the break.

PARK shared with us their proposal for the harbor revitalization competition in Aalesund, Norway. To revitalize the southern harbor district situated adjacent to the historic city center, they put an emphasis on the relationship between the distinct architectural heritage of Ålesund and the new development, which includes large scale functions like a cruise terminal, a hotel, a conference center and a bus station. Their design incorporates an infrastructure that solves the issues of through-traffic and at the same time upgrades public transport and light traffic. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Named One of the Best Inventions of 2011 by Time Magazine, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s (SOM) Al Hamra Firdous Tower will be the tallest building in Kuwait. The iconic structure appears to fold into itself, creating an efficient form designed to maximize views and minimize solar heat gain. The commercial complex will be complete early this year and is comprised of offices, a health club and a high-end shopping mall with theaters and a food court. Continue reading for the architect’s project description.

Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Client / Developer: Al Hamra Real Estate and Entertainment Co., Mr. Abdulaziz Alhumaidhi Location: Kuwait City, Kuwait Site Area: 10,000 m2 Size: 195,000 m2 Height: 412 m (74 stories) Completion Year: 2011

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Now accepting residency applicants, the MacDowell Colony’s mission is to “nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagination.” Artists from a wide range of disciplines, including a long list of architects, have experienced the MacDowell Fellowship, receiving a studio, accommodations and three meals a day for up to eight weeks with no residency fees. The experience is very private. Each individual is given their own studio to live and work in solitude, as no studio is visible from another. Meals are shared at the Colony Hall. The sole criterion is artistic excellence.

Continue reading for more details.