Architecture News

Michael Green has teamed up with Finnish forestry company Metsä Wood and Equilibrium Consulting to redesign the Empire State Building with wood as the main material. The project is part of Metsä Wood’s “Plan B” program, which explores what it would be like for iconic buildings to be made of timber. Their work shows that not only can wood be used to produce enormous structures in a dense urban context, but also that timber towers can fit into an urban setting and even mimic recognizable buildings despite differences in material.

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Amsterdam already has over 1,200 bridges throughout its canals, with some dating as far back as the 17th century, but the city is about to add one more in correspondence with its growing 3D printing industry. Dutch start-up MX3D has partnered with Joris Laarman Lab, Heijmans, Autodesk, and several other supporters, in a collaboration that will create an intricate steel pedestrian bridge made by 3D printers.

Thomas Heatherwick, Alberto Alessi and a number of other famed jury members have shortlisted 214 projects from 70 countries for the 2015 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards. Now in its seventh year, the awards are the only of its kind dedicated to the design of food and beverage spaces. The winners will be announced in October. From burger vans to airports, you can see all the shortlisted projects here.

Romanian photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu has shared images from last year's "Sticks and Stones" exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Designed by David Chipperfield, the intervention brought 144 8-meter-tall trees to the interior of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Mies van der Rohe's 1968 masterpiece. See our previous coverage of the installation and enjoy a full gallery of Ghinitoiu's images after the break.

Zaha Hadid has unveiled plans for two "sculptural" towers and a new privately-owned cultural precinct at Mariner's Cove on Australia's Gold Coast. Commissioned by Sunland Group, the $600 million mixed-use project will include two 44-story residential towers, ground floor retail, a 69-suite boutique hotel and underground aquarium, along with an art gallery, museum and outdoor sculptural gardens.

Choquée je viens de voir l'église de #saintdonatien en feu ! #nantes @Erwangdb pic.twitter.com/SRGcCgd6Li

— Mathilde Moreau (@theatrenantes) June 15, 2015

The Basilica of Saint-Donatien in Nantes has been significantly damaged by a huge fire. As reported by the BBC, the fire started at around 10:30 am local time, and is believed to have broken out on the roof of the building in connection with waterproofing work.

With a high-density population and a history of internal armed conflict, the city of Medellín in Colombia lacked substantial public space, but had an overwhelming amount of industrial infrastructure in place. But as profiled by The Architectural Review, recently architects and urban planners of the EPM group saw this imbalance as an opportunity, and so in the uninhabited patches of land surrounding over one hundred fenced industrial lots, the UVA or Unidades de Vida Articulada (Units of Articulated Life) program was born. Including initiatives to build public classrooms, launderettes and cafés, the UVA projects were conceived together with the local population through a series of workshops, where every resident was invited to express their vision for the new public square through writing and drawing. Medellín, existing at the convergence of several hills, provides a wide variety of unique landscapes for architects to experiment on - and through the UVA projects, EPM Group demonstrates how architecture can empower a community from the first day of design. Read more about how this project will continue to instigate positive change at The Architectural Review.

Despite being at the forefront of digital fabrication technology, 3D printing is still shrouded in mystery, something which the Design Exchange (DX) hopes to change with its most recent exhibition, “3DXL” in Toronto. Curated by the director of DX, Sara Nickleson, 3DXL brings together 3D printing projects from across fields, including work from medicine, design and architecture. As the name suggests, the exhibit presents 3D printing on a scale not normally observed by the public. In particular, the exhibit addresses the role 3D printing will play in the future of architecture, and how it may begin to replace more traditional architectural construction.

A winner of the Millennium Yacht Design Awards, Salt & Water's concept for a Floating Hotel aims to introduce tourism onto inland waters without disrupting the natural harmony of its surroundings. Their design consists of two parts: a central floating body and separate catamaran apartment units.

Learn more about the Floating Hotel after the break.

Too often, architects and designers treat nature as separate from humans or human creations. Nature is fought, or protected, or considered as something to accommodate for through a retroactive checklist. In contrast, Barberio Colella ARC's Lanterns Sea Village is a conceptual plan to create short-stay housing that integrates natural systems with people and buildings. The team behind the project, Micaela Colella and Maurizio Barberio, designed the small residences to approach housing from a more adaptive perspective.

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Richard Meier & Partners has topped out on their Four Season’s expansion to the historic Russell Pancoast-designed “Surf Club” in Florida. Scheduled to complete next year, the luxury hospitality and residential project is comprised of two, 12-story towers, offering 150 private units, alongside an 80-room hotel on 9-acres of Surfside oceanfront property. Read on for more in-progress images. You can learn more about the project, here.

Büro Ole Scheeren has envisioned a "future vision for vertical living." Designed to serve as an "urban pivot" on one of Vancouver's main avenues, 1500 West Georgia Street, the multifaceted tower features a system of vertically shifted apartment modules and outdoor terraces that branch out horizontally to "engage the space of the city and activate Vancouver's waterfront skyline."

“Vancouver possesses a unique balance of urban conditions surrounded by spectacular nature that provides fertile ground for envisioning new possibilities for future living in a cosmopolitan and environmentally-friendly city” says Ole Scheeren. “The design for this building exemplifies our ambition to reconnect architecture with the natural and civic environment and go beyond the hermetic confines of towers that increasingly inscribe our lives.”

Norman Foster has been awarded the Louis Kahn Memorial Award, an annual award that was established in 1983 to recognize "excellence in architecture" in honor of one of Philadelphia’s most influential architects.

"I am deeply honored to receive this award, particularly as I studied for my master’s degree at Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery in 1961," said Foster. "I have been hugely influenced by his work, which is still as fresh today as it was then. I was privileged to meet Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture and to later teach there.”

For this edition of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," the team visited the annual congress of the Academy of Urbanism to discuss how happiness and wellbeing can be achieved on the urban level. In this show Andrew Tuck and his correspondents spoke to architects, planners, designers and urbanists in an attempt to ascertain what makes a 'social city' for 'social animals', and which metropolises from around the world offer lessons that we can learn from.

An exploration of "post-war design for play," The Brutalist Playground by Assemble and artist Simon Terrill has opened to the public at RIBA's Architecture Gallery. The immersive installation draws on a number of historic London estates - Churchill Gardens, Pimlico; the Brunel Estate, Paddington and the Brownfield Estate in Poplar - where playgrounds were once made from concrete and cast into sculptural forms to offer children an abstract landscape for play. Now deemed unsafe, these playgrounds no longer exist. Thus, The Brutalist Playground was envisaged to explore play, "the Brutalist way."

Images of the complete installation, after the break.

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Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas are competing to design the new Western Australian Museum (WA Museum) in the Perth Cultural Center. As The West Australian reports, the leading architects are part of three shortlisted consortiums being considered to develop the new $428 million project. Each team is currently working with the government on their proposals. A team is expected to be announced later this year. The museum is slated to open in 2020.

The complete list of the shortlisted teams include...

Foster + Partners has won planning permission to realize the new Yuexiu International Financial City in Wuhan. Sited near Jingwu Road, once famous for its street vendors, the 147,000 square-meter masterplan aims regenerate the city's core by becoming a "walkable, highly permeable" new district that is seamlessly integrated into the surrounding context.

“Our aim has been to create a new urban model for Wuhan – a unique and exciting new destination, with a sustainable mixture of commercial and residential uses, but which feels familiar and of its place. Rather than create an enclosed ‘city within a city’, we have stitched this new quarter into the surrounding streets. It will have a distinctive new identity, but one that is inspired by local architecture, history and culture,” says Luke Fox, Senior Executive Partner, Studio Head of Foster + Partners.