Competitions

Major natural disasters caused by climate change are becoming an unfortunate certainty worldwide. Prevention of these events is something that no single architect can accomplish, but preparation for them can be. To that end, Open Online Academy (OOAc) has challenged architects worldwide to design disaster-resistant architecture with their online course "Designing Resilient Schools." Architecture firm MAT-TER has responded to this challenge with a new design for Guiuan National High School in the Philippines, an area hit especially hard by last year’s Typhoon Haiyan. The design is a singular, compact structure designed to better withstand the forces of major storms, doubling as both a school and a community emergency shelter.

The winners of the international competition to design Berlin's new Natural Science Museum have been announced. The brief, which called for a large scale iconic building in the heart of the German capital, offered the opportunity for architects and students to design in a city founded in the 13th century.

Understanding that natural science museums are often simply seen as places for public spectacle, the organization behind the competition wanted to ensure that the "importance of the museum's specimen collections for documenting historical and present-day patterns of biological diversity cannot be overstated."

See the winning entry, along with the runners up, after the break.

International design firm 3XN has recently won a competition to design a residential building in downtown Vienna, Austria. Being so close to the historic center of the city, the project required a unique but unobtrusive appearance. With this in mind, a subtle, curving façade composed of warm colors was developed for the exterior.

The honor of designing Thailand’s pavilion for the 2015 Milan Exposition has officially been awarded to The Office of Bangkok Architects (OBA). The firm’s winning design incorporates the Expo’s theme of “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” with the agrarian and religious qualities that define the Kingdom of Thailand. Located centrally on the Expo’s main avenue, the pavilion will be adjacent to a canal that will be used as a part of the exhibition, relating back to Bangkok’s informal title as the “Venice of Asia.”

Paris-based X-TU has envisioned a more cohesive, sustainable market where food is not only grown and harvested, but sold and consumed on the spot. Serving as the French pavilion for the 2015 Milan Expo, X-TU’s competition-winning scheme will celebrate the country’s “rich genetic heritage” and future in innovative food production with a timber “fertile market” that supports the growth of the produce it sells.

Manhattan-based Zerafa Architecture Studio has been announced as winner of a competition to design a monument to Orange County’s crime victims. Placed between two natural mounds on axis with Irvine’s Mason Regional Park office, the winning scheme carves a subtle, circular void within the park’s forested landscape that offers a range of experiences to the community.

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amphibianArc has been announced as winner of the Ningbo Yinzhou Southern CBD Portal Planning competition. Commissioned by the same developers of the Ningbo Museum designed by Wang Shu, the "transit-oriented" proposal aims to become the "driving force" of urban life in the masterplan's fourth and final phase.

UNStudio has won a competition to remodel the Hanwha headquarters in Seoul. With an aim to transform a building into a symbol of the leading environmental technology company’s values, UNStudio's winning scheme will replace the skyscraper’s opaque panelling and single layer of dark glass with an animated facade designed to reduce solar gain, increase natural light, generate energy, and interact with its surrounding.

Henning Larsen Architects has won an invited competition to design a new headquarters for the Central Bank of Libya in Tripoli. Inspired by Libyan vernacular architecture, the structure will occupy two existing site excavations. The first, and largest, excavation will be transformed into a “shaded oasis” that serves both the bank and Gurji district by providing areas for operations, an education center, restaurant and hotel. The second will allow vehicular access to the treasuries.

South African-based practice Boogertman + Partners has recently won a competition to design a new education centre for the Karura Forest Environmental Education Trust in Kenya's Karura Forest Reserve. The centre, situated on around fifteen acres of a former sports club, will be surrounded by the closed-canopy forest close to the Kenya Teachers Training College, the International Center for Research in Agro-forestry and the United Nations Environment Programme Headquarters.

Located in the northern part of Nairobi County, bordering the Muthaiga, Gigiri and Runda residential areas, the centre will seek to educate people on the many species of plants, birds, insects and mammals to be found within Karura's diverse landscape.

The Strelka Institute, Moscow’s most innovative school for architecture and urbanism, "might be soon forced to leave its current venue in the heart of the Russian capital" due to proposed redevelopment of the area. Faced by the threat of this possibility, the school formed a competition in order to collect ideas for the relocation. The winning proposal, developed by Squadra Komanda, proposes a "visionary program of development for the disputed and immense architectural legacy from the late-Soviet period."

Late Soviet architecture constitutes "almost two third of all buildings in Moscow." As it represents "an unpleasant reminder of the recent past," many Russians dislike this kind of building. As a result, the Strelka Unsettled, with the possibility for collaboration with the outdated cultural institutions hosted inside the building of the All Russian State Library for Foreign Literature (built in 1966), seeks to offer new scenarios for this "neglected kind of architecture."

Chad Kellogg and Matt Bowles of AMLGM have envisioned a new residential tower typology for New York that can connect and transform unused space surrounding various transportation hubs into a dense, mixed-use housing tower.

The proposal, dubbed Urban Alloy, which won first in Metropolis’ Living Cities Residential Tower Competition and received honorable mention in Evolo Skyscrapers 2014, is capable of responding to a number of unique spacial and environmental situations, providing a new way for the city to grow "organically" and provide adequate housing for the expanding population.

Read on for the architect's description...

HENN has been selected to design a 160-meter, mixed-use tower for a new Central Business District in the eastern China metropolis of Wenzhou. Located in close proximity to the Ou Jiang river, on the district’s southern edge, the Wenzhou Tower hopes to serve as the gateway to the new city development.

As we announced earlier, David Chipperfield Architects’ modest proposal for the Nobel Center’s new home in Stockholm has been announced as the winning submission of the Nobel Foundation’s prestigious international competition. Lauded by the jury for its “lightness and openness,” Chipperfield envisioned the glass and stone proposal to “convey dignity” and embody the ideals of the Nobel Prize so it may serve as inspiration for generations to come.

Detailed drawings, images and quotes from the architect, after the break... 

Herzog & de Meuron and Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects have been announced as winners of an international competition to design one of Denmark’s largest hospitals: Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland. Selected ahead of six other practices, including BIG and C.F. Møller, Herzog & de Meuron’s nature-inspired proposal will provide the New North Zealand Hospital with a 124,000 square meter facility that serves 24 medical departments and provides over 660 beds.

“The hospital organically reaches out into the wide landscape. Simultaneously its soft, flowing form binds the many components of the hospital,” described the architects. “It is a low building that fosters exchange between staff and patients, and it has a human scale despite its very large size.”

Brooks + Scarpa has won a competition to design a new park-and-ride plaza for the future Angle Lake light rail station in Seattle. As part of the 1.6-mile South 200th Link Extension, which will connect Angle Lake to the airport and downtown area by 2016, the $30 million complex will provide the station’s anticipated 5,400 passengers with a pedestrianized plaza, drop-off and retail area, as well as a 1,050-stall parking garage and 35,000 square feet of reserved space for future transit-oriented development.

Architects in Mission (AIM) recently announced the winners for their 2013 competition with the topic, Post Earthquake Reconstruction, Ya’an Sichuan - Rebuild Panda’s Hometown from the Earthquake. The Ya'an Earthquake occurred at 08:02 Beijing Time on the 20th April 2013. The epicenter was located in Lushan County, Ya'an, Sichuan, about 116km (or 72 miles) from Chengdu (along the Longmenshan Fault) in the same province that was hit heavily by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. For this year's competition, AIM asked participants to pay particular attention to the master planning of the Snow Mountain Village, whilst developing new business models to encourage economic growth for local villagers. See the four winning entries after the break.

BLUE TAPE, the winning proposal of an international competition to design an Architecture School adjacent to the American University in Dubai, “is a vertical re-imagining of the typical architecture school typology.” Submitted by USC alumni Evan Shieh and Ali Chen, BLUE TAPE, which transforms a horizontal pin-up space into a vertical 'conceptual connector,' is inspired by USC's 'Blue Tape Reviews' (their method of pinning up work for design reviews).