Architecture News

Total Engineer Team RSVP has unveiled the renovation design for the Main Building of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, which, once completed, will be the most sustainable university building in the world. On September 27, the design was awarded as BREEAM Outstanding under the BREEAM-NL sustainability label of the Netherlands, with a score of 93.86%.

The university building, which will be called Atlas upon completion, was designed by a multidisciplinary team consisting of Team V (architect), Van Rossum (construction engineer), Valstar Simonis (building installations engineer), and Peutz (building physics engineer and sustainability expert).

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As Zaha Hadid’s successor and current leader of the firm, Schumacher relays a host of opinions, including those on parametricism, which he deems the “architectural style of capitalism.” The term describes the avant-garde practice that uses digital animation to create equations for designs. Patrik Schumacher, who coined this term in 2008, believes this style extracts doubt from the design process, relying instead on the infallibility of science.

KCAP Architects & Planners in cooperation with Kunst + Herbert have won the international Fischbeker Reethan competition to master plan the Harburg district of Hamburg, Germany. The 70 hectare site is being developed by the IBA Hamburg (International Building Exhibition) as a new residential and business district with the aim of creating a “Garden City of the 21st Century.” The design will accommodate a total of 2,200 apartments, 100,000 square meters (1,080,000 square feet) of small industry space and nearly 200,000 square meters (2,150,000 square feet) of diverse public landscapes.

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The new Hunters Point Community Library, designed by Steven Holl Architects, has topped out. Located along the East River in Long Island City, New York, the 22,000 square foot library will add a new community-devoted space to the waterfront, while serving as a new icon that can be seen from across the river in Manhattan.

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The government of Lithuania announced today the 3 winning architecture firms of a competition to design a new National Science and Innovation Center, to be known colloquially as “Science Island,” in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. The competition, organized by Malcolm Reading Consultants, saw entries from 144 teams, making it the largest design content ever held in Lithuania.

Nestled in the heart of the UNESCO designated and celebrated university city, Kaunas, the science center will be located on a 13,000 square meter (140,000 square foot) site on Nemunas Island in the Neman River, adjacent to the Žalgiris Arena and within short walking distance to Kaunas’ historic Centras district. The new €25M complex will “celebrate recent achievements in science and global technologies with the aim of inspiring visitors to expand their knowledge and support innovation,” and will focus on research on the environment and ecosystems.

Continue reading to see the winners.

During the 2015 school year, fourth-year students of the Ceip Praza de Barcelos primary school in Galicia (Spain) had the opportunity to take an introductory architecture course during school hours, thanks to the initiative of a local project called “Arquitectura Para Niños” or “Architecture for Children”.

Society today is under information overload, children need to learn to locate and filter it through and develop their own content, explains the initiative team led by Ana Barreiro, Marta Guirado and Africa Martinez.

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The iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) has announced the winners of the 2016 edition of the annual competition. Founded in 2007, the same year as the release of the first iPhone, IPPAWARDS is the first and longest running iPhone photography competition. Now in its 9th year, the awards continue to select the best images taken by iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from a variety of categories including Landscape, Animals, People, Still Life and Architecture.

This year’s architecture category was won by Jian Wang of Beijing China for his shot “China Red,” taken at the Beijing Olympic Park. Second and third prizes were awarded to Patryk Kuleta for two shots from his series, “Modern Cathedrals.” Kuleta was also selected as the IPPAWARDS Photographer of the Year for the series, which featured layered-exposure captures of historic cathedrals in Warsaw and Strasbourg.

Continue after the break to see the three winners and honorable mentions.

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André Chiote’s newest series of illustrations focuses on the seminal architectural works of Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the firm’s founding this year. Established in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1986 by architects Morten Schmidt, Bjarne Hammer and John F. Lassen, the firm has since grown into an award-winning, international practice (with offices in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Shanghai and London) whose design philosophy begins with the Nordic architectural traditions of democracy, welfare, aesthetics, light, sustainability and social responsibility.

To commemorate the important date, SHL selected a set of 6 emblematic buildings to be illustrated through Chiote’s personal vision. Check out the collection and links to the projects after the break.

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75 buildings have been announced as the winners of the 2016 American Architecture Awards by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. Now in its 22^nd year, the American Architecture Awards recognize “the best new buildings designed and constructed by American architects in the U.S. and abroad and by international architects for buildings designed and built in the United States.”

This comprehensive and even-handed overview of new American Architecture for 2016, allows you (as a viewer) to witness the enormous diversity in the American practice of architecture today, said Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, Museum President, The Chicago Athenaeum. This year’s selection by the Denver jury was more interested in discussions concerning the problems of the environment, social context, technical and constructive solutions, the responsible use of energies, restoration and adaptive- reuse, and the sensitive use of materials and ecology.

The 75 winners of the 2016 American Architecture Awards are:

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US tech-giant Apple Inc. have revealed that they will consolidate their UK operations to "a new Apple campus" in London's Battersea, at the heart of a site formerly occupied by the derelict Grade II* Listed Battersea Power Station. The 42-acre complex, which is currently undergoing major redevelopment (and is soon to have a public square designed by BIG connecting to the Electric Boulevard development designed by Norman Foster and Frank Gehry), will provide a mix of commercial space and residential zones. According to the London Evening Standard, Apple will be relocating around 1,400 staff from eight sites around the British capital to the former power station, occupying all six floors of the restored building's extensive new office space. They will be the site's single largest single tenant.

The Serpentine Galleries has announced a new process for the selection of architects for its successful Summer Serpentine Pavilion program.

For the event’s first 16 years, the annual commissions were selected by program founder and former Serpentine Galleries director Julia Peyton-Jones, who left her position earlier this year to pursue independent contemporary art and architecture projects. Replacing her are the Serpentine Galleries new CEO Yana Peel and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, who will lead an advisory board featuring architects Richard Rogers and David Adjaye.

In this video, members of the engineering team behind the the world’s largest LED screen explain the process behind its installation on the facade of the Burj Khalifa last year. The massive screen required 72 kilometers of cabling and 10,000 connectors to cover a total area of 33,000 square meters.

“We faced sandstorms, we faced rain, we faced heavy wind, so quite often we had to wait until we had a good slot in terms of wind to go out and do the installation,” says Senior Project Manager Kris Vloemans.

The screen has been utilized for a range of different shows since it was first used to ring in the New Year in 2015. Earlier this year, the Burj Khalifa sent out an open call to artists to submit their own dynamic designs to be displayed on the building facade.

Also check out some videos of the screen in action, below.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced a team led by Brock Carmichael Architects as the winners of the Tristan da Cunha Design Ideas Competition, a call for proposals on how to create “a more self-sustainable future” for the island of Tristan da Cunha, the world’s most remote inhabited island.

The competition, run by RIBA on behalf of the Government of Tristan da Cunha, encouraged architects to submit “innovative and cost-effective proposals for the re-design and consolidation of Tristan’s government (community infrastructure) buildings” in the community of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the only permanent settlement on the island.

Update: We've added a gallery of renderings to the post!

Penn Station is finally getting its much-needed makeover. The transportation hub, the busiest train station in the country, has been the target of much ire and disdain ever since its Beaux-Arts predecessor, designed by McKim, Mead & White, was demolished in 1963, forcing the station to retreat into the dark, cramped passageways below Madison Square Garden. The ordeal lead critic and Yale University Professor Vincent Scully to memorably quip: “One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.”

But today, after years of scrapped schemes, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a fast-track plan that will give New York’s scuttling visitors and commuters some breathing room as early as 2020. Led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the design calls for a new 255,000 square foot train hall and retail space in the James A. Farley Building, also known as the General Post Office, across 8th Avenue from Madison Square Garden and the current Penn Station entrance.

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This article was originally published on Business Insider as "Hitler's 3-mile-long abandoned Nazi resort is transforming into a luxury getaway."

Three years before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of the world's largest tourist resort, located on a beachfront property on the island of Rügen. The Nazis called it Prora.

Capable of holding more than 20,000 residents at a single time, Prora was meant to comfort the weary German worker who toiled away in a factory without respite. According to historian and tour guide Roger Moorhouse, it was also meant to serve as the carrot to the stick of the Gestapo—a pacifying gesture to get the German people on Hitler's side.

But then World War II began, and Prora's construction stalled—until now.

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MawsonKerr Architects' Low Rise High Density has been selected as the winner of the RIBA Journal Sterling OSB Habitat Award. The house proposal, in the Byker area of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, uses prefabrication and CNC techniques to confront issues of substance abuse and addiction.