Architecture News

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.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego recently released plans to begin demolition on a portion of its La Jolla building designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Aiming to expand and renovate, the museum is facing mounting criticism from a range of architects, critics and historians. The new plan calls for Venturi Scott Brown's exterior colonnade into Axline Court to be removed, and for the museum's neon-accented entry atrium to be repurposed as a public gathering space. With a part of the colonnade already removed, critics have signed an open letter hoping to save VSB's work.

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Russian-German architect Sergei Tchoban of Tchoban Voss Architekten has won the Gold Medal in the First Athens Architecture Club Exhibition, organized by the Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design. Participating architects included Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind, and Santiago Calatrava.

The Athens Architecture Club seeks to resurrect the historical architecture clubs of the 19th century, functioning as an “open forum, an infrastructural framework, and support platform for architects, artists, and writers to discuss, challenge and enrich a dialogue among practitioners and scholars.

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The V&A Dundee, in collaboration with Rapid Visual Media, have released drone footage and imagery ahead of the building’s opening, marking Kengo Kuma’s first UK project. The footage showcases the new museum jutting out into Dundee’s River Tay, inspired by the cliffs of Scotland.

The museum is formed of 2,500 pre-cast concrete panels hung from complex curving walls, casting shadows which vary depending on weather conditions. As well as being Kuma’s first UK building, the V&A Dundee is also the first dedicated design museum in Scotland.

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World Architecture Festival has announced the winner of its inaugural Water Research Prize. First place was awarded to a team of students from Pontificia Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) who designed a water management system that "captures, stores, and treats rainwater and inserts it into pre-existing water networks."

Sidewalk Labs has unveiled a new proposal for Toronto's eastern waterfront and a neighborhood development called Quayside. After announcing plans to create a model smart city in Toronto last fall, Sidewalk Labs has been working to pioneer a new approach to future urban developments. Plans for Quayside were revealed during a roundtable discussion on August 14, 2018. As the subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, the team responded to an open call from Waterfront Toronto with a design that features heated pavements, large public spaces and mass timber buildings.

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Fender Katsalidis Architects’ Seafarers Place project has received planning approval for its $450 million redevelopment of the Northbank Goods Shed. Designed to revitalize the industrial waterfront site, the project will include a mixed-use precinct and a 5-star luxury hotel along the Yarra riverfront. Created with property developer Riverlee, the project aims to radically rethink the area's public space with a 3,500sqm public park and significant restoration along the historic wharf.

Since moving to New York in 2010, BIG founder Bjarke Ingels has built an impressive portfolio, from developed projects such as VIA 57 West and The Eleventh to propositions such as West 29th Street and The Spiral.

In a new interview with Louisiana Channel, Ingels steps back from the pragmatism of individual projects, and instead reflects on his view of New York, from multiculturalism and inequality to regeneration and skyscrapers.

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The Brussels Lebeau – Sablon competition has announced MLA+, the sister company of Maccreanor Lavington, as the winners of the international contest to transform the city's historic Le Sablon district. Working together with local firm Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten, the team's proposal is a new mixed-use development for Belgium developer IMMOBEL, which seeks to regenerate the key historical district. The winning scheme includes offices, residences, a student hotel, and a public square.

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39 people are now reported to have died following the collapse of the Morandi motorway bridge in Genoa, Italy. The incident happened 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.

The cause of the collapse is not yet known, however, attention is now turning to the bridge’s maintenance record, concerns of its integrity stretching back decades, and how the collapse sits within the broader context of aging Italian infrastructure.

New residential developments in the country must incorporate accessibility features in all common areas, while individual housing units must be adapted according to buyer demand. Developments will have an 18-month deadline to adapt to the new rules established by Decree 9,451, whose guidelines regulate the Brazilian Inclusion Law.

UNStudio and Cox Architecture have officially been announced as the winners of Melbourne’s landmark Southbank Precinct overhaul. Selected from a range of high-profile offices, including BIG, OMA, and MAD, UNStudio's vision for the $2 billion project includes a pair of twisted towers called Green Spine. As the largest single-phase project in the history of Victoria, Australia, the Green Spine is designed as a state-of-the-art, mixed-use environment centered around innovation in architecture and design.

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Time Magazine and MONEY have released a new 2018 ranking that identifies the affordability and education quality of more than 700 leading institutions across the United States. The ranking looked at colleges that have a strong record of helping students graduate and preparing them for jobs at which they’ll earn enough to pay off student debt. Of the top 25 schools, over half offer either unaccredited or NAAB accredited architecture degrees for undergraduate students.

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The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has issued a statement outlining its new initiatives in response to the rising tide of school shootings in the United States. The statement, titled “Where we stand: School design and student safety,” outlines four paths of action the Institute intends to take to support architects and school communities.

While not containing a detailed policy to tackle the ongoing crisis, the AIA statement commits to updating school design guidelines, supporting education to achieve safe school design, making safe school design eligible for federal grants, and establishing a federal clearinghouse on school design.

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A bridge approximately 1.5 kilometers long collapsed this morning in Genoa, Italy. The Morandi Bridge, built in the 1960s, crosses the Polcevera River in the western part of the Port of Genoa, connecting the city center with the regional airport. Authorities attribute the disaster to structural failure combined with a severe storm occurring at the time of the collapse.

James Stirling (1926-1992) was a British architect who is considered by many as the premier architect of his generation and an innovator in postwar architecture. Some of his most famous projects include the Sackler Museum, No 1 Poultry, and the Neue Staatsgalerie. Through the influence of his teacher Colin Rowe, Stirling had a deep understanding of architectural history, yet never adopted a singular doctrine. His career began with designs that were more aligned with what would later be labeled as the high-tech style, but evolved into buildings that were a series of dynamic and often colorful arrangements. Stirling’s aesthetic tropes ultimately gave the final push that broke architecture free from the clutch of post-war European Modernism as he turned the Modernist canon of “form follows function” into a hyperbole by celebrating the expression of a building’s program with his over-the-top details. Stirling’s work is still largely influential, and the recursive wave of history has shown that the underlying implications of his oeuvre remains somewhere in all architectural practice of the present day.

"True love is a span, extending infinitely,
An immense monolith, our architecture."
- Gilberto Gil, Drão

Just over two years ago, the Casa da Arquitectura - Portuguese Centre for Architecture began a major effort to assemble a collection of significant works from the last 90 years of Brazilian architectural history. In addition to expanding the institution's already impressive archive—which includes, among other items, hundreds of original scale models by Souto de Moura—this collection of more than eight thousand documents of Brazilian architecture will form the core of the exhibition Infinito Vão, curated by Guilherme Wisnik and Fernando Serapião.

I hope you have caught your breath after this year’s FIFA World Cup. France’s win in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium marked the end of an era; the last World Cup with a classic format. After the 2022 Winter tournament in Qatar, the competition will be expanded to 48 teams (rather than the current 32).

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