Hyundai Pavilion by Asif Khan. Image Courtesy of Iconic World
The German Design Council has announced the winners of the IconicAwards 2018: Innovative Architecture. The awards honor superb examples of interaction between disciplines through an independent architecture and design competition. The Iconic Awards 2018: Innovative Architecture focus on internationally outstanding construction projects, innovative interior and product design as well as compelling communication in an architectural context. The focus is on holistic production and on the interaction between the trades in the context of architecture.
Earlier this month, the Winter Olympics was officially opened in South Korea. Laurian Ghinitiou visited PyeongChang to capture the celebrations and the festivities of the Winter Olympic Games. At the Olympic Park, he turned his lens towards the now-famous Vantablack VBx2 building designed by Hyundai and Asif Khan. The pavilion was conceived of as a "narrative" and everything from the facade to the five rooms within -- water, solar, electrolysis, hydrogen fuel stack and recreation of water -- were part of the story.
The unique experience starts from the initial encounter of the pitch-black building at the Olympic Park to the final room where water droplets ripple off the walls. The alluring black facade, for example, embodies the dearth of light in space, as well as the infinite possibilities of the universe. The universe is also the birth place of Hydrogen during the Big Bang and is where the narrative begins.
Hyundai chose to build the complex in the Olympic Park in order to reveal to visitors how Hydrogen energy is conceived, but the designers made sure this was not going to be purely a science experiment. Laurian Ghinitoiu captures how the pavilion is all about novelty, delight, and the visitor experience.
Much has been said about the darkest building in the world, designed by Asif Khan, for Hyundai's Winter Olympic pavilion this year. What’s more surprising about this blackest-of-black pavilion is really how bright it is inside. The imposing facade of Vantablack VBx2 encloses a series of radiant, playful rooms and the entire project is part of a joint effort by Hyundai and Asif Khan to use architecture and design principles to bring delight to Olympic visitors in Pyeongchang this year.
Asif Khan's Vantablack pavilion, the world's first super-black building, will open at the PyeongChang 2018 Opening Ceremony on 9 February 2018.
The Olympic pavilion is coated with Vantablack VBx2 carbon nanotubes and illuminated by thousands of tiny white light rods. These rods extend from the structure's parabolic super-black facade and create the illusion of a field of stars suspended in space. Looking at the building will be the closest experience to looking into space from a point on Earth.
The 2016 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by BIG, has today been unveiled at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, London. The design consists of an "unzipped wall" in which a straight line of tubular fiberglass bricks at the top of the wall is split into two undulating sides, housing the program of the pavilion. For the first time, the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion is also accompanied by four "summerhouses" designed by Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, Yona Friedman and Asif Khan. The Pavilion and summerhouses will open to the public later this week, on June 10th, and will be in place until October 9th. Read on to find out more about all five designs.
The Mountain, Copenhagen / BIG. Image Courtesy of Serpentine Galleries
The Serpentine Galleries have revealed that the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion will be designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), alongside a surprise announcement that four "Summer Houses" will also be built by internationally acclaimed practices. Kunlé Adeyemi – NLÉ (Amsterdam/Lagos), Barkow Leibinger (Berlin/New York), Yona Friedman (Paris), and Asif Khan (London) will each design a 25sqm structure inspired by the nearby Queen Caroline’s Temple, a neo-Classical summer house built in 1734 and "a stone’s throw from the Serpentine Gallery." In line with the criteria for the selection of the Serpentine Pavilion architect, each chosen to design a Summer House has yet to realise a permanent building in England.
Now for the first time, Guggenheim has unveiled the six fully developed designs competing to become Guggenheim Helsinki. Selected from 1,715 entries in world's the most popular architectural competition, the remaining finalists have spent the past five months refining their designs after being shortlisted by an independent 11-member jury, of which includes Studio Gang's Jeanne Gang and former Columbia University dean Mark Wigley.
One of the finalists in the Guggenheim Helsinki competition. Image Courtesy of Malcolm Reading Consultants
More than ever, the media shapes architecture. The controversial Helsinki Guggenheim competition is as much about the use and exploitation of contemporary media as it is about design. The competition organisers are hugely proud to have over 1,700 entries to tweet about, but informed critics are less impressed. Has quantity ever guaranteed quality?
The competition has certainly created an impact. Some celebrate this, while others feel it has been detrimental to the profession, with so much unpaid time invested resulting in a low-level contribution to museum design.
Meanwhile, the spectre of Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim, an “iconic” building that gave the American foundation so much positive publicity when it opened in 1997, haunts the Helsinki project. Finnish politicians hope for a similar success, a Sydney Opera postcard effect in this remote corner of the earth.
The Guggenheim has announced the finalists in the competition to design Guggenheim Helsinki, whittling down the entrants from a record-breaking 1,715 submissions to just six. Representing both emerging and established practices with offices in seven countries, the shortlisted entries show a variety of responses to the challenge of creating a world-class museum.
The six finalists are:
AGPS Architecture Ltd. (Zurich, Switzerland and Los Angeles, United States of America)
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