Architecture News

British architect David Adjaye is set to submit plans for new Studio Museum in Harlem. Designed to replace the 47-year-old museum's existing facility on Manhattan's West 125th Street, the new $122 million proposal will more than double the museum's space, allowing it to become a premier center for contemporary artists of African descent.

According to the New York Times, Adjaye was chosen to design the museum due to his sensitivity regarding the artists and surrounding neighborhood, which in turn inspired the project; the project's main space will feature a four-story, multi-use core marked by an "inverted stoop" that will act as an inviting "living room" and host for public programs.

“I wanted to honor this idea of public rooms, which are soaring, celebratory and edifying — uplifting,” he told the New York Times. “Between the residential and the civic, we learned the lessons of public realms and tried to bring those two together.”

After serving as curator for the past three years at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Portuguese architect Pedro Gadanho will be leaving his position to become the first artist director of the new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon. Scheduled to open in the fall of 2016, the new MAAT museum will be responsible for the EDP Foundation's cultural program.

"Pedro Gadanho’s profile and international experience are essential to our ambitions for MAAT, making it a distinctive space of contemporary culture in Portugal", says António Mexia, CEO of EDP. Pedro Gadanho adds that "MAAT will be a cultural institution of the quality and breadth seen in major European cities, offering an exciting contemporary program at the intersection of art, architecture and technology."

After renovations by Todd Schliemann of Ennead Architects, the New York Hall of Science’s (NYSCI) Great Hall has reopened to the public, reclaiming its place as the centerpiece of the NYSCI. Originally designed by Harrison and Abramovitz Architects, the Great Hall was the main exhibit space of the Hall of Science during the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, encapsulating visitors in an illusion of deep space with its irregular plan surrounded by undulating glass and concrete walls. Still one of the most formally interesting buildings in Queens, the Great Hall is one of the original World’s Fair’s last surviving structures and a landmark of mid-century modernism.

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Filling Station(s), the latest ideas-based challenge organised by Combo Competitions, asked participants to "rethink refueling" in a competition which sought to re-imagine the ubiquitous filling station. The historical rise of this 20th century typology, from simple fuel dispensers to palatial rest-stops on the highway, grew with the proliferation of the car and became symbols for societal progression, personal status, and "a bright future." Although the number of vehicles worldwide "surpassed one billion in 2010, there has been a steady decline in filling stations since the end of the last century." As such, perhaps this is the time to start to rethink how these fragments of the international mobility infrastructure operate?

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The Enric Miralles Foundation, in collaboration with the Polytechnic University in Catalunya (UPC), will offer a postgraduate program called Social Urban Regeneration, starting October 8. Students will create a social urban project over the course of 10 weeks specializing in integrated, contemporary, and sustainable urban planning. The project, entitled "2017 Grand Paris Clichy-Montferneil Suburbs of Paris," will look into the question of how new cities should be planned, and how older cities can be renewed and renovated.

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Estudio Guto Requena has designed a new façade, which also doubles as an urban art intervention, for the Hotel WZ Jardins in São Paulo. Dubbed “The Light Creature,” the 30-story facade is visible both during the day and at night, changing to interact with its surroundings and responding to stimuli like air quality and sound. During the day the façade has a pixilated blue, gray and gold skin that serves as “a visual reflection of the soundscape of São Paulo’s iconic Avenida Rebouças,” and at night it is illuminated by interactive light patterns.

Learn more about The Light Creature after the break.

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Currently under renovation in order to turn its soaring shell into a hotel, Eero Saarinen's iconic TWA Flight Center has been off limits to the public since 2001. However last week, while a team of digital preservationists were making scans of the swooping curves of the building's interior, photographer Max Touhey was allowed access, camera in hand, to catalog the building's mid-century elegance. The photoset, published in full on Curbed NY, shows the building in a generally good condition considering its decade-long slumber. Read on after the break for a selection of these images.

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Hoping to reverse the fortunes of this small but distinctive area of Chicago, real estate development firm R2 Companies and urban planning group PORT Urbanism have teamed up to devise a plan to renew Goose Island. A man-made island with a long history of manufacturing, Goose Island lacks the revenue stream of many other Chicago regions, but the development team hopes to improve conditions by 2025 by enabling it to develop into a sustainable, high-tech neighborhood connected to Chicago’s urban grid.

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The acclaimed Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, northern England, has been named by the Art Fund as the 2015 Museum of the Year. The project has been hailed by the jury as "one of the great museum achievements of recent years," citing its "transformation – architecturally, curatorially, and as a destination" – as a key reason for its success. The building, which has been received well by critics, was comprehensively restored and extended by MUMA (McInnes Usher McKnight) and re-opened to the public earlier this year. Since then it has seen record-breaking visitor numbers, partly due to the appeal of the building and partly due to "the creativity and originality of its outreach programmes during closure."

The United Arab Emirates National Innovation Committee has unveiled plans to build the world's first 3D printed structure with a massive, 20-foot-tall 3D printer. Though many structures have utilized 3D printing, none have been entirely built by using the technology. Everything - the building's structure, interior finishes, and furniture - will be 3D printed in sections and then assembled on site, according to a report by 3DPrint. The 2,000-square-foot building will then be used to house the Museum of the Future headquarters in Dubai.

Nader Tehrani, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architecture professor and founding principal of Office dA and NADAAA, has been appointed dean of The Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. From 2010 to 2014, Tehrani served as the head of MIT's Department of Architecture, while leading two offices in Boston and New York City. He will now join Cooper this month and focus his efforts on speculative research and interdisciplinary collaboration.

In the latest episode of Monocle's Section D, Josh Fehnert talks to Ben van Berkel, co-founder and principal of Amsterdam-based UNStudio, about London's new Caneletto residential tower. The office, which was founded in 1988, has completed projects around the world ranging from Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge to the Mercedes-Benz Museumin Stuttgart. With over 81 built projects, and 54 currently in progress (including Raffles City in Hangzhou and Scotts Tower in Singapore), London’s Canaletto Tower (which is due to be completed in 2015) marks the practice’s first major project in the UK. The tower, located at the confluence of two London districts — Islington and Shoreditch — marks a significant moment for the Dutch practice's œuvre.

Details have been released on a new residential project designed by ODA Architecture at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York. Occupying two waterfront sites in the Pier 6 uplands development area, the project will include two10,000-square-foot buildings focused on affordable housing, community development and preserving the surrounding parkland.

The 20th century was an era of unbelievable change, with more revolutionary ideas and scientific developments than perhaps any era before it. But among the many developments in the material sciences, one stands as perhaps the most revolutionary: plastics. An experimental group of materials at the turn of the century, artificial plastics are so ubiquitous now that it's almost impossible to imagine life without them.

However, in the 21st century plastics have gained a bad reputation; commonly produced from oil, plastics are a non-renewable resource and, after spending decades or even centuries polluting our environment, most plastics will eventually degrade to release their carbon into the atmosphere. Recycling plastic will go some way to slow this problem, but with so many modern products relying on plastic - and our tendency toward increasing consumption showing no signs of slowing - recycling can only do so much.

But what if there was a way to use plastics to actually reverse the release of greenhouse gases? That's exactly what Newlight Technologies is attempting to do with their carbon-negative plastic, AirCarbon.

CDP Investimenti has selected Studio 015 Paola Viganò as the winner of the Progetto Flaminio International Design Competition to master plan a new district surrounding the City of Science in Rome. After launching the competition in December 2014, CDP Investimenti Sgr and the Municipal Government received over 240 entries. Of those, six teams were shortlisted and given 24,000 euros each to develop and submit their final proposals. Learn more about the winning proposal after the break.