For the first time in history, the TED Prize winner is not an individual, but an idea that greatly impacts the future of planet Earth… and the winner is The City 2.0. The City 2.0 is the city of the future, a future in which more than ten billion people are dependent on. The idea is not a “sterile utopian dream” but rather a “real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom.” More urban living space will be constructed over the next 90 years than all prior centuries combined, so it is time to get it right.
Continue reading for more information on The City 2.0 and details on how you can participate.
On the first of December, President Obama announced his appointment of Philip G. Freelon, FAIA to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The Commission is composed of seven fine art experts and is obligated to give “expert advice to the President, Congress and the heads of departments and agencies of the Federal and District of Columbia governments on matters of design and aesthetics, as they affect the Federal interest and preserve the dignity of the nation’s capital.” The Commission is also responsible to advise the U.S. Mint on the design of coins and medals, and approves the location and design of national memorials, both within the U.S. and around the World.
Australian based practice Lacoste+Stevenson and DJRD have been shortlisted for the new Marrickville library competition. Their entry is blending building and landscape and strongly refers to australian scenery. More images and architect’s description after the break.
‘Inhabiting the sky’, a project proposal for the Istanbul Disaster and Prevention Center by LEON11, aims both, to provoke a radical impression over the visitants and to take care of nature. In doing so, their design creates an awareness about sustainability through the understanding that nature is not something that we have to fear, but just to respect and love. To get the main point across of understanding nature by being surrounded by it, they are reaching out to show visitors. Once they get in the center, visitors get the feeling of being surrounded by clouds. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The City of Sebastopol, California, together with the Redwood Empire Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and a group of local business sponsors, is hosting an international design competition to generate innovative ideas for renewing the city center. The overarching intent is to explore how the physical presence of the city can become a more economically thriving and aesthetically vibrant place reflective of the natural beauty of the region, and the character of the community. Submissions, which are due February 3rd, will explore the ways a small, northern California city can transition from its agricultural past to a lively and sustainable future. For more information, please visit the competition website here.
The Masters of International Cooperation Sustainable Emergency Architecture at the ESARQ-UIC in Barcelona is excited to present this year’s open conference on December 12th titled, Rebuilding Japan: Lessons in architectural response, featuring talks and a roundtable discussion with Japanese architects involved in the reconstruction of Japan during its recent history of devastating earthquakes. How can architects respond in the aftermath of a natural disaster? What lessons can be learned from the last three major earthquakes in Japan? How does the context of a natural disaster affect the role of the architect and the reconstruction process? More information on the conference after the break.
Along with ArtefactoryLab, OLGGA Architects put together this creative video presentation for a social housing competition in Caen, France. The mixed-use building includes 100 affordable housing units, ground floor retail units and community spaces. The residential units gradually stack up to six stories, maximizing the potential of the site while remaining sensitive to the surrounding context. Stepped terraces provide private outdoor spaces for each dwelling unit while simultaneously allowing for optimal daylighting and natural ventilation.
London-based architect David Adjaye was selected for the 2011 Designer of the Year Award by Design Miami – a global forum for design that highlights influential collectors, gallerists, designers, curators and critics from around the world, presenting annual fairs in Miami, USA and Basel, Switzerland. Design Miami praised Adjaye for his “ingenious use of materials and unique ability to showcase light coupled with his democratized approach to the architectural process.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded $97 million dollars to 27 regions and 29 communities across 32 states with the 2011 Sustainable Communities Grants. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan stated, “These grants will be leveraged with local funds more than doubling the investment and, helping to create new visions for how communities and regions plan for housing, transportation, workforce development and the quality of life of their residents for generations to come. When more than half of the average working family’s income is devoted to housing and transportation costs alone, we know that we have a responsibility to fix that and to provide housing and transportation options that can improve their quality of life and economic stability.”
Thank you public plaza, for being so unnecessarily spacious, and for allowing me to park so far away from the entrance. I probably needed to walk that extra 30 minutes during my lunch hour on my way to the DMV.
Thank you public plaza, for changing levels occasionally, just to keep me alert.
Thank you public plaza, for your simple paving pattern articulated by oily puddles, and the homeless. It makes passing through SO whimsical, like an obstacle course, designed for the lonely.
Thank you public plaza, for obscuring your entrances. It’s like a treasure hunt. Is this my bank here? nope, that’s a dumpster enclosure. Fun! Signage is for losers anyway.
https://www.archdaily.com/190065/thank-you-public-plazaJody Brown
L&A Design Group has developed an exciting contemporary bridge design as an architectural highlight of Wuxi Xidong Park, located in Jiangsu province, China. The bridge is planned to be the main connection between the north and south foreshores of the parks lake and allows visitors access to a small island destination that commands views over the water as well as café facilities and pocket gardens. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The min2max international architecture symposium, curated by Ilka & Andreas Ruby of textbild, is a two-day event where architects, artists, and activists will discuss design solutions to the pressing issue of keeping housing affordable and livable.
The event, which will take place on the weekend of the 10th -11th of December, will bring together some of the leading practitioners and theoreticians devoted to housing and architecture, including Anne Lacaton (Lacaton & Vassal Architects), Alfredo Brillembourg (Urban Think Tank), ELEMENTAL from Chile, Pier Vittorio Aureli (AA, London), Jacob van Rijs (MVRDV) and Diébédo Francis Kéré (Kéré Architecture), among many others. Panel discussions will be moderated by Carson Chan (PROGRAM), Michael Kimmelman (New York Times), and Joseph Grima (DOMUS). More information on the event after the break.
Magda Mostafa, guest editor for the Open House International Journal and associate professor at the American University in Cairo announced a call for papers for their special issue on the topic of built environments for special populations. More information on the call for papers including important dates and deadlines after the break.
The AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) and its Top Ten Green Projects awards program recognize the benefits of sustainable design and acknowledge architects as leaders in the creation of environmentally responsible design solutions. Now in its 16th year, the program is one of the best known sustainable design recognition programs in the nation.All architects licensed in the United States are eligible to submit entries, regardless of project size, budget, style, building type, or location. New buildings and renovations/restorations are eligible. Projects must be built and completed after 2002 and at least three months prior to the submission deadline, which is January 23rd. More information on the call for submissions after the break.
Ben Kacyra, co-founder and CEO of Cyra Technologies and managing director of CyArk, discusses digital preservation of the World’s Heritage Sites through 3D laser scanning. The non-profit organization uses quick and precise 3D scanning systems to create high-resolution, digital models of historic sites through the creation of point clouds. These systems have the capability of gathering nearly 10,000 points per second, compared to a surveyor gathering only 500 points a day. With the constant threat of natural disasters and human destruction, the CyArk 500 Challenge aims to digitally preserve 500 World Heritage Sites within five years. Ben Kacyra states, “We are losing the sites and stories faster than we can physically preserve it.”
Thom Mayne recently sent us his latest book, Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form. MIT Professor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, Alan Berger, hails this book as “nothing short of a tour de force and should be required reading for landscape urbanists and landscape architects. Students and general audiences of design and planning will find it difficult to go back into their disciplinary silos.” The twelve projects featured in this book “were generated over a ten-year period. They are assembled here for the first time as a single collection of our urban work. Ranging from sixteen acres–the World Trade Center–to fifty-two thousand acres–the New New Orleans Urban Redevelopment–these proposals are situated on different parts of the architecture-to-urban-design-scale continuum. Each project inhabits an ambiguous in-between territory in which physical scale exceeds architecture but the manifestation still requires architectural qualities in order to make sense in its context.”
https://www.archdaily.com/186998/combinatory-urbanism-the-complex-behavior-of-collective-formChristopher Henry
Thames Hub continues to make progress since Foster + Partners revealed the proposal in early November. The £50bn project includes a £20bn high-speed Orbital Rail line around London; a new £6bn Thames Barrier and crossing; and a £20bn international Estuary Airport, with annual capacity for 150 million passengers. Comprehensive environmental management strategies have been made in order to minimize the impact of development and create significant opportunities for new wildlife habitats.
Chilean architect Sebastian Irarrazaval recently completed the new building for the Universidad Catolica School of Design in Santiago, Chile.
The new 4-stories tall building is organized around two patios with different spatial qualities, that create new intimate spaces in the campus. The building is cladded in corten steel, a material chosen to age with the building, contrasting with the combination of concrete and light wood to give a more intimate character to the interior spaces, patios and circulations.
Thanks to this video by architectural photographer Cristobal Palma we are able to see dynamic aspects of the building in use, such as the the windows, which play a key role bringing indirect light to the classrooms and allowing for cross ventilation through the patios.
For their latest museum design in Beijing, Ben van Berkel and UNStudio have designed a formal expression which takes ques from Chinese culture to create an architecture that offers dynamically varied spaces for the NAMOC collections. Based on uniting dualities – past and future, day and night, inside and outside, calm and dynamic, large and small, individual and collective – the two volumes reference ancient Chinese ‘stone drums’ and function in a contemporary way as a media facade with illuminated art projections.
Tokyo-based architect Sou Fujimoto has been selected as the first prize winner for the Taiwan Tower International Competition. The winning proposal’s design reflects Sou Fujimoto’s philosophy of Primitive Future, as the “21st Century Oasis” aspires to be a model of green architecture for the future generations.
Continue reading for more project information and images.
BIG + Kollision + Schmidhuber & Partner team up to bring BIG’s vision of future urban mobility to life for AUDI at Design Miami/ 2011, running from November 30th through December 4th adjacent to Art Basel Miami Beach. BIG originally presented the concept as an entry for the 2010 AUDI Urban Future Award introducing a future city paved with a digital surface that liberates the streets from existing boundaries and allows for a new flexibility of public use. More images and project description after the break.
During the 2009 AIA Convention in San Francisco, I had the chance to see a very interesting group of architects, Emerging Voices. That group, in my opinion, represented the new generation of US architects who are advancing the profession with new ideas and innovative projects. Several of those architects have already been interviewed and featured on ArchDaily, but it took me a while to finally meet one of them: Philip G. Freelon. We met during the 2011 AIA Convention in New Orleans, where I had the opportunity to interview him. I really liked this interview, where Philip shares valuable insights on running a firm and his views on the role of the architect.
De Rotterdam is a unique multifunctional building on the shores of the river Maas on the Wilhelminapier in Rotterdam designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) of Rem Koolhaas. Its remarkable mix of functions makes this building a true vertical city.
By following the construction for 4 years (January 2010 – end of 2013), Ruud Sies presents a photographic report on a very special project in the development of Rotterdam, one that also forms a link to the Wilhelminapier as a historic spot. The full report can be viewed here. More images after the break.
The 12th annual Glenn Murcutt International Architecture Master Class will be taking place at the Architecture Foundation Australia from July 8-22, 2012. The two week residential studio based program has been described by many participants as ”a life changing experience” and has created a wonderful active international alumni network which includes practicing architects (older and younger), academics, postgraduates and senior students from around the globe. They are currently taking applications and the details and application form can be found here.
