Urban Planning: The Latest Architecture and News

The Glasgow City Council has selected a multidisciplinary team lead by MVRDV and Glasgow-based Austin-Smith:Lord to transform downtown Glasgow into a “more livable, attractive, competitive and sustainable center.” Titled (Y)our City Center, the strategy calls for a regeneration of the 400 hectare city center that would reorganize circulation and infrastructure while providing new residential options to support Scotland’s economic center.

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Last week, it was reported that Foster + Partners had been selected to design the capitol complex of Amaravati, a new capital city for the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India. The commission, however, has not come without controversy. As revealed by Indian news company The Wire, the project had earlier been awarded through invited competition to Japanese firm Maki and Associates, who were later removed from the project under uncertain circumstances.

In a letter sent a few weeks ago to India’s Council of Architecture, principal Fumihiko Maki has questioned the motivations of the Andhra Pradesh government committee, alleging unfair practice, lack of transparency and his firm’s ‘fraudulent’ removal from the project.

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ADEPT Architects has won the commission to design a new masterplan for the Budapart neighborhood of Budapest, a project that will become the largest singular urban development in the city for nearly 30 years. Based on a distorted grid structure, the design will reference both historic and modern parts of the city, and will encompass 54 hectares of mixed-use space.

Located on the [‘Buda’] bank of the Danube River, the Budapart masterplan aims to create a green and human scaled neighborhood rather than just another new modern development. The fantastic location on the waterfront, the existing characteristic landscape qualities and the close vicinity to the central city are the main attractions that each generate huge potential to make the new neighborhood an epicenter of its own, described the architects in a recent press release.

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Vincent Callebaut Architectures has released plans for the development of a radical eco-neighborhood at Tour & Taxis, Brussels, Belgium. Covering an area of 135,000 square meters, the proposal will see the redevelopment of the early twentieth-century Gare Maritime, and the construction of three residential “vertical forests” reaching 100 meters in height. The architect’s ultimate vision is a neighborhood which embraces technological progress, sustainable building principles, and renewal of the built heritage.

Situated northwest of Brussels city center, and constructed in 1907, the industrial park at Tour & Taxis originally operated as a shipping and customs complex. Whilst the lifting of European customs borders has rendered its original function obsolete, the Gare Maritime (Marine Terminal) still embodies the architecture of the industrial era.

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Foster + Partners has been selected as the winners of an international competition to design a new £500 million capital for the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India. The brief calls for a new 365 hectare masterplan that will serve as a new municipal capital for India’s eighth largest state, which lost its previous capital, Hyderabad, when state lines were redrawn two years ago.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced the names of the 144 finalists in the 2017 edition of the Knight Cities Challenge, a nationwide call for innovative ideas aimed at transforming the organizations’ 26 member communities into more vibrant places to live and work. Open to innovators and designers from any field, the challenge requested submissions that responded to a simple prompt: What’s your best idea to make cities more successful?

The City of Tampere, Finland has announced the proposal by Schauman & Nordgren Architects and Mandaworks as the winner of an open international competition for Hiedanranta Bay's new master plan. The design, entitled "Hiedanranta Innovation Bay," responds to the rapid growth of Tampere's central region. Over the next 20 years, the Innovation Bay will see the transformation of the former industrial district into an innovation hub for sustainable economic development, creating 10,000 new jobs, and housing over 25,000 new residents.

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Philippe Barrière Collective (PB+Co) has created the urban plan for a new semi-rural/semi-urban development in Manouba, Tunisia. Utilizing an existing olive grove estate, the environmentally driven project includes collective housing pavilions among its ecological design composed of 4,475 salvaged olive trees, newly planted taller trees, and a wild botanical garden that fosters local biodiversity.

Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne has completed a three-semester–long study of Houston’s future, given its current sprawling urban conditions and rapid growth. The project, conducted alongside 21 University of Houston students and faculty members Matt Johnson, Peter Zweig, and Jason Logan, focused on ways of addressing the problems that arise from Houston’s historical lack of zoning in conjunction with the largely unregulated growth of industry and capitalism. These approaches include reinventing the current energy infrastructure, changing real estate and density, and leveraging the lack of zoning to generate new ideas.

This article was originally published by Autodesk's Redshift publication as "Reincarnated Architecture: Through Green Alleys, Dead Space Can Live Anew."

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M CO Design has released its designs for “Dragon’s Link,” a new dragon-inspired, mixed-use infrastructure on the south side of Hong Kong Island “that will serve a large part of the community and will enhance a local historic monument,” the Tai Tam Dam, which will celebrate its 100^th anniversary this coming February.

Drawing inspiration from local traditions and the natural topography of Hong Kong, the project will create new connections within an existing network of roads and hiking trails in Tai Tam Country Park in “a juxtaposition of old and new,” in order to improve user experience and infrastructure.

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Development by Design (2nd edition)

If starchitecture isn’t dead, then it has surely been rendered irrelevant in a world struggling to provide decent living conditions to at least a quarter of the world’s population. A growing network of architects and urban planners are busy tackling the challenges posed by realities like unprecedented urban growth, climate change and conflict as opportunities to build a more just and sustainable future. As such, resilience, sustainable urban development, the effects of mass migration on cities, community participation, post-disaster response and disaster risk reduction are key issues within our master program that deserve a spotlight beyond the classroom and that today, more than ever, resonate with urban practitioners and the general public.

OMA has released images of their masterplan for Feyenoord City, Rotterdam, after the plan was approved by city’s mayor and alderman. Developed for the Feyenoord football club, the project will consist of a redeveloped mixed-use district centered around a new 63,000 seat stadium for the team located along the Maas River.

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Staab Architekten has released its plans for the historic center of Cologne, which will include the research and administration buildings for the Römanisch-Germanisches Museum, the Kurienhaus der Hohen Domkirche (curia house of the high cathedral), and the Kölner Stadtmuseum (Cologne state museum). Through these buildings, the project will redefine the urban space around Cologne’s cathedral and generate a place where the city’s history can be “presented and explored from diverse perspectives.”

This article by Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, the cofounder of Snøhetta, was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Opinion: The Next Great Public Spaces Will Be Indoors."

Maybe with the sole exception of railway stations, public space is generally understood as outdoor space. Whether in the United States or in Europe, especially now with heightened concerns around security, there seems to be this determined way of privatizing everything that is indoors, even as we are increasingly aiming to improve access to public space outdoors. But in the layered systems of our cities of the future, we will need to focus on the public spaces that are found inside buildings—and make them accessible.

Elected in 2001, over eight years in office Miami's former mayor Manny Diaz oversaw one of the most dramatic urban transformations in the United States' history. Diaz was therefore invited to offer the opening remarks to the second day of the 2016 Design Matters Conference, presented by the Association of Architecture Organizations, which is currently taking place in the city. In his speech delivered at the Miami Center for Art and Design, Diaz explains how he developed the "Miami 21" zoning code to leverage the power of architecture and urban planning, ultimately turning Miami from a subject of jokes into one of the United States' most successful and admired cities. Below is an edited version of this speech.

Ron asked me to explain how a lawyer with no experience in elective office and with no training whatsoever in architecture, urban planning or city design ends up with land use and Miami 21 as the signature project of his administration.

Adjaye Associates has been announced as the firm that will serve as masterplan architect and creative director for the second phase of revitalization of the San Francisco Shipyard, the waterfront neighborhood located at Hunter’s Point along the San Francisco Bay.

The project, developed by FivePoint Holdings, is envisioned as a state-of-the-art commercial district containing offices, labs, research facilities and housing, and will feature a mix of reclaimed heritage buildings and new constructions. The plan will center around acres of public spaces and sports grounds.

“I’m thrilled to be partnering with FivePoint to explore ways to reinvigorate this site’s unique infrastructure for the 21st Century,” said David Adjaye, firm principal. “This is a project with incredible transformative potential; to be given the opportunity to contribute to San Francisco’s urban fabric in such a significant way is a true honor.”

Maksim Atayants and Maksim Atayants Workshop have announced the construction of Laikovo, a new, large, classically-designed city in the Moscow Region that will be built from scratch – which, according to the architects, will be the first classical city to be built from the ground up in Russia in over 100 years.

Intended to embody the best practices of Russian and global urban planning, the city will be designed in the modern classic style in five districts, and will become Moscow’s nearest satellite city, located near Rublyovka, with easy access to the paid expressway, the M-1 double.

50 percent of the 116-hectare city will be dedicated to public space, including a two-hectare park and lake at city center, as well as a main waterway that will become the Moscow Region’s longest artificial channel.

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