Architecture News

The third Kuwaiti Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, entitled ‘Between East and West: A Gulf’, will "look past Kuwait’s borders to the contested hydrography of the Persian/Arabian Gulf" in order to propose a new masterplan for the region. Curated by Hamed Bukhamseen from Kuwait and Ali Karimi from Bahrain the pavilion will, in an area of physical, religious, and political division, "tell the story of the Gulf’s islands and the possibilities they hold for a joint territorial project."

French department store Galeries Lafayette has selected London based AL_A to transform their historic flagship store on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Galeries Lafayette selected them with the goal of “building the department store of the 21^st century” which will be designed to bring a completely new shopping experience to customers. The remodeling of the 40,000 square meter store is scheduled to begin in early 2017.

While there are many different approaches creating architectural space, most architects agree that the primacy of the human is paramount to the creation of a successful design. We perceive architecture through our senses, interpret its scale in comparison to our bodies, and of course require architecture to protect our bodies from the forces of nature. For these reasons, designers often include human figures in their sketches to give a better sense of the scale and atmosphere of their design.

However, often these figures can be even more revealing. "Architects project themselves into the human figure," explains Noor Makkiya, who has collected a selection of figures from the sketches of the world's best-known architects. "So if we compare drawings from different architects, we frequently find differences in body shape and body activity, for practicing architects often represent their own ideologies as a reference for understanding the human physical condition."

From the scientific body proportion studies used by Da Vinci and Le Corbusier, to the primitive figure used by Glenn Murcutt, to the creative explosion that is Frank Gehry's deconstructed human, read on to see the full set collected by Makkiya.

Due to a fire in 1988, the Chiado district of Lisbon had many of its buildings damaged or partially destroyed by the flames, and an intense restoration and recovery project led by Álvaro Siza has been going on for over a decade.

Among the strategies employed by the Portuguese architect (and winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize) is the reorganization of routes and walkways, creating elevated walkways to facilitate access to the area and the flow of locals and visitors. According to the Municipal Council of Lisbon, Siza has recently completed the connection between one of the courtyards of the Carmo Convent (Patio B) to the Largo do Carmo square and the Carmo Terraces with a pedestrian path.

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a2o architecten, in partnership with artist Jan De Cock, has won a competition to design a crematorium in Lommel, Belgium. The goal of the project is to integrate the crematorium into the existing cemetery, which shares the site. The design is heavily symbolic and is based off of the idea of “the journey” of saying farewell to a loved one.

In his project Abbey Time Shift architectural photographer Andy Marshall sought to capture the elusive nature of time by documenting the subtle shifts of light across the hand-laid masonry of Hexham Abbey in Hexham, Northumberland, in the northeast of England. Using the camera's ability to isolate changes in light that might be imperceptible to the human eye, Marshall set up "the gentlest of traps" to create videos and still-image collages of particular views and vantages of the Abbey as the sun emphasized the relics and architectural details within. Spending several days in the Abbey in 2013, Marshall watched light gather and fade in real time, but he has repackaged his own experience into a short video and collages for all to enjoy. In a project that counterpoints the speed and precision that characterizes most of our lives, Abbey Time Shift asks us to to slow down and admire the delicacy and beauty of the nearly indiscernible.

The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize has announced five finalists for its biannual MCHAP.emerge awards, celebrating the best architecture in the Americas by emerging practices. The five projects were selected from a list of 55, coming from 95 different nominators, that were announced last week. The projects represent the best architecture completed by young architects over the past two years in both North and South America, with finalists coming from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Chile and Paraguay.

The winner of the prize will be announced on the evening of April 1st at a symposium at the S. R. Crown Hall in Chicago, after an afternoon in which the finalists present their work to the jury, and the Architecture faculty and student body of IIT. Read on to see the list of finalists.

It's no secret that among the architecture profession's biggest sources of guilt is our reliance on concrete in a huge number of the buildings that we have a hand in creating. Architects are more likely than most to be aware of the environmental implications of the material, and yet we continue to use it at an alarming rate. But what alternatives are there in order to do our job? In an article for Forbes, Laurie Winkless runs down a list of three alternatives that stand a good chance of changing the face of concrete construction.

Since this time last year, an additional 119 new tall buildings have been planned for London, according to a report published by New London Architecture (NLA) and GLHearn. This brings the total number of planned, tall buildings -- buildings of 20 floors or taller -- to 436.

The research conducted by the NLA shows that since last year, the number of tall buildings undergoing construction has inched from 70 to 89. An impressive 223 tall buildings have received planning approval and 114 towers are in pre-application or planning stages. Ninety-four tall buildings, up from 72 buildings in the previous year, were submitted for planning. Of those 94, 43 were approved in the same year. The survey also notes that a significant number of these tall buildings are part of larger scale master plans, which situate multiple towers in clusters.

The Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale (UABB) in Shenzhen finished in February, but at least one element of it lives on. Floating Fields, a project by Thomas Chung, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was installed at the UABB site at the Dacheng Flour Mills in Shekhou as a demonstration of a concept to return agriculture to the Shenzhen's bay with floating agricultural fields. The project, which forms the major landscape piece at the Biennale, received the Biennale Organising Committee Award at the event's closing ceremony.

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Kazuyo Sejima is designing a new express train for Japan. Commissioned by Seibu Group, the Limited Express train would be a "friendly" addition to the company's "Red Arrow" series, which so far boasts brightly colored, traditional designs that stand out from the surroundings.

Much like Sejima's architecture, the initial concept reveals a light, semi-transparent design that allows the train to blend into the landscape.

Videos

More than 6 million courses have been created for Super Mario Maker, a video game where players can create their own game levels with all of the available tools of the Mario universe. The plumber, who has entertained millions of people around the world with his adventures, turned 30 last September, the date of the release of his first solo odyssey, Super Mario Bros. The rest, as we know, is history.

A few months ago, for the premiere of Super Mario Maker at the last Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 2015), Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, the creators of Super Mario Bros, explained how they designed the levels of the classic Nintendo video game in 1985: on graph paper.

That's right, using graph paper and tracing paper, the Japanese artists drew each level in detail, adding and editing the position of enemies, traps, and even designing the game's cover art.

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Darling Harbour has commissioned Kengo Kuma to design a new civic and creative center in Sydney - the Japanese practice's first Australian project. The 30-meter-tall, wood-clad "Darling Exchange" will rise six stories and provide space for a ground-floor market hall, library, childcare center, makerspace, and additional program for start-ups, as well as a rooftop bar and restaurant.

“Our aim is to achieve architecture that is an open and tangible as possible to the community, and this is reflected in the circular geometry that creates a building that is accessible and recognizable from multiple directions,” said Kuma.