As the first phase of the Guggenheim Helsinki design competition concludes, a group of independent arts organizations have launched a search for "alternative" proposals: The Next Helsinki. The counter-competition calls on architects, urbanists, landscape architects, artists, and "all others who love cities to suggest ways in which Helsinki and its South Harbor can be transformed for the maximum benefit of the city.” More information, after the break.
Imagine: After three years of careful dismantling, moving, painstakingly re-assembling and most importantly, restoring, John Notman’s historic Athenæum building has finally arrived at its new location in Fairmount Park, where it will serve as the headquarters of the newly formed Philadelphia chapter of the Friends of Brownstone (PhilaFOB). Flush with government funding from lottery and fracking revenue, PhilaFOB made the Athenæum Board of Directors an offer it couldn’t refuse. So now, for the first time since 1845, the lot at 6th & St. James Streets is vacant, and the Athenæum, still a vital independent lending and research library, with growing architectural and design collections, must re-imagine itself without its historic building. Given its location and its corporate purposes, what might a mid-21st century Athenæum look like?
Competitions results for the first stage of the Moscow Metro Station for Solntsevo and Novoperedelkino have been announced. Aiming to revive the tradition of unique designs for Moscow metro stations since the 1930s-50s, this is the first time in the recent expansion of Moscow's Metro system that a competition has been used to find an architect.
The final design concepts for the redesign of Arizona’s Mesa City Center have been unveiled by the competition's three finalist design teams: Colwell Shelor + West 8 + Weddle Gilmore; Woods Bagot + Surface Design; and Otak + Mayer Reed.
London’s Science Museum has selected muf architecture/art to design a new permanent interactive gallery. Set to open in 2016, the new gallery will be an expansion of the current Launchpad children’s gallery, creating a larger area to engage visitors in interactive math and science exhibits and live events.
Broadway Malyan has been awarded a commission to design the initial phase of a new, iconic urban district in Chengdu in Western China. The Chengdu Creative Centre will be the first landmark in a larger master plan for a high-tech mixed use and business park, set to be called Tianfu New Town.
A major competition for reuse has just been announced for the Malagrotta Landfill, one of the European Union's biggest landfill sites. After Malagrotta was closed in August 2013 due to its controversial size and negative impact on the surrounding community, the Municipality of Rome began a process of redevelopment through community engagement. Multi-displinary teams are tasked with a creating a proposal to reinvent the sprawling 240-hectare property while considering its original purpose. The competition is designed to begin a conversation on the long-term vision for the property.
Is it possible to build low cost homes in the city that are both sustainable and easy on the eyes? Self Build on a Shoestring in the City, organized by the National Custom & Self Build Association and Grand Designs Live, is an ideas competition in its second year that seeks to answer this question by showcasing innovative designs for a group self build project in an urban location. More details after the break.
The 40th Annual Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition, the longest running architectural drawing competition, is now accepting submissions. Entries can be conceptual or final elevations, sections, perspectives, or renderings and may be produced digitally or by hand – or a combination of both.
The city of St. Petersburg, Florida is once more seeking candidates for the design of its new pier. The call comes two years after a pier design by Michael Maltzan Architecture was selected over rival schemes by BIG and West 8, but was eventually turned down after significant public criticism. To avoid a repeat of that incident, the current selection process for candidates and their subsequent proposals will incorporate more community input.
London's Science Museum has announced Wilkinson Eyre as the winner of its competition to design new medical galleries. Winning the project over a shortlist of six other architects - including Caruso St John, Amanda Levete Architects and Haworth Tompkins - Wilkinson Eyre's £24 million galleries will occupy 3,000 square metres on the museum's first floor, almost doubling the size of the museum's existing galleries.
The Global Schindler Award is a new competition for students that will explore questions about universal mobility and access amidst rapid globalization and urbanization. In its inaugural year, a real site in Shenzhen – a booming commercial and industrial area adjacent to Hong Kong – has been chosen as the subject of the urban design proposals. Entrants are being asked to re-imagine the city as an inclusive urban environment and will be vying for portions of the $150,000 prize fund.
Architecture competitions offer an opportunity for architects to launch their careers, and in some cases generate unexpected designs in the process. Many iconic works of architecture, including the famous Sydney Opera House, were the result of open design competitions - but do architecture competitions today maintain the influence they might have had in the past? While critics in the United States have recently argued that it could be time to quit competitions, Donald Bates argues that Australians should be organizing more. In his article on The Conversation, Bates discusses the state of design competitions in Australia, and why we should take another look. Read the full article here.
What will New Orleans look like in one year? Ten years? Fifty years? The Future Ground design competition, hosted by the Van Alen Institute, is looking for multidisciplinary teams help shape the city's future by answering these questions. The competition is specifically looking for teams to "generate flexible design and policy strategies to reuse vacant land in New Orleans, transforming abandoned landscapes into resources for the city."
Do you have design skills to crow about? Well the Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque wants to hear from you - to raise money for the National Audubon Society (the US partner of Birdlife International), they've organized NEST, a birdhouse design competition open to architects worldwide which they hope will result in some birdhouses to coo over.
Numerous awards recognize innovative, forward-thinking and environmentally-friendly design, yet there is no way to recognize projects that are harming the environment or detrimental to the planet – until now. Created by Cameron Sinclair, one of the co-founders of Architecture for Humanity and current Executive Director of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, the recently launched “DEAD Prize” seeks to highlight projects that have a negative impact on the planet, with the aim of inspiring designers to “see these failures as a challenge to create something new, to correct the mistakes of the past or to find the antidote for the project in question.” Tweet your nominations for the prize to @deadprize by November 1 and learn more about this tongue-in-cheek award at the DEAD Prize website.
Faith!, the latest ideas-based challenge organised by Combo Competitions, asked participants to design a place of worship in London. In spite of the beguiling simplicity of the title, coupled with a typically open brief, the placed winners and three honourable mentions exhibit a diverse, exciting collection of conceptual drawings and visuals. With an interesting balance of playful interpretations and more grounded proposals, all start to address relevant socio-political issues - such as the mutual acceptance and peaceful co-existence of different religions - in some way. The competition asked participants first and foremost to seek to merge two concepts: religion and knowledge.
After years of rebuilding from the devastating earthquake that hit the city in February 2011, the city of Christchurch in New Zealand has announced an open competition to design a memorial to the 185 people that lost their lives in the tragedy. The $3.5 million memorial will be situated in the city center on the banks of the Ōtākaro-Avon River, and is expected to be "a thoughtfully designed space where small groups or individuals can pay respect to those who died," but will also "comfortably fit a crowd of around 2,000 people" to host an annual memorial gathering, as well as other events.