The Royal Institute of British Architects has awarded RIBA House of the Year 2022, to a "contemporary new family house in rural Dorset," the Red House by David Kohn Architects. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, the structure "reinterprets the style in an intentionally provocative way [...] [with] playful eccentricity, including oversized eaves, patterned red brickwork, and contrasting bold green details".
Quito-based developer Uribe Schwartzkopf unveiled two residential projects in the capital of Ecuador: IQON designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, and QORNER, by Safdie Architects. IQON represents BIG’s first project in South America and the tallest building in Quito. QORNER proposes a mix of residences of varying dimensions, complete with amenities such as private terraces, gyms, spas, and pools. To create an engaging interface with the city fabric, a mix of shops, restaurants, and commercial spaces are proposed at the street level.
Zaha Hadid Architects and Architects 61 unveiled the design for the new Science Center in the Jurong Lake District, Singapore. The 52,460 square meters complex aims to make science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) more accessible through specialized amenities, educational programs, and interactive experiences. The building is expected to open in 2027, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the Science Center and aligns with the Singapore Green Plan 2030.
Empatitzem / Equal Saree. Image Cortesía de Equal Saree
Equal Saree is an architecture studio based in Barcelona, led by three young architects: Helena Cardona Tamayo, Julia Goula Mejón, and Dafne Saldaña Blasco. All three studied at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB), Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, where they met while taking the subject "Architecture and Politics", taught by Zaida Muxí and Josep María Montaner. The studio is composed of 15 other women architects, in addition to the founding partners.
Annabelle Tan (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) for Past, Present and Post-Tropicality: Viewing Singapore through an ‘Infra(-)structural’ Field. . Image Courtesy of RIBA 2022 President’s Medals
The Royal Institute of British Architects has just announced the winners of the 2022 President’s Medals, highlighting the world’s best student architecture projects. In its 186th edition, RIBA’s oldest awards have gathered the highest-ever number of entries, receiving 347 entries nominated by 100 schools of architecture located in 27 countries.
For the 2022 cycle, the RIBA Silver Medal for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 2 or equivalent, was awarded to Annabelle Tan at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for A Journey through Past, Present, and Post-Tropicality, who was also granted the RIBA Dissertation Medal. The RIBA Bronze Medal (for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 1 or equivalent) went to Mary Holmes at the University of Cambridge for Out of the Closet, Into the Garden.
Largely driven by rural migration to cities and overall population growth, 68% of people worldwide will live in urban areas by 2050. By doing so, many will benefit from greater access to basic services, proximity to public transportation, and better education and employment opportunities. But the pursuit of living urbanized lives also leads to isolation from the outdoors –be it a forest, a meadow or the mountains– that can negatively impact our physical and mental health. Exposure to nature has long been proven to reduce stress levels, boost mood, foster productivity and, above all, enhance well-being. So, considering we typically spend around 93% of our time indoors (and that the pandemic has magnified that statistic), now more than ever we find ourselves seeking a connection with the outdoors and all its inherent benefits. Architects thus face the important challenge of bringing nature in, which is precisely where biophilic design comes into play.
CRA - Carlo Ratti Associati and architect Italo Rota have developed a project to transform an 18th-century hospital complex in Modena, Italy, into a multidisciplinary cultural and innovation hub. The master plan for the new hub, called AGO Modena Fabbriche Culturali, includes an origami-inspired kinetic roof designed in collaboration with artist-engineer Chuck Hoberman. The feature will cover a triangular-shaped plaza in the center of the complex. The restoration plan also aims to create flexibility so that the structure can easily adapt to changing future configurations.
Rock | Roll by Germane Barnes. Image Courtesy of Miami Design District
Distinguished for its quality, depth, and diversity, Design Miami 2022 has concluded, giving worldwide collectors and locals the best in contemporary and emerging art and design. Kicking off at the end of November and running through the first week of December, this event ran alongside the annual Art Basel Miami Beach. The ultimate international art fair ranged from interactive installations to art exhibitions by promising up-and-comers to 20th-century masterworks, including Daniel Arsham and Andrés Reisinger, and Stefano Boeri. Also during this event, MetaMundo has presented their Top 50 Creators of the Metaverse - a hand-picked collection of some of the world’s best 3D artists.
For this edition, The Miami Design District has awarded Miami-based architect and designer Germane Barnes and commissioned a multifaceted installation that honors the city's polyethnic culture. Along with other relevant architectural installations during the Miami Art Week, the following selection includes work by Leandro Erlich at Perez Art Museum Miami and Pilar Zeta.
Now in its eighth edition, the Prix Versailles awards are presented to honor the best achievements in the field of architecture and design worldwide, promoting architectural production as a vector of intelligent sustainable development and considering ecological, social, and cultural impacts.
Penthouse Tuymans - Arocha. Image Courtesy of Glenn Sestig
Whether an apartment building, house, storefront, office interior, or restaurant, Glenn Sestig’s architecture consistently reveals itself in tidy fragments of robust and determinately monumental geometry that tends to evoke urban qualities. His austere facades, colonnades, stair landings, and even reception desks and shelf displays appear to be quite hefty and substantial. And, in fact, every project, be it a small boutique or gallery, starts with rigorous planning – visual primary and secondary axes get established, circulation flow is laid out, and major anchors are identified before the architect moves on to addressing the appropriate materials, surfaces, and details. Every space is architecture first; its program and appearance will fit into it.
Zaha Hadid Architects has joined Ukrainian authorities to present the OdesaExpo 2030 bid proposal, an event planned to become the first Expo to be hosted in Eastern Europe. The masterplan is designed with legacy and sustainability in mind. The central pavilions are configured to be transformed into Ukraine’s first fair exhibition hub after the closing of the Expo, while the national pavilions are designed to be dismantled and redeployed as new civic buildings throughout Ukraine.
For some time now, roofs have become leisure spaces, whether in large luxurious buildings or houses on the outskirts. This condition, however, is not limited to our times. Different cultures at different times used flat roofs in their architecture, in different ways.
Frames, inserts, modules - hundreds of individual elements from JUNG have successfully gone through the Cradle to Cradle certification process. The LS 990, LS CUBE, AS 500, A 550, A FLOW, A CREATION series from JUNG in white are now Cradle to Cradle certified. Image Courtesy of JUNG
Annually, 13% of the waste generated by humans is recycled, but where does the remaining 87% go? The combination of different types of waste is gradually filling the Earth’s oceans and landfills, leading to a negative impact on wildlife, the natural environment and human health. Within the large amounts of solid waste produced in developed cities, used electronics are a clear example of how materials can be efficiently managed after their life cycle ends. Understanding the behavior of these materials and resources before, during and after their useful life cycle has guided the search for new solutions, such as the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) methodology.
C2C proposes the design of products or processes that function as a healthy ecological system, where resources are efficiently managed in a cyclical way. By applying this methodology to electric appliances, JUNG has developed circular design strategies for their most-used switches and plugs for conventional and smart building technology, allowing them to be dismantled and reused when the product is no longer fit for use.
DEADMAU5 The Metaverse Festival. Image by Duncan Rawlinson flickr under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0).
“All the physical spaces that we (architects) design – buildings, interiors and cities are born as metaspaces, and we call them 3D models”. With this statement Brian Jencek, director of planning at San Francisco-based architecture firm HOK, narrows the boundaries between the current way of designing and the future of architecture in the metaverse. According to him, we are not that far from this technology, since we already use the same tools that visual designers use to create realistic environments, such as Unity, Twin motion and Blender.
Meinhard von Gerkan, founder of von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects (gmp), and one of the most influential German architects, passed away in Hamburg at the age of 87, on November 30, 2022. With a worldwide contribution to the field of architecture, in his 50 years of career, von Gerkan has created one of the largest practices in Germany, with 600 employees in seven locations. University professor and critic, the architect together with gmp, has completed more than 500 projects all over the world.
In recent years hair salons and barbershops have begun to incorporate different activities - a programmatic hybridization almost necessary in today's service economy.
Several architects have been commissioned to propose alternatives to the standard beauty salon/barbershop to not only address an efficient configuration but stunning interior aesthetics.
Take a look at 10 barbershops and beauty salons with their plan and section.
Authenticity seems impossible today, with places and the buildings in them assembled with products from the Industrial Development Complex that could be assembled almost anywhere else on Earth in a debauchery of placelessness, disharmony with nature, and meaninglessness that doesn’t age well. So how is authenticity in the built environment achieved?
Organized by the Abdullatif Alfozan Award for Mosque Architecture and the College of Architecture at Kuwait University, the 3rd International Conference on Mosque Architecture was held in Kuwait on 14-16 November 2022. Under the theme of “Mosque: a cross cultural building,” 101 architects participated in this year’s edition, showcasing their state-of-the-art designs and how they reimagined religious buildings in a more contemporary context, taking into account the importance of community, privacy, its religious significance, and the environment.
