Architecture News

Indian design and fabrication studio, MuseLAB creates customized furniture and products. Their 2017 creations include to-scale miniature architectural wall hooks. These functional household items were inspired by the works of Oscar Niemeyer, Le Corbusier, Charles Correa, Michael Graves, and others.

Jurors looked for submissions which were not only aesthetic but also pushed the perceived limitations of wood construction.

A mirror-clad shopping mall has been awarded the first prize for its innovative materiality and strong connection to the city in the “2017 Unbelievable Challenge” architectural design competition. “Unwrapped”, submitted by Ben Feicht, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon, was chosen as the winner out of the proposals from 22 different countries. Three other projects were awarded as runner-up.

Take a closer look at the winning design, after the break.  

With a growing number of states choosing to rollback professional architectural licensure requirements, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has issued a “Where We Stand” statement calling for the reinforcement of the practice, which they believe stand to “protect the health, safety and welfare of the public and shield consumers from unqualified practitioners.”

According to the AIA, over the past 5 years, legislative or executive actions have been taken in at least 25 states to impose the “least restrictive regulations” for professional licensure, with several states recommending the elimination of all licenses in the state.

The 2018 DAM Preis for the best building in Germany has been been awarded to bogevischs buero and SHAG Schindler Hable Architekten for their visionary residential housing project wagnisART in Munich. Selected from a list of 4 finalists, the project was lauded by the jury for setting new “social, architectural, and urban planning standards” in becoming a model for future residential housing projects in Germany.

The DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany was established by Deutsches Architekturmuseum in 2007 to honor outstanding buildings in Germany. Previous winners of the annual award include the European Hansemuseum in Lubeck by Studio Andreas Heller (2017), the renovation of the Neues Museum by David Chipperfield Architects (2010) and the Kolumba Museum by Atelier Peter Zumthor (2008).

Learn more about the winner and see a selection of shortlisted and finalist projects below.

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The communications department of the BioBío Regional Theater has shared a series of photos with us showing the light and color testing process ahead of the venue's upcoming opening, which is tentatively scheduled to take place between March 1 and 6, 2018, in Concepción, Chile.

Conceptualized by Smiljan Radic, Eduardo Castillo, and Gabriela Medrano as an 'urban lantern' that seeks to enhance the connection between the city and the banks of the BioBío River, the 10,000-square-meter building fills the void left by the loss of the former Concepción Theater, which was located at the intersection of Barros Arana and Orompello streets and later replaced by a shopping mall.

Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup’s Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. has been selected as the winner of the Beazley Design of the Year for 2017.

Presented by the Design Museum in London, the award is given to the project that best meets the criteria of design that “promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year.”

See more from the overall winner and each of the category winners, below.

Around 19,000 architects and urban planners from Rio de Janeiro state now have access to a shared office space in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Featuring 20 workstations and two meeting rooms, the space allows professionals to work and host client meetings.

The Council's goal is to bring greater vitality to the use of its headquarters—located at Av. República do Chile, 230, 23rd floor—while strengthening ties with professionals and providing access to an infrastructure that architects and urban planners help maintain. By the end of this year, CAU/RJ expects to increase the number of available workstations and meeting rooms.

Despite 3 years of community input and redesign, BIG’s plans for the new Smithsonian Institution Campus Master Plan in Washington, D.C., has been met with skepticism from the Commission of Fine Arts, one of the two federal agencies charged with approving the plan.

Although these are amateur contemporary photographs, we should look beyond the surface. These "false hills" hide huacas that—whether they were ceremonial centers, administrative complexes, or food storehouses—offer a message of peeling back layer after layer. Here, different stages of history and the ways of life of our pre-Hispanic ancestors are revealed, offering us a sense of wonder as we look beneath the overlaps of time. The huacas teach us to see with greater breadth and perspective.

The collaboration of Aranda\Lasch + Marcelo Coelho has been selected as the winners of this year’s Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition for their 3D-printed proposal, Window to the Heart.

Envisioned as the “world’s largest lens,” the installation was in response to its location within one of the world’s most instagrammed places, Times Square. The 12-foot-diameter Fresnel lens, designed with 3D-printing manufacturer Formlabs and structural engineer Laufs Engineering Design, will capture the image of the square within the heart-shaped window at its center, bending and distorting the surround myriad lights and colors.

Steven Holl Architects, in collaboration with Art-group Kamen, has been selected as the winners of an international competition to design a new mixed-use residential development in the Tushino district of Moscow, Russia, beating out proposals from Fuksas Architecture, Zaha Hadid Architects, Mad Global, and Tsimailo, Lyashenko & Partners.

Comprising housing, social spaces and educational facilities, the design of the complex draws inspiration from its historic site, a former paratrooper airfield. In response, Steven Holl Architects proposed a completely new building typology, “Parachute Hybrids,” which “combines residential bar and slab structures with supplemental programming suspended in sections above, like parachutes frozen in the sky.”

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The team led by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, in collaboration with C.F Møller Arkitekter, Bollinger + Grohmann Ingenieure, Baugrundinstitut Franke-Meißner und Partner, GMBH and Transsolar Climate Engineering, has been selected as the winners of an international competition to design a master plan and mixed-use tower for the central rail station in Oslo, Norway.

Known as Nordic Light, the winning proposal was lauded by the jury for best responding to the site and program’s unique challenges, and for its dedication toward sustainable architecture. Nordic Light was chosen as the unanimous winner over proposals from BIG, Ingenhoven Architects and Sauerbruch Hutton.

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New renderings have been revealed of Gehry Partners’ Grand Avenue Project as construction is finally set to begin this fall. Located across from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, the development now known as The Grand will offer up retail, entertainment and residences within two blocky, terracing towers.

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In one of the largest mergers ever to occur in the architecture world, world renowned Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has joined Perkins+Will in a strategic global partnership aimed at extending the firms’ international reach and reinforcing a commitment to sustainability and design excellence.

Founded in 1986, Schmidt Hammer Lassen has grown to become one of Scandinavia's most prominent and reputable practices, completing projects such as the Dokk1 Library and ARoS Museum of Art in Aarhus, Denmark; the Halifax Central Library in Nova Scotia, Canada; and The Black Diamond, the extension to the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The firm had a particularly successful 2017, winning competitions for projects in locations as wide ranging as Shanghai, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Detroit.

'Trenzando' is now underway. Designed by architect Daniela Gutiérrez and built from shipping containers, this traveling cultural center aims to promote decentralization by activating and traveling across the railway networks of northern, central, and southern Chile. 'Trenzando' will bring cultural and technological development programs—including workshops, exhibitions, seminars, training sessions, laboratories, artistic performances, and film workshops—to non-metropolitan communities.

This article was originally published by The Architect's Newspaper as "Demolition of Paul Rudolph’s Shoreline Apartments stalled by single tenant."

Demolition of the Paul Rudolph-designed Shoreline Apartments in Buffalo, New York, has accelerated, and the full destruction of the housing complex is being stalled by a single tenant. John Schmidt has refused to leave his unit in what remains of the brutalist buildings, despite having received an eviction notice, over what he feels are strong-arm tactics from developer Norstar Development Corporation.

University of Arkansas students are abuzz about the latest addition their university: Stadium Drive Residence Halls. Currently, under construction, the new 202,027 square foot residence halls are the nation’s first large-scale, mass timber higher ed residence hall project and living learning setting. The design collaborative behind the project is led by Boston-based Leers Weinzapfel Associates, Modus Studio in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Mackey Mitchell Architects in St. Louis, and Philadelphia landscape and urban design firm, OLIN.

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