Part park, part urban square and part garden, the public realm of the Green Square Library proposal is a unique landscape offering to this new urban community and is an exemplar of contemporary community public space design and place making. Designed by ASPECT Studios, the public realm is designed to integrate with the program of the library building and facilitate a richness of public experiences and moods by changing scales and tempos. More images and architects' description after the break.
Situated outside the city of Tianjin in Northern China, the proposal for the new National Maritime Museum is designed to house both new and old maritime items with a focus on celebrating the historical achievements of Chinese naval exploration through out time. Designed by Holm Architecture Offce (HAO) + AI the museum combines all aspects of the maritime world, from aquarium to sailing to education, combining a series of unique visitor experiences under one roof. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Upon winning the competition in 2010, schmidt hammer lassen architects just celebrated the ground-breaking ceremony for the International Criminal Court (ICC) this past Tuesday in The Hague, The Netherlands. Aiming to convey hope, trust and faith in justice, the 54,500 square meter building complex will be the first permanent premises of the unique, international institution. The permanent premises of the International Criminal Court will be finished in the summer of 2015. More images and architects' description after the break.
Situated on a hillside in the outskirts of Torshavn, the capital of the autonomous Denmark province of Faroe Islands, the new Marknagil Education Center will seek to “establish synergies” between three educational institutions under one roof. The BIG-designed, 19,200 square meter will provide for more than 1,200 students and 300 teachers by housing the Faroe Islands Gymnasium, Torshavns Technical College and Business College of Faroe Islands in a single building, making it the largest educational building in the country’s history.
More images and the architect’s description after the break...
Romano Adolini Architetto shared with us their design for a new residential complex, carved into the vertical face of an abandoned tufa stone quarry in Civita Castellana, near Viterbo, Italy. Their scheme is a modern reinterpretation of a manner of living and behaving which responds to the need to distance oneself from outside, a new dimension of hidden isolation, of seeking silence and meditation. It is also a new solution to the rehabilitation of quarry sites, currently abandoned and forgotten industrial by-products, located in wonderful landscapes and destined otherwise to become illegal dumping grounds. More images and architects' description after the break.
HOK recently unveiled their design for the state-of-the-art medical school and integrated transit station at the University at Buffalo's Downtown Medical School, which will anchor the vibrant mixed-use district. Designed for the new School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the seven-story medical school will bring 2,000 UB faculty, staff and students daily to downtown Buffalo and, at more than 500,000-square-feet, will be one of the largest buildings constructed in Buffalo in decades. More images and architects' description after the break.
With the aim to be a meaningful building beyond its iconic form, the new Museum & Educational Center (MEC), designed by 3XN, is about connecting with people, while opening up the world of science, technology, innovation and Russia’s extraordinary achievements in these domains. Through both an internal and external architectural expression of flexibility, this proposal, which was a finalist in the international competition, recognizes that architecture shapes behavior. More images and architects' description after the break.
Icon: Claridge Homes is set to become Ottawa’s tallest tower at 45-storeys, transforming the cityscape of the country’s capital and setting a new standard for high quality design and smart densification in the city. Designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects, and as part of the area’s revitalization, the development will bring a mix of uses to meet both the existing and future needs of the neighborhood. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed by Triple O Studio, the basic premise they had for their design of the En-able – Paralytic Home was to keep in mind the every day activities of the differently-able and the specific nuances in the design of catering to their needs. Located in Sri Lanka, the architects wanted to create an environment that would bring about a feeling of community and help keep their spirits up. More images and architects' description after the break.
With an area of 48,636m2, the site of the Hebei University Library is located in the center of the new Beicheng Campus. This competition winning proposal by Damian Donze, of the Tongji Architectural Design and Research Institute, is clearly divided. The base of the building is designated for some offices, an archive, a network center, a convention center and an exhibitions center. This way, the West entrance is reserved for the offices and the the network center while the East entrance is reserved for the convention center and the exhibition center. More images and architect's description after the break.
In order to accommodate the expansion of the local tram system, La Fabrique Métropolitaine de la Communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux has commissioned OMA to design a new major urban development in the southern district of Bordeaux, France. Over the next five years, the masterplan will regenerate the neighborhoods of Bègles and Villenave d'Ornon by forging new connections to Bordeaux's central station and unlocking the potential for both city development and public space.
This project is part of the new identity for the "Porte Sud de Bordeaux" (Bordeaux south gate) and continues OMA's intensive recent engagement in Bordeaux, as the office has been working since 2010 on the masterplan for 50,000 new housing units in the city.
More on OMA’s Bordeaux masterplan after the break...
Situated in the large fun park in the suburbs of Sofia, Radionica Arhitekture's proposal for the Collider Activity Center, which won one of five first prizes, is a small artificial 'mountain'. When external conditions are favorable, the facade opens and the internal atmosphere becomes external. The second layer is the hall, a kind of a "cytoplasm". The space between the façade and the climbing surface.This is the place of entrance, where the building and the park mix, the site of overlapping where all paths intersect. More images and architects' description after the break.
The proposal, ‘Athens PubliCity: an urban neuron for a new city center’, for the Re-Think Athens competition organizes a public space processing system which develops and expands like an “urban neuron”. Designed by Nikiforidis-Cuomo Architects, their concept becomes an entire living framework aiming to re-activate and revitalize the urban body. The system acts as a familiar, habitable and dynamic framework able to “contain” events and situations of both collective and individual actions. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by Ksestudio, their “Stage a lot” Flat Lot competition entry, which received an honorable mention, is a constantly transformative intervention that responds to the call for a temporary structure from the Flint Public Art Project. The project invents a ballet of ropes and pulleys animating four suspended rectangular pieces of white tyvek that in a neutral position hang vertically to form a topless cube. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by TABB Architecture, their proposal for the Notre Dame de l’Assomption Cathedral in Port au Prince optimizes resources, producing designed solutions and teaming up for a change. Designing a New Cathedral for Port-au-Prince,not only will imply a beautiful, energy saving, affordable building, but a complete strategy plan to generate the labor force in order to sustain the local economy, teaching people construction techniques to support future needs. More images and architects' description after the break.
Emerging from a design excellence competition held by the Parramatta City Council, the Aspire Tower, designed by Grimshaw Architects, is a landmark mixed-use tower set to establish a new benchmark for innovative, passive-environmental design in Australian high-rise developments. Designed to act as a catalyst project for Parramatta Square, the tower provides high density, urban residential living which is not only affordable but also sustainable. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed by Leeser Architecture their design concept for the Polytechnic Education Center takes its cues from the rich history of modern Russian architecture of the early part of the twentieth century. Located in the Lenin Hills section of Moscow, which play an important role in the history of Moscow as a place of radical experimentation, the new institute symbolizes this incredible energy and conflation of future inventions with past achievement as a new symbol of global importance. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located in the rapidly urbanizing Mladost area on the edge of central Sofia, the new Collider Activity Center, designed by INDEX, draws on the process of the tectonic movement and operations of geological forms as an organizational system to create architecture. The center will be one of the first new buildings to occupy the quasi Greenfield site and the broader urban structure plan for the area will eventually play host to a variety of new facilities, capitalizing on the latent potential of Bulgaria as an emerging economy. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed and directed by Iceland based architect Marcos Zotes and his studio UNSTABLE, their Pixel Cloud installation is the winning competition entry for the Reykjavik Winter Lights Festival 2013, organized by Höfuðborgarstofa, Orkusalan and the Iceland Design Center. The installation creates an opportunity for Icelanders to reconsider the use and management of their urban public spaces. With the current financial situation leaving a permanent landscape of obsolete scaffolding structures scattered across the city, this has resulted in urban scars that remind us of the fragility of their current society. This installation takes advantage of this condition by transforming an ordinary scaffolding structure into a fully immersive environment of light and sound in the heart of Reykjavík. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed by Hooba Design Group, one of the major aims in their second prize winning proposal for the Persian Factory in Iran was coming to an integrated spatial pattern, which fits both the new part of the existing structure and the site plan of the factory. In order to achieve an integrated organization, they used a spatial diagram, which defined both the inside and outside of the project simultaneously. This diagram is influenced by the building’s site, and also the existing status of building and additional sections. More images and architects’ description after the break.
FORA and Beth Hughes, with Raul Moura and Tudor Vasiliu, have been selected as one of four finalists for the second phase of the Danish site in the Nordic Built Challenge - an open multidisciplinary design competition for the refurbishment of five buildings one in each Nordic country. Their proposal addresses the Ellebo Housing Estate in Ballerup, Denmark. The estate was built in 1963, and features four buildings for a total size of 20,000m2, enclosing playgrounds, playing fields and green recreational areas. Their challenge was to renovate the existing buildings and outdoor areas, and for 5,000m2 of additional housing. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed by DMP Partners, their winning proposal for the Sejong Art Center (SAC) is composed of two theaters, a main theater with more than 800 seats, a medium sized theater with 300 seats, a film theater with 250 seats, and an art gallery. Located in the international cultural area between nature-scape and urban-scape, the building combines nature and city through its straight, linear shape. This form is applied in accordance with the city and its curvature shape is in accordance with nature to create a comfortable feeling. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Mediating between iconic metaform and the human scale, this proposal by FAR frohn&rojas is one of the winners of the architectural competition for the new central library of the state of Berlin at the airfield of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. By twisting a three dimensional grid from horizontal to vertical, the three key urban drivers of the site - the runway, the motorway and the former airport building - are resolved. More images and architects' description after the break.
Designed by LOVE architecture and urbanism, the main goal of their winning proposal for the 50Hertz Headquarters in Berlin was to develop an innovative, transparent, open headquarters for the company that above all flows from inside to outside. The focus became to create flexible,versatile, and unique working environments, which are traversed by spacious outdoor spaces in the form of terraces, balconies and atriums. More images and architects' description after the break.
