Architecture News

The latest collaboration between architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and artist Ai Weiwei may be called Hansel & Gretel, but it brings to mind just as much another literary classic: George Orwell’s 1984.

The immersive, site-specific installation, located within the expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall at New York’s Park Avenue Armory, places visitors in a darkness-cloaked environment, where your every move is tracked and monitored by motion sensors, image captures and a team of surveillance drones. The work is a not-so-subtle interpretation of the expanding role of surveillance in modern-day society and the changing dynamics between the public and private realms. 

C.F. Møller has been selected as the winners of a competition to design a community-focused highrise in the Stockholm neighborhood of Kista, a district known as the city’s tech hub that is in need of attractive, contemporary living options. Known as Geysir, the 15,000-square-meter building will provide 220 new units of varying size, as well as 2,000 square meters of retail space, helping to develop the urban quarter.

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The Curry Stone Design Prize has selected 11 honorees as part of June’s Social Design Circle, whose work responds to the question: Can Design Reclaim Public Space? From NGOs to design collectives across the globe, each winner addresses notions of usage, organization, and amenities within the realm of public space, and is featured on the prize’s website. In addition to a new circle of monthly winners, the prize hosts a weekly podcast, Social Design Insights, complimenting the featured work and expanding on the monthly themes with leading practitioners in social design.

Here are the 11 members of June’s Social Design Circle:

Located in central Shanghai, this multifunctional arts and culture complex is part of the Bund Finance Centre – a joint project between London-based practices Heatherwick Studio and Foster+Partners. Sitting between the old town and the new financial district, this new space combines exhibition and events spaces with a performance venue inspired, according to the architects, "by the open stages of traditional Chinese theatres." Of most visual interest is the building's mechanical "moving veil," captured here by photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu.

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LTL Architects (Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis) has been selected as the winner of the Telluride Transfer Warehouse competition, beating out finalist entries from NADAAA and Gluckman Tang. The competition sought schemes for the adaptive reuse and transformation of the National Historic Landmark-listed warehouse in Telluride, Colorado into “an architectural and cultural landmark that provides contemporary, public art space that deepens and expands the cultural life of Telluride.”

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At a meeting convened today at the Biennale's headquarters at Ca’ Giustinian in Venice, Italy, Grafton Architects—Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara—revealed the theme and outline for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, which they have titled Freespace. According to the Directors, the forthcoming Biennale will celebrate "generosity and thoughtfulness," and "a desire to engage."

We believe that everyone has the right to benefit from architecture. The role of architecture is to give shelter to our bodies, but also to lift our spirits. A beautiful wall forming a street edge gives pleasure to the passer-by, even if they never go inside.

Freespace will "reveal diversity, specificity, and continuity in architecture. Together," they proposed, "we can reveal the capacity of architecture to connect with history, time, place, and people. These qualities sustain the fundamental capacity of architecture to nurture and support a meaningful impact between people and place." In their closing statement, Farrell and McNamara chose to quote an Ancient Greek proverb: a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) today, the US-based tech giant announced the latest slate of performance updates to their software and hardware products. Targeting software developers and other high-end users, the event was highlighted by the announcement of significant upgrades to their computer’s graphics and processing capabilities—or in architect’s terms—the components required to work on projects like creating content within a VR experience or real-time 3D rendering.

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Videos

As the 150th Anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's birth approaches, LEGO has released the latest kit in their architecture series: Wright's New York masterpiece, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The 744-piece set features a new rendition of the building made from the classic plastic blocks, following a 208-piece interpretation released in 2009. The new set provides a much more realistic portrayal of the Wright's original building as well as the 10-story limestone tower added by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects in 1992 (based on Wright's original sketches).

Brazil-based architects Estudio Guto Requena, working with digital product studio D3, has launched an app that collects emotions to create a unique piece of jewelry. That, and some 3D-printed craftsmanship direct from the design you generate via their new app. Coined the Aura Pendant, the final product is an intricately woven golden pendant that can be gifted to yourself or a loved one.

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Art is not confined to gallery walls. The concept of art displayed on ceilings stretches back to the Renaissance, perhaps most notably the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo. The Renaissance tradition of Trompel’oeil ceilings went further, using an illusionary depth of perspective to depict a volume which doesn’t exist; be it a dome that was never built or an attic filled with angels.

Four hundred years later, New York and Los Angeles-based architecture firm FreelandBuck has elevated the concept with its upcoming installation ‘Parallax Gap’, which has been selected by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum as the winning entry in a competition entitled ‘ABOVE the Renwick’. From July 2017 to February 2018, the 2,500sqft canopy will be suspended from the ceiling of the Renwick’s largest room, the Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon, depicting an abstract catalog of American architectural icons.

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After a study of Madrid’s exuberantly geometric architecture, Digital Designer and Creative Director Joel Filipe continues his formal exploration in a series of photos of the MAAT by AL_A that celebrates the delicate impression of its undulating white tile facade against the bright Lisbon sky. Situated on the Tagus River, architect Amanda Levete creates a reunion between the river and the city with MAAT’s walkable rooftop terrace that draws visitors from the nearby streets of Belem, and with the promenade which steps down to meet the water. The roof provides a gathering space during the day and a place to screen films at night. The low-lying gentle arch of the building allows for a clever play of shadows and light, along with a nod to rippling water.

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On a tree-lined avenue in Singapore, fittingly named Orchard Road, Apple has opened its first Flagship store in the city-state, highlighting its role as a global center for creativity and innovation. Designed by Fosters + Partners, in collaboration with the design team at Apple, the Orchard Road Flagship seeks to create a new social focus by working in tandem with nature, blurring the boundaries between inside and out.

With a modular composition inspired by traditional sub-Saharan African building typologies, MASA Studio’s safe lodging proposal for Tanzanian cancer victims has been selected as the winner of the Hostels for Hope competition, which called for solutions to issues of health and safety in regards to the rehabilitation of cancer victims away from home in rural Africa. Organized by Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, an international foundation combatting women’s cancers, the competition responds to the unfortunate decision that thousands of Tanzanian women have to make every year – to travel great lengths for unaffordable treatment and lodging, or to remain at home unable to fight the disease.

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Praksis Arkitekter has been awarded 500,000 DKK as winners of Nykredit's Architecture Awards, the most prestigious architectural distinction in Scandinavia. Founded in 1987 by the Nykredit Foundation, the awards also honored two practices with 250,000 DKK Prizes: the Motivation Award, won by ADEPT, is “an encouragement to continue and further develop an already obvious talent” seen in young architectural practices, while the Sustainability Award, which was introduced in 2016, was won this year by Leth & Gori.

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Chilean architect Samuel Bravo has been selected as the winner of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design 2017 Wheelwright Prize, a $100,000 travel grant established to support “investigative approaches to contemporary design.”

Bravo’s research proposal, Projectless: Architecture of Informal Settlements, seeks to study the architecture of traditional and informal settlements, offering a contemporary revisiting of Bernard Rudofsky’s “architecture without architects” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964.

The design of the world’s tallest hybrid timber building, by Shigeru Ban Architects, has been revealed by Vancouver-based developer PortLiving. Named “Terrace House,” the project will be located in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour neighborhood, adjacent to the landmark-listed Evergreen Building, designed by late architect Arthur Erickson. The design of the “Terrace House” pays tribute to its neighbor, picking up the architectural language of triangular shapes, natural materials, and an abundance of greenery.

Moscow-based architecture practice Meganom has unveiled their design for a supertall luxury skyscraper in Manhattan. The parcel, on 262 Fifth Avenue is located in the city’s NoMad neighborhood near Madison Square Park. The site owner, Israeli developer Boris Kuzinez from Five Points Development, submitted plans for the project in September 2016. Kuzinez and Meganom have previously worked together on several projects, including the award-winning Tsvetnoy Central Market in Moscow. 262 Fifth Avenue will be the debut project in the U.S. for both, and the skyscraper will be the tallest ever built by a Russian architect in America.