Architecture News

Hoor Al Qasimi, the President of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and its curator Tosin Oshinowo, have announced the title and theme of the 2023 Triennial as "The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability". The theme reflects on the issues of scarcity in the Global South, and how this challenge has created a "culture of re-use, re-appropriation, innovation, collaboration and adaptation". Through these differing modes of practice, the event, which will be inaugurated in November 2023, will explore how people can "reorient global conversations to create a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future".

In parallel with the restoration works underway at the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, the city of Paris has launched a design competition to redevelop the cathedral’s surroundings. On June 27, the jury announced the team led by landscape designer Bas Smets as the winner of the competition. The project, planned to start in 2024, will reimagine the square and the underground parking spaces beneath it, including the archeological crypt, the Jean XXIII square located behind the cathedral, the Seine riverbanks, and the adjacent streets. This extensive project aims to bring Parisians back to the heart of Paris and welcome the 12 million visitors coming each year in better conditions.

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The Municipality of the City of Mendoza launched a provincial ideas competition for the design and construction of a memorial honoring Malvinas veterans. Although organized by the Architects' Association of the Province of Mendoza (CAMZA), the initiative originated from a group of Malvinas veterans who reached out to the municipality. They sought a single space where they could be remembered, and which could bring together the four local Malvinas organizations: ACUVEMA (Cuyo Association of Malvinas Veterans), AVUM (Association of Veterans United for Malvinas), ADEM (Association of Malvinas Veterans), and FECUVEMA (Cuyo Federation of Malvinas Veterans).

Foster + Partners has completed the new headquarters for the National Bank of Kuwait, a 300-meter skyscraper with a distinctive presence among the buildings of Sharq, Kuwait city's growing financial district. The new tower promotes employee synergy and enhanced wellbeing by bringing all of the bank’s corporate employees together under one roof. The design combines environmentally-conscious features and structural innovation, providing an energy-efficient passive architecture that shields the offices from the extremes of Kuwait's climate.

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EHDD has recently launched the Early-Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC) Assessment tool, a free new web-based application developed to designers set goals and strategies to reduce carbon emissions from building and construction projects. The tool aims to fill a gap in the life-cycle assessment process and allow designers to identify the most impactful measures early in the project process. At the same time, other resources like Tally and EC3 are seen as crucial later in the design.

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On this day 117 years ago, Juan O'Gorman—the first Mexican functionalist architect—was born, whose work marked a turning point in the architectural production of his era. He trained at what was then the National School of Architecture, where he completed and integrated his studies in architecture and engineering. Considered the father of modern architecture in Mexico, O'Gorman trained in the style of Le Corbusier and the stripped purism of Villagrán, eventually evolving toward the "New Mexican Baroque" movement. His works were characterized primarily by the use of reinforced concrete, asymmetric exteriors, and a constant search for air and light.

As part of the London Festival of Architecture, French-Lebanese architect Annabel Karim Kassar and her award-winning studio AKK have unveiled a new installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London titled The Lebanese House: Saving a home, Saving a city. The installation explores the aftermaths of the Beirut explosion, and the rebuilding of the city with a life-size replica of a typical Lebanese home, one of the few remaining classic Ottoman-Venetian houses left in old Beirut, along with documentary films.

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UNStudio has been announced as the winner of the international competition "Un Iași pentru Viitor" to design a new residential district in the historical center of Iași, Romania. For this competition, organized by Iulius company, four offices have been invited to participate, Foster + Partners, MVRDV, UNStudio, and Zaha Hadid Architects. The main challenge of the competition brief was designing a building well integrated into a complex urban environment marked by historic monuments of different ages, new archeological discoveries, and open public spaces and gardens. The winning proposal, titled „Bridging Time, Bridging Communities,” aims to offer a coherent response to the particularities of the site.

Hello Wood launches the Builder Method; an international collaboration to develop a presence and action-based educational methodology. Through the process of building, participants not only build an object but they build a community and develop themselves.

As part of the ideas competition organized by the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA), Aisenson Arquitectos, together with associated firm MGHS, won first prize for the design of the institution's main headquarters building, to be located along the central axis of the Innovation Park in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.

Aedas has unveiled the design of the Hangzhou Yun He Wan International Tourism and Leisure Complex in Hangzhou, China. Located in the southern area of the Grand Canal New Town in the Gongshu District of Hangzhou, the site is the first phase of a larger project, starting off as a vibrant international tourism and leisure complex that highlights the waterfront of Yun He Wan and the historical remains of the nearby industrial pier.

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At the end of June, the exhibition marking the end of the First Stone program opened at the National Coach Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. Initiated in 2016 by the cultural association experimentadesign, the program involved 36 architects and designers from 15 different countries, including Michel Rojkind, Álvaro Siza, Amanda Levete, Bijoy Jain, Carla Juaçaba, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Elemental, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, Manuel Aires Mateus, Mia Hägg, Paulo David, Studio MK27, Vladimir Djurovic, Claudia Moreira Salles, Estudio Campana, Fernando Brízio, Frith Kerr, Ian Anderson, Jasper Morrison, Jonathan Barnbrook, Jonathan Olivares, Jorge Silva, Michael Anastassiades, Miguel Vieira Baptista, Pedro Falcão, Peter Saville, Philippe Starck, R2 Design, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Sagmeister & Walsh, Ai Weiwei, Alexandre Farto aka Vhils, Carsten Höller, Fernanda Fragateiro, Julião Sarmento, and Marina Abramovic.

The Antofagasta Public Space Design Guides, developed by Allard&Partners for CREO Antofagasta, aim to improve the quality of life for the city's inhabitants, “by gradually complementing and consolidating a coherent identity for the city that strengthens the character of each area and its communities.” The four volumes, corresponding to their respective neighborhood typologies—Commercial (Downtown District), Under Transformation (Station District), Mixed Residential (Brasil District), and Coastal Edge—are available on the CREO Antofagasta website for direct download and free use.

One of the most urgent problems faced by Ukrainians today is the unsettled situation faced by displaced citizens, along with the challenge of returning to the cities they were forced to abandon earlier this year. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has shared that efforts to rebuild Ukraine will require ‘colossal investments’, and as leaders gather to work out ‘Marshall plan’ to rebuild the country, local architects have already begun developing emergency housing, healthcare, and educational facilities in cities further away from the Russian border.

As a temporary solution to the displacement of north-eastern and eastern Ukrainians, Drozdov&Partners, together with Replus Bureau and Ponomarenko Bureau, have begun refurbishing shelters for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Lviv and its region, using school campuses and other large-scale facilities as temporary housing.

Architecture practice Grimshaw has revealed designs for the Futures Institute at Dollar Academy (FIDA) in Scotland, UK, an open-access learning platform developed by the Dollar Academy, one of Scotland’s leading independent schools. The Institute’s new building will receive the country’s first Living Building certification.

FIDA was launched in May 2021 to tackle fundamental challenges in education: providing equitable access and closing the poverty-related attainment gap; finding compelling alternatives to traditional teaching and exam systems; and addressing sustainability. The initiative invites young people across Scotland to participate in innovative projects rooted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These challenges include workshops, skills-based courses, design challenges, and competitions, all offered in-person and via an online platform to enable the broadest possible participation.

The EPFL Innovation Park (EIP) has selected 3XN | GXN and IB (Itten+Brechbühl SA) to design and build a new "ecotope", expanding the university's Science Park and Innovation Square to a new site, west of the main EPFL campus in Ecublens, Switzerland. The Ecotope is set to be a vibrant and innovative marketplace for ideas, serving as an "ecosystem in which policymakers, researchers, investors, executives, students, and citizens can come together for open dialogue or debate.” The concept of the project not only brings together leaders in business, science, and technology, but also puts a high priority on access to green spaces and biophilic principles.

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The Outsider magazine and the City Municipality of Maribor have announced the winners of the international competition “Floating Pavilion on the Drava River.” The purpose of the competition was to obtain an innovative design for a floating pavilion that would have two main functions: a space for smaller events during the Lent Festival and a space for contemplation by the river. The City Municipality of Maribor will invite the winning candidate to participate in the implementation of the project.

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Canary Islands-born architect Fernando Menis has received the highest honor at the Faith & Form International Awards for Religious Art & Architecture in the United States, for his design of the Holy Redeemer Church of Las Chumberas in Tenerife. Co-sponsored by Faith & Form, Partners for Sacred Places, and Interfaith Design, the annual awards program has honored outstanding religious architecture since 1978.