Architecture News

After at least five years of study, the time comes for architecture and urbanism students to complete their final graduation projects—often referred to as TCC, TFG, or Final Projects. In choosing their topics, students highlight civic, urban, or theoretical projects that are of great importance in sparking a debate about the future of our cities, the built environment, urban infrastructure, mobility, and many other fundamental issues shaping how we inhabit space.

Completing these projects requires a major effort in data collection, research, and design development to address complex challenges. Since they are not always recognized as they deserve, we launch an annual call to showcase the best work by students from Portuguese-speaking countries, helping them reach a wider audience and inspire the general public with new ideas.

In 2017, Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl and RSAA/Büro Ziyu Zhuang were commissioned by Guangdong Zhuguang Group Co., Ltd. to create an ecologically transformative urban design and waterfront landscape along the northern bank of the Pearl River in Guangzhou's CBD. The planning phase of the project spanned nearly a year.

Today, Wednesday, November 21, the winners of the 2018 Gold Medal competition were announced as part of the XXI Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Ecuador (BAQ2018) in Quito.

The jury for the 2018 Gold Medal competition, comprising Astrid Petzold (Venezuela/Mexico), Ana Milovan (Uruguay), and Lucas Fehr (Brazil), determined the winning projects of the contest, which honors the best student work produced at Ecuadorian schools and departments of architecture between November 2016 and October 2018.

Studio Cadena’s Happy installation has been unveiled in New York's Flatiron Plaza. The project is the winner of the fifth annual Design Competition hosted by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership Business Improvement District (BID) and Van Alen Institute. As the centerpiece of the annual holiday program, the installation was selected by a jury with expertise across the worlds of design and public art, including representatives from the Flatiron Partnership, New York City DOT Art, and Van Alen Institute’s board of trustees.

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Safdie Architects has completed a comprehensive renovation of Moshe Safdie’s unit at the iconic Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada. The 10th floor unit of the designated monument was restored to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Habitat 67, in conjunction with a 2017 exhibition of Safdie’s work titled “Habitat ‘67 vers l’avenir : The Shape of Things to Come.”

Two years worth of repairs to the duplex unit included addressing decades worth of water damage, extensive interior restoration, and technical upgrades to align the building’s systems to 21st century standards of sustainability and energy conservation.

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Danish architecture firm ADEPT has been announced the winner of a competition to redevelop Berlin's Marinehaus as part of the city's Stadtmuseum group. This iteration of the competition was launched in 2018 (following a similar competition ten years ago) and will rehabilitate the Marinehaus for public use after nearly 20 years of closure.

Children Village by Brazilian architects Aleph Zero and Rosenbaum has won the 2018 RIBA International Prize. Located on the edge of the rain forest in northern Brazil, the new school complex provides accommodation for 540 children attending the Canuanã School. The RIBA International Prize is awarded every two years to a building that exemplifies design excellence and architectural ambition, and delivers meaningful social impact. Children Village was recognized for it's vision in imagining architecture as a tool for social transformation.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has selected Kulapat Yantrasast and wHY Architecture to renovate its Michael C. Rockefeller wing. With arts produced in Africa, Oceania and the Americas, the 40,000-square-foot wing is located on the southern side of the Fifth Avenue museum. The $70 million project aim is showcase the collection of arts and artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas.

The landscape of the United Kingdom is littered with historic castles reaching back centuries. Once proud structures commanding the surrounding countryside, many stately houses, castles, and churches have since collapsed into ruin. While the ruins evoke a sense of magic and curiosity in their own right, a study into how these castles looked in their heyday is a worthy venture.

With this in mind, Onward and NoeMam Studios have joined forces to digitally reconstruct six ruined castles across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The series of gifs sees the castles fluidly re-emerge from the landscape, retelling the sense of place by showing “the true splendor enjoyed and defended by yesteryear’s barons, queens, and kings.

Daniel Libeskind will visit Chile this coming December, following an invitation extended by Mauricio Soria, the mayor of Iquique, and approved by the Chilean city's municipal council. However, the decision has drawn coverage from local media due to opposition from council members who voted against the initiative, primarily over the budget: 75 million Chilean pesos (around $110,000), which includes a "city visit, site visit, public lecture, and a preliminary draft or conceptual proposal," as highlighted on Twitter by council member Felipe Arenas, one of the dissenting voices in the municipal vote.

Although the announcement was shared by the mayor's office on Twitter on November 8, efforts to bring Libeskind to the country began exactly a year ago when the architect visited Chile to give a lecture at ENMATERIA's International Architecture and Materials Encounter. During that visit, the American architect met for the first time with Soria and his technical team in Santiago.

The latest Apple Store designed by Foster + Partners has opened on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, occupying the grounds and courtyard of a historic Parisian apartment. The ornate Beaux-Art building has been appropriated by “carefully interweaving several layers of history with contemporary, light-filled and inviting spaces.”

The design is the result of a close collaboration by Foster + Partners and Apple’s chief design officer Sir Jonathan Ive, which has produced Apple Stores around the world including Piazza Liberty in Milan, Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Regent Street in London.

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Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have decided to move forward with a plan to reuse L.A. General Hospital as affordable housing for high-need populations. The plan aims to provide homeless residents and low-income tenants with new living units inside the 1930s-era hospital. The board approved a motion to study the feasibility of reusing the structure and to craft a strategic plan that would bring the project to life. As the “birthplace of emergency medicine,” the Art Deco–style building includes 1.5-million-square-feet of space that could be used for the housing project.

Shigeru Ban Architects have been selected to a new 420-acre campus for the owners of Kentucky Owl Bourbon just south of Louisville, Kentucky. The new project will convert the former Cedar Creek Quarry into a distillery, bottling center, and rickhouses. Working with landscape architects Design Workshop from Denver and Earthscape from Tokyo, the $150 million project will be built with three timber pyramids housing the distillery at the center of the development. The new plans come after Stoli Group purchased the Kentucky Owl brand in 2017.

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Steven Chilton Architects has released details of their proposed Puzzle Ball Theatre in the Huadu District of Guangzhou, China. The 2000-seat spherical scheme is influenced by the ancient art of puzzle balls; “intricately carved sculptural ornaments consisting of several concentric spheres, each freely rotating with the next and traditionally formed from a single block of material.”

The Chilton scheme, along with the original Yue-inspired show it will contain, seeks to evoke the characteristics and qualities of the ancient art, through a spherical massing, asymmetric overlapping patterns, and a complex surface geometry.

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Foster + Partners have unveiled details of their latest proposed tower for the City of London. “The Tulip” seeks to become a “new public cultural attraction” sitting adjacent to The Gherkin: one of Foster’s and London’s most iconic structures.

The 305-meter-high, bud-like scheme, named after its nature-inspired form, will offer an education facility operated by building owners J. Safra Group. The program, with 20,000 free places per year for London’s state school children, will feature “unparalleled vantage point to view London from a height of around 300 meters.”

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The Tallinn Architecture Biennale has announced the shortlisted schemes for their 2019 Installation Programme Competition “Huts and Habitats.” 137 worldwide submissions were received for the two-stage competition, aimed at “offering emerging architectural talents the opportunity to design and built an experimental wooden structure in the heart of Tallinn.”

Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena shares the fundamentals of his design philosophy in a documented interview titled “To Design is to Prefer.” The Pritzker Prize winner founded his practice in 2001, committed to exploring socially conscious design practices. His firm, Elemental, first gained international recognition for its work creating social housing projects in Chile, but its portfolio continues to expand to include work from museums, universities, transportation, and urban infrastructure.

This video highlights the mental process behind Aravena’s personal practices and insights into Elemental’s unique approach to design. The interview begins discussing Aravena’s introduction to architecture as a teen and how architecture, a rather obscure phenomenon to the young Aravena, became his passion. Throughout the film, Aravena flips to the pages of his sketchbooks, illustrating the raw hand of the architect.

In the wistful irony of creating liquid fire through sheets of paper, David Oliva of Barcelona-based firm SP25 Arquitectura and Anna Juncà of Atelier 4 collaborated to fabricate an installation piece for the LLUÈRNIA festival of fire and light in Catalonia. Titled, "Origami Lava", the field of flame cloaks the 100 m² surface of an abandoned building using over 10,000 pieces of origami.

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