We are living through the most rapid and significant phase of urbanization in human history. By 2030, more than 60% of the world’s population - 5 billion people - will live in cities. To understand and act upon this mega trend, the New Cities Foundation hosts the New Cities Summit, the leading global platform for urban innovation and exchange. Each year, the Summit gathers 1,000 of the world’s brightest thinkers and decision-makers for action-oriented debate, information sharing and problem solving. São Paulo is the vibrant location of this year’s event. The theme this year: The Human City, placing the individual and the community at the heart of discussions on our urban future.
How will this urban planet alter the human experience? For ‘We the Urban People’, what specific issues can we grapple with today to ensure that tomorrow's metropolis is a positive place to live and work?
Taking place at the DESSA Gallery Ljubljana June 3 - July 15, Jordi Badia, founder of the studio BAAS Arquitectura, will be presenting his work at the 'Architecture and City' exhibition. The exhibition shows a compilation of his architecture through 11 works, public and private buildings focused on the respect for the city, the end user and the context. The exhibition also reflects on Jordi Badia's particular vision of urban space configuration through the use of the void. More information on the exhibition and architects' description after the break.
Open to students and professionals, the Seoul Institute just launched the international ideas competition for the first step to changing the Mapo Oil Reserve Base, a relic of the industrial era. Located in Sangam, this area was once an abandoned mountain of waste, but now stands as a state-of-the-art city that leads the future of Seoul. Aiming to achieve a communication and co-existence between people and nature, the oil reserve base will be returned to the citizens through the ideas of students and professionals who reflect the meaning and value of the land and regenerate the space to meet this new era’s core values of environment & ecology and sustainable future. The deadline for submissions is August 23. To register, and for more information, please visit here.
RIBA is now inviting expressions of interest from architect-led design teams with exceptional design skills for the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE) New Global Center for the Social Sciences, the world’s leading center for social sciences. The next step in the campus development program is to further improve the School’s teaching, research and support facilities through the complete redevelopment of the center of its Aldwych campus. The new building that will be constructed will have a vital role to play in cementing the LSE’s position as a world renowned educational establishment and will become a place that inspires existing LSE students and will help attract new high caliber students and staff to the School. The deadline for submissions is June 14. For more information, please visit here.
Once again we have partnered with the World Architecture Festival, the world's largest festival and live awards for the global architecture community, to be held during October in Singapore.
This is an open call, two-stage international design competition workshop for architects, artists, engineers, innovators, scientists and related disciplines to imagine the future mobile event pavilion.
Taking place June 2 - September 2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, 'A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California' will be the first extensive, scholarly examination of the radical forms that have become prolific in Southern California architecture during the past twenty-five years. It will examine the role of Los Angeles–based architect Frank Gehry, arguably the most significant and innovative architect of the later part of the twentieth century, and the generation of Los Angeles architects that followed him, including Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, Thom Mayne, and Eric Owen Moss, to name a few. For more information, please visit here.
Honoring the victims and Canadian survivors of the Holocaust, the National Capital Commission, on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is inviting teams of professional artists, architects, landscape architects, and other design professionals to submit their credentials and examples of prior work for the first stage of a two-phase competition to create a national Holocaust monument in Ottawa, Canada’s Capital. This monument will ensure that the Holocaust continues to have a permanent place in our nation’s consciousness and memory. The RFQ document is available now until September 4. To obtain the competition document, and for more information, please visit here.
Founded by Grimshaw and FutureCity in collaboration with the Fellows of the RSA, the Urban Research Unit (URU)is a one-year research project focused on urban design, masterplanning and placemaking. It will include a series of eight panel discussions that will use various urban factors to compare and contrast New York and London. Their upcoming event, 'Navigating the Future City' will take place in London on June 5. This event sets out an ambitious and achievable vision for London as the most vibrant, vital and accessible city in the world. The discussions will focus on a new approach to supporting London’s role as a key aviation hub, and points towards radical solutions for the capital’s transport network. For more information, please visit here. A video of their previous event can be viewed after the break.
DLAB experiments with the integration of algorithmic and generative design methodologies as well as with large scale digital fabrication tools. Continuing its color based agenda DLAB will immerse in blue for its 2013 cycle as a way to investigate natural growth processes in relation to innovative concepts of architectural tectonics and fabrication. Blue will become the inspiration for diving into the depths of emergence, differentiation and complexity which are found at various scales in nature. We will carefully interweave these concepts with interaction and participatory design in order to create full-scale working prototypes. The programme will be formulated as a two-phase process. During the initial phase participants will benefit from the unique atmosphere and facilities of AA’s London home. The second phase will shift to AA Hooke Park campus and revolve around the fabrication and assembly of a full-scale architectural intervention which will unify the design goals of DLAB.
Some of the most prominent features which the participants will be exposed to during DLAB include:
Organized by AAAB, the 'Connection - Import Ticino' Exhibition, which begins today and runs until June 9, aims to create a network of cultural connections between cities as a means of spreading the values of urbanism and architecture. The exhibition features a project that was born out of the desire to establish a cultural connection between the city of Barcelona and other European cities. A series of architecture exhibitions are the focus of this project, which also offers other events such as conferences and meetings between universities and aims to create synergies between the professional architects involved. Each event, which is called a “connection”, is composed of a first exhibition in Barcelona, followed by a second presentation in the invited country. For more information, please visit here.
Currently on view until July 4th at the Aedes Gallery in Berlin, UNStudio's 'Motion Matters' Exhibition presents ten of UNStudio’s milestone projects, in addition to conveying their perspective on 25 years of architectural production, their current approach to architectural practice and the wider discourse that determines design challenges today. For many years UNStudio has been investigating the potential of the temporary installation as an experimental testing ground for manifold architectural concerns and it is these investigations that form the basis of their exhibit. More images and architects' description after the break.
Courtesy of Urbanitas Berlin-Barcelona, Associació de Mestres Rosa Sensat
Taking place July 6-7 at CosmoCaixa in Barcelona, the 'Childhood and Public Spaces' international conference offers a series of perspectives and experiences on actual childhood space scenarios in the city. An encounter with urban-design practice, educational experience and artistic methods are key aspects of this hands-on approach. It will also include a forum allowing dialogue between international professionals and workshops that take you to actual spaces in Barcelona. This action has been organized by the design and space-creation masters students of the UPC-CCCB. The deadline to register for the event is June 15. More information after the break.
Taking place August 28-September 6, the University of Genoa's San Rocco Summer School (SRSS) will teach you to design buildings by making drawings, copying precedents and talking about corner solutions. Each teacher, who is a member of the San Rocco editorial board, and some friends and colleagues, will participate for two days, taking over the work developed by the colleagues that preceded him in the days before. It is the students who will provide the SRSS with consistency, being the only constant. The building to be designed is the new mosque of Genoa. Applications must be submitted no later than 12:00 on June 10. For more information, please visit here.
Courtesy of Fondazione Bisazza + Richard Meier & Partners
As an update to our recent post about the ‘Richard Meier – Architecture and Design’ Retrospective Exhibition currently taking place until July 28 at the Fondazione Bisazza in Vicenza, Italy, the first images have been shared with us. The exhibit includes several iconic, current and recently completed projects by Richard Meier & Partners, in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary. Also being unveiled at this exhibition is a site-specific installation for the Foundation’s permanent collection. For more information about the exhibition, please visit here. More images after the break.
Open to students and professionals worldwide, the Architecture at Zero 2013 competition is challenging participants to create a design for a new, roughly 150 unit mixed-use residential apartment building located in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco, California. With the aim of being as close to zero net energy as possible, the building must be a mix of affordable and market rate housing units and include a full neighborhood-serving grocery store on the ground level. The competition is presented by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and AIA San Francisco, in partnership with the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC). Submissions are due October 1. To register, and for more information, please visit here.
