The Greek Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale will be hosting an exhibition titled #ThisIsACo-op, which underscores the role of collaboration in architecture. Through a series of displayed research and discussions, the exhibition aims to understand how architects may need to unite on different “fronts” of world crises, including the refugee crisis, the housing crisis, and the crisis of the architectural profession, among others.
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has unveiled its plans for the renovation and master plan of the MBAD African Bead Museum, an arts and cultural complex in Detroit centered around African art.
Located on a major boulevard in a series of townhouses, the Museum is currently in a state of disrepair with the roof on its corner building having collapsed. This main corner building, although heavily damaged, still features wall murals by artist Olayami Dabls, and thus needs to be preserved.
The Republic of Seychelles will make their debut at the upcoming Venice Biennale with an exhibition titled Between Two Waters, Searching for Expression in the Seychelles. Curated by Andrés F. Ramírez, and featuring the work of local firm ADD.locus, the exhibition faces the Grand Canal and “transports visitors to the 115-island archipelago—the least populated nation in Africa,” exploring the identity of this nation while also investigating the architecture of every day life in the paradise islands.
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has been awarded first prize in the competition to design the Student Center and Library for the Wenzhou-Kean University in Wenzhou, China. Set on 500 acres of land in a rural mountainous region, the 25,000 square meter project will provide learning and living space for 8,500 students.
Wenzhou-Kean University is cooperatively run by Wenzhou University, in China, and Kean University, in New Jersey, USA, and aims to merge Chinese and American teaching methodologies. Thus, the new Student Center and Library is focused on embracing diversity, interaction, and the sharing of knowledge.
Losing Myself, a collaborative exhibition by Níall McLaughlin and Yeoryia Manolopoulou, will be presented at the Ireland Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Focusing on Alzheimer's Disease, the exhibition highlights the process of “designing and revisiting buildings for people who have dementia.” The exhibit contains two main components: a website that arranges a series of drawings, stories, and research on dementia; and an installation in the pavilion, which contains drawings that explore a building designed for people with dementia.
The Islington Council, in collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects, is hosting a design competition for the new Finsbury Leisure Centre on the Bunhill ward site in south Islington, London. Five firms -- Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Grimshaw, Hawkins\Brown, Pollard Thomas Edwards, and Henley Halebrown Rorrison -- have been shortlisted to present their proposals to the public.
The Burj Kahlifa has been the world’s tallest building since 2009, and last year the Dubai-based supertall broke another record by implementing the world's largest LED-illuminated facade. Building on these accomplishments, Minus5 Architects in collaboration with Studio Mr. White, has proposed using LED technology to create scale silhouettes of architectural monuments from around the world on the facade, including the Empire State Building, Beijing's CCTV Tower, London's Shard, Toronto's CN Tower, Taipei 101, the Petronas Towers, and others.
Design firm WXY architecture + urban design has released plans for a reconnection of nearly 50 acres of public space between downtown Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Called The Brooklyn Strand, the project seeks to create a more appealing and accessible waterfront, while transforming the quality of public space in the area.
Aedas has unveiled their design for the new Tebrau Waterfront Residences, located in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The new two million square-meter waterfront community will combine villas and high-rise residential towers with a variety of commercial programs and a hotel.
A group of 20 students from the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V), along with chief of project Frank Rambert, have designed and built a small-scale building based on the theme of “The Minimum Habitat.”
Over a period of four months, students created individual projects meant to display, in a minimum number of square meters, the space that a person needs to live. A jury then selected one project to be built. This project covers a total of 12 square meters, with a five square meter footprint.
In celebration of the four decade career of the late Zaha Hadid, Fondazione Berengo will host an exhibition of her paintings, drawings, and models at the 16th century Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, coinciding with the 2016 Venice Biennale. The exhibition will display the full range of Hadid's design work from built projects, to those under construction, and others ultimately never realized. Some of the early, unrealized work that will be represented includes Malevich’s Tektonic, a bridge concept for the Thames River, which Hadid developed while she was still a student at the Architectural Association School in London (1976-77), as well Peak Club, Hong Kong (1982-83), Hafenstrasse, Hamburg (1989), Grand Buildings, Trafalgar Square, London (1985), the Victoria City master-plan for Berlin (1988), and the Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994-95).
Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas have designed luxury villas for a 300-acre resort community at Is Molas Golf Resort in Sardinia, Italy. Envisioned as “inhabited sculptures,” the design includes four different prototypes of “eco-friendly, open-concept, and uniquely-designed villas” spread throughout the site of an 18-hole golf course designed by former professional golfer, Gary Player.
The Global Arts Affairs Foundation (GAA), in collaboration with PLANE—SITE, is releasing a series of video interviews with architects to be shown as part of the TIME SPACE EXISTENCE Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. At the start of Denise Scott Brown's interview, the architect declares,"I've fought to make buildings useful and beautiful, and in that order." In her segment, Scott Brown elaborates on the need for architects to consult multiple precedents to be most effective, the view that photography has become a sub-discipline of architecture, and her position as a role model for young female architects. For her complete perspective, watch Scott Brown's interview, and read on for a complete list of the other interviewees.
Seattle-based architecture and design firm NBBJ has formed a new business partnership with startup Visual Vocal to develop an innovative virtual reality (VR) productivity platform. Using this new tool, distributed project stakeholders will be able to immerse themselves into unbuilt environments and provide instantaneous feedback.
As opposed to traditional methods of communication such as email, a new VR platform, combined with mobile and cloud-based communications, could help expedite and facilitate the sharing of designs with clients, in a way that has "the potential to transform workflows within the field of architecture and beyond," state NBBJ in a press release.
Architectural and landscape photographer Jade Doskow is publishing the first hardcover, full-color monograph of her eight-year photography project on the post-utopian sites of the World’s Fairs, entitled Lost Utopias. Since 2007, the project has captured the remaining architecture and landscaping of international World’s Fairs at 26 sites in North America and Europe on large-format 4”x5” film.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced 17 winners for its RIBA South Awards, which recognize architectural excellence. These 17 regional award winners were drawn from a shortlist of 30 projects. Over the next few months, they will be considered for the RIBA National Awards, and then for the RIBA Stirling Prize.
MetPublications is a portal to The Met’s online publishing program, containing more than 1,500 books and other publications from the museum from the last fifty years. It includes descriptions for most titles as well as information on the author, publication reviews, and links to other similar titles.
The contents of many publications can be viewed online or downloaded in a PDF format. Readers can also search for works of art from The Met’s past collections. New titles are frequently added, expanding the online catalog.
Check out some of the architecture-related publications below and find more at the MetPublications Portal, here.
Arch Out Loud has announced the winners of their New York City Aquarium and Public Waterfront Competition, which invited students and professionals alike to design "an intertwined public aquarium and park" on an underutilized riverfront property located on the East River in Queens. Participants were asked to “redefine the aquarium typology, examining its relationship to the urban context and the public domain.”
The call for submissions was answered by 556 participants and 178 proposals from forty counties, and included ideas that pushed the physical boundaries of the site and responded to the idea of redefining the typical aquarium typology.
.jpg?1463150672 "The Peak, Hong Kong. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects")
