Architecture News

Studio Gang has released images of their proposed high-rise MIRA residential scheme in the heart of San Francisco. Currently under construction, the 400-foot-tall tower will contain almost 400 residential units when completed, 40% of which will be below market rate.

The scheme's design is centered on the evolution of the bay window element, a feature common to San Francisco’s early houses. The bay window is reimagined in a high-rise context, twisting across the full height of the tower to offer views across the city.

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The experimental design group Space Saloon has completed their first workshop, LANDING, to create exploratory projects and installations that rethink design-build and hands-on education. Curated by Danny Wills and Gian Maria Socci, the mobile educational camp investigates perceptions of place to develop projects that make territories and environments legible. Studying material, cultural, and energy-based phenomena, students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and the International Program in Design and Architecture at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (INDA) came together in the high desert of Morongo Valley, California.

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The Hungarian government is introducing a new skyscraper ban in the hopes of preserving the Budapest skyline. Gergely Gulyás, minister of the prime minister's office, recently stated that the ban will affect all new buildings in Budapest over 90 meters tall. The ban will not limit projects already approved with planning permission, including Foster + Partners' MOL Campus Tower, a high-rise being built as part of the new headquarters for the MOL Group. The 120 meter tower will be exempt because it has already won planning permission.

In response to the question of how the United States should treat the monuments to Civil War Confederate figures which are dotted throughout the country, The New York Times commissioned six artists to re-imagine what could replace the controversial statues.

The issue of Confederate statues, which many regard as a glorification of those who fought to preserve slavery, has been brought into sharp public focus as of late due to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 which resulted in the killing of counter-protester Heather Heyer.

Architects and engineers have launched a call for free technical assistance in the design, renovation, or construction of social housing—already established by a 2008 law—to "be more than a law; to become a State Policy, as part of the social right to housing guaranteed by the Constitution."

The appeal was made at the opening of the Seminar on Technical Assistance for Social Housing, hosted by CAU/BR and the Federal Council of Engineering and Agronomy (CONFEA) in Brasília on the 15th of this month. If the proposal is adopted, Brazil would have the equivalent of a "SUS" (Unified Health System) for social housing. The proposal is part of the "Open Letter to Candidates in the 2018 Elections for the Right to the City," recently released by CAU/BR and the Institute of Architects of Brazil (IAB).

Photographer Stefanie Zoche of Haubitz-Zoche has captured a series of vibrant images showcasing the “hybrid modernism” churches of the Southern Indian region of Kerala. The images below, also available on the artist’s website, depict the blend of modernist influences and local architectural elements that defined many Indian churches following the country's 1947 independence.

As Zoche explains, the post-independence Indian church establishment sought to differentiate itself from the historic colonial building style, and hence drew inspiration from the modernist icon Le Corbusier. The buildings in Zoche’s gallery often display an “effusively sculptural formal language and a use of intense color” with Christian symbols “directly transposed into a three-dimensional, monumental construction design.”

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The "Single-Family Housing" Architectural Design Workshop, organized by the architecture firm Cota Paredes Arquitectos, concluded its sixth edition, which invited graduate architects and senior architecture students to develop a Single-Family Housing Project over four weeks in either in-person or online formats. Discover the top projects:

The brief required designing a single-family home for a family of three in Cuautitlán Izcalli, State of Mexico. The workshop also aimed to design projects for low-income families who owned a plot of land and planned to build in the future. The chosen designs had to adapt to the context, creating a home for the family using the concepts of introspective architecture.

It has been just over a week since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed 50,000 homes in North Lombok, a city just east of the island of Bali, Indonesia. Although much of the town is gone, the community has already rallied together to begin the long and arduous rebuilding process. With the rainy season approaching in less than two months, DOME Lombok is working to begin building earthbag domes and teaching their construction techniques to help the area rebuild.

The results of the various competitions held during the 13th edition of Semana de la Madera 2018 have recently been announced, covering the categories of Architecture, Design, and Engineering and Innovation.

Held in Santiago, Chile, the architecture competition awarded three projects that, according to jury director Tomás Villalón, "achieve a healthy symbiosis between the particularities of public space, its site, and material expression."

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Discovering what young architects are doing across Mexico was the starting question for architects Lucia Zesati Farías, Gustavo López Padilla, and Honorato Carrasco, curators of the exhibition 21 jóvenes arquitectos mexicanos. Segunda edición (21 Young Mexican Architects: Second Edition). The show opened on August 9 at the National Museum of Architecture at the Palace of Fine Arts and will run until September 23, 2018.

Over a year and a half, the curators reviewed recent works to select 21 architecture firms whose design teams are under 45 years old. This age limit was established because significant architectural production is rare among recent graduates in their twenties.

The island nation of Taiwan is a country that boasts both a high population density and a wide range of ecosystems. However, a large issue that the country is currently facing involves the energy production and consumption, and the negative impact it has on the environment. With the largest power plant slated to be shut down by 2023, a team from Taiwan has devised an architectural proposal for how to construct a plant that both generates enough electricity to serve the metropolitan area and reduce its negative impact on the air quality and surrounding wetlands.

On Friday, August 10, the community of Licantén, Chile, gave its final approval to a new project by Chilean architect Sebastián Irarrázaval. The Licantén Theater, built primarily of laminated timber, will span 2,500 square meters and require an estimated investment of approximately 3 billion Chilean pesos (USD 4.47 million).

The Licantén Theater is developed under the Cultural Donations Act, resulting from a public-private partnership involving the Fundación la Fuente —the organization behind the Arauco Cultural Center and the Constitución Public Library—, the forestry company Arauco, and the Municipality of Licantén. Following community approval, the next step is "to apply for regional funds to finance its construction," Irarrázaval explained in an interview with ArchDaily.

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Australia loomed large in the news this week following the announcement for the continent's tallest tower in Melbourne. The competition, which was won by a joint bid from UNStudio and Cox Architecture, boasted designs from some of the world's best-known firms including MVRDV, OMA, MAD, and BIG.

Oregon has become the first state in the U.S. to allow timber buildings to rise higher than six stories without special consideration. The recent addendum to the state's building code is the result of Oregon’s statewide alternate method (SAM), a program that allows for alternate building techniques to be used after an advisory council has approved the “technical and scientific facts of the proposed alternate method.” The decision stands as a precedent for future construction across the United States.

For those with $145,000 hidden down the side of their sofa, Zaha Hadid Architects has designed and released Lapella Chair, continuing their “investigations in structure and fabrication-aware tectonics by reinterpreting the iconic 1963 lounge chair by Hans J. Wegner."

Created from Italian marble, Lapella retains the proportions, scale, and recline of the original chair while introducing “contemporary stone tooling and carbon fiber composites.” 

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In a world of 3D, HD, 4K, and CGI, architectural representation in the film, television, and gaming industries are becoming ever-more realistic, ever-more dazzling, and ever-more expensive. But strip away the special effects, and the beautifully-crafted architectural forms of fictional worlds such as Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Marvel are no less impressive.

To demonstrate this, Angie’s List has produced a set of elemental, greyscale, pen-and-paper illustrations of some of the entertainment industry’s most iconic fictional worlds, celebrating style, form, materiality, and shadow. From the sleek futurism of Star Wars and Marvel to the vernacular fortresses of Game of Thrones and Skyrim, the “Fictional Architecture” series captures the finer details of our favorite fictional universes.

U.S. Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer has been named chair of the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury by the Hyatt Foundation. As a member of the award jury since 2011, Breyer takes over from the current chair Glenn Murcutt, Hon. FAIA. Tom Pritzker, chairman and president of the prize's sponsor, noted how Breyer's devotion to "civic-minded architecture underscores the mission of the Prize and his unparalleled ability to guide a group deliberation is essential in creating a unified voice." The international prize is regarded as architecture’s highest honor, and this year marks the 41st year of the award.

Cities are living testaments to the cultural, social, economic, and political transformations of society. In a state of constant evolution, superficial traces of the past fade away, while deeper scars overlap with the multiple layers of the present that unfold across cities over decades and centuries. 

Throughout history, a combination of factors has allowed some cities to remain better preserved, offering vivid glimpses of colonial Brazil. In contrast, in other cities, the traces of early urbanization have been erased or swallowed by subsequent eras.