Last week, we asked our social media followers, "What does public architecture mean to you?" These thoughts are intrinsic to the architectural debate and come into play in various types of projects, especially in those related to the planning of common-use spaces in cities.
This article was originally published on CommonEdge as "What Landscape Architects and Urban Designers Can Learn About Public Space From Cuba."
It was certainly what I had come for: I was sitting on broad, cobbled steps, watching people interact in the public realm. It was an August afternoon in Cuba, and I had found temporary respite from the harsh sun beneath a haphazard array of trees. My design work as a landscape architect focuses on urban parks, streetscapes, and academic campuses, and I wanted to see how differently the open spaces of Cuba might function.
Within the framework of Espacios Oscuros research project, focused on observing and analyzing the experience of sexual diversity in public spaces of Santiago de Chile, architects María González and José Tomás Franco spoke with Nikos Salingaros, a mathematician and thinker known for his alternative theoretical approach to architecture and urbanism. Salingaros promotes design focused on human needs and aspirations, combining rigorous scientific analysis with a deep intuitive experience.
Our cities are, for the most part, hostile to the sensibilities of their citizens. (...) Almost everything has been aligned, standardized, emptied. So, how to meet different people, and how to expect a mix between strangers?
When we think of energy from renewable sources, the first that probably come to mind are solar and wind. And decentralizing power generation is something that has inspired engineers and inventors from all over the world.
So what about turning the mechanical energy generated when people walk into electrical energy? It can be done thanks to technology developed by Laurence Kemball-Cook,founder of Pavegen. Using platforms inserted within sidewalks Pavegen converts steps into electric power (while also generating data and even rewards). But before you go out there feeling like Michael Jackson in Billie Jean, you should understand how this system works.
Cultural flagships, from trendy breeding grounds to iconic cultural palaces, form the core of many urban cultural landscapes. Spaces of Culture is about the new construction and redevelopment of cultural buildings in Amsterdam in the period 2000-2016.
The New York City Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) Logo Design Competition is being held to solicit a design for a new POPS logo that may be featured on signage at over 550 POPS located across the city. A new POPS logo would be seen by millions of residents, workers, and visitors on any given day and encourage the public to take full advantage of these valuable, but sometimes unknown, public spaces.
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It is, once again, the time of year where we look towards the future to define the goals and approaches that we will take for our careers throughout the upcoming year. To help the millions of architects who visit ArchDaily every day from all over the world, we compiled a list of the most popular ideas of 2018, which will continue to be developed and consolidated throughout 2019.
Over 130 million users discovered new references, materials, and tools in 2018 alone, infusing their practice of architecture with the means to improve the quality of life for our cities and built spaces. As users demonstrated certain affinities and/or demonstrated greater interest in particular topics, these emerged as trends.
Pavel Hnilicka Architekti is set to design Prague’s Victory Square, having been announced as winners of an international competition. Led by Pavel Hnilička, Eva Macáková, and Josef Filip, the winning scheme seeks to divert all existing traffic away from the square, transforming the space with a striking central monument.
The scheme sees the removal of tram tracks through the square, which will instead be relocated to the west side and Evropská Street. While traffic will be removed from the square, a new traffic plan will, in fact, accommodate more cars than the existing layout, while the center of the existing roundabout will become a “functioning space for universal use.”
New York’s iconic Central Park was designed in 1858 by F.L Olmsted and C. Vaux, having been chosen in a competition against 32 other entries. The competition called for the design of a park including a parade ground, fountain, watchtower, skating arena, four cross streets, and room for an exhibition hall.
Of the 32 alternative entries, only one survives to this day. The sole survivor was drawn up park engineer John J. Rink. To give an indication as to how Rink’s plan would have aged in the Big Apple, NeoMam Studios and Budget Direct have published a set of visualizations derived from the design. Find out below what one of the world’s most iconic green spaces could have looked like if a 160-year-old decision had been different.
Zaha Hadid Architects has won an international competition for the design of the new Sverdlovsk Philharmonic Concert Hall in Yekaterinburg, Russia. A melting pot of Eastern and Western cultures, talents, and industries, the strategic Ural city hosts a Philharmonic Orchestra which has performed in more than 20 countries, while based in the existing 1936 Sverdlovsk Philharmonic building.
For the design of the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra’s new home, Zaha Hadid Architects “echoed the physical aspects of sound waves” to create an inspirational venue meeting the orchestra’s growing program, and to create a new public plaza for all citizens.
The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) is an urban design award that seeks to promote innovative thinking about the built environment and advance conversation about making cities better. The award discovers and celebrates urban places in the United States that are distinguished by quality design along with their social and economic contributions to American cities.
Artist Janet Echelman has unveiled her latest site-specific work of public art, with the activation of the first phase of “Pulse” in Philadelphia’s Dilworth Park. Pulse seeks to reshape urban space “with a monumental, fluidly moving sculpture that responds to environmental forces including wind, water, and sunlight.
Inspired by the square’s history as a water and transportation hub, Echelman’s work traces the paths and trolley lines of the subway beneath, with four-foot-tall curtains of colorful atomized mist traveling across the park’s fountain surface in response to passing trains underneath.
Carlo Ratti Associati, working in collaboration with Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, has unveiled their design for a modular paving system named “The Dynamic Street.” Intended to make streets “reconfigurable, safer, and more accessible to pedestrians, cyclists, and tomorrow’s self-driving vehicles,” the project will be on display at Sidewalk Lab’s office and experimentation space in Toronto throughout the summer of 2018.
Manifesting as a series of hexagonal modular pavers, the project explores the various patterns which can be created by reconfiguring modules, with a potential future “allowing a street to create an extra car lane during rush hour before then turning it into a pedestrian-only plaza in the evening.”
Brussels-based architecture firm 51N4E have won first prize for their Skanderbeg Square project in Tirana, Albania. The European Prize for Urban Public Space is a biennale competition that promotes creating, restoring, and improving public spaces within European cities, and have chosen this year’s winners for their impressive transformation of the city’s central square.
51N4E’s restructuring and renovation of the Skanderbeg Square is a result of winning an international architecture competition back in 2008. After the project was paused in 2010 for administrative changes, and resumed in 2015, the end result is a series of urban interventions, “inviting public and semi-public neighboring functions to spread into the exterior space”.
Architecture, Innovation, Housing and Affordable Living Converge at reSITE 2018 ACCOMMODATE.
Sou Fujimoto, Michel Rojkind, Jeanne Gang, Assemble, MINI Living, Airbnb, WeWork/WeLive and OMA’s Reinier de Graaf are among the confirmed speakers at reSITE 2018 ACCOMMODATE, one of Europe’s top annual international forums showcasing top solutions for cities and attended by the region’s top design, business, and civic leaders, happening in Prague.
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.
Danish firm Henning Larsen has released images of their competition-winning Key West urban development, seeking to revitalize a socio-economically challenged area of the Belgian capital Brussels. Developed in collaboration with A2RC Architects, the masterplan aims to balance urban and recreational life along the Brussels Canal Zone through a combination of housing, schools, urban farming, and a market hall.
Like many European cities, Brussels is moving towards a post-industrial economy, giving new opportunities to old industrial areas such as the Canal Zone. The Henning Larsen redevelopment seeks to remodel the area as an urban center, tying the urban areas west of the canal to central Brussels.
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