The bi-coastal urban and landscape design team TLS/KVA-Tom Leader Studio (Berkeley) and Kennedy and Violich Architecture (Boston)-were named the winning design team of the Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition just last week. RIVERFIRST stood out as particularly well suited to the Upper Riverfront in Minneapolis. The team grounded their proposal in proactive outreach to the community, demonstrated extensive research, and posited several multi-layered solutions unique to these 11 miles of riverfront and the habitat, communities, businesses, infrastructure, and culture intrinsic to the region. More images and project description after the break.
This is our fifth selection of previously featured refurbishment projects and we’re still bringing up some great ones from 2009! Check them all after the break.
Valentin apartment / ECDM French architects Emmanuel Combarel Dominique Marrec sent us the transformation of this small apartment, with a clear strategy: Decompartmentalise the place so as to fit out an open plan and elude the demand of an extra room by conceiving in the center of the volume a suspended white cube which generates comic and disconcerting use situations (read more…)
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the New York-based architectural firm, has been selected to design New York City’s (and the State’s) first Net Zero Energy school building. PS 62 will be located in Staten Island, NY on a 3.5-acre site at the intersection of Crabtree Avenue and Bloomingdale Road. The primary school will have a 444-seat, 70,000 sq-foot facility that would include Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten.
The competition for the new Soheil Abedian School of Architecture for Bond University in the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia has been won by CRAB – the studio of Sir Peter Cook and Gavin Robotham – in association with Brit Andresen. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects shared with us their proposal for the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural and Popular Music Center, an international competition that finds its inspiration in the vibrancy of Kaohsiung City and its maritime culture, and in the energy and phenomenon of popular music. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Dating back to the early 1900s, Carl Möller designed a masonry building to house the local and regional government records of designated Swedish provinces, which was then expended in 1971 by Bernt Nyberg’s extension. Situated in Lund, this branch of the Regional Archives is categorized as a prime example of Sweden’s modernist brick architecture – a tradition that began with architect Sigurd Lewerentz and his collaboration with Erik Gunnar Asplund for the Chapel of the Resurrection at Woodland. The building has become an icon of Swedish architecture with its historic Helsingborg brick, limited fenestration and a sprawling Virginia Creeper climbing its walls.
Thanks to our friends from studiometrico, we’ve learned that this historic building may be facing an unfortunate future as it was sold to become student housing. Such a drastic programmatic shift would create a completely new aesthetic for the building, as large windows, which would be necessary for the residences, would punch through the brick wall.
In spring 2011, the AA will hold its first Istanbul Global School in collaboration with the Istanbul Technical University. This 10 day long intensive team-based workshop, taught by recent AA graduates/ AA staff, will explore tall structures through vertical growth algorithms by focusing on local crafts.
More information and contact information after the break:
An amazing house in Portugal, BIG’s debut in New York, an impressive office building in France, a classic by Kisho Kurokawa in Japan, and a casino in Spain. This is our selection of the best projects from last week. Check them all after the break.
House in Melides / Pedro Reis The house in Melides, on the southern Alentejo Coast, by Pedro Reis, represents the desire for a holiday house as a getaway from the bustle of a big city. The client made the unusual decision to have an architectural competition between three distinct ateliers, allowing a choice from a wider range of possible solutions (read more…)
Architects know that sustainability is the most important trend in architecture and construction today. Discover how GRAPHISOFT’saward-winning EcoDesigner can help your design decisions by providing precise forecasts about the annual total and specific energy consumption, monthly energy balance, and carbon footprint of your project.
The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce holds the annual Building Brooklyn Awards. Currently accepting nominations for the 11th Annual Buidling Brooklyn Awards, the event is a signature real estate industry event that recognizes recently completed new, and renovation construction projects, that have a positive impact on the borough’s economy and quality of life.
The event honors individuals who have made significant contributions toward enhancing the business conditions and economic climate of Brooklyn. This year’s awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, July 14, 2011, at the Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
More information and images from last year’s winners after the break.
In the past few years, Bjarke Ingels’ architecture has slowly, but steadily, been gaining international attention. From housing projects to commercial entities to design ideas, Northern European countries have found themselves host to an abundance of angular geometries, bold forms, and straightforward approaches characteristic of Ingels. As we reported early last week, BIG will now take its signature style to Manhattan with a not-so-typical response for the design of a New York apartment building for client Durst Fetner Residential (be sure to read our coverage here).
After the excitement of seeing BIG’s fresh architectural idea respond to the character and context of New York, now, the harsh reality of board meetings and zoning regulations are the project’s next obstacle to overcome in the quest for final approval.
More about W57th’s approval process after the break.
Kate Orff shares her vision of ‘oyster-tecture’ utilizing oysters as an agent for urban change. Focusing on the New York Harbor, Orff, architect and founding principal of Manhattan based studio SCAPE, demonstrates how we can rethink our landscapes, both the green and blue spaces, linking nature and humanity for mutual benefit.
The young architecture firm of SM-arch has recently won a architectural competition for their Multigenerational building proposal in Gland, Switzerland. They are now engaged with the municipality for the execution of the project. Additional images and a brief narrative from the architects after the break.
mossessian & partners have won the MIPIM Architectural Review Future Projects “Overall Winner category” Award for their element of the Musheireb scheme, a sustainable downtown regeneration project in Doha, Qatar for the Dohaland development group.
Eero Saarinen’s decommissioned TWA Terminal has been slated for conversion into a boutique hotel. It seems as though the Port Authority’s plan is to use the landmark terminal as the gateway to a separate hotel building that will be squeezed into the crescent of space between Saarinen’s building and JetBlue’s Terminal 5. Along with this proposal, some might think that creating a boutique out of a classic could contradict what Saarinen had in mind. Many design challenges can arise from a simple, yet complex transformation. More on the news after the break.
This house is a contemporary version of an Earthship, an ecologically benign house type popularized in the 1970s by Mike Reynolds, founder of Earthship Biotecture. This version is similarly set into the earth, cut into a hillside facing Pike’s Peak. Because of its rural location, it relies on PVs and solar thermal energy for electricity and heat. It also has a shallow plan, south facing windows, and a finished concrete floor to maximize passive solar gains during winter months.
Following the success of last year’s competition, Architecture for Humanity Chicago, in collaboration with Archeworks, is proud to announce the Street Furniture Competition 2011. Read over the full competition brief after the break.
The 5th IABR calls for submissions of projects that advance innovative responses to today’s most pressing urban challenges. Municipal, metropolitan and national governments, cultural organizations, researchers, designers, and other parties are invited to submit design projects that rethink the existing interaction between politics, planning and design.
David Kohn Architects and artist Fiona Banner have been selected to design A Room for London, a temporary installation that will sit on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank Centre, London and be part of the London 2012 Festival. ArchDaily has been showcasing selected entries to the competition for months now and can be seen here. For more information pertaining to David Kohn Architects and Fiona Banner‘s winning entry please follow after the break.
A while ago we visited Stephan Jaklitsch and Mark Gardner in New York. Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects, formerly Stephan Jaklitsch Architects, have made a name for themselves by designing buildings that engage their users and respond to their cultures. The conceptual framework of each project derives from the context, time and place of each project.
