Architecture News: The Latest Architecture and News

MONU – Magazine on Urbanism, is looking for interesting contributions for their coming issue MONU“Clear Urbanism”.

Yesterday we posted about the influence in architecture of famous actor Brad Pitt. To continue with this Pitt/Architecture debate, listen to this podcast made by Ted Wells, who talks about the popularity of architects thanks to Brad, among other things.

Easily regarded as one of the most adroit architects of 20th century, Le Corbusier was a relentless designer, urban planner and writer dedicated to industrializing almost every city he came across.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is probably one of the biggest concerns to the world leaders. Although sometimes it may seem that nothing will help solve this crisis, there are still people willing to believe that peace is possible between Israel and Palestine. One of them is Viktor Ramos, an architecture student from Rice University.

Viktor designed this gigantic bridges in which both states can live together. The result is a fantastic example of architectural speculation: genuinely massive – and impossibly cantilevered – bridges used as transport links, aerial housing, and skyborne agricultural complexes, all in one.

More information about this project, here. More images, after the break.

Located in South Korea, the apartments are built using oblique lines in which each unit consists of a terrace.

The building, designed by Korean firm Unsangdong Architects, consists of various community spaces which include parks, leisure facilities, event space, a library, media space and performance space.

Seen at designboom. More images after the break.

Tragedy has struck Australia in the past weeks. Big, unstoppable, uncontrollable fires destroyed 750 houses (with over 210 people killed) in the state of Victoria, taking the lives of many people in the way. But along with tragic situations, new opportunities come to help those who are in need. Australian firm, 1:1 Architects have designed the House re-Growth Pod.

It is a permanent and cost effective housing unit which can assist in the rebuilding of the fire devastated town-ships of Victoria.

The robust pre-fabricated concrete structure has been designed to be built upon, but in the short term acts as a habitable starting point for the building of a new home. The units can be prefabricated, delivered and connected to services rapidly allowing families to begin the process of re-building without displacement from their communities.

The House Pod is not just relief housing it is a starting block for the re-growth of regional Victoria. Ecotec Build Solutions have already offered to construct a prototype.

For more information, go to the House re-Growth Pod official website. re-Growth Pod assembly video, after the break.

The Serpentine Gallery is delighted to announce that the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 will be designed by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of the leading Japanese practice SANAA. Sejima and Nishizawa’s Pavilion will be the architects’ first built structure in the UK and the ninth commission in the Gallery’s annual series of Pavilions, the world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind. The Pavilion will open in July on the Serpentine Gallery’s lawn, where it will remain until October.

Steven Holl Architects‘ winning design from the “4 Tower in 1″ competition calls for a quartet of towers to be built around the brand new Shenzhen Stock Exchange and its surrounding plaza.

The folks at Art & Seek published a video with interesting insights on the construction of the Wyly Theater in Dallas, TX designed by REX | OMA, which is almost complete.

Max Wallack, a 12 year old from Natick, has just won WGBH’s Design Squad “Trash to Treasure” design contest with his “Home Dome” invention, which is a shelter for the homeless, built with just plastic, wire and packing peanuts. The structure is in the form of a Mongolian yurt and includes a built-in bed.

For his winning design, Max won $10,000, a Dell laptop and a trip to Boston to see how his design becomes real. The “Home Dome” was selected as the winning innovation out of more than 1,000 contest submissions.

Seen at The Design Blog. Watch a video about the winner, after the break.

Two days ago, norwegian architect Sverre Fehn died at 84 years old.

This was sent to us by Klaus Olsen via our Facebook Group. The Danish architects JAJA have just revealed their new proposal for an office and shop complex in Sandnes – Norway. They have worked with Rambøll Aros on this 13,000m2 project.

The building is named after an ancient Viking Ship, which was called worm Lange. The ship was Norwegian, and it feels appealing to draw historical references to a piece of contemporary architecture.

For more details, click here.

More images after the break.

And we just saw the news that the project got “cut”, but in a literal way. It wasn´t because of the economical crisis, but actually due to construction flaws: 15 floors of wrongly installed rebar. This forced the developer to cut down the height -removing the condos portion of the building- resulting on a 28 stories tall building, instead of 49 as planned.

We just saw this link on VariousArchitect´s Twitter, and thought it might interest you. Small architectural practices are bearing the brunt of the recession with 47% saying they do not have enough work, new research reveals.

MAD recently organized a collaborative masterplanning project in South West China. Ten young international architects were invited to take part in an urban experiment, to design a new city centre on a scenic natural site close to the city of Guiyang. The participating architects were: Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (DENMARK), Dieguez Fridman (ARGENTINA), EMERGENT/Tom Wiscombe (USA), HouLiang Architecture (CHINA), JDS (DENMARK/BELGIUM), MAD (CHINA), Mass Studies (KOREA), Rojkind Arquitectos (MEXICO), Serie (UK/INDIA), Sou Fujimoto Architects (JAPAN).

Seen on designboom.

Images after the break.

After a high-level meeting on February 13, CCTV issued a report that shows that only the surface of the building was damaged. The amazing fire we saw on the images and videos was actually the zinc alloy burning very fast (melts at 400ºC, versus 1000ºC fireworks can get). Anyway, a Chinese architecture expert puts this in doubt, saying that interior equipment had to be damaged. Now it´s up to the engineers to decide the future of the building.

Our green friends from Inhabitat sent us this interesting project. A new prefab recently built by the students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Their goal was to build a prototype prefab conducive to elegant and sustainable living within the heart of the desert landscape.

The results of the 2009 Skyscraper Competition have just been announced by eVolo. The winners are, in first place, Kyu Ho Chun, Kenta Fukunishi, and Jae Young Lee. In second place, Nicola Marchi and Adelaide Marchi. And in third place, Eric Vergne. They were also 15 special mentions. 40 projects will be published in eVolo Magazine.