Architecture News: The Latest Architecture and News

Established by Aga Khan IV (the current Islamic leader responsible for the interpretation of Islam and the improvement of his followers’ lives), the Aga Khan Award for Architecture rewards architectural achievement that meets the “aspirations of Islamic societies.” Every three years, the honor is awarded to multiple projects and it recognizes projects, teams, and stakeholders, in addition to buildings and people. This year marks the 11th award cycle (which began in 2008) and the short list has just been announced. The projects are quite varied ranging from a mosque in Bangladesh, to a textile factory in Turkey, to a community center in Sri Lanka.

More about the award after the break.

As part of the Triennial program at the Cooper Hewitt, the showing exhibit Why Design Now? presents some of the most innovative designs of contemporary culture. The exhibition, which addresses human and environmental concerns, includes designers dappling in all areas of the design field – from architecture, to fashion, and graphics to materials.

More about the exhibit after the break.

Eli Broad, an American philanthropist, is getting ready to design the newest home for his extensive art collection. For his latest museum project, on the corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street in Los Angeles, Broad invited six of the professions’ leading minds to compete. Resting across the street from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s 1986 Museum of Contemporary Art, Broad’s museum with include approximately 40,000 square feet of top-floor exhibition space, along with offices for the Broad Art Foundation.

Built in memory of Ernst Koller, a businessman and inventor, BBK‘s pavilion is a multipurpose space open to the educational community for meetings, workshops and exhibitions. The pavilion, in the spirit of Koller, will serve as a creative center where students on the Basel University campus can come together to brainstorm and design.

More about the pavilion after the break.

The Guggenheim Musuem’s newest exhibit features the work of Julie Mehretu, an abstract painter best known for her densely-layered paintings. Her work expresses an obsession with architecture, in particular, densely populated urban environments. In her pieces, Mehretu takes recognizable architectural components, such as the column, façade, and elevation, which are then compressed and combined to capture different perspectives. “Her paintings present a tornado of visual incident where gridded cities become fluid and flattened, like many layers of urban graffiti.”

LA Times shot by Isaac Brekken

At an exhibit in Gothenburg, architects Fredrik Kjellgren + Joakim Kaminsky from Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture have designed a sustainable city as a ”glimpse of a possible sustainable future” for Sweden. The project, entitled Super Sustainable City, takes the analytical findings of a previous green initiaive,”Gothenburg 2050″ and presents a new “architectonic vision.”

More about the exhibit after the break.

Global Architecture Development (GAD), an Istanbul and New York based firm, is working on a 25,000 m² shopping center in Turkey. The new retail area injects the area with a larger sense of urban renewal. The center’s facade consists of alternating surfaces that respond to their different orientations. The scale of materiality and designs of the facades try to respond to the different surrounding conditions, whether it be residential, commercial, or urban infrastructure.

More images after the break.

Almost a year ago we told you of a survey Autodesk was conducting regarding the UI and printing capabilities of Autocad with Mac users, the first confirmation of Autodesk finally working on a version for this platform.

Federico Viticci from Macstories posted several screen shoots of Sledgehammer, the first Beta of Autocad for Mac OSX, running on a 64-bit machine. The UI presents several changes from what we were used to on the Windows version, and I´m happy to see mouse gestures (supported by Macbook’s touchpad and the Magic Mouse).

Not much details out there, but we do have a meeting with an Autodesk rep in the following weeks, when we will try to get you more details.

In the meanwhile, take a look at the following screen shoots and tell us what you think: Is Autodesk going in a good direction with this new version (more than an adaptation) of Autocad for Mac? Does the UI seem usable for you? What would you add?

Yesterday, architect William McDonough and chemist Dr. Michael Braungart launched their Green Products Innovation Institute, Inc. , an addition to their Cradle to Cradle Movement® (C2C). This new non-profit organization is focused on being a valuable resource for all consumers, and ultimately, will help people achieve a higher level of environmentally safe and healthy products. The driving force behind the movement is that through the innovation of “redesigning products and ingredients to become nutrients, and enabling old products to become the raw material for new goods and services” a cycle of reusing elements will eliminate waste.

The Royal Institute of British Architects just announced 102 buildings that were awarded for the 2010 Awards. These buildings, 93 sprawled across the UK and 9 in the rest of the EU, include 6 which were nominated for the Stirling Prize.

More about the winners and more images after the break.

C18 Architekten restored an old chapel in Germany, updating the originial funeral parlor designed by Karl Gonse in 1954. When approached to update the chapel, the architects decided to keep the basic shape of the existing structure and pay particular attention to the ceiling.

More images and more about the ceiling after the break.

Derek Leavitt (@architectderek on Twitter) recently posted an opinionated blog entry on ‘Why Open Architecture Competitions Are Bad for Architects’ . The author outlined why entering competitions is detrimental not only to the individual, but also to the field of architecture.

Competition has been a defining characteristic of architecture for centuries.  Without competitions to spur creativity, a young woman would have never submitted her graceful yet powerful black line…and we would be without the Vietnam Memorial.  Without architects using competitions as a way to test urban gestures, a young team would have never submitted their idea to use just a portion of their allotted site, leaving the rest for a public plaza…and we would be without the Pompidou Center in France.  And, dating quite farther back, without an Italian man initially losing a competition and then determined to further his architectural understanding, we would be without the grand achievement of Brunelleschi’s dome.

The point is that although competitions are demanding, and at times may seem unfair, they are a staple in our profession which pushes the field forward.  With this in mind, we will attempt to argue in favor of the open competition, in the hope that we can persuade and inspire you to keep listening to your instinctive competitive nature and keep compiling those entries.

It seems that after Cornell overcame the danger of having both their accreditation and new architecture school eradicated from the campus, there has been smooth sailing in terms of the physical construction of OMA’S Milstein Hall. The building is right on schedule to be fully completed in the Fall of 2011, as the structural steel, and the exterior structure + roof are being erected.

More images of the steel and more about the current construction phase after the break.

As the previous pavilions we have featured on AD for the World Expo 2010 illustrate, the exhibition is, undoubtedly, a giant testing ground to experiment with the latest avant-garde design concepts. In late March, we featured Naço Architectures‘ pavilion and we have just be informed of some details of the facade treatment. The facade’s main focus was to capitalize on Monaco’s seemingly eternal presence of sun and sea. Designed so visitors will experience different lighting effects, the pavilion’s prominent water screen casts its reflections on and around the pavilion’s façade, “to symbolize a country surrounded by sea and sunshine and attached to respect its environment.”

More images and more about the facade after the break.

It was just announced that OMA + AMO will collaborate with Strelka, a postgraduate school for media, architecture and design in Moscow. The new school is launching an educational program where a select group of students will work intensely and innovatively on a series of themes aimed to reshape Russia’s current role in the world. In an attempt to raise the ambition of the creative industries in Russia, the institute will challenge students with a variety of projects. The students will guided by the expertise of both Russian and international creative leaders.

More about the collaboration after the break.

By addressing the capacity to cope, the ability to bounce back, and the mitigation and management of risk, proposals are welcome that showcase a fresh understanding of the possibilities and opportunities of resilience in architecture, from the large to the small scale. Whether resilience stems from natural disaster, civil conflict, global warming, catastrophe, and so on, is the applicant’s discretion. Please visit the submission site for more details.

This past weekend, we were invited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Panton chair and other Vitra creations at their showroom in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan. The showroom was buzzing with people socializing and viewing the different designs on the showroom’s staggered levels. We were especially excited to see Alejandro Aravena’s novel “Chairless“, a strap of fabric that is a way to eliminate the need for the traditional chair, and yet allows the person to become the integral part of the furniture. Inspired by the Ayoreo Indians who sit on the ground with a tight strap around their back, Aravena developed this concept to produce a seating device that relieves the spine and legs. “It is obvious that many things have evolved since the beginning of time and that progress has accumulated in our lives in the form of sophisticated needs and desires. But it is also true that there are many things and needs that haven’t changed much since our origins and they can still be satisfied in an extremely simple way: sitting comfortably on the ground is one of them,” explained Aravena.

More about Vitra after the break.