Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen and NYCEDC President Maria Torres-Springer have announced New York City’s first official approval of the Lowline project in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As the first major step in making the project a reality, the approval will help to create the world’s first underground park, a community-oriented public and cultural space that will become both a local resource and an attraction for worldwide visitors.
Although the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) did express interest in the space last fall, the Lowline team was awarded conditional use due its high community potential.
Cooperación Comunitaria. Image Courtesy of The Buckminster Fuller Institute
The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has announced 19 semifinalists for the 2016 Fuller Challenge. Now in its ninth annual cycle, The Fuller Challenge seeks proposals to address challenges using holistic approaches and problem solving.
Teams of individuals and groups were judged by the Challenge Review Committee, which looked for projects that are visionary, comprehensive, anticipatory, ecologically responsible, feasible, and verifiable.
In a recent interview presented in collaboration with PLANE—SITE, architect Christian Kerez and curator Sandra Oehy speak about Incidental Space, their exhibition for the Swiss Pavilion in the Giardini at the 2016 Venice Biennale.
Kerez explains, “what we tried to do for this year’s Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is to really make a building, actually—to build a space, to offer an experience of architecture. Basically, a space at the Biennale doesn’t have to be very functional. You don’t have to live there; you don’t have to work there. It’s really about experience. This is also about the question, how much can you imagine? How can you create a space with the utmost architectonical complexity?”
NARTARCHITECTS has released the plans for its Csontváry Museum in Pécs, Hungary, which will feature the work of Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, a Hungarian painter known for his technical skill and spiritual messages.
The design of the Museum reflects Csontváry’s symbolic and interpretive work. Rather than utilizing the typical “plaza-museum” typology, the Csontváry Museum will be located on the outskirts of the city in a crater of a former coal mine near a lake. Through this location, the space gives a dramatic ambiance suited to its program.
Studio Symbiosis Architects is amidst the construction process for Punjab Kesari Headquarters, an 18,000 square meter office space in Delhi NCR, India.
Designed as a fusion of traditional Indian architecture and contemporary office space, the main objective of the project is “to reduce heat gain and optimize façade opening ratio, ensuing no artificial lighting is required on a typical day.”
Neuman Hayner Architects, in collaboration with architect Gal Karni, has unveiled their proposal to a competition for a new music and dance school in Mevaseret Zion, Israel.
Five lines defining four strips, a frame of a story, a foundation for the creation... fertile ground for learning, a space for work, a stage for talent, a platform for infinite opportunities.
Architecture and Urban Planning firm group8asia has won third prize in the Seoul Metropolitan Government competition for the design of Nodeul Island with its sustainable project Seoul Green Dot.
Nodeul Dream Island leads with the idea of Neverland in mind, and isdesigned as “a utopia where nature and serenity are abundant.” Here, it is hoped that environmental economy, and socially sustainable practices can be utilized to create a space to transform the dense urban fabric.
Architects for Urbanity has released its designs for Seoul Urban Womb, a mixed-use women’s and family complex in South Korea. Located in Daebang-dong at the former site of the Seoul Women’s Shelter, the project aims to revitalize the current Seoul Women’s Plaza, a space previously described as “gloomy” and “deathlike.”
The new facility will serve as a connection between the Women’s Plaza and nearby train station, as a mix of public and private space, and is hoped to help “form creative culture, [teach] traditions, and expand the value of gender equality in family and community.”
Mas Subramanian. Image Courtesy of Oregon State University
After discovering a vibrant new pigment of blue by accident, chemists at Oregon State University have brought the compound to market in the form of a paint that looks promising to architectural sustainability.
While experimenting with materials to study applications for electronics in 2009, OSU chemist Mas Subramanian and his team mixed black manganese oxide with other chemicals and heated them to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Little did they know, one of their samples would turn into a brilliant blue color.
Soriano & Arquitectos Asociados (S&Aa) together with JC Architecture + Near Future Architects + Bernabeu Ingenieros + Urculo Ingenieros has unveiled its plans for 'The Pitcher’s Mounds' a project that received fourth place in a competition to design the Tainan Asia-Pacific International Baseball Stadiums and Training Centers in Taiwan.
The competition sought out designs to integrate a transport hub into the cityscape of Brno, as well as integrate a design for the undeveloped southern area of the city.
International architecture non-profit Shelter Global has announced the winners of its second annual Dencity Competition, which highlights innovative solutions to improve living conditions for slum dwellers worldwide.
With over one billion people living in slums today, and this number expected to reach two billion by 2030, the Dencity Competition called architects and planners to “consider how design can empower communities and allow for a self-sufficient future.” Thus, the competition is a way to foster new ideas about how growing density in unplanned cities can be addressed.
The winners of the second annual Dencity Competition are:
Architect Nguyen Hoa Hiep of a21 studio, in collaboration with Saigon architecture students, have created a cocoon-inspired pavilion. This exhibition is organized annually by Handhome.net in Vietnam in order to connect older generations of architects with students.
Inspire by Modernist aesthetics, Elysee’s is a luxury condominium where the floor plan expands as it grows higher, “creating a multi-tiered exterior structure.” In this sense, the tower is meant to become three vertical neighborhoods.
The exhibit, entitled Oskar Hansen: Open Form, will detail “the evolution of Hansen’s theory of Open Form from its origin in his own architectural projects to its application in a firm, visual games, and other artistic practices.”
The building permit for MVSA Architects’ 'Mall of the Netherlands' has officially been approved by the municipality of Leidschendam. Commissioned by Unibail Rodamco, the project entails a renovation and extension of the existing Leidsenhage shopping center, as well as an entirely new interior design.
ODA New York has unveiled the plans for Bushwick II, a 1,000,000 square feet apartment development that will occupy two city blocks in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood in New York.
Located on the former site of the Rheingold Brewery, the project will act as a “city within the city,” and is modeled after “the quintessential European village,” featuring a meandering system of interconnected courtyards.
