Architecture News

A historic hotbed of architectural styles and a current architectural capital of the world, cities in the United Kingdom are awash with iconic buildings from the Georgian, Neoclassical, and contemporary era. Such buildings, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol to the Southbank in London, have come to define the cities in which they stand, drawing the eyes of tourists and designers alike from around the world.

It is therefore an interesting exercise to examine what these cities would look like if such structures didn’t exist. To this end, Neomam Studios has partnered with QuickQuid to produce a series of images demonstrating what six British cities could have looked like, resurrecting some of Britain’s most surprising unbuilt structures.

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The International VELUX Award 2018 sought to highlight the work of architecture students around the globe who challenge the use of daylight in built environments. The award, titled “Light of Tomorrow,” was launched in 2004 and is awarded biennially for creative interpretation, exploration, and investigation of daylight in built environments. This year, the winners were selected from over 600 submissions.

PLP Architecture’s Tower Ten, the new expansion of the World Trade Center Amsterdam, officially began construction last week. The ground breaking ceremony was launched by deputy director Sandra Thesing of the City of Amsterdam and Ronald van der Waals of CBRE Global Investors. Located in the Zuidas central business district, the project will create a radically different appearance from its predecessor, adding 32,000 sqm of new office space and amenities in the process.

Yong Ju Lee Architecture and Atelier KJ have created "Elusive Boundary" for the Korean Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. The project is designed as a place for radical encounters in different fields. The main theme of the Korean Pavilion, Mobility, is defined as a new space of possibility created by movement between territories and escape/expansion to new territories. The movement defined by new mobility is not linear, but a simultaneous event between territories.

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UNStudio has released images of their proposed Lyric Theatre complex in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong. Intended as a “celebration of the world of theater,” the mixed-use scheme will house three theaters, rehearsal room, and dining, retail, and entertainment functions.

Designed to be open, inclusive, and welcoming, the compact scheme is comprised of a series of stacked transparent elements making the arts accessible to the general public. Open displays draw visitors inside from a series of reactivated plazas surrounding the scheme, supported by “an additional programme for the public to enjoy that is independent of performance timetable.”

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Richard Rogers has been awarded the 2019 AIA Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architects. The world-renowned architect and founding principal of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has been recognized “for his influence on the built environment [that] has redefined an architect’s responsibilities to society.”

Honoring “an individual or pair of architects whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture,” the AIA Gold Medal is often considered the highest honor awarded in the United States for architecture.

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Zaha Hadid Architects and A-Lab have been announced the winner of a competition to design two new metro stations in Oslo. The stations, Fornebu Senter and Fornbuporten, are to be part of Oslo's new Fornebubanen line, connecting a major existing rail interchange to the Fornebu Senter, a major shopping center in the city.

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What are the exact dimensions of the Royal Palace of Madrid? How many rooms does it have? How many doors and windows? These questions stem from a need for definitive answers. This is exactly what Patrimonio Nacional—the Spanish state institution responsible for managing and preserving its historic buildings—set out to do: create an accurate 3D model of the palace to produce a unified digital record of the building's interior and exterior.

Using Leica Geosystems technology, an "almost millimeter-accurate" model of its interior spaces, facades, and roofs was created, mapping every corner of the building's two basements and six floors—totaling approximately 137,500 square meters of built area that required more than 2,500 scans.

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The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA P.S.1 have announced the five finalists of their 2019 Young Architects Program (YAP). The competition was founded to offer emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design a temporary, outdoor installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series. Architects are challenged to develop creative designs that provide shade, seating and water, while working within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling.

Italian furniture brand Cassina has reissued an iconic piece of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed furniture, the Taliesin 1 chair. The chair was designed by Lloyd Wright in 1949 for the Garden Room in Taliesin West. The iconic chair didn’t enter mass production until the late 1980s, but was discontinued in 1990 as it was seen as “too avant-garde.” The Taliesin 1 is constructed from a single piece of folded plywood, and will release in its original beech plywood with a cherry wood veneer.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture has announced the master jury for the 2017-2019 award cycle. The jury, a diverse and global group comprising architects, academics, and theorists, will select the recipients of the award, each of whom will, in turn, receive a USD $I million prize for their winning work.

The Bardi Institute has just inaugurated its "Summer Pavilion," a structure built at the foot of the Glass House by Lina Bo Bardi, which will host a schedule of concerts, exhibitions, lectures, and other events. Built amidst the vegetation and featuring an organic shape that evokes Lina's work, the pavilion both blends in and stands out in its context. All proceeds raised during these activities will go toward the maintenance and cultural programming of the Bardi Institute / Glass House in 2019.

Read the project description by Sol Camacho below.

Bjarke Ingels Group has revealed new images for their King Street West condo community in Toronto. The development was formed as sets of pixels extruded upwards to create space for housing, retail and boutique offices. The concept was made to avoid the footprints of heritage buildings that already exist on site. The latest renderings revealed both interior and exterior images of the striking new development.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects has awarded the 2018 RIBA President’s Medal for Research to Chris Hildrey of Hildrey Studio for ProxyAddress: Using Location Data to Reconnect Those Facing Homelessness with Support Services. Hildrey’s project addresses one of the main causes of homelessness in the UK: the end of an ‘assured short-hold tenancy’, where a landlord is legally entitled to issue a possession order. ProxyAddress tackles this issue through collaborative research and real-world application.

The Royal Institute of British Architects have announced the winners of the 2018 President’s Medals for the world’s best architecture student projects. This year's winners were selected from 328 design projects and dissertations submitted by over 100 schools of architecture in 37 countries. Three medals were presented, as well as commendations to nine students of architecture from around the world. Each year, the medals are awarded to reward talent and promote innovation in architectural education.

On October 22, the winning design of the 1st Public Design Competition of Conde was announced. A total of 32 proposals were submitted from 11 states, featuring intervention plans for an area of approximately 14,266 m², with projects covering landscaping, urban planning, urban infrastructure, public facilities, and street furniture. The area designated for the competition contains the highest concentration of open spaces and public facilities within Conde's urban perimeter, such as a market, schools, plazas, churches, an open-air market, transit services, and public offices. Among these, the Pedro Alves and Antônio de Sousa Santos plazas, along with Domingos Maranhão and Nossa Senhora da Conceição streets, hold significant urban potential and host major social events in the city.

The jury comprised architecture and urban planning professionals, as well as a local representative. The winning proposal came from Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul) and met several key requirements, including local economic development, commerce, and the creation of public spaces for community gathering. The team consists of Bruno de Moraes Britto, Camila Bellver Alberti, Douglas Silveira Martini, Jean Michel Forte dos Anjos, and Mariana Mocellin Mincarone. See the winning entries below:

Tokyo-based designer monde has created a series of bookends inspired by the narrow back alleys of Tokyo. As described by My Modern Met, the bookends convey the “dizzying feeling of wandering the city’s back alleys” through a mixture of laser-cut wood and lighting.

The results of the two-year project were debuted at the Design Festa arts and crafts event, where they caught the eye of outlets across Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.

As part of a global, interdisciplinary effort to tackle climate change, architects are devoting resources towards optimizing the energy efficiency of buildings old and new. This effort is more than justified, given that buildings account for almost 40% of UK and US emissions. As awareness of the issue of climate change becomes more apparent each year, so too do the architectural responses. 2018 was no exception.

In a year that saw wildfires rage across California, hurricanes in Florida, and mudslides in Japan, the architectural community has put forward a wealth of proposals, both large and small scale, which seek to mitigate against the role the built environment plays in inducing climate change. 

Ranging from a biological curtain in Dublin to a radical masterplan for Boston, we have rounded up six developments in the architectural fight against climate change that we published throughout 2018.