Radar Architecture&Art has won second place in the ACTIVATE North Carolina 2016 Housing Competition, which sought out innovative ways to reinvent urban housing for the 21st century.
Through its design, Radar proposes a “new way of inhabiting” and “a new sense of community” via a hybrid structure of public, semi-public and private space.
Competition platform matterbetter has announced the winners of its Syria: Post-War Housing Competition for architectural students and professionals. The competition, initiated earlier this year, called for solutions to the housing scarcity crisis in Syria, “which will affect the country as more and more cities of the war-torn country will be freed and refugees will start to come back.”
With refugee camps around Europe and other countries in generally poor conditions, and Syrian towns in ruins, one solution to the housing crisis becomes the creation of living conditions that are attractive for once-displaced Syrians to return. The competition asked for a new housing concept that would be able to permanently accommodate people in need of a new home and new life in Syria.
Out of 245 submissions, matterbetter selected three winners, each of which was awarded a cash prize, there were also nine honorable mentions.
The winners of the Syria: Post-War Housing Competition are:
The team of CIRCOLO-A + LINEARAMA has won first prize in the AAA-Architetti Cercasi 2015 competition with its design, EPICICLO. As a mixed-use building, EPICICLO will feature apartments, alternative residences like student and social housing, common spaces, as well as both public and semi-private outdoor spaces.
The design is shaped after a ring so that it is open to the outside and comfortable on the inside. The design takes into account the relationship between public and private, not only creating a gradient from outside to inside but also varying public and private spaces within the building. Similarly, open and closed spaces are alternated, to create "spots of community life and moments of privacy."
Pliskin Architecture has been awarded as a finalist in the competition for the Mevaseret Music School, in Mevaseret Zion, Israel. The firm’s proposal centers on the site’s existing topography, as well as the idea of public space through the elevation of the classroom programs to the upper level, and the creation of a continuous open space at street level.
The new public space at the street level leads visitors to a partially covered plaza, which will act as the main access point for the various functions of the conservatory. A café will be located adjacent to the plaza, where visitors can be partially exposed to the school’s activity via the building’s massing.
TA.R.I Architects has won second place in the competition for a Women's and Family Facility Complex in Seoul, South Korea, with its proposal, Space Salim. Based on the idea of welcoming the community and fixing its problems, the proposal centers on a diffuse system to represent the complexity of society.
Bernabe Labanc Architecture Urbanism (BLAU) has received fourth place out of 58 entries in the international urban planning competition for The Future of Brno-Center, in Brno, Czech Republic.
The competition sought out designs to integrate a transport hub into the cityscape of Brno, as well as integrate a design for the undeveloped southern area of the city.
International architecture non-profit Shelter Global has announced the winners of its second annual Dencity Competition, which highlights innovative solutions to improve living conditions for slum dwellers worldwide.
With over one billion people living in slums today, and this number expected to reach two billion by 2030, the Dencity Competition called architects and planners to “consider how design can empower communities and allow for a self-sufficient future.” Thus, the competition is a way to foster new ideas about how growing density in unplanned cities can be addressed.
The winners of the second annual Dencity Competition are:
Zeller & Moye, working alongside artist Albert Weis, have been selected to design the new Martin Luther Memorial in Berlin. The competition, initiated by the Protestant Church of Berlin and the Berlin City Administration, asked entrants to design a memorial to Luther in central Berlin at the former Neuer Markt next to the St. Marienkirche—in the same location as a previous memorial to Martin Luther that was constructed in 1895 and destroyed in the Second World War. The brief also required designers to incorporate the existing statue of Martin Luther that survived from the earlier memorial.
In response to this brief, Zeller & Moye has envisaged a memorial based on the mirroring of the 1895 memorial: a negative form of the original plinth is carved into the ground in medium-gray concrete, while the statue of Luther is joined by a second, slightly abstracted replica, cast in aluminium with a mirrored finish.
New York’s H Architecture, in collaboration with South-Korea-based Haeahn Architecture, has won a nation-wide competition, organized by the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation, to design the renovation of the 1988 Olympic Gymnastics Arena, which is located within the Olympic Park in Seoul, Korea.
The arena not only holds historic significance with its role in the 1988 Olympics but is also “the premiere cultural performance venue of Korea,” with its location inside one of the largest man-made public parks in Korea.
India-based Studio MADe has won the Suncheon Art Platform competition with its proposal, The Hidden Cloister. The competition, hosted by the City of Suncheon, South Korea, sought to revitalize the Old City area with an art square featuring an art center.
Through The Hidden Cloister, Studio MADe aims to create a “psychological ‘void’ in the midst of a high-density area by creating an open-to-sky quadrangle as a pure subtraction of ground.” Thus, the proposal creates a new link in the heart of the Old City by connecting the riverbank and public space.
KAAN Architecten has won the commission to design the New Amsterdam Courthouse. The new building will replace the current judicial complex at the intersection of Zuidas and Parnassusweg, which is slated for demolition. The Courthouse of Amsterdam is the largest in the Netherlands and handles 150,000 cases a year with a staff of 200 judges and 800 professionals. KAAN Architecten describes the building's design as both "stately" and "distinguished," stating that the intention was to create a facility that understands justice as an open process, and thus incorporates ways for the public to engage with the Courthouse.
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Napur Architect has won the competition to design a new building for the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. On a site bordering Ötvenhatosok Square and adjacent to City Park, the building is one part of the Liget Budapest Project, aimed at renewing the civic space of the area with renovations to existing structures, rejuvenation of green spaces, and institutional additions. Besides the Ethnography Museum, City Park will be home to the House of Hungarian Music designed by Sou Fujimoto and a New National Gallery designed by SANAA.
Agence Ter and Team have been announced as the winners of a proposal to redesign the oldest park in Los Angeles, Pershing Square, with a call for “radical flatness.” Opened in 1866, with subsequent name changes and redesigns, the winning proposal will replace the most recent iteration by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta and landscape architect Laurie Olin, which opened in 1994. Pershing Square is a five-acre park bounded by 5th Street to the north, 6th Street to the south, Hill Street to the east, and Olive Street to the west, in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles. The path to redevelopment began in September 2015, when the Los Angeles City Council adopted the plans of councilmember José Huizar, to create a public-private partnership and work with Pershing Square Renew, a non-profit partner, which came out of a task force created by Huizar in 2013.
International architecture competition organizers Bee Breeders have announced the three winners and honourable mentions of their competition to design a Charlie Hebdo Portable Pavilion. Intended to be a travelling exhibition of the work of the French Magazine “Charlie Hebdo,” participants were asked to “support and promote” principles of free speech in their design. Responding to the terror attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the ensuing global discourse on free speech, the competition sought to deconstruct the “conventional assumptions of free speech,” and look specifically at “what makes speech free and how much of it comes at a cost.”
Entries were judged for the way they challenged these assumptions in terms of space, material and form. Preference was given to projects that had clear concepts, circulation, sequence and narrative, in addition to public engagement and a “reconciliation between the abstract and theoretical with the physical and real.” Consideration was also given to the way projects contributed to a discourse – rather than expressing an opposition - concerning the growing grey areas between "ideological, political, and cultural binaries."
Manuelle Gautrand Architecture, DesignInc, and Lacoste + Stevenson have won an international competition for the design of a civic and community building in the Australian city of Parramatta. The six-story, 12,000 square meter building, a mixture of rectilinear sharpness and parabolic curves, extends back from the city’s Victorian Free Classical style town hall. The new structure will include a variety of spaces, including: council chambers and offices, a library, public roof gardens, a customer care center and visitor experience center, community meeting rooms, a technology hub, and an innovation space.
Prolific organizers of architecture competitions, Bee Breeders has revealed the winners of their latest challenge: repurposing a brutalist department store in Bangkok into an artists’ retreat. Competitors were expected to not only renovate the building, but also to engage the public in the surrounding city with the arts, as well as to “reflect on both the history and future” of the site. The program was loosely defined and open to interpretation, with entries evaluated primarily on the strength and clarity of their concept, originality, presentation quality, relevance to context and its possible presence as a strong community for artists in Bangkok. See all of the winners after the break.
The team of Peter Bus, Tomas Vlasak, Vaclav Petrus, and Petr Bouril has received an honorable mention for their proposal for the Tokyo Pop Lab Competition, which recently announced its winners. The proposal, entitled "At The Crossroads of Ideas," is designed as a “three-dimensional representation of history and development of pop culture.”
Separated into three parts, one below ground, one above ground, and one in-between, the design is interconnected via cylindrical concrete towers, which act as the main structural support of the building.
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The winners of the latest Combo Competitions challenge, Prison Puzzle, have been announced. Based on the idea of utilizing architecture to reduce recidivism—the large number of criminals that relapse into crime and back behind bars—Prison Puzzle sought out proposals for the design of a medium-security prison with a capacity of 500 inmates. The design was to be sited in Arizona, in the United States, where the number of inmates per resident is high above the national average. Each design had to include elemental components like cells, exercise yards, and visiting rooms, and participants were encouraged to explore "how architecture can help in shaping environments that influence behaviors."
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