OPEN Architecture has released the latest construction photos of the Dune Art Museum topping out in a Chinese coastal city near Beijing. The art museum manifests itself as a complex of interconnected concrete shells, which in the next and final stage of construction, are to be buried in sand and shrubs to restore the natural silhouette of the dunes on the beach.
eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of its 2018 Skyscraper Competition. Now in its 13th year, the annual award was established to recognize “visionary ideas for building [high-rise] projects that through [the] novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.”
This year, 3 winners and 27 honorable mentions were selected from a pool of 526 entries. Among this year’s winners are a foldable skyscraper inspired by origami, an urban building for rice farming, and a prototype for vertical housing in areas damaged by wildfires.
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Studio Gang’s 10-story commercial “Solar Carve Tower” has topped out in New York’s Meatpacking District. Officially named “40 Tenth Avenue,” the scheme responds to a perceived lack of site-specific design in New York, with Studio Gang prioritizing “intentionality and contextuality” as their guiding principles. The scheme is therefore defined by a dramatic curtain wall, chiseled shape, and a dynamic relationship with its surrounding environment.
Sou Fujimoto, Nicolas Laisné and Dimitri Roussel will be building a new gateway to the city of Rosny-sous-Bois in Grand Paris. Their project, Village Vertical, has been chosen as the winning proposal for the "Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris" competition. The team includes landscape and urban designers from Atelier Georges and urban developers from La Compagnie de Phalsbourg and REI Habitat.
Bamboo construction—locally known as guadua—is, without a doubt, one of the regional techniques that defines contemporary Colombian architecture. As an environmentally friendly resource, it serves as a highly functional and practical building material, easily sourced in Colombia due to its rapid growth.
Farmers, architects, and builders have adopted this "vegetable steel" in many of their projects, which blend seamlessly into the landscape. With proper treatment, it performs exceptionally well across the South American country's diverse altitudinal zones. In addition, it offers varying textures and color tones, bringing a brilliant yet subtle aesthetic to these buildings.
On Monday, April 16, Chilean architect María Isabel Tuca, a prominent academic and professional association leader, passed away in Santiago. In 2000, she became the second female president of the Chilean Association of Architects, following Eliana Caraball in the mid-1980s.
In an interview with the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio after taking office, Tuca recalled that despite the warnings of the nuns at her school ("that was a career only for men," they told her), she chose to study architecture at the University of Chile, graduating in 1965.
UK-based design studio NEWSUBSTANCE has debuted at the Coachella Valley Music & Art Festival with a seven-floor pavilion taking visitors on an “ever-changing journey of light, color and perspective.” The 75-foot-high (23-meter-high) pavilion named “Spectra” consists of a spiral form featuring an observation deck at its peak, projecting a rainbow band of color.
The dazzling color scheme is produced by the separation of light waves by their varying degrees of refraction, embodying the lively spirit of the Coachella festival. Through this manipulation of the physical properties of light, Spectra is capable of producing over 16 million colors.
If you want to understand the interests, aspirations and behaviors of architects that are 45-and-under, just perusing Bjarke Ingels' Instagram is an interesting and highly educational exercise… don’t worry, we already did the job for you.
On Saturday in Santiago, Chile, the Prix Versailles Committee announced the continental winners of its annual awards celebrating built commercial architecture.
Ten winning projects in Central America, the South and the Caribbean and twelve in North America are awarded in four categories: stores, shopping malls, hotels and restaurants. In May, built projects in Africa and Asia will be awarded in Algiers and Beijing. The European winners will be announced in Paris.
Check a gallery of the continental winners projects, below.
Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi, known for his majestic wire mesh sculptures, has unveiled his biggest artwork to date for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. Titled “Etherea,” the site-specific installation represents the culmination of Tresoldi's research in the music field, realized as three transparent structures taking inspiration from Neoclassical and Baroque architecture.
The Italian artist has established a reputation for wire mesh sculptures, having been named by Forbes as one of the 30 most influential European artists. The Etherea sculpture represents the artist’s investigation into architecture as a tool for contemplation, a “dedicated space where the sky and clouds are narrated through the language of classical architecture.”
Barcelona is a thriving city with world-class architecture and a rich history that makes it one of Europe’s most popular destinations. When you first think of this Spanish metropolis, what comes to mind? For many of us, it is the image of Antoni Gaudi’s unique style and gravity-defying Sagrada Familia. But what would Barcelona look like without this cathedral or some of its other buildings the city is known for? In Menilmonde’s new video titled “Barcelona Archi’llusion”, the buildings flicker between total erasure, a pseudo-sketch, and views of their actual forms, allowing you explore to what the city would be like without some it’s most famous icons.
The Expo Guadalajara Technical Committee invited five different Mexican architecture studios to participate in the design competition for the conceptual proposal for the extension of this trade fair venue in the capital of Jalisco state. Following a lengthy competition period, Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos has been selected as the winner with a conceptual project that takes as its main objective: the creation of a multifunctional space with an important urban interaction.
Dubai Nhabitat, a mixed-use tower proposed by Ankara-based firm rgg Architects, utilizes its own unique formal system to create "permeability through different materials and building tectonics." The tower is an aggregate of individual modules that can be enlarged or shrunk by an "8mx8m grid" based on programmatic needs, creating views and outdoor spaces unique to each spatial arrangement.
Adjaye Associates has unveiled images of its proposed reconceptualization of the protective façade of an electrical switching station into an engaging “Art Wall” in Newark, New Jersey. The 30-foot-high walls of the Fairmount Heights switching station will be transformed into a canvas for original works of 14 local and international artists, exploring themes of youth, education, and community, while a canopied passageway will house a market, art installations, and gathering space.
It no longer makes much sense to say that BIM technology is the future of architectural design; it is the present and will become increasingly widespread. However, professionals and students often note that the technology's complexity can make it user-unfriendly, particularly regarding parametric element families.
While there are websites that offer ready-made families, the vast majority focus on engineering and other building systems, leaving few options for architectural and interior design elements.
Taiwan has announced the scheduled October 2018 opening of the Mecanoo-designed National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, also named “Weiwuying.” The Mecanoo scheme incorporates five state-of-the-art performance spaces under a single roof which, at 35 acres (141,000 square meters), stands as the world’s largest performing arts center under one roof.
Set across a 116-acre (470,000-square-meter) subtropical park in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, the scheme will occupy a former military training base, symbolizing the city’s transition from a major international harbor into a rich, diverse, cultural hub, connecting local and international artistic talent.
Today, Friday, April 13, starting at 10:00 AM (GMT -3) in Santiago, Chile, the mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue, and 2002 National Architecture Award winner Juan Sabbagh will present the municipal Inmobiliaria Popular (Public Housing) project at the national headquarters of the Architects' Association (Colegio de Arquitectos).
Unveiled in late January of this year, the initiative—unprecedented in Chile—consists of the construction of two five-story buildings with a total of 38 apartments, each measuring 55 square meters, to be rented to vulnerable families in the municipality. Other municipalities in the Chilean capital—Renca, Macul and Las Condes—have already announced they will study replicating the model.
Late last year, we reported on the progress of world’s first 3D printed steel bridge designed by Netherlands-based MX3D. With the design now finalized, the start-up company has announced that the span of the bridge is now complete.
The final round of structural tests is expected to take place this summer, just three years after the project was first announced. After the structural integrity has been tested, the final design will be modified and the completion of the bridge will follow only a few months after. MX3D hopes to showcase the potential of their multi-axis 3D printer during the Dutch Design Week, and the first of its kind bridge is planned to be installed into its final location in a canal in Amsterdam sometime next year.
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