Architecture News: The Latest Architecture and News

In the 1970s, the principal designers at DIALOG, Norm Hotson and Joost Bakker, were commissioned by the Canadian government to redevelop Vancouver's Granville Island, a former industrial site, into a people place. The architects envisioned a radically different type of waterfront characterized - not by beaches or parks - but by varied commercial and cultural programs. Today this iconic destination, popular with both citizens and tourists alike, is recognized as a pioneering precedent for urban development across Canada. In the video above, the DIALOG duo chronicles the success of the mixed-use design, touching on how it has influenced the city of Vancouver as well as the firm’s more recent work.

The winners of the 2014 Canadian Urban Design Awards, a biennial competition recognizing projects that contribute to the vitality and sustainability of Canadian cities, were recently announced by the Royal Institute of Canada (RAIC), Canadian Institute of Planners, and Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. Eight individuals, organizations, and firms - including Perkins + Will for a masterplan in Edmonton - were recognized for their urban design efforts in categories such as Community Initiatives and Civic Design. For information and images on the winning entries, read on after the break.

Construction has begun on the new Nanjing Jianye District office tower in China. Designed by UDG China, the multi-level complex will house hundreds of government workers throughout almost 100,000 square meters of office space.

Sector 66 of Gurgaon, India will be the site of Maison Edouard François’ newest project: a massive luxury complex crowned by three stainless steel-clad skyscrapers. Given over entirely to opulence, Guragon 66 will house a hotel, a multiplex cinema, and an apartment complex. Yet its most defining feature may be its shopping mall, which covers most of the ground floor. This glass-canopied commercial center will host internationally known brands, such as Fendi and Chanel, in independent marble buildings within the main structure.

These shopping "embassies" will be grouped along the mall axis in a manner resembling a traditional European neighborhood. At the same time, the roofs of the shops will be utilized as restaurant space, and will be connected to each other by elevated footbridges. This is intended to create a unique, multi-level promenade which the architects describe as "an exterior landscape that is air-conditioned and unified beneath the glass canopy of the mall."

The fertile Anqiu region of China’s Shangdong Province is known locally as the land of “cultivation, stone hills, and creeks.” Thus, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting’s (LITTLE) design for Anqiu’s new cultural campus and fitness center is based upon these very elements.

Chad Kellogg and Matt Bowles of AMLGM have envisioned a new residential tower typology for New York that can connect and transform unused space surrounding various transportation hubs into a dense, mixed-use housing tower.

The proposal, dubbed Urban Alloy, which won first in Metropolis’ Living Cities Residential Tower Competition and received honorable mention in Evolo Skyscrapers 2014, is capable of responding to a number of unique spacial and environmental situations, providing a new way for the city to grow "organically" and provide adequate housing for the expanding population.

Read on for the architect's description...

Two sister Middle Eastern media companies have commissioned REX to design a conjoined headquarters that references traditional Arab iconography. The result, two ultra-thin, stone-clad towers that are shielded from the Middle East’s “unrelenting sun” by an array of retractable sunshades whose shape was inspired by the Arab Mashrabiya pattern.

Measuring nearly 15 meters in diameter, these sunshades can be quickly deployed, transforming the building’s glass facade into a “blossoming” shaded tower within minutes.

“The headquarters’ instantaneous transformation forges a new kind of powerful iconography, one that rejects the tired—and ephemeral—pursuit of being the tallest,” described REX.

Videos

Zaha Hadid Architects has designed a 40-story luxury hotel for Macau’s premier leisure and entertainment destination known as “City of Dreams.” Perceived as a single “sculptural element” united by an exposed exoskeleton mesh structure, the “simple volume” was extruded from its rectangular site as two towers connected at the podium and roof levels, with two organically-shaped bridges punctuating the tower’s center external void. This central void is then celebrated by a 40-meter tall, “grandiose atrium” that greets visitors as they enter the hotel.

Take a digital tour through the building and into the atrium via a newly released video, after the break...

In this interview with Daniel Libeskind, originally featured on Metropolis as Q&A: Daniel Libeskind on Italy, Product Design, and the State of Architecture Today, Paul Clemence talks to Libeskind about his perspective on Italian culture, its influence on his career, and his most recent foray into product design.

When you talk to Daniel Libeskind, no single question has a simple answer. From his days as a young musical prodigy (he played the accordion) to his directorship at Cranbrook Academy, not to mention his voracious passion for literature, the fascinating episodes of his life all come together, informing his approach to design and architecture. His career path is an unusual one. And while that is true for many architects, his is particularly interesting, where each twist and turn, no matter how ostensibly disconnected, seem to have always prepared him for his next step. Take his two highest profile jobs, the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the master plan for Ground Zero. The two are intrinsically linked—the museum’s official opening to the public in 2001 was originally scheduled on September 11. The project had taken 13 years of political maneuvering to realize. Similarly, Libeskind's World Trade Center site master plan was marred by a decade of delays and alterations, which threatened to blot out his original design intentions. One monumental task after the other, eerily similar in challenging circumstances, both offering the architect a rare opportunity to helm projects richly entrenched in emotion, symbolism, and historical significance.

Now as his career moves beyond these two important projects, the architect's connection to Italy is beginning to play a pivotal role in his work. He moved there after his time at Cranbrook, when he was looking for new career challenges. Libeskind has been back in America since he was commissioned the Ground Zero project, but he recently opened up a studio in Milan, where he, his wife, and son oversee the firm's forays in product design.

I caught up with Libeskind at his Lower Manhattan office overlooking Ground Zero to talk about Italy and his involvement in upcoming design fairs there, Milan Design Week and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Koichi Takada Architects (KTA) has released details on Australia’s biggest urban renewal project: Green Square. Shaped by the pedestrian and traffic flows that surround the building, the mixed-use, multi-residential complex is expected to serve as the gateway of Sydney’s Green Square Town Centre by its completion in 2016.

Grimshaw, Nordic Office of Architecture (Oslo) and Haptic Architects (London) have released details on what is expected to be the world’s busiest airport terminal: Istanbul Grand Airport. Planned for the Black Sea coast, just 35 kilometers outside the city, the six-runway development, masterplanned by Arup, will serve as a modern gateway to Istanbul and Turkey.

The first of the project’s four phases is slated for completion in 2018 and will serve 90 million passengers per year. Once all phases are complete, the airport’s capacity will expand to over 150 million annual passengers, making it the world’s largest airport terminal under a single roof. 

“The Istanbul Grand Airport will be a modern, highly functional airport, with a unique sense of space,” described Nordic. “The airport is inspired by what makes Istanbul great: a large-scale, heaving metropolis with millennia of history, stunning architecture, both new and old, and a richness in color, patterns and quality of light.”

Videos

Dwell on Design, an immersive 3-day design exhibition at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 20-22, will feature over 400 exhibitors and 90 presentations on ‘new ideas for modern living.’

London's Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is selling off parts of their blockbuster architectural exhibition, Sensing Spaces. The Great Architecture Fair will see the seven practices behind the enormous installations select objects and materials from the exhibition to be repurposed as beautiful, unique items available to buy. In addition to these, the RA are offering members of the public the chance to experience the spaces out-of-hours "to give you your own exclusive moment in the exhibition."

Ranging from a top step from Chilean architects Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen's gargantuan installation for £450, to a bag of pebbles (plus certificate) from Li Xiaodong's Zen Garden for £10, slices of one of the world's most accessible architecture exhibitions in recent years are up for grabs.

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