Architecture News

The winners of the Richard H. Driehaus Building Arts Awards, presented annually to four master craftspeople in various traditional building trades in Spain, have been announced.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to remove the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works in northern Chile from the List of World Heritage in Danger, a status they had held since 2005.

The 2019 Dulwich Pavilion by Pricegore and Yinka Ilori has opened in London this June. Dubbed the “The Colour Palace”, the project was made for the Dulwich Picture Gallery as a a celebration of color, pattern, and light, drawing from European and African cultural traditions. Now you can step inside the pavilion with a 360° virtual tour by Nikhilesh Haval.

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Construction company Bouygues Batiment International, in collaboration with their modular construction laboratory Dragages Singapore, has celebrated the completion of the tallest building tower ever built from modular construction, the Clement Canopy buildings in Singapore.

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Carlo Ratti Associati has unveiled the world’s first crowdsourced graffiti, designed by thousands of people and painted by a swarm of drones in the city of Torino, Italy. The UFO-Urban Flying Opera project was created by four UAVs flying simultaneously over two consecutive days. Each drone carried a tank of sustainable spray paint and sketched the individual designs on the canvas. The final painting was divided into three layers: a grey one to set the story, magenta one to represent Torino’s communities, and a light blue one to visually wrap the story.

Architecture practice Hamonic+Masson & Associés have designed a new neighborhood development to reimagine suburban Paris. As the winning entry in the Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris 2 competition, the "High Garden" project was made to propose a metropolitan-scaled architecture on one of the sites proposed within the greater city limits. Responding to the brief, it was designed to be a dynamic and attractive neighborhood in a new eco-district.

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Last month, the city of Cuiabá inaugurated its first bus shelter built by repurposing shipping containers. The shelter was developed under a public-private partnership model, in which the companies Pantanal Shopping and Edificatto Arquitetura provided the bus stop to the city in exchange for advertising rights.

Álvaro Siza and Carlos Castanheira have announced a new project for the Haishang Museum in the Jiading district of Shanghai. The proposal includes a building for the museum and three other smaller structures; a pavilion, a tea house and a bridge. As Castanheira says, the project will be many projects within one.

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The Museum of London has unveiled the design for their new West Smithfield home. Designed by Stanton Williams, Asif Khan, and Julian Harrap Architects, the plans showcase the transformation of a campus of beautiful yet dilapidated market buildings into a 24-hour cultural destination. The scheme celebrates the historic buildings of West Smithfield, while creating a unique, memorable visitor experience.

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"Hórama Rama" by Pedro & Juana (Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo & Mecky Reuss) has been inaugurated as part of The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1’s 20th annual Young Architects Program. This year’s architectural installation is an immersive junglescape set within a large-scale cyclorama that sits atop MoMA PS1’s courtyard walls. Selected from among five finalists, Hórama Rama will be on view through the summer, serving as a temporary built environment for MoMA PS1’s pioneering outdoor music series Warm Up.

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OMA Partner Jason Long has designed a new redevelopment of the historic Barbara Jordan Post Office in downtown Houston. Dubbed POST Houston, the 550,000 sf project will be re-used as a mixed-use cultural and commercial hub. Created for Lovett Commercial, the redevelopment rethinks the post building that was in use by the US government from 1936-2014. The new design aims to reinvigorate the city’s north downtown neighborhoods.

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On May 28, the winners of the Binational Public Competition for Preliminary Architectural Projects, organized by the Administrative Commission of the Uruguay River (CARU), were announced. The competition was open to architects from both Argentina and Uruguay, with the support of the Association of Architects of Uruguay (SAU), the Association of Architects of the Province of Entre Ríos (CAPER), and the sponsorship of the Argentine Federation of Architectural Organizations (FADEA).

The project called for the construction of a Control Laboratory for the environmental analysis of the Uruguay River, to be located adjacent to the head of the Libertador San Martín International Bridge, on the eastern bank of the river, in the city of Fray Bentos, Uruguay.

Álvaro Siza and Carlos Castanheira have unveiled the design for another major structure in Asia, this time for the Haishang Museum, located in the Jiading District of Shanghai, China. The proposal comprises a museum building and three smaller structures—a pavilion, a tea house, and a bridge.

Sidewalk Labs has released the full 1,500 page development proposal for its Quayside neighborhood in Toronto. After announcing plans to create a model smart city, Sidewalk Labs has been working to pioneer a new approach to future urban developments. Plans for Quayside were first revealed last summer as an interconnected smart neighborhood for the city. The Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) proposes a comprehensive planning and partnership model to set a new standard for urban development in the 21st century.

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The remaining structure of Genoa’s Morandi Bridge has been demolished. The motorway bridge collapsed on Tuesday 14th August, when one of the bridge’s structural components, comprising of pre-stressed concrete stays and trestles, collapsed onto a railway line and warehouse 150 feet (45 meters) below. 43 people were killed in the incident.

General Design Co’s house in Kamitomii, Kurashiki, Japan has been announced as the winner of the AR House awards 2019, joining two Highly Commended and three Commended house projects. Now in its tenth year, the awards are diverse and wide-ranging, often branching beyond the traditional remit of the dwelling to recognize originality and excellence in design of dwellings of all types.

Opening on July 5th, “Architecture Speaks: The Language of MVRDV” will provide an immersive, diverse, multimedia experience for visitors to the Tyrolean Architecture Center (aut) in Innsbruck, Austria. The exhibition centers around a spatial intervention of 4 towers constructed inside the aut’s Adambräu Building, a former brewhouse. Each tower embodies a word that represents key concepts in MVRDV’s designs: stack, pixel, village, and activator. “Architecture Speaks” aims to present the concepts in an approachable, engaging manner, with the colorful towers enhanced by images, text, models, drawings, videos, audio, and interactive elements to present MVRDV’s projects.

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Istanbul-based Studio Vertebra has designed a new science center and technology park in Gaziantep, Turkey. Called the Naci Topcuoglu Science Centre, the project was made to add value to the region with a sustainable, holistic and integrated approach to architecture and landscape design. Located in one of the developing regions of the city, the project is made with a "planetarium orb" at its center.

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