Patrick is ArchDaily's News Editor. Prior to this position, he was an editorial intern for ArchDaily while working full time as an assistant for a watercolor artist. Patrick holds a B. Arch degree from Penn State University and has spent time studying under architect Paolo Soleri. He is currently based in New York City.
This year’s installment of the National Building Museum’s Summer Block Party Series, James Corner Field Operations’ ICEBERGS, is now open to the public. On display until September 5th, ICEBERGS takes the form of a shimmering, underwater world of glacial ice fields located in the museum’s expansive Great Hall to provide the public with an escape from the hot Washington, D.C. summer.
The offices of Caá Porá, Siete86 and Ingeniera Alternativa have released designs for “Palenque Cultural Tambillo,” a cultural center dedicated to the artistic tradition of marimba music in the Afroecuadorean town of Tambillo, Ecuador. Consisting of a performance and meeting hall, two multi-use classrooms, rehearsal spaces, an artisanal instrument workshop and ecologically friendly public bathrooms, the project is planned to become one piece of a network of cultural centers to be built in the UNESCO heritage province of Esmeraldas.
Ingenhoven Architects have released images of Marina One, a high-density mixed-use complex for the new Marina Bay Financial District in downtown Singapore. The plan consists of two office towers, two residential towers and a retail podium set between two large urban parks. The project’s centerpiece is the “Green Heart,” which upon completion will become the largest public plaza in the central business district. Construction has currently topped out, with an expected completion date falling sometime in 2017.
_AlexanderSchmitz.jpg?1467999479 "© Alexander Schmitz. Courtesy of Ingenhoven")
Building on the popularity of Snarkitecture's popular BEACH last year and BIG's massive Labyrinth in 2014, the National Building Museum's 2016 Summer Block Party installation has returned this year with "ICEBERGS," designed by James Corner Field Operations. ICEBERGS is an interactive underwater environment of glacial ice spanning the museum's Great Hall, and invites in the public to escape the hot Washington D.C. summer by exploring climbable bergs, ice chutes, caves, grottos and more.
Take a look at this time lapse video to see how the project came together.
Bringing together architects, artists, chefs, designers and engineers, pop-up restaurant Food Ink. has laid claim to the title of "world's first 3D-printing restaurant." The restaurant utilizes 3D printers produced by Dutch company byFlow to create dishes out of hummus, chocolate mousse, smashed peas, goat cheese or pizza dough – essentially anything that can take the form of a paste. The paste can then be fed through the extruder to create culinary sculptures.
Dreem Arkitekter have been announced as the co-winners of a competition to design a new urban plan for a three block area in the Stockholm neighborhood of Kista. The project will include a large mixed-use complex consisting of residential, commercial and active public spaces, and is anchored into the neighborhood through a cornerstone residential tower. Together with joint winner ÅWL, the offices will finalize the project this fall.
Ennead Architects has released plans for a new 40,000 square meter (430,550 square foot) Music Center in the Chinese city of Xiamen. The design, produced for a six-week design competition held by Xiamen City Municipal Planning, draws inspiration from the island city’s dramatic topography and history to create a new public institution along the harbor. To provide the beachfront with a new public gathering place, the project’s feature element will be a grand stair likened by Ennead to Rome’s timeless Spanish Steps.
The city council of the Flemish city of Aalst have awarded KAAN Architecten with the commission for a new library and home of the Academy of Performing Arts. The building will also integrate the existing “Pupillenschool” (formerly a military school for children) to anchor the new tenant into the Belgian town’s rich history. The complex will be located at the corner of Oude Graanmarkt and Espalnadestraat, becoming a new cornerstone project where the many communities of Aalst can gather, learn and engage in cultural activities.
White Arkitekter’s Copenhagen studio has been selected as winners of a competition to design 115 individual homes as part of a social housing project in Denmark’s Allerød Municipality. Located north of the capital city of Copenhagen, the new neighborhood will be bordered by forest and a lake, inviting the nature in to complement and screen individual buildings. The project, titled “By the Woods,” will attempt to subvert typical preconceptions about social housing through the blurring of public and private space.
Danish firm CF Møller have been tapped by the LEGO Group to design a 52,000 square meter (560,000 square foot) global hub for the company’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark. The design, which draws inspiration from the colored modular bricks for which LEGO is known, will provide new flexible work arrangements and community spaces centered around a brightly lit 4-story atrium, as well as a new public park for the campus.
From a list of 25 finalists released in May, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) has announced the winners of the 2016 European Prize for Urban Public Space. Awarded since 2000 to recognize “transformations and improvements in the public spaces of Europe,” this year’s prize names two joint winners along with four special mentions. All 25 finalists will have their work featured in an exhibition that will tour Europe over the next two years, and also will be published in an online archive that features past finalists.
Continue after the break for images and descriptions of the winning projects.
Currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, Award-winning African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré has created Colorscape, a installation made from steel and brightly-colored fiber, to accompany his first solo show in the United States. The exhibition is titled The Architecture of Francis Kéré: Building with Community, and features of a retrospective of the architect’s career that includes material artifacts, tools and scale-models created for stand-out projects in both Africa and Europe.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected seven recipients of the 2016 Small Project Awards. This is the 13th edition of the program, which was established to recognize firms for their excellence in small-project design. This year the winners have been placed into two categories: Category 1, which awards “a small project construction, object, work of environmental art or architectural design element up to $150,000 in construction cost,” and Category 2, given to “A small project construction, up to $1,500,000 in construction cost.”
This year’s winners include a wide variety of program types and sites. Continue after the break for the list and descriptions of the projects.
Dutch firm Benthem Crouwel Architects have won a competition to renovate and expand Museum Arnhem, a museum located in Arnhem, Netherlands housing a collection of modern and contemporary art. The winning proposal was selected by the jury from its “clarity and simplicity, the preservation of the centuries-old lateral moraine, and the brilliant idea of incorporating a publicly open veranda into the new extension.”
BIG’s unzipped wall for the 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion has been a critic and fan favorite so far this summer. Its simple parametric design has inspired the array of captivating photos and even a virtual model that allows you to adjust the parameters of the structure in your browser window. Now you can play with its design wherever you go, thanks to a new app by Studioclam.
The Obama Foundation has selected Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) with partner Interactive Design Architects (IDEA) to lead the design of the Obama Presidential Center for Chicago's South Side. Chosen from a shortlist including Diller Scofidio + Renfro, John Ronan Architects, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, SHoP Architects, Snøhetta and Adjaye Associates, TWBTA stood out for their “commitment to explore the best ways of creating an innovative center for action that inspires communities and individuals to take on our biggest challenges.”
The residence belonging to famed Postmodernist architect Michael Graves will be sold to Kean University, home to the new Michael Graves College for architecture and design, after receiving approval from its board of trustees. Following Graves’s death last year, the architect’s will stipulated that the residence, his studio, another property were to be donated to Princeton University, Graves’s neighbor and longtime employer. But Princeton University felt the buildings would be better served in another capacity and rejected the gift, allowing Kean to step in.
The Walmart Supercenter is generally considered one of the great antagonists of architecture around the world – the hulking behemoth who sold its integrity for the consumer convenience of having everything in one place. Though the first Walmart Supercenter didn’t open until 1988, big box stores have existed in some form since the 1960s, luring in shoppers with low prices and curbside loading lanes. For all the user psychology design that goes into them, the original designs of these buildings rarely pay much mind to their architectural or urban consequences, excluding a few notable exceptions.
Regardless, for the past 20 years big box stores have continued to prosper, prompting tenants to leave their homes and move on to even larger structures, leaving behind giant, open frameworks – for sale on the cheap. In a recent essay for 99% Invisible entitled Ghost Boxes: Reusing Abandoned Big-Box Superstores Across America, author Kurt Kohlstedt explores the architectural potential of these megastructures, drawing inspiration from the architects and communities that have successfully converted them into valuable assets.
