competition: The Latest Architecture and News

Terra Award, the first international prize for contemporary earthen architectures, has released a shortlist of 40 projects competing for awards in nine categories. The finalists selected span five continents and 67 countries. Each entry was evaluated on a range of topics including: architectural quality and landscape integration, environmental approach and energy performance, creativity and innovation, technical performance, local economy and social intensity, and showcasing of skills. Project materials range from light clay to cob, poured earth, wattle and daub, compressed earth block (CEB), adobe, rammed earth, and others.

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The Knight Foundation has announced their second Knight Cities Challenge – a grant with a pool of $5 million to be awarded for city-improving ideas. Applications can be submitted by anyone, professional, student or amateur. Projects must take place in, or benefit one or more of the 26 knight communities across the United States, and focus on one or all of three key drivers of city success: attracting and retaining talent, expanding economic opportunity, and creating a culture of robust civic engagement.

Maka-Sojka Architects have won a competition to design a new facility for Polish public broadcasting corporation TVP in Warsaw. Driven by their desire to communicate transparency in journalism, and centralize the many programs involved in television, the project consolidates many different factors, much like journalism itself. Read more about the TVP Information Agency building after the break.

2015 marks the 20th Anniversary of Canstruction Boston. The 2015 theme is "Celebrate 20 years in Boston!" Canstruction Boston is a charity event and exhibition in which teams of Boston-area architects, engineers, contractors, designers and students compete to display colossal sculptures made out of canned goods. After the sculptures are dismantled, all the canned goods will be donated to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Following a turnkey competition, NORD Architects was awarded the contract for their design of the new Furesø City Hall in Denmark. The project, consisting of 2,000 square meters of renovation and 3,400 square meters of new space, is set to finish by 2017 and will house 300 employees. Driven by sustainable and democratic design, the new city hall is estimated to reduce annual operating costs by 8 million DKK for the Furesø government. Read more about this upcoming project after the break.

Imagine that Eurasia has been brought to absolute destruction - by wars over religion, ethnicity or countries, or maybe even nuclear destruction. Cities, towns and villages across the super-continent are left in rubble or abandoned; all forms of organization are a fairy tale from a bygone era. Thousands of years of culture and civilization, gone.

What if a new Eurasia could arise from the remnants of this destruction? What artifacts and memories would remain, to seed the creation of a new Eurasia? Imagining New Eurasia, commissioned by Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea, invites anyone living in, or from Eurasia to submit their ideas, in the form of drawings, sketches, text, artwork, found objects, photographs, maps, memorabilia or any other kind of artifact, on how the future of a New Eurasia may pan out.

With ideas ranging from floating homes to new mega-cities, New London Architecture has revealed 100 proposals to address the housing crisis in London. The ideas will be on display as part of the New Ideas for Housing exhibition at the NLA Galleries in the Building Centre in London. After an open ideas competition announced June 2015, over 200 entries from 16 different countries were received. Of the 100 shortlisted projects 10 finalists will be selected and have the opportunity to work with the Greater London Authority to implement their ideas. Read more about the entries and exhibit after the break.

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WVA's “Zhuhai JIANFENG Bridge East Square Landscape Tower” proposal received third place in the Zhuhai Doumen Observation Tower Competition, held in July 2014. Their project began with a rigorous analysis of the surrounding geographical, cultural and socio-political context. Located at the junction of two rivers in Zhuhai, China, the Zhuhai Observation Tower is sited in an intersection of neighbourhoods: a place of destination and circulation for locals and tourists.

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The City of Milan has announced the winners of a competition to redesign the Piazza della Scala, with a bold idea to reconfigure the Piazza similarly to its arrangement in the 19th Century taking third place. Designed by Chilean architect Cristian Undurraga in collaboration with Laura Signorelli, Stefano Rolla, Sebastián Mallea, Soledad Fernandez, Michele Zambetti, Max Daiber and Leonardo Valdés, the proposal begins with the demolition of the medieval block separating the Teatro alla Scala and the Palacio Marino, developing visual continuity to catalyze construction and improve existing spaces. Read more about the proposal after the break.

ARKxSITE has announced the winners of its call for ideas for a hypothetical contemporary Art Centre to be built in the Fortress of Cresmina in Cascais, Portugal. Open to architecture students and architects under 40 years of age, entrants were challenged to preserve the significant cultural, historical and landscape elements of the Fortress of Cresmina, celebrating the existing ruins to create a unique experience for visitors. The jury comprised Alberto Mottola, (demogo studio di architettura, Italy), Felipe Grallert (Felipe Grallert Arquitectos, Chile) and Rasmus Jessing (COBE, Denmark). See the third, second and first place winners after the break.

Open-idea competition platform matterbetter has announced the winners of its Concordia Lighthouse Competition, which sought to pay tribute to the Costa Concordia Disaster of 2012 when a cruise ship capsized off the coast of Tuscany, causing 33 deaths. Open to architectural students and young architectural professionals, participants were asked to “redefine contemporary lighthouse typology and take into consideration advances in technology, development of sustainable systems and its metaphorical value which has made it one of the most inspiring structures in the world.”

Out of 282 entries, first place was awarded to Gwizdala Andrzej and Adrien Mans for their Concordia Lightscape design, which disperses the idea of a lighthouse into thin lines that increase in density as they move closer to the sea.