Zaha Hadid Architects has revealed the design of the Daxia Tower, to be built in the High-Tech Economic and Technological Development Zone of Xi’an, one of China’s largest inland cities with a population nearing nine million people. The tower will mark the center of Xi’an’s business district and will include offices, retail, and ancillary facilities, all designed with data analytics and behavior modeling to ensure a balanced disposition of spaces.
DAGOpen OÜ has just won the architectural competition for a standard design of Ukrainian Family houses, with their design “Hata.” The competition invited 17 designs from Estonian and Ukrainian architects to design “a standard project for modern family-type small group homes to be built in Ukraine”. The architecture of Ukraine directly inspired the winning design and addressed the spatial decisions made to attend to the crisis.
WilkinsonEyre has been selected to design a new college campus on the Olympic Way in Wembley, London, to serve as the new educational facility for the College of North West London. The project is designed to cater to over 300 students per week in addition to the 250 staff members. The new facility will offer classes in engineering, the built environment, and green skills, as well as digital technology, computing, health, and social care. The new campus scheme has recently been granted planning permission at the Council’s Planning Committee meeting and has now been passed to the Greater London Authority for final approval.
Urban Radicals presented a temporary pavilion “A Brick for Venice” as part of the European Cultural Center’s “Time Space Existence program during the same time as the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. The entirety of the brick pavilion was made with mud from the city’s canals. Furthermore, “A Brick for Venice” is the first proof of concept for the team’s novel waste-based construction product.
Organized by the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Planning of Uruguay (MVOT) and MEVIR, with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), the International Architecture Competition "Wood: Innovating Social Interest Architecture" involved submitting proposals for new types of wooden housing extensions. These could be either paired or standalone single-level structures, to be built by MEVIR in a demonstration set of 20 social interest houses within the town of Tranqueras, Rivera Department, Uruguay.
The “Green Obsession” campaign launched by Stefano Boeri Architetti has been declared the winner of the SDG Action Awards, the most important recognition of projects that support the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. As part of the SDG Action Campaign, the United Nations set out to reward initiatives that “mobilize, inspire and connect communities in order to promote positive change.” The winning initiative aims to help improve the relationship between nature and design by implementing the principles of urban forestation. Green Obsession represents a series of conferences, public programs and a book, “Green Obsession: Trees Towards Cities, Humans Towards Forests”, published in 2021 and supported by the Graham Foundation.
In the summer of 2022, Iwan Baan completed an urban pilgrimage through the unique streets of Prague. For 7 days, the photographer photographed the city on foot, on a bike, and from a helicopter, capturing the essence of the urban fabric, from the center to the periphery and the landscape along the Vltava River. Presenting the city as a raw and often neglected entity, Iwan Baan showcased his exhibition “Iwan Baan: Prague Diary” this year at CAMP.
The web series Atemporal ‑ A arquitetura permanece features a compilation of nine episodes depicting the various architectural movements that have shaped the history of Curitiba. Launched in 2020, the project spans from the earliest architectural impacts on the city during the colonial era and the influence of immigrants, to Eclectic architecture, Art Deco, and the first glimpses of Modernism, culminating in a denser vertical growth and an internationally recognized urban plan.
Many people are in need of shelter. War, extreme weather events, and famine... Unfortunately, these crises are frequent and lead to large-scale migration. Welcoming individuals in extremely vulnerable situations is a challenge. Ensuring comfort, well-being, and dignity is a humanitarian imperative. Today, there are around 103 million displaced people worldwide, and climate change could significantly increase this number.
The project Fertile Futures, the Portuguese representation at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, organized an International Summer Seminar in July in the municipality of Fundão, promoting alternative approaches to architecture and highlighting the project's promising future. The seminar aimed to foster thematic awareness, collaborative experiences, and an expanded field of action among the participants.
Shigeru Ban has announced the intention to collaborate with the municipality of Lviv to design an expansion of the Lviv hospital. As the largest hospital in Ukraine, this unit has witnessed an increase in the number of patients since the beginning of the war, leading to the need to increase the capacity of the institution. Shigeru Ban’s proposal uses cross-laminated wood and joints inspired by traditional wooden construction techniques to create a safe and welcoming environment for healing and recuperating.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a drastic housing shortage spread across Europe, and Milan was no exception. Various plans and solutions were conceived to address this crisis, outlining satellite communities for the city to accommodate between 50,000 and 130,000 residents each. The first of these communities began construction in 1946, just one year after the war's end: the Gallaratese project.
In late 1967, as the plan allowed for the private development of Gallaratese 2, the esteemed Studio Ayde, led by partner Carlo Aymonino, was assigned the project. Aymonino invited Aldo Rossi to contribute his architectural skill to the complex, leading to the realization of their distinct visions for an ideal microcosmic community. Together, these two Italian architects began a journey to shape a groundbreaking and historically significant housing icon for Milan. Captured through the lens of Kane Hulse, the building and it’s significance is revisited through this photo series.
The 20th century saw a period of experimentation and innovation at an unprecedented pace, a direction that also marked the architectural expressions of the time. Paris, as one of Europe’s leading centers for artistic and cultural expression, was also the epicenter for the formation of new architectural styles, from Le Corbusier’s modern architecture revolution to expressions of the High-Tech style as seen in the design of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ Centre Pompidou. The social transformation found its expression through Brutalist public institutions or residential ensembles, like the ones designed by Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie at Irvy-Sur-Seine, while political movements attracted architects from across the ocean, including Oscar Niemeyer, who created his first European building in the French capital.
Switzerland-based office Oppenheim Architecture has been announced as the winner of a two-phase competition for the redesign and restoration of the Besa Museum in Tirana, Albania. The institution is dedicated to showcasing the Albanian code of honor represented through the name “Besa,” a concept that dictates welcoming any guests as one’s own. The museum is conceived as a continuation of the Jewish Museum on Vlora, diving deeper into the principle of Besa and its role in the help given to the Jews in Albania during the Holocaust.
OPEN Architecture’s Sun Tower, designed as a landmark for the Chinese coastal city of Yantai, topped out last month. On the summer solstice day, the 50-meter-tall structure reached its peak height. The landmark is expected to be open to the public in 2024. Acting as a cultural placeholder, the building reframes the typical understanding of "design with nature."
During the opening keynote at the UIA 2023 World Congress of Architects, Bjarke Ingels, the lead and founder of BIG, shared insights into pressing global challenges along with the office’s distinctive approach to addressing them. After the conference, ArchDaily had the chance to sit down with Bjarke Ingels to further expand on these topics. The discussion touched on a number of subjects, including BIG’s approach to design, based on their principle of “Hedonistic Sustainability,” the meaning and opportunities behind this change in mentality, the inter-applicability of technological innovations across different fields and even across planets, and the need to develop a New European Bauhaus as a response to the emerging environmental necessities.
CHYBIK + KRISTOF has just won an architectural competition to design the new primary school in Stara Boleslav in the Czech Republic. The school will allow up to 900 children from sixteen neighboring towns to attend. Furthermore, the design is based on a flexible methodology that will enable the school to change in the future to meet new demands. The building's green atrium opens views of the city's primary local and historical structures. Moreover, the school is designed to become an educational and cultural hub for the town and the neighboring public.
Ennead Architects has been enlisted to redefine the campus of The American School in Japan (ASIJ) to align the international school’s academic mission with its environment. Currently defined by its aging and fragmented infrastructure, the campus is set to become a dynamic and innovative space, encouraging integrated learning, cohesion, and collaboration across age groups. Sustainability principles, along with the experience of Japanese heritage, also play an important role in the design of the master plan, which proposes a toolkit of solutions intended to help create a unified, sustainable and resilient campus.
