Presented at the bike festival of Gothenburg just about a week ago, the Cycling Center by We Are You + Erik Hallberg aims to promote cycling and bring together different cycling communities in the city. With Gothenburg being a city strongly dominated by cars, more than other large Swedish cities, this project has started to turn this around and make Gothenburg a ‘bike city’ with role models such as Amsterdam and the neighboring and great example Copenhagen. In this work of switching over from cars to bikes, their proposed cycling stadium would act as a catalyst. To become a ‘bike city’, the perception of the bike and the cyclist among city inhabitants is crucial. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Above is a video by Vincent Hecht, an architect and filmmaker in France, which highlights the NA House by Sou Fujimoto Architects. The video is part of a new collection of architecture movies about Japanese architecture. Designed for a young couple in a quiet Tokyo neighborhood, the 914 square-foot transparent house contrasts the typical concrete block walls seen in most of Japan’s dense residential areas.
Facing the roman Arenas and amphitheater of Nîmes, crossed by the ruins and the archeological remains of the ancient roman fortifications, the main challenge for the design of the Musée de la Romanité was to design a museum that would become a reference on an international scale. This winning proposal by Elizabeth de Portzamparc creates a strong architectural dialogue between two architectures separated by over two thousand years of history and facing each other. The project is located on the backbone of the site, on the old limit that used to separate the medieval town from the modern city. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Designed by OH.NO.SUMO, the ‘Stairway Cinema’ installation experiments with architecture and the way it can engage with the public in unique and exciting ways. This project takes inspiration from the site and its inhabitants. Located at the busy pedestrian intersection of two inner city streets in Auckland, New Zealand, the installation offers a very simple programmatic response to recognize and counter the issue of how a community must be linked not only virtually but also physically. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Fantastic Trailer, designed by Cheryl Baxter, is a mobile pavilion aimed at being a delightful experience as the interruption of columns and seating areas force the architecture into the conversation, setting the stage for engaging social experience. Developed as ethereal forms, the draft columns blur the line between drapery and structure, and invite the viewer to feel the supporting air movement. The circular seating areas on the pavilion create small conversation circles intermittently invaded by the draft columns. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The design proposal of the Badel Block Complex by Popular Architecture is a combination of polyvalent and stable, both a massing inviting interpretation and detailed development by others, and an anchor seeking to re-channel the site’s positive qualities. Conceptually, the project begins with making a direct link between the former distillery building and the preserved façade of the Gorica Factory — two features required to be kept. Treating the factory façade as a gateway, the plan pulls in the existing context of an active street market — into the heart of a site cut-off from the city for decades — while also avoiding direct replication of the area’s pervasive perimeter block typology. More images and architects’ description after the break.
This city of Gyeongju in South Korea is going to accommodate a new headquarters for the Korea Hydro Nuclear Power (KHNP) Company, one of the nation’s most advanced energy institutions. Designed by H Architecture, the project is to be built on the site surrounded by rich historical heritage and is required to represent KHNP’s dynamic pursuit to purvey the world’s cleanest and safest methods of producing energy. Alongside the historical context, the new KHNP headquarters must also consider the rural, mountainous landscape of the site, which lies low at the center surrounded by adjacent small mountains. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Above is a video by Vincent Hecht, an architect and filmmaker in France, which highlights the KAIT (Kanagawa Institute of Technology) by Junya Ishigami + Associates. The video is part of a new collection of architecture movies about Japanese architecture. With the relaxing and calming music in the background, you are able to place yourself in the amazing studio and workspace where students get to spend their days designing.
Studio Mode / modeLab is putting on a two-day intensive parametric design workshop July 7-8 which will introduce participants to the fundamental concepts and essential skills necessary for effectively designing with Grasshopper for Rhinoceros. In a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment, participants will explore concepts such as object attributes/parameters, data types, data structures, composing algorithms, as well as the creation and manipulation of computational geometry through parametric modeling interfaces. workshop curriculum will additionally cover techniques for Ccntrolling the flow of data via functions, conditional statements/logical gates, sampling data, and user interface objects. For more information, please visit here.
The proposal by reSET Architecture for the Klaksvík city center unites the two town halves and acts as a place of meeting, relaxation and celebration. Their design creates a place that represents the new born heart of Klaksvík. The architects believe that the city should be attractive to more than just the people of Klaksvík itself, a place that attracts people from the Faroer and abroad. More images and architects’ description after the break.
With a challenge to make a series of random ephemeral public spaces using a simple structure in the Seattle Center, the intervention by Hoshino Architects proposes areas of such spaces to be transformed to voids and purely leave the circulation spaces on the ground level. In contrast, the public contents circles are randomly scattered on the field level. As normal urban spaces, the circulation spaces sometimes change to unexpected functions, such as a viewing gallery for the event staged at the field level. This dual layer structure intertwines and creates the complex ‘Porous-scape’. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Organized by Europan Europe, 2:pm Architectures & CUAC Arquitectura met for a 4-days long international workshop to explore how agriculture and architectural development are in symbiotic relationship. In analyzing the growth of Vienna and Oberlaa, they can easily understand how architecture born on agricultural results in footprints so they offered a system to develop Oberlaa. It’s a system which is able to offer countryside qualities within contemporary city density. More images and architects’ description after the break.
LAVA, the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, and Designsport collaborated with local Ethiopian firm JDAW to win the international architecture competition for a national stadium and sports village, held by the Federal Sport Commission, Ethiopia. Now, football and athletics-loving Ethiopians will have a new FIFA and Olympic-standard 60,000 seat stadium in Addis Ababa thanks to a design that combines local identity with new technology. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Presenting an opportunity, remaining largely unbuilt and mostly unburdened by heritage, the proposal for the Badel Block Complex by Luka Anic, Danko Balog, Tamara Baresic, and Srdan Gajic introduces new spatial configurations to the city center, opening the block area to public access and use. The large demanded gross built area quoted in the competition brief (65 000 m2) instils initial reproach. However, its justification can be found, apart from the apparent economical argument, in the term of density. A dense city is a live, vibrant city. Multiplicity of people, events, and spaces makes a city. And high quality density is what Zagreb lacks. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, designed by 5G Studio Collaborative, aimed to address the needs and desires of the growing community through sustainable capital improvements on the existing campus that sought to reflect the past and contemporary contexts. Through dialogue, observation, and reimagination, the potential to reposition the existing underutilized courtyard as the centroid of the Church’s social life became evident. Beginning with the courtyard and progressively outwards to the lot perimeter, the new campus design creates places of varying moods and moments to enrich the Church’s environmental and social connectivity with its neighbors. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Globe/Hedron Rooftop Farm is a bamboo greenhouse designed to organically grow fish and vegetables on top of generic flat roofs. Designed by Conceptual Devices, the structure is optimized for aquaponic farming techniques: the fish’s water nourishes the plants and plants clean the water for the fish. Using this farming technique, the design is optimized to feed four families of four all year round. More images and designers’ description after the break.
Safdie Architects was recently selected to design a new mixed-use development in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The 69-storey mixed-use project will be the first for Moshe Safdie in Sri Lanka, and is expected to be the tallest residential building in Colombo when it is completed. The design includes expansive family and community space amenities such as community gardens, shared outdoor spaces within the upper levels of the building, and individual roof gardens or terraces for every residence, a hallmark of Safdie’s design philosophy to provide access to outdoor spaces in high density urban housing. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The proposal for the Ajoodaniyeh Tower by Kamvari Architects seeks to use traditional design within Iran as a means of addressing performance criteria within a high-rise. With the intention of analyzing unique aspects of traditional architecture specific to the region, they combine these with advanced design methods to produce a novel proposal for the site and our client. More images and architects’ description after the break.
