Architecture News: The Latest Architecture and News

Architectural research initiative, arch out loud, have released winners for their international competition to design a landmark for a nuclear waste site in New Mexico. As part of the brief, participants were required to design a timeless piece of architecture that could stand for 10,000 years to warn future generations of the unstable by-products of nuclear weapon production that are buried 2,150 feet beneath the surface.

In the competition, many entrants engaged with the local geology of the site where the waste isolation pilot plant (WIPP) is situated for the landmark that would withstand millenniums. Testbed, the winner of the competition, proposed ex-situ mineral sequestration by reacting olivine or basalt with carbon dioxide to form inert and solid carbonate material to capture the gas, that would act as an ‘artificial tree.' The other proposals questioned the site and the underlying issues regarding human involvement with nuclear activities and the consequences, designing structures that heavily juxtaposed the natural landscape.

South Australian artist, Joshua Smith has created yet another true-to-life miniature, a locksmith shop in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The miniature was created for an exhibition at the Arcade Art Gallery in Kaohsiung called, ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ as part of the Streets of Taiwan festival. Miniaturist Joshua Smith selected the shop by using google maps, with supplemental reference photos taken by the gallery -- Joshua has not been to Taiwan, let alone the shop itself.

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French photographer Laurent Kronental’s latest photo series, “Les Yeux des Tours” views of Paris, are framed by the quirky windows of the Tours Aillaud, and by the subtle differences in which the spaces around them are inhabited. Kronental considers the towers as some of the most spectacular of the Grands Ensembles built in the post-war economic boom in France. For him, photographing these buildings was a form of nostalgia, a way of satisfying a deep sense of childhood wonder and curiosity that fostered in him as a young boy perceiving them from the nearby business and shopping center "La Défense," questioning the lives of the people who live there.

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Bee Breeders have announced the winners of the Amber Road Trekking Cabins competition for the Latvian Baltic Coast. The competition sought proposals for low impact, transient and inhabitable infrastructure to support a planned hiking network along vast topographies of the Latvian Baltic Coast. The winning projects considered the various landscape elements of the site including pine trees, dunes, and white sand beaches while responding to programmatic requirements - economy, constructability, environmental sensitivity and utilitarian function.

The competition collectively provokes reflection of ecological conservation and its prescience in contemporary cultural and social practice, serving as an economic alternative to the commercialized, industrialized landscape definitive of global capital interests.

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Bee Breeders have selected the winners for the Pape Bird Observation Tower competition, which saw participants submitting designs for a new bird observation station located in the Nica and Rucava Municipalities in the South Western region of Latvia. The competition is the first in a series organized by Bee Breeders in collaboration with Pasaules Dabas Fonds, Latvia's leading nature conservation fund. The competition asked for proposals for a tower that would replace a previous tower that was struck by lightening.

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Bold, innovative and set to become the largest botanic garden in the world, images of Oman’s future light-filled oasis in the desert have been revealed. A collaboration between Arup, Grimshaw, and Haley Sharpe Design delivers the architecture, engineering, landscaping, and interpretive design in a scheme of over 420 hectares for the Oman Botanic Garden.

Born from a system of sliding, curved glass doors, and inspired by its potential presence in nature, this house takes new technology and uses it in a beautiful way.

LUMISHELL is a collaboration between a young engineer and architect, Christophe Benichou, and LUMICENE, a company developing curved and reversible glass windows.  The result is a small, pre-fabricated accommodation unit that capitalizes on the nature of the curved windows to generate living and bedroom spaces. 

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Creator of London’s Design Museum and columnist for CNN, Stephen Bayley named Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau as one of, “20 designs that defined the modern world.” Before Bayley lays out the list, he gives a brief history and several definitions of design; culminating to his conclusion that design gives life meaning. Bayley writes, “Le Corbusier declared that design is ‘intelligence made visible’. That’s certainly true, but intelligence can take many forms…” [1]

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) has released concept designs for the new NHM West/South Project – a scheme designed by LA firm Frederick Fisher and Partners (FF&P) in the first step towards a 10-year revitalization of the NHM as Exposition Park’s historic hub. The extensions would focus on the west and south sides of the museum, supporting new uses and reimagining the programs and spaces of its famous Ice Age fossil site at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Hancock Park.

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S9 Architecture’s Dock 72, a 17-storey commercial office project expected to bring 4,000 workers to the Brooklyn Navy Yard area, has been topped out this month marking the completion of the building’s steel superstructure.

Over 350 construction workers, local business leaders, community representatives and public officials attended the ceremony, which ended with the raising of the final beam signed by all the members of the Dock 72 team.

The National Infrastructure Commission and Malcolm Reading Consultants have revealed an online gallery of the four final design concepts for The Cambridge to Oxford Connection: Ideas Competition.

The competition, which launched in June, focuses on the 130-mile corridor connecting Cambridge, Milton Keyes, Northampton, and Oxford. It acknowledges the presence of world-leading universities, highly skilled workers and tech firms, but also the corridor’s failure to function as a connected economic zone.

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Brooklyn Point by Kohn Pederson Fox will hold the title of Brooklyn’s tallest building - although for a short while as the downtown developer craze competes for the next top spot. The mixed-use skyscraper is the final step in the City Point mega-development and is the first of Extell Development Company in the borough

After being in the design process for the past three years, construction of Brooklyn Point began this summer; it is only now that Extell is releasing the details of the tower in a new render that displays the extent of the façade.

Three projects have been selected as the winners of The American Architecture Prize (AAP) 2017, which aims to recognize “creativity and innovation in architectural, interior and landscape design.”

An expert Jury judged thousands of entries from 68 countries and winners were selected from 41 categories. The jurors included Peggy Deamer, Professor of Architecture at Yale University; Troy C. Therrien, Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives at the Guggenheim Foundation and Museum; Ben Van Berkel, Principal of UNStudio and Professor at Harvard University Graduate School, and many more.

It has been a privilege to receive such exceptional entries competing for the AAP this year. Every submission is outstanding in its own way. All these entries from accomplished architects and architecture firms give us the opportunity to not only promote amazing designs but also to marvel together at the evolution of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture across the globe - AAP President Hossein Farmani.

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The Burnham Prize 2017 is a competition hosted by the Chicago Architectural Club (CAC), this year the title was ‘Under the Dome,' requiring participants to rethinking the radial form that has been a part of architecture for centuries.

Participants were asked to develop a speculative proposal for the abandoned St Stephen’s Church on its centennial anniversary, challenged with the task of injecting energy and life back into the desolated ruin. In reaction to the Chicago Architecture Biennale, the historical and typological construct of the dome was to be taken and reconsidered as a contemporary structure with an understanding of the historical context.