Five major firms have been shortlisted for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's $80 million expansion in Buffalo, New York. Chosen for their "design intellect" and ability to collaborate, the competing firms will envision ways to expand the gallery's exhibition space and create a new public urban area that maximizes the site's potential, as the Albright-Knox campus is located on the edge of Delaware Park - one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s major works.
The PERI Foundation have announced the winners of their 10-day “Space for Future Education” workshop in Dagestan, Russia. Organized in conjunction with the Moscow School of Architecture, the workshop selected 30 young architects under 30 from a pool of over 100 applicants from around the globe to develop concepts for a new PERI facility, the Perimeter Center for Culture and Education, in historic Makhachkala overlooking the Caspian Sea.
The London School of Economics (LSE) and RIBA have revealed the six shortlisted proposals for their next major development: 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields/The Paul Marshall. With designs from David Chipperfield, Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Penoyre & Prasad and Herzog & de Meuron, LSE is hoping their new building's "world-class architecture" will appropriately reflect the university's "global academic reputation." AL_A, Grafton Architects, and Niall McLaughlin with Scott Brownrigg complete the shortlist.
Hong Kong-based architecture firm TheeAe has released the plans for its entry to the competition for the Varna Regional Library in Varna, Bulgaria. The competition called for proposals to combine six regional libraries into one new site, ultimately awarding Architects for Urbanity the first prize.
120 Hours, an open architectural competition organised by students from the Oslo School of Architecture, is inviting fellow students from around the world to explore the role of the architect in today's society. The competition, according to its organisers, is in "a unique position to make students reflect on their future profession. We want to challenge people to rethink the future of architecture." Last year's competition, chaired by Julien de Smedt, received 741 submissions from 90 different countries.
BPD Marignan and XTU Architects, in association with SNI Group and MU Architecture, have won the Réinventer.Paris competition for Paris Rive Gauche site M5A2. The winning project, called In Vivo, seeks to “[promote] social mix and openness between citizens and [integrate] nature into cities, to achieve a fairer, more sustainable, and resilient city,” through three buildings for humans, and one to raise earthworms for vermicomposting of inhabitants’ organic waste.
For decades, architectural competitions have been recognized as a great way for architecture firms to get their big break, or to make a name for themselves in the types of projects they might not have been considered for before. However, competitions come with a downside: it’s not always easy for firms to build them in to their culture. Design competitions take time, often don’t translate to billable hours, and aren’t always clear pathways to strengthening the firm’s balance sheet, and as a result they have seen something of a backlash in recent years.
Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and OMA are some of 15 major practices that have been shortlisted in the second (and final) stage of a competition to design the new Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. The building will be one of four new museums being built in Hungary's 200-year-old Városliget (City Park) as part of the Liget Budapest project, which includes SANAA's Ludwig Museum and Sou Fujimoto’s House of Hungarian Music.
Oxford University has released five shortlisted proposals to overhaul and extend its St Hilda's College. Part of the invited competition Redefining St Hilda's, the concepts are designed to expand student and Fellow accommodation, while providing new social and teaching spaces, Middle Common Room, Porters' Lodge and entrance for the college.
schmidt hammer lassen architects has won an international competition to design a new home for the West Shanghai Workers’ Cultural Palace. This project has been a widely popular destination for Shanghai’s Labor Union workers and local community since it opened in 1959. The new proposal will include a theater, cinema, art and exhibition spaces, as well as office, sports facilities, commercial spaces, and a transportation hub -- all settled within the eight hectare site.
Guangzhou, China's third largest city, is planning to rebuild four bridges in its region - the Renmin, Jiangwan, Haiyin, and Liede Bridges. Three teams have been shortlisted for each bridge, all of which are Chinese practices with the exception of Zaha Hadid Architects, Knight Architects and NEXT Architects. As BDOnline reports, the finalists are expected to propose a range of options, from small upgrades to complete rebuilds. A winner for each will be selected in February, after the Chinese new year.
Adjaye, Henning Larsen, and wHY are among seven practices shortlisted in an invited design competition to design the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art (LMoCA). The new museum, planned for the center of Riga, Latvia, hopes to become "the most visited art museum in the Baltic States, as well as a cultural arts center of interregional significance." It's collection will feature regional art and visual culture from the 1960s.
Sydney-based firm Stewart Hollenstein has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the international design competition for a new 17,000 square-meter library in Varna, Bulgaria. Their design scheme focuses on Varna's rich history as a city known for its public gardens, and seeks to make the library a cultural center of the city.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced the names of the 158 finalists in the Knight Cities Challenge. The nationwide call was for innovative ideas to make the 26 communities where the Knight Foundation invests more social and vibrant places to live. More than 4,500 entries were submitted proposing a range of ideas from opening the world’s largest African American history museum in Detroit to a card game that encourages residents of Charlotte to visit new neighborhoods. The winners, who will split a prize of $5 million, will be announced in the spring of 2016.
Aysu Aysoy and Roman Hajtmanek have been announced as the winners of the ArchDaily + IIDEXCanada Virtual Spaces Competition, which sought proposals for un-built, fantastical spaces. The designs were then developed into virtual spaces by Invent Dev as a part of a virtual reality exhibition at IIDEXCanada.
The Museum of Finnish Architecture, in collaboration with the Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA), has announced the winners of its “From Border to Home” competition, which sought solutions for temporary housing seekers who are awaiting a decision on their refugee status, prior to finding more permanent housing in Finland. Ninety-three entries were submitted from countries around the world including Finland, Sweden, Norway, China, Belarus, the United States, and Brazil, among others. Submitted proposals included solutions that would provide a positive social impact, and also support future ideas about long-term living arrangements.
