On Monday, January 14, 2019, nearly 200 architects and professionals gathered at the Center for Architecture to
discover the winners of the 2019 AIA NY Design Awards. Following two days of deliberations by a jury of independent architects, educators, critics, and planners, AIA New York publicly announced the 27 winning projects during a live event, which was followed by a jury-moderated discussion.
Winter is hardly the high season for Toronto's waterfront. Nevertheless, the annual design competition Ice Breakers aims to draw people back to the outdoors, populating the frozen harborside with installations celebrating the winter. This year's winning designs are currently on show, centering around the theme "Signal Transmission."
For a third year in a row, Ports Toronto and the Waterfront Business Improvement Area (WBIA) partnered to produce this 2019 exhibition. Out of hundreds of international submissions, the winning designs include an illuminated starlight house, kaleidoscopic mirrors, and arches of bells, now on display until February 24.
See all five winning installations with descriptions by the architects below.
The ‘Super Tall and Skinny’ NYC Tower 111 W 57 by SHoP Architects is forging ahead as seen in this photographic construction update by Paul Clemence from Archi-Photo. In the photos, the glass and terracotta facade seems largely complete, casting beams of light into New York's notoriously valley-like streets. SHoP's ultra-thin residential tower, which is set for completion this year, will rise above the Empire State Building and even One World Trade Center, taking a bird's eye view over the entirety of the city skyline.
After revealing the design for the new Oakland Athletics baseball stadium, Bjarke Ingels Group has proposed a new use for the existing 51-year-old Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The existing stadium will be overhauled into a new commercial and housing hub to create new economic, cultural, and recreational opportunities. The Coliseum will be converted into a sunken amphitheater at the heart of a new municipal park.
WRI Brasil has launched a free online publication detailing the benefits, costs, and barriers of adopting sustainability measures in social housing developments. Jointly produced by Lara Caccia, Henrique Evers, Luana Betti, and Camila Schlatter, the study examines simple, low-cost actions and technologies aimed at reducing water and electricity consumption in buildings.
2019 has already witnessed a series of bridge-related milestones marked, from the world’s longest bridge nearing completion in Kuwait to the world’s largest 3D-printed concrete bridge being completed in Shanghai. As we remain fixated on the future-driven, record-breaking accomplishments of realized bridge design, "911 Metallurgist” has chosen to look back in history on some of the visionary ideas for bridges which never saw the light of day.
Whether stopped in their tracks by finance, planning, or engineering difficulties, the four bridge designs listed below embody a marriage of art and engineering too advanced for their time. From a proposal for a EuroRoute Bridge between Britain and France, to a 12-rail, 24-lane bridge across the Huston River in New York, all four designs share a common, ambitious, yet doomed vision of crossing the great divide from pen and paper to bricks and mortar.
Everyday, the theme of the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, Brazil, proposed by the curators Vanessa Grossman, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Ciro Miguel, seeks to reveal architecture and space through everyday life. Architects and urban planners have long aspired to design total environments, civilizations, even the planet. However, in the current climate of political and economic uncertainty, occurring against the backdrop of unprecedented environmental impacts wrought by rapid technological development, design professionals have begun to acknowledge the vulnerability of their work to global transformations and the challenges of an automated future.
MVRDV have released details of their proposed mixed-use complex, designed to redevelop a post-industrial site in Kiel, Germany. The 65,000-square-meter proposal will adopt a flexible design system as opposed to a fixed, unchangeable plan, thus allowing the scheme to adapt to future demands as the design development progresses.
Labeled the “KoolKiel,” MVRDV’s scheme will occupy an existing large, single-story building previously used to store chains of ships, and for the printing of Germany’s famous Werner comics in the 1980s. The site’s current use as a hub for media and creative industries, and its resulting charismatic identity, has strongly influenced the MVRDV scheme, with the retention of the existing structure and lively, playful exterior spaces.
After having previously photographed the offices of architecture firms in the Netherlands, Dubai, London, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, the Nordic countries, and Barcelona, architectural photographer Marc Goodwin continues the series with an exploration of 15 large architecture and design studios in Los Angeles. Featuring a set of emerging and world-renowned offices alike, the series gives a glimpse into the life of designers across the City of Angels.
Each year, the Boston Society of Architects offers the James Templeton Kelley Prize to the best final design project for the MArch degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. This year, the March II recipient was Ziwei Song for their thesis titled “Not so skin deep: vernacularism in XL” for exploring alternative ways of integrating the Chinese vernacular with modern “XL” developments.
Ziwei’s thesis sought to re-approach the typical developer project in China, and demonstrate the capacity of the vernacular image to positively-effect the sequence, perception, and exposure of space. To test this, the project was placed on Chongqing, a typical second-tier city in China with a concentration of XL developer projects.
On January 23, 2019, during the opening of the exhibition showcasing the 20 selected projects out of 127 entries from 16 Brazilian states and the Federal District, the three winners of the 1st Instituto Tomie Ohtake Leroy Merlin Design Award and one honorable mention were announced.
The Vancouver Art Gallery has unveiled the final design for its 300,000-square-foot building designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Designed to serve the Gallery’s ever-expanding collection of art and educational programs, the scheme will offer “a global platform for Vancouver’s and Canada’s thriving arts scene and play a vital role in establishing this city as one of the world’s most foremost cities for arts and culture.”
The scheme has been designed as a sculptural, symmetrical, upright building infusing opaque and transparent surfaces. The stacked scheme sees a minimal mass at the bottom contrast with larger volumes concentrated at the top, allowing light and air to filter down to an active, open-air courtyard below.
The Glass House, the residence where Lina Bo Bardi and her husband, Pietro Maria Bardi, lived for over 40 years and the current headquarters of the Lina Bo and P.M. Bardi Institute, will open its doors for a special free tour in celebration of São Paulo's 465th anniversary. The program begins at 11:30 AM and will feature the participation of the Institute's president, Waldick Jatobá.
American light and space artist James Turrell's best-known work, Roden Crater, is now set to open to the public within the next few years thanks to a series of partnerships and new funding. Part of the additional funds includes a $10 million donation from Kanye West that would allow the project to expand and open within the next five years. Only a small group of people have experienced the crater, and the new funding will jump-start the updated master plan, which includes a restaurant, visitor’s center, cabins, and a "light-spa."
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The ICO Museum (Madrid) has extended Francis Kéré: Primary Elements, the first exhibition in Spain dedicated to the Burkina Faso-born, German-trained architect. Originally scheduled to close on Sunday, January 20, the museum has pushed the closing date back to Sunday, February 3.
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Gensler has released details of their proposed Tower Fifth in New York City. If realized, the 1556-foot-tall scheme would be the second-tallest building not just in New York, but in the Western Hemisphere. Located east of Fifth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street, the tower will sit adjacent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
According to Gensler, who designed the scheme in collaboration with developer Harry Macklowe, the tower “creates a new paradigm for how a supertall structure meets the street and interacts with its neighbors.”
Architecture research initiative “arch out loud” has announced the winners of their “Waste: Multi-Purpose Stadium” competition, asking participants to speculate on the design of a multi-purpose stadium at the former Olusosun Landfill in Lagos, Nigeria.
The competition was organized in response to the fact that the world creates more than a billion tons of garbage per year, most of which is incinerated, buried, and explored to landfills. As populations and major cities expand, so too must our “ability to reverse wasteful tendencies and begin living more efficiently and sustainably.”
UNESCO has named Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as the World Capital of Architecture for 2020. In keeping with UNESCO’s recent partnership agreement with the UIA, UNESCO designates the World Capital of Architecture, which also hosts the UIA’s World Congress. The World Capital of Architecture is intended to become an international forum for debates about pressing global challenges from the perspectives of culture, cultural heritage, urban planning and architecture.
