On the occasion of the first edition of its Public Design Festival, esterni announces an international call for entries to search for ideas and projects for public spaces; among all submissions, 10 projects will be selected, carried out and presented during the festival, that will take place in Milan on April 18-26 2009. This unique opportunity to design a planned intervention on an urban parking area is open to different types of approaches, from community service to urban furniture.
The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, was designed by Daniel Libeskind and completed in 2001. The museum was mainly sorrounded by a plain exterior, occupied by a parking lot. The canal-side building is planning a new design landscape and collected proposals from several firms in a competition. The entries have come to five finalists, from which the final design should be chosen this March.
The finalists are:
KLA (UK) White arkitekter ab (Sweden) Patel Taylor (UK) Topotek 1 (Germany) Field Operationes (US)
Seen on designboom. The proposals, after the break.
Following with our “Round Up”, the category this Friday is Institutional Architecture. Enjoy this selection of our previously published works.
Our green friends from Inhabitat just shared this with us: Morris Architects, a Houston-based architecture and design firm, recently took top honors for two of their submissions in the Radical Innovation in Hospitality design competition. The grand prize winner, the Oil Rig Platform Resort and Spa makes use of one of 4,000 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and transforms it into a luxurious eco-resort and spa.
More details on the project, here.
More images after the break.
Texas Tech University’s College of Architecture in conjunction with the American Institute of Architecture Students will host a symposium and workshop April 15-16 that will focus on making its campus more environmentally friendly.
Cesar Dubó sent us this link to Flavor Wire (Flavorpill’s Blog). It shows the very best songs related to architecture. Please, feel free to submit your own favorites in the comments.
We just saw this link on VariousArchitect´s Twitter, and thought it might interest you. Small architectural practices are bearing the brunt of the recession with 47% saying they do not have enough work, new research reveals.
International architectural firm Coop Himmelb(l)au have received the first prize in the competition to design the new ‘Headquarter of China Insurance Group’ in Shenzen, China. It will be part of a lively business quarter in the heart of the central district of Shenzhen made up of a carefully composed ensemble of individual towers creating a landmark silhouette.
Seen at designboom, here.
More images after the break.
MAD recently organized a collaborative masterplanning project in South West China. Ten young international architects were invited to take part in an urban experiment, to design a new city centre on a scenic natural site close to the city of Guiyang. The participating architects were: Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (DENMARK), Dieguez Fridman (ARGENTINA), EMERGENT/Tom Wiscombe (USA), HouLiang Architecture (CHINA), JDS (DENMARK/BELGIUM), MAD (CHINA), Mass Studies (KOREA), Rojkind Arquitectos (MEXICO), Serie (UK/INDIA), Sou Fujimoto Architects (JAPAN).
Seen on designboom.
Images after the break.
It’s Tuesday, time for another “Round Up” of previously published works. This week, we bring you our first selection of Museums.
After a high-level meeting on February 13, CCTV issued a report that shows that only the surface of the building was damaged. The amazing fire we saw on the images and videos was actually the zinc alloy burning very fast (melts at 400ºC, versus 1000ºC fireworks can get). Anyway, a Chinese architecture expert puts this in doubt, saying that interior equipment had to be damaged. Now it´s up to the engineers to decide the future of the building.
Our green friends from Inhabitat sent us this interesting project. A new prefab recently built by the students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Their goal was to build a prototype prefab conducive to elegant and sustainable living within the heart of the desert landscape.
The masterplan will transform a site of a former slaughterhouse in the city of Horsens, Western Denmark into a mixed-use commercial, office and cultural complex that will include residential areas. Shla’s masterplan received particular praise for its dynamic design which will create a sense of cohesion between the city’s existing urban identity and the new retail and recreational areas.
More details, after the break.
Paul Murdoch Architects, with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, won the 2-stage competition for a national memorial and park to occur at the site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The memorial will honor the passengers and crewmembers of Flight 93.
A heart-shaped sculpture by Gage Clemenceau Architects will land on Times Square today. It will stay on Duffy Square until March 1st. The sculpture is constructed with DuPontTM Corian® strawberry ice and welded steel tubes. The heart is lit from within using color-changing LED lighting.
Sponsored by the BSA/Boston Society of Architects and Architectural Record, “In the Pursuit of Housing”, is a competition that invites architecture students and recent graduates to think critically about the housing issues facing their generation. The BSA challenged submitters to design housing that they themselves could afford. The submission deadline is March 3.
Following with our round ups of works by categories, this week we bring you a selection of Interiors previously featured in ArchDaily.
With the exhibition “Yes is more”, the Danish Architecture Centre zooms in on BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. Using unconventional approaches, humour, and international focus, BIG has contributed to the renewal of the Danish architectural tradition.