Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Celebrating groundbreaking projects that showcase sustainable construction practices, this year’s winners of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction 2023 highlight innovative approaches across various scales, forms, geographies, and forms. The Gold Prize for North America was awarded to Partisans Architects and Well-Grounded Real Estate with their high-tech, low-cost modular housing solution for urban living in Toronto. In a video interview for ArchDaily, Jonathan Diamond from Well-Grounded Real Estate discusses the development of the winning project and the forces that shaped it.

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His work – more than 250 buildings in the span of 30 years – was lauded by critics and colleagues, cited for international design awards, and landed the architect on the cover of Time. But today, even practitioners and aficionados might be challenged to name one of Minoru Yamasaki's buildings beyond his two most infamous creations that no longer exist: the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and New York’s World Trade Center towers. Paul Kidder explores this complex architect and his work in a new book, Minoru Yamasaki and the Fragility of Architecture (Routledge).

Kidder, a professor of philosophy at Seattle University, provides a fresh, sobering assessment not only of Yamasaki's architecture but the man himself: his challenges, triumphs, and contradictions, as well as the fragility of architectural achievement. The loss of this architect’s most famous buildings suggests the growing scope of architecture’s fragility, especially today, when real-estate investment often augers against preservation of even late-modern works. Yet, paradoxically, Yamasaki believed that fragility could be a desirable architectural quality—the source of its refinement, beauty, and humanity.

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The introduction of AI generative tools represents one of the most significant technological revolutions in the field of architecture and design. While there is concern about this changing the working landscape for professionals in the field, a significant number of practices are embracing the new technology. Architectural visualizations represent one of the main areas where these changes take effect. However, the array of AI tools accessible to non-specialist users rarely allows for true control over the design process, often offering general interpretations of scripts. This can be helpful during early conceptual design phases but loses its appeal soon after. Gendo, a new browser-based app, aims to change this, offering the possibility to not only generate visualizations in seconds but also to edit and customize them, even introducing real-life products in the design. Until August 3, readers of ArchDaily can register and use the code ARCHDAILY50 to get 50% off any plan.

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The Ostrava Concert Hall, designed by Steven Holl Architects, has just broken ground in the Czech Republic. Commemorating the start of construction, the concert hall “promises to be an inspiring venue for both locals and internationals who cherish Ostrava’s rich music heritage.” Designed for the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, it creates a dramatic contrast between old and new, aiming to create a cultural landmark.

Located in Mexico City, the municipality of Iztapalapa has some of the most densely populated areas within the metropole. Serving a population of 1,800,000 people, many of them with lower incomes, the municipality struggles to provide sufficient public spaces and amenities. In an effort to correct this, the administration set out to take underutilized and abandoned plots of land and transform them for public use. Utopia Estrella is one of these initiatives. Located near Mexico City’s largest water treatment plant, the project combines a socially engaging architectural program with a pedagogical approach to the role of water infrastructures in the larger ecosystem. Designed by Cano Vera Arquitectura, the project has been recognized as the Gold Prize Winner of the Holcim Awards 2023 for Latin America. In a video interview for ArchDaily, Juan Carlos Cano of Cano Vera Arquitectura discusses the impact of this project, its goals, and the unique conditions that led to its development.

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The UIA, in collaboration with UN-Habitat, has revealed the finalists for the first stage of the second edition of the UIA 2030 Award. Celebrating architecture that contributes to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda, this biennial award honors built projects that demonstrate design quality and alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The regional finalists will now proceed to Stage 2, where they will submit a three-minute video demonstrating their projects in action and explaining in detail how they align with the relevant SDGs and meet the eligibility criteria. During stage 1, the finalists were evaluated regionally, representing the five UIA regions: Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and Africa. Winners in each of the six will be awarded a medal. The awards ceremony will be taking place in Cairo, Egypt, at the twelfth session of the World Urban Forum from November 4-8, 2024.

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Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has just announced Thandi Loewenson as the winner of the 2024 Wheelwright Prize. The prestigious $100,000 grant is dedicated to supporting innovative research in contemporary architecture with a global perspective. Loewenson’s project, “Black Papers: Beyond the Politics of Land, Towards African Policies of Earth & Air,” explores the social and spatial dynamics in modern Africa.

At the initiative of the Surf Ghana Collective, architects Glenn DeRoché and Jurgen Strohmayer, the co-founders of DeRoché Strohmayer, set out to transform a small waterfront plot in Busua, a surfing hotspot on Ghana’s western coast. The result is a dynamic community hub, complete with amenities for local surfers, but also providing spaces for the entire community to gather in and off-season. The project has been recognized as the winner of the Gold Prize of Holcim Awards 2023 for the Middle East and Africa commended for the profound local impact and the resourceful approach to construction techniques. In a video interview for ArchDaily, architects Glenn DeRoché and Jurgen Strohmayer discuss the development of this initiative and the innovations that shaped it.

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Rafael Viñoly Architects’ Tokyo International Forum has been honored with the prestigious AIA Twenty-five Year Award. Celebrating its “distinctive transparent character and capacity to engage with the public in the largest metropolitan area in the world.” Rafael Viñoly Architects was first selected to design the structure through Japan’s first international design competition facilitated by Kenzo Tange, the architect of Tokyo’s City Hall and the first Japanese laureate of the Pritzker Prize.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Christopher Alexander (1936–2022) and Joseph Rykwert (b. 1926) were two giants of 20th century architectural theory who began their work in England and eventually created lasting legacies at two great American architectural schools: the University of California at Berkeley (Alexander) and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (Rykwert). Their careers not only coincided with a critical period of social and cultural research among designers and urbanists, but in many ways continue to inspire the current generation of committed critics of late capitalist development on our imperiled planet. Yet to many they are too little known.

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