The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award has just announced the first 449 works competing in its 2022 edition. Selected from 279 cities in 41 countries, the projects have been nominated by European independent experts, the national architecture associations, and the Prize Advisory Committee.
Alison Brooks Architects has created a landmark structure in the emerging area of Kings Cross in London, part of its Central Masterplan. The proposed mixed-use urban block containing 158 dwellings will reinforce the neighborhood’s “unique sense of place and celebrate its emerging and historic contexts”.
Newly built houses, with their sizable carbon footprints, don’t just contribute to climate change. For many Americans, they’re also too expensive—a bitter irony in cities rife with vacant buildings and record evictions.
Given the urgency of both issues, projects that retrofit livable housing into existing low-carbon shells (the initial embodied carbon was spent long ago) might be worth a closer look. We searched for them and came across a handful that promise a cure for housing insecurity and excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
For decades, companies have relied on disposable plastic packaging to bag and contain products worldwide. Today, the staggering detrimental effects of this plastic dependence are well-known: since the 1950’s, over 9 billion tons of plastic have been produced, only 9% of which was recycled; around the world, one million plastic bottles are bought every minute and two million plastic bags are used every minute; and per the Plastic Pollution Coalition, by 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight. Moreover, plastic is a petroleum product, and its production only further contributes to the devastating climate effects of mass fossil fuel use.
Croatia has long been a crossroads of culture. Located along the Adriatic Sea, it borders five countries and has some of the richest biodiversity in Europe. The built environment reflects influences from Central Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as both the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Today, a series of new housing projects are reinterpreting the country's past as architects and designers look to reimagine what the future holds.
When it comes to attics, we often imagine underused spaces in homes and buildings, such as warehouses or rooms that are exclusively used to shelter infrastructure systems. However, reflecting on the reuse of traditional attics in 19th-century Parisian buildings as housing, which is happening nowadays, one realizes that these spaces can be reinvented and, with a little creativity, they can provide impressive living spaces.
ODA-Designed Hunter’s Point South, the newest development by TF Cornerstone, and the largest affordable housing project in NYC has launched its housing lottery. The master-planned, mixed-use and mixed-income community, park, school, and playground, situated along the East River in Long Island City, Queens, the first of its kind to hit the market since COVID-19, brings 1,194 rental units and a new park to Long Island City waterfront.
In order to assist the city of London and encourage constructions after Covid-19, the Mayor of London, with tech-led design practice Bryden Wood and leading residential consultancy Cast, have launched a new version of the housing design app PRiSM. Using the latest digital technology and data to help design and build manufactured homes, the freely available application will allow users to share expertise and use technology to transform the design process and get the city building the homes Londoners need.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is recognizing seven new residential designs with 2020 Housing Awards. The projects are awarded across single family, production, multifamily and specialized housing. Presented by the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community, the awards emphasize the importance of good housing as a "necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit, and a valuable national resource."
Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture received the green light to move forward with its latest “socially focused mixed-use scheme” that includes council homes, an adult education center, and affordable workspaces. Entitled Morland Gardens, the new project located in the London Borough of Brent, one of the district’s most deprived areas, is scheduled to start in the fall of 2020.
Perkins and Will have selected the winning projects for this year’s edition of the Phil Freelon Design Competition. Entitled “Arroyo” the 2020 laureate is “a self-sustaining community that embraces the diversity of New Yorkers”, designed by Vangel Kukov and Hala El Khorazaty. Imagining co-living strategies to combat the housing crises in America, the annual event gathered entries from Perkins and Will studios around the world.
MASS Design Group has published a COVID-19 design guide for Senior Housing. Made by the firm's Design Response team, it includes strategies and best practices for retrofitting and upgrading existing buildings. The guide aims to help senior housing developers and operators as they work to manage infection control while balancing social and cultural needs with emerging research on the coronavirus.
This article is part of "Eastern Bloc Architecture: 50 Buildings that Defined an Era", a collaborative series by The Calvert Journal and ArchDaily highlighting iconic architecture that had shaped the Eastern world. Every week both publications will be releasing a listing rounding up five Eastern Bloc projects of certain typology. Read on for your weekly dose: Monolithic Housing Blocks.
Waugh Thistleton Architects or WTA has won an international design competition in collaboration with In Praise of Shadows and Land Arkitektur, to deliver the new head office of Gotlandshem, the national housing association of the Swedish island of Gotland in Visby, Sweden. The project, low carbon, and low impact building will be a multifunctional place, providing a healthy hub for businesses, accessible by the whole community.
City officials in Barcelona have found an incentive to help increase the city’s available rental housing units. Authorities are threatening to forcefully buy empty properties to create more affordable housing if landlords don’t manage to fill their vacant rental assets within a certain time frame.
Following up on their series of urban block flashcards, Spanish publisher a+t architecture publishers launched in 2018 a new deck of cards featuring collective living floor plans as part of one of their series of cards about urban density, Density. As a courtesy to ArchDaily, the publishing house shared some of these expanded cards, both typical floor plans, and each unit, where you can see the designs and privacy parameters and openings to the outside of each project.
Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) has just received planning consent for Lucan Place in Chelsea, a mixed-use project that provides new homes, nursery, and specialist educational accommodation. The project, a redevelopment of the site of the former Chelsea Police Station, will generate a total of 31 new homes, as well as social and community functions.
