Architecture News

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On August 28, the exhibition “Arquitectura Popular del Noreste” (Vernacular Architecture of the Northeast) opened at the Distrito Tec Open Gallery in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. The show features a series of images of the region's vernacular architecture captured by a group of 16 photographers, alongside residential surveys conducted by two architects: Francisco Álvarez, Tania Anchondo, Marcelo Barahona, Marcel del Castillo, Colectivo El Norestense, Sofía Garfias, Nora I. Gómez, Sofía Kalionchiz, José V. Kontos, Iván Manríquez, Josué Olivo, Isaac Rincón Aiza, Jar Rock, Carolina Segura, Martín Tovar, Marcela Vela, David Verazaluce Lugo, and Ignacio Woolfolk.

Valentino Gareri has proposed a sustainable and modular educational building for the new post COVID-19 era. Entitled Tree-House School, the project reinforces the relationship with nature, with connected outdoor and indoor spaces.

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The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies have announced the 2020 International Architecture Awards. The global architecture award for the world’s best new buildings and urban planning celebrated 125 plus projects for its 2020 edition from over 38 nations.

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A new mixed-use waterfront development is set to start construction in 2021 after receiving approval by the City of Melbourne’s Future Melbourne Committee. Designed by Foster and Partners, Fender Katsalidis and Oculus, the project is backed by WMW Developments, a venture between Perri Projects and Qanstruct. Located along the Maribyrnong River, the design is made with a series of buildings that span retail, residential, commercial and community uses.

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Videos

Stefano Boeri has released a short movie, directed by Stefano Santamato and produced by Paolo Soravia, highlighting the journey of 400 fir logs, from being downed by the storm Vaia to being part of the scenography of the Greek Theater in Syracuse. The film, dedicated to the second life of fir trees has won the Venice Architecture Short Film Festival 2020.

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Büro Ole Scheeren unveiled images of the Shenzhen Wave, a transformational headquarters for ZTE, and new symbol of China’s next digital revolution. Envisioned as the future of workspace, the project “reimagines the urban cityscape as an interactive and integrated spatial ecosystem hovering above ground level”.

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The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is recognizing seven new residential designs with 2020 Housing Awards. The projects are awarded across single family, production, multifamily and specialized housing. Presented by the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community, the awards emphasize the importance of good housing as a "necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit, and a valuable national resource."

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The winners of the National Ideas Competition "Emerging Habitats" in Argentina have been announced. Organized by the national government through the Ministry of Territorial Development and Habitat and the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the call invited university students, faculty, and researchers across the country to submit design proposals for environmentally efficient housing that can be built during emergencies.

The Architecture Thesis of the Year | ATY 2020 an international architecture thesis competition organized by the Charette, unveiled the winners of this year’s edition. Aiming to “extend appreciation to the tireless effort and exceptional creativity of student thesis in the fields of Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape and Restoration”, the contest gathered over 1000 entries from all over the world.

Danish architecture firm TREDJE NATUR has designed a new 40-hectare regenerative masterplan for Bergen, Norway. The grand vision aim to bring new life to an old logistics port and ferry terminal. The plan outlines a zero-emission district focused on a community-based sharing economy, renewable building materials and climate adaptation strategies. The proposal emphasizes Bergen’s relation to the fjord, nature and history.

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Videos

Piscina Mirabilis is a Roman reservoir built by Emperor Augustus in the 1st century AD, in order to feed with drinking water the headquarter of his western Mediterranean war fleet. It was dug out a tuff hill, and it is based on a regular grid of pillars and arcs. The vaulted reservoir is 15 meters high, 72 meters long, 25 meters wide and features 48 brick pillars. 

UNStudio has unveiled images of the first finished stations on the new Doha Metro Network, one of the most advanced and fastest driverless systems in the world. Phase one of the Qatar Integrated Railway Project (QIRP), involved the construction of three metro lines (Red, Green, and Gold), with 37 stations currently having been completed.

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Urban Forest, a 30-story mixed-use residential high-rise is the latest development designed by Koichi Takada Architects. Located in South Brisbane, Australia, the building features one of the world’s most densely-forested vertical gardens, going beyond regular green buildings norms and achieving “300% site cover with living greenery, featuring 1000 plus trees and more than 20,000 plants selected from 259 native species”. Increasing biodiversity and reducing the ecological footprint, the structure highlights another stage in the evolution of the architectural vertical garden.

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The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 have been released. Including over 1,500 universities across 93 countries and regions, the latest rankings is one of the largest to date. Featuring a range of subjects, including architecture, the rankings are based on 13 performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Videos

Running from 11 September till 15 November 2020, "Thom Mayne: Sculptural Drawings" is the latest architectural exhibition at Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin. Curated by Kristin Feireiss, together with Esenija Bannan, the project questions the nature of architectural drawing and how it influenced the work of Thom Mayne, founder of Morphosis. The exhibition features Mayne’s works dating from 1979 through 2020 and leads visitors from “traditional” drawings and new experimentations with techniques, through to 3D paintings.

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10 Design has revealed images of its winning scheme for China Fortune’s 243,768sqm contemporary mixed-use destination. Part of the redevelopment vision of an old military airport in Nanjing, China, the project puts in place three interconnecting buildings linked by a sunken street, incorporating office, retail, and cultural spaces.

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The new Palace of Justice in Kuwait by PACE is currently under construction. Al-Diwan Al-Amiri plans for the project to include a 25-story building with 123 courtrooms, as well as both automated and conventional parking for 3000 cars. The Palace is designed to be a "symbol of fairness and integrity" for Kuwait.

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In August, the city of Ouro Preto, in Minas Gerais, signed a public-private partnership for a "smart city" project, setting in motion plans to become Brazil's first historic smart city. The contract entails an investment of R$ 10 million and establishes an administrative concession for the Ouro Luz consortium to operate Ouro Preto's public lighting network and telecommunications infrastructure for 25 years.