Taking place June 19th at 7pm at RIBA in London is the Do Architects Help? event which will examine the role that the UK built environment industry plays in overseas development. This London Festival of Architecture discussion, sponsored by Dunbar & Boardman, and put on by Article 25, emphasizes that in a world that is becoming increasingly urban and populous, architects and other built environment professionals are well placed to use their specialist knowledge and skills to influence development policy and help communities better prepare for and recover from disasters. Despite this their expertise is largely lacking for mainstream international development practice. For more information on the event, please visit here.
The Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, with the presence of Benjamin Ball and students from the 6th Semester Atelier 3x of the Ecole Speciale, inaugurated the 2012 Ball-Nouges studio ‘Pavillon Speciale’. This marks the 2nd edition of the summer architecture series that gives young emerging international architects the opportunity to build with students a temporary pavilion project in the heart of Paris. Curated and conceived by Matteo Cainer in the summer of 2010, the series is unique worldwide because it establishes a bridge between the architectural profession and academia, becoming therefore an integral part of the educational program of the school. More images and architects’ description after the break.
In the proposal for the Badel Block competition, WAU Design considered the site and its position as an opportunity to create a new center for the locals as well as a new entrance for the city through the ‘Communities of a Single Roof’ design. Considering the relative lack of public space and facilities in the neighborhood, they propose to extend the square and the market inside the Badel block and enlarge the space devoted to culture and leisure in order to strengthen the sense of community and centrality. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by Waa (We Architech Anonymous), the Yinchuan Art museum will be the first project developed within this new arts district centre. The project is named the yellow river art centre (YRAC) due to its close proximity to the yellow river which has been coined ‘the cradle of Chinese civilization’ by previous generations that helped protect and provide for early settlers. Located within 20km of the city centre, the main function of their design will be to knit subsequent communities together enhancing the well-being of future local social infrastructure. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Danica O. Kus shared with us her photographic work for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012. Designed by Herzog & De Meuron and Ai Weiwei, these photos give you a great insight into the overall feel and spatial qualities to the design. The half sunken in and water-covered structure starts to become a part of the landscape, as Kus is able to take the viewer inside and around the pavilion. You can check out more images after the break.
The ‘Sur Mesure’ Sticker Installation, designed by FREAKS freearchitects, was placed onto the facade of Oscar Niemeyer’s Building for French Communist Party Headquarters in Paris this past December. Known forNiemeyer’s simple construction without ornament, the installation creates a simple, yet interesting addition to the building for people around the city. Completed in the early 1980′s, the intention of letting it “breathe” to the city and not break the site generates an open space district with its undulating forms. This then mirrors the continuity of the urban fabric of the neighborhood and frames the plaza. The video shows the process of installing the immense sticker onto the facade. More images of the installation can be viewed after the break.
Richard Meier & Partners recently announced the first retrospective exhibition in Mexico City presented at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil on display now until August 26. Exhibiting some of the most emblematic works of renowned architect Richard Meier make it possible to view his design philosophy as a whole and in depth. The retrospective includes a selection of models, original sketches, renderings and photographs. Some of the iconic projects exhibited on the show include the Smith House, The Getty Center, The Neugebauer Residence and the Jubilee Church. More information on the exhibition after the break.
The proposal by PlaC (Plateaux Collaborative) for the Badel Block complex implements an alternative model of urban regeneration. In being sensible to local conditions and open to extra-territorial economic dynamics, equality and the balancing effect become the key-qualities of what they call the ‘CoExistence’ strategy. They measure the plot’s capacity not in terms of maximum square meters for consumers (as in the traditional sense of urban regeneration), but as optimization of the existing capacity. This is then obtained through careful renovation of the Badel assets and a coordinated volumetric upgrade. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place June 15th from 7-9pm at McNally Jackson in New York, CLOG is inviting the public in their celebration of the launch of their third issue, Data Space.
The Creators Project, VICE and Intel’s art and technology initiative, recently visited Mass Studies, a world-famed Korean architecture firm in Seoul. They spoke to the company’s founder Minsuk Cho who explained how their ultimate goal is to shape a community through space. The vast scope of their work, informed by both pre and post-urbanized Korea can be seen in this video interview here.
Danish architect Peter Sand recently received the 4th prize in the open urban international competition for a new city center in Klaksvik on the Faroe Islands. The new master plan, which is composed of 21,000 new square meters in the city center, highlights the already existing natural qualities with the close contact to the fjord and the beautiful surrounding mountains. More images and architects’ description after the break.
With a key concept for the Badel Block proposal of creating the core as a living icon, the existence of such a rich structure as the old distillery building defines this approach. As an opportunity to develop a new structure that enhances new urban routines, this project becomes a strong new urban value. Designed by Pablo Pita Architects, the mixed-use proposal defines the morphology of the construction ring, breaking it down in several pieces. This enables the intervention to be phased and sets the right urban scale. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designing Action, an international design competition, was recently launched by the Nashville Civic Design Center to re-imagine an industrial site along Downtown Nashville’s Cumberland River. With emphasis on creating active spaces for healthy citizens, and highlighting alternative sports and related activities, the 75 acre site has many variables to entice creative solutions. It is a brownfield site disconnected from the neighborhoods of East Nashville by an elevated interstate. The goal is to generate innovative ideas and concepts that could enhance the future redevelopment of riverfront property, promote active lifestyles and increase the quality of life for its citizens.
In the competition for eight houses in Chiba, Japan, Betillon/Dorval‐Bory Architectes aimed for an original architecture that would invent new lifestyles. Drawing inspiration from the analysis made by Junichiro Tanizaki in his famous work, ‘The Praise of Shadows’, the eight houses they propose are actually eight roofs. They are designed off the ground to clear the plot, allowing the parking of vehicles, access to garden and legibility of the landscape by a continuity of the ground. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place the weekend of July 21-22, Studio Mode / modeLab is putting on the Screening Workshop which will focus on the performative capacity of screening devices to regulate light and view while simultaneously producing both ornamental as well as material effects. The workshop will make extensive use of our digital fabrication equipment, coupled with parametric patterning techniques in Grasshopper for Rhinoceros. In a fast-paced and hands-on learning environment, participants will explore issues pertaining to the coordination of fabricated parts through unique object attributes, baking objects with user-defined attributes, nesting optimization with Rhinonest for Grasshopper, as well as the precise creation and manipulation of computational geometry through parametric modeling interfaces. For more information, please visit here.
The Well building 2050, an international design contest for housing in the strategic area of “La défense” Paris, is giving additional time to apply until Wednesday, June 13 at 12h00 GMT Paris. The competition challenges students worldwide to place quality of life and energy efficiency at the heart of urban housing in 2050. We need to consider housing from a new perspective, to bring about changes and improvements to the skills and jobs related to designing, constructing and using tomorrow’s place to live in. For more information on the competition, please visit here.
Taking place June 6 – July 31 at Escola Universitária Vasco da Gama’s Monastery of St. Jorge de Milréu in Coimbra, Portugal, the “Eduardo Souto de Moura – Contests” exhibition shows 50 works made for tenders launched in the last 31 years (between 1979 and 2010). In many competitions, the proposed architecture appears as immaterial sometimes unable to provide a reading of the detailed and comprehensive that actually is projected. It will be enlightening to see how there is a working method in which it supports the construction of the proposal (program, materials, location, history, references, sketches, models, drawings, photomontages, photographs, customer). More information on the exhibition after the break.
“Flip/City”, a proposal by PinkCloud.DK which was shortlisted in the 2012 Rethinking Shanghai competition, proposes a new urban identity for Shanghai as a model for the development of future cities. By flipping the horizontal cityscape to the vertical, footprints of Shanghai’s existing typologies, only visible by plane, embody the new face of the vertical city. By expanding Shanghai up along the vertical plane, unused urban voids will be activated. More images and architects’ description after the break.
