As long as cities have been around, there’s been one pressing question central to their future: “What makes urban areas desirable?” Over half of the world’s inhabitants live in cities and that number is projected to climb over the next decade with more than 5 billion people inhabiting urban cores globally. To prepare for this demand, cities are finding ways to be more desirable, draw in talent, and entice both big and small businesses, all while finding more ways to create equitable living opportunities for all.
Courtesy of DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO AND STEFANO BOERI ARCHITETTI
Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R) and Stefano Boeri Architetti have won the international architectural competition for the renovation of Pirelli 39 in Milan. Launched on 25 November 2019, the contest organized by COIMA SGR and the municipality of Milan, gathered 70 submissions made up of 359 studios from 15 countries.
Hybrid Category - Apartment #5, a Labyrinth and Repository of Spatial. Image Courtesy of World Architecture Festival
The World Architecture Festival has announced the winners of the Architecture Drawing Prize 2020. Entries were chosen in the Digital, Hand-drawn and Hybrid categories. The contest included 165 entries from 30 countries, and the 2020 competition also introduced the ‘Lockdown Prize’ focusing on the global pandemic, awarded to a drawing related to the architectural changes brought by the coronavirus.
The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France, known also as Beaubourg, is set to undergo major renovation works. Designed in the 1970s by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, and inaugurated in 1977, one of the capital’s leading cultural attractions is scheduled to be closed completely as of the end of 2023 until 2027. Showing signs of aging, especially when it comes to the heating and cooling system, escalators and elevator malfunctions, and asbestos that must be removed, this is not the inside-out museum's first revamp, in fact, it was closed down once before in 1997, during its 20th anniversary, for a couple of years.
Jennifer Luce, principal and founder of LUCE et Studio Architects has shared her vision for the Mingei International Museum renovation in San Diego. The design is featured in a video by Jeff Durkin of Breadtruck Films. The Mingei is a nonprofit that collects, conserves and exhibits folk art, craft, and design objects in Balboa Park. During the building’s centennial, a $55 million campaign began to renovate the structure.
ArchDaily is continuing a six-year-long tradition of celebrating the best architecture drawings of the year. The 2020 edition highlights a carefully-curated collection of architectural drawings and visualizations with a wide variety of techniques and representations, all orientated towards a common goal of sharing ideas, visions, and designs.
Heatherwick Studio has shared plans for a pair of residential towers in Vancouver, Canada. The "curvaceous" skyscrapers were designed for Kingswood Properties and Bosa Properties in the city's West End neighborhood. Inspired by tree-like forms, the towers aspire to create a "new level of global design excellence" that emerges from a ground level plaza. The two towers would rise between 30 and 34 stories tall in height, and would feature views across the city and Vancouver Harbor.
In our increasingly urbanized world, everything and everyone has adopted a lifestyle of nomadism. New environmental and social constraints have forced people to have a constant "on-the-go" behavior, so much so that almost everything has acquired wheels, even the buildings. But with the rise of debates like "is humankind being replaced by robots?" and "is technology taking over?", urban mobility has helped give access to housing, healthcare, and education in places with extreme difficult conditions.
To shed the light on globally-thriving mobile activities, the France-based Institut pour Ville en Mouvement, or City on the Move Institute, is an organization that has been addressing the challenges posed by urban mobility and contributing to the emergence of innovative solutions. In a series of short Youtube clips, the organization invited experts in the fields of architecture, urban planning, and technology to share their insights on the future of urban mobility.
Architecture practice Bey Arquitectura has shared details of the firm's Punta Cana Bey Garden project in the Dominican Republic. The 28 loft-type villas were designed to connect with the surrounding natural context and support the implementation of renewable energy. Located in the heart of Bávaro, the project is sited near shopping malls, restaurants, schools, the Punta Cana Airport and the beach.
Sonnenklang / Christoph Hesse Architects. Image Courtesy of Christoph Hesse Architects
Vladimir Belogolovsky speaks with Christoph Hesse over Skype between New York and his office in Korbach, Germany to discuss his pioneering projects and why working in the countryside is relevant.
It’s a given that the coronavirus pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on construction projects large and small over the past 10 months. So, what about the construction of new buildings that share the defining characteristic of being superlatively tall?
As detailed in an annual report published earlier this month by the Chicago-headquartered Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), newly completed skyscrapers experienced a global decline of 20 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year due, both directly and indirectly, to the COVID-19 crisis.
The Nordic Pavilion at the 17th International ArchitectureExhibition of the Venice Biennale will be transformed into an experimental cohousing project by architects Helen & Hard, supported by a curatorial team from the National Museum of Norway. Responding to the theme of How will we live together? the intervention “will present a framework for designing and building communities based on participation and sharing”.
Imagine having a blank canvas on which to master-plan a brand new city; drawing its roads, homes, commerces, and public spaces on a fresh slate and crafting its unique urban identity. Every urban planner has fantasized about designing a city from scratch and luckily for some, this dream is morphing into concrete opportunities.
Over the last two decades, new, master-planned cities have emerged from the ground up at an unprecedented scale, the majority of which have been created in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, with currently over 150 new cities in the making. This new type of urban development has shown to be particularly seductive in emerging markets, where they are sold as key parts of the strategy to leapfrog from agriculture and resource-based systems to knowledge economies by attracting foreign capital and boosting economic growth.
Wood in architecture, when properly managed, is often associated with sustainability but also with a sense of comfort and coziness. Well-designed joinery can provide versatility and uniqueness to interior design, among so many other benefits.
https://www.archdaily.com/955092/defining-spaces-with-wood-joinery-in-brazilian-apartmentsEquipe ArchDaily Brasil
As we are entering 2021 after a year of anxiety and uncertainties, what are your expectation for our future? The UN75 survey reports that most people around the world hold greater optimism for the future: “Globally, many more respondents believe people will be better off in 2045 than today (49%) compared to those who believe people will be worse off (32%).”
For most people, calling a place “sacred” designates it as an important location, one usually associated with spirituality. It might be the setting for religious rituals (the sacred space of a church, synagogue, or mosque), a spot where some event described as “miraculous” has occurred (such as the reported sighting of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France, which became a pilgrimage site), or a place which held the body of deity (think of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built upon what is believed the be the tomb of Jesus Christ).
https://www.archdaily.com/955561/assault-on-a-sacred-placeMichael J. Crosbie
David Chipperfield Architects has unveiled his restoration plans for the Grand Hotel in Nieuwpoort, Belgium. Started in 2019, the project converts the structure into a residential building, while seeking to reinstate its landmark status. Becoming “The Grand residential building”, the architecture will also take on an extension that underlines a “sensitive understanding of heritage value and entails reinterpretation and invention as well as restoration”.
.jpg?1611288061 "The Line project in Saudi Arabia. Image © NEOM")
