Bjarke Ingels Group has unveiled the final design for Västerås Travel Center, a transport infrastructure hub bringing together multiple travel modes within one cohesive architectural object. The project's defining feature is a light, undulating roofscape unfolding across the various complex elements of the program that make up the urban node, creating a new landmark for one of Sweden's largest cities.
Cloister of Green Light. Image Courtesy of iF Design Award
Architects from around the world are designing hotels that are sustainable and mindful of their ecological footprint, seeking to connect their guests more closely to nature. We are talking about a deep understanding that seeks to truly harmonize the environment of the place with the architecture to create a forgotten closeness to nature for urban guests.
https://www.archdaily.com/961851/eco-conscious-hospitality-architecture-meet-the-winners-of-the-if-design-award-2021ArchDaily Team
Following China's rapid urbanization and emergence of new districts and public buildings, MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, has won an international competition to design the new Zhuhai Cultural Arts Center. Their proposal, titled "Village Under the Dome", will be situated within China’s Pearl River Delta in the Yinkeng Village, a historic town that has recently been demolished and relocated by the municipality to make room for new projects. Instead of rebuilding over the demolition, their design offered a conservation and renewal of the village, creating a new function of the original site.
For the first time in the Venice Architecture Biennale, the island nation of Grenada presents the exhibition COethos, featuring its newest architectural landmark, Grenada's House of Parliament, together with a number of ideas for regenerating the city of St. George's. Curated by the Babau Bureau collective, the pavilion showcases the design and building process of the Parliament building, as well as explorations of the various possibilities of re-activating public spaces along the town's harbour.
Interior courtyards are open-air areas located within buildings, with their perimeters defined by walls or galleries. These outdoor yet contained spaces often play a crucial role in shaping and organizing a project's floor plan. In some cases, they act as a central lung, gathering the surrounding spaces around their perimeter. They can also be designed as pathway organizers or articulating elements, connecting while simultaneously dividing different areas of the project.
Numerous benefits—such as the influx of natural light, improved ventilation, and a stronger connection to nature without sacrificing privacy—have made this feature an effective solution for many architectural designs. Consequently, we present a selection of 15 projects in Argentina where interior courtyards take center stage.
Combining units and patterns to offer different ways of composing a space is the primary reason for choosing modular furniture. It adds value to interiors through spatial versatility while establishing a rhythm that can dictate various forms of occupancy and intervention within the same environment.
One of the biggest names in Brazilian and worldwide architecture, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, passed away at the age of 92. As his son Pedro Mendes da Rocha reported to ArchDaily, the architect was hospitalized in São Paulo due to lung cancer and passed away at dawn on Sunday, May 23, 2021.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha will be remembered for the great formative role he had. His architectural creation debated life above all, raising questions and challenging ready ideas and conformity. He consolidated an influence short of language or aesthetics, formed mainly by the way of acting and thinking, in which each project was an opportunity for transformation. His ideas and designs overflowed the limits of the program, place and materiality, always bringing a new point of view to achieve revolutionary simplicity.
https://www.archdaily.com/962174/paulo-mendes-da-rocha-passes-away-at-92Equipe ArchDaily Brasil
As part of an initiative by the new Mexico Design Fair platform, the "Designer of the Year" award was presented today, May 22, at Casa Naila in Puerto Escondido to industrial designer Liliana Ovalle, whose work demonstrates an extensive exploration of materials and processes that incorporate narratives and observations of her surroundings.
Flat slabs, pitched roofs, and straight-line designs are relatively recent developments in human history. Historically, curved roofs predominated in Indigenous architecture. Today, although they are not the most common choice, some firms are exploring how more organically designed roofs can better engage with their context and introduce functional benefits, influencing the project from the construction site to the ultimate comfort of its users.
Methods of shading facades and preventing direct solar radiation from entering a building's interior have been present since ancient architecture. However, modern architecture popularized the use of the brise-soleil, one of the most widespread passive climate control devices, which shades spaces while allowing for cross-ventilation when necessary.
Not-for-profit Zuecca Projects and Coldefy have shared new research for Tropicalia, the largest single-dome greenhouse on the planet, for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Presenting tropical fauna and flora, the team is also sharing the architectural and engineering specificities of the Tropicalia greenhouse with its unique sustainable air treatment engineering.
Titled "Future School", the Korean Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale Di Venezia, transforms the structure into an explorative academic facility. Curated by Hae-Won Shin, the pavilion will be on display at the Giardini from May 22nd until November 21st, 2021.
The Luxembourg Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale reflects on how the pandemic has brought a series of dualities to the spotlight, challenging the understanding of the relationships established between architecture and land, interior and exterior, home and work or the built environment and nature. In light of these issues, the exhibition titled Homes for Luxembourg, designed by Sara Noel Costa de Araujo (Studio SNCDA) and featuring contributions to the architecture publication Accattone explores ideas of modular, reversible living while also illustrating a model of repurposing land to build new forms of togetherness.
Developed by architect Gerardo Caballero, in collaboration with Paola Gallino, Sebastian Flosi, Franco Brachetta, Ana Babaya, Leonardo Rota, Emmanuel Leggeri, Sofia Rothman, Gerardo Bordi, Edgardo Torres, and Alessandro De Paoli, "The Infinite House", a project inspired by traditional Argentine houses, will represent Argentina in the upcoming 2021 VeniceArchitecture Biennale. The project reflects on the identity of Argentine public housing and the role collective housing, both public and private, has played in the country's history and society. The Infinite House aims to push the limits of the domestic and to highlight the importance of the collective rather than the individual by illustrating that a home extends beyond one's own living space: "it is the city, the country, and even the world."
Foster + Partners have shared the design for a residential-led masterplan on the outskirts of Bangkok. Dubbed The Forestias, the project includes a large forest at its heart. The design was made to address the growing disconnect between contemporary city life and family traditions. The Forestias proposal focuses on promoting multi-generational family co-living and new models of urban life in Thailand.
Titled "It's Not For You! It's For the Building", the Latvian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia showcases how technology risks creating new problems while providing solutions to urgent global crises. Curated by architecture office NRJA, the pavilion will be on display at the Arsenale from May 21st until November 22nd, 2021.
The Loreto Open Community project is the winning proposal of the competition organized by the Municipality of Milan to redesign Piazzale Loreto, now a crowded traffic junction. Designed by Metrogramma, together with Mobility in Chain, Studio Andrea Caputo, LAND, Temporiuso, Squadrati and developed by Ceetrus Nhood, the project envisions a layered system of architectural objects and public spaces that would foster a wide array of activities while also shaping a new green area for the city.