The Louis Vuitton Maison Seoul, imagined by architects Frank Gehry and Peter Marino has just opened in the South Korean capital. Celebrating Korean heritage and culture, the design puts in place a curved glass facade, perched atop a white cubic mass.
Rwanda is writing a new global story for itself. Over two decades after the end of the country’s civil war and the 1994 genocide, a series of progressive visions have been the catalyst for transformation throughout Rwanda. These economic and structural reforms have redefined the built environment, and in turn, are shaping contemporary architecture across the country.
With the current socio-economic conditions, effects of climate change, and the exponential growth of urban centers, the relationship between design and residential spaces has become the centerpiece of architecture today, so much so that The Future of Housing was the theme of this year's SkyCity Challenge.
The Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition seeks to revitalize traditional architecture in overlooked areas of Spanish towns, while promoting the work of local artisans and builders. In this first phase, municipalities submitted proposals to rehabilitate or remodel various architectural spaces. Out of all the submissions, Alzira (Valencia), Santa Cruz de la Palma (Tenerife), Santiago de Compostela (La Coruña), and Guadix (Granada) were selected.
The School of Architecture, Design, Art, and Urbanism at the University of Morón (UM FADAU, Buenos Aires, Argentina) concludes its academic cycles with an Integrated Final Project (PFI). Through this project, since 2016, architecture students have designed full-scale community projects—designing, managing, building, and donating their work to non-profit organizations and local municipalities. The initiative is part of the Academic Program of Federal Assistance “PAAF!!”, created by the school, which allows students to graduate by building a fully operational building and donating it to a community in need in Argentina.
Ondřej Císler from Aoc architects and Petr Tej from the Klokner Institute at CTU in Prague have designed a bridge over the Dřetovice stream in Vrapice, near the city of Kladno in the Czech Republic.
Audience sightlines, accessibility and acoustics all make theater seating a hugely precise art. As part of their set of online resources for architects and designers, the team at Theatre Solutions Inc (TSI) have put together a catalog of 21 examples of theater seating layouts. Each layout is well detailed, with information on the number of seats, the floor seating area and row spacing. These layouts fall under three general forms; to supplement this information, alongside TSI's diagrams we've included the pros and cons of each type, as well as examples of projects which use each format. Read on for more.
The Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA) 2020 has been launched by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe. Announced during the Young Architects’ Forum in Barcelona, the award program encourages exchange between schools and seeks to improve the skills of architects from the beginning of their professional careers. YTAA recognizes the talent of recently graduated architects, urbanists and landscape architects, and provides the opportunity to work with architecture offices and institutions.
The Federal Senate has made a free e-book on the design of sustainable public buildings available on its official website. Written by Mário Hermes Stanziona Viggiano, the book presents a cultural, economic, environmental, and architectural approach to the conception and design of public-use buildings.
Within the framework of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25), the Official Association of Architects of Madrid (COAM) will host, from December 2 to 13, the conference “Architecture Facing Climate Change: Time to Act,” as part of the Castellana Verde Axis. The objective of this initiative, which stems from a collaboration between COAM, the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE), and the CSCAE's “Observatorio 2030,” is to raise public awareness about the key role cities play in the fight against climate change and to promote shared strategies within the building sector to help curb global warming.
The Superior Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) has announced the State of Oaxaca Historical Archive Building by Mendaro Arquitectos as the winner of the 2019 International Spanish Architecture Award, which is presented to encourage and promote the global expansion of Spanish architects and architecture firms, recognizing their architectural and urban quality while consolidating a shared brand.
Modern Moroccan architecture is reinterpreting vernacular traditions. Taking its name from the Arabic al-maġhrib, or the “place the sun sets; the west”, the kingdom is a sovereign state home to numerous examples of Islamic design, as well as detailed art and ornamentation found within geometric patterns, friezes and open courtyards.
Música para volar is the winning project of the “Micro Urban Architecture – Caminito” experience, a joint exercise conducted by the School of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design at the National University of Córdoba, Buenos Aires (Cátedra Equipamiento A, FAUD UNC) and the Politecnico di Milano.
Architect, educator and founding director of SCI-Arc, Ray Kappe, FAIA, passed away last week at the age of 92. Kappe experienced lung failure after battling pneumonia. As a renowned architect, Kappe designed more than 100 residences, pioneered a new approach to architectural education, and shaped both Los Angeles and California Modernism as we know it.
MoMA PS1 has announced that the Young Architects Program will be placed on a one-year hiatus. MoMA PS1, formerly P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, is one of the oldest and largest nonprofit arts centers in the United States devoted to contemporary art. The Young Architects Program founded by MoMA and MoMA PS1 was made to offer emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design a temporary, outdoor installation in New York.
The international design firm Olson Kundig has designed a new sustainable option for after-death care. In fact, the architects created the world’s first facility for converting human remains into soil, a flagship building for Recompose in Seattle.
In collaboration with Being development, OMA has won a competition to redevelop Van der Meulen-Ansemsterrein (VDMA) in central Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. The central site will be rehabilitated into “a vibrant urban hub with housing, offices, and public spaces.”
London's largest co-working space is officially set to open in the summer of 2020. Designed as part of Victoria House in Bloomsbury Square by LABS Collective, the 150,000 square foot project combines office, retail and leisure space. With access to both the West End and The City, the co-working space will feature a range of rooms and layouts, from small private offices to entire floors.
Opening in December in Shenzhen, China, the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (UABB), organized by the cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, will discuss the theme of “Urban Interactions”. First to use Facial Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, the public exhibition will test new grounds to reflect on the impact of digital technologies on the urban environment.
The Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture has created a new digital archive of student work in a comprehensive online database. As one of the few online collections of a school of architecture's student work, the database represents over eight decades of work, dating from the 1930’s through the present.
SNKH studio from Yerevan has been selected to design the Garage Screen summer cinema for the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia. The museum invited promising architecture firms to present their vision of temporary architecture and expanded the geographical reach of the competition to include Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kirgizstan.
Brazil's most famous architect, Oscar Niemeyer, kept his office active until his death in 2012 at the age of 104. One of the last projects he designed is nearing completion in Leipzig, Germany. The project is a 12-meter-diameter sphere embedded in the corner of a 19th-century brick building, which will house a cafe and bar for employees of the HeiterBlick and Kirow Ardelt AG railway companies.
WERK and Snøhetta have been selected as the winners of the maritime center competition on the harbor of Esbjerg, in Denmark. The proposal puts in place a glowing building entitled Lanternen or the Lantern, a new addition that will gather communal activities.
Heatherwick Studio has released their latest images for the 1,000 Trees Development in Shanghai. Dating back to August 2019, the images showcase the construction progress of the 300,000-square-meter project, with the near completion of one of two mountains, set to open in 2020.
