Cultural Center: The Latest Architecture and News

New York based Büro Koray Duman Architects are collaborating with the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) to design a cultural center prototype, named Cordoba House, in order to facilitate the total integration of American Muslims, without compromising their religious identities. The center will be the first Muslim sponsored multi-faith community center in New York City, aiming to help promote “progressive change, inter-religious coexistence, and cultural exchange”.

Highlighting the necessity of such a project, the design team explain: “There are approximately 800,000 Muslims living in NYC. A majority of the gathering places for Muslims are Mosques that focuses on Religion as Practice, which does not leave enough room for developing Religion as Culture.”

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Situated at the intersection of a forest-scape and harbor, Helen & Hard’s winning museum competition entry, Navet, offers the Norwegian island of Odderøya a place to reflect on the area’s heritage and naval history. Located in the city of Kristiansand, Navet will join a group of institutions in the region called the Vest Agder Museums that celebrate Norway’s past. Developed through careful consideration of its surrounding landscape, the form of the building situates itself to activate both the water and existing mountain front.

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A competition organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government for the design of a new local art complex has been won by Korean firm Arcbody Architects. The brief called for the development of a new cultural hub revolving around the arts, to capitalize on local historical infrastructure and provide opportunities for creative enjoyment, education, and research.

"Art complex, Pyeongchang-dong, Seoul will be a multiplex community hub that connects human, cultural organizations, schools and academic associations with the art archive as the medium and aims to be a space for creative and artistic social activities,” explained the architects.

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Videos

MVRDV has released new renderings and a flythrough of their competition-winning design for a new cultural center in the city of Zaanstad in the Netherlands. Borrowing architectural motifs from the historic Zaan House, the design flips the traditional form inside out to create a new living room for the city. Inside, the building will become the new home of a film house, a library, a performing and visual arts centre, a pop music centre, a music school, a centre for design and a local radio station.

Check out the video below.

Copenhagen-based firm EFFEKT has won a competition to design a new Streetmekka in Viborg, Denmark, through the repurposing of an abandoned former windmill factory in the city’s industrial sector. The winning proposal, aims to instill a newfound sense of identity and value into one of the many leftover warehouse buildings, in the form of a new cultural center for street art, sport, and culture.

The Viborg Municipality and GAME, a Danish street sports NGO, announced that the competition’s purpose was to enable social and cultural change, specifically through empowerment of local youth.

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White Arkitekter has proposed a timber-framed "lantern" design for in a new addition to the local art center in Akershus, Norway as part of a limited architecture competition. The design by White Arkitekter was selected as a runner-up, with Haugen/Zohar Arkitekter named the winner. White’s design aims to connect the art facilities to adjacent historical institutions and create additional public space.

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Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group has released a new animation of “The Shed” (previously known as “The Culture Shed”), a convertible cultural center designed for New York City’s Hudson Yards development overlooking The High Line. When complete, the building will contain 170,000 square feet of exhibition space for temporary installations, concerts, performances and other cultural productions. Watch in the video as The Shed grows out of its partnering residential skyscraper, also designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Rockwell Group, and transforms to serve various program types.

A part of Phase 1 of the Hudson Yards project, construction on The Shed began in mid-2015 and is scheduled to be completed in 2019. The venue will serve as the new home of several high profile events, including New York Fashion Week.

After receiving building permit approval, Twelve Architects has revealed their design for a 42,000 square meter international exhibition center in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The design, which houses a series of conference halls, a media center, gallery, exhibition space, seminar rooms and lounges, has been developed from their initial 2015 competition winning entry. Partnership with a local practice has helped to guide the design of the center, enabling the creation of a major cultural hub within Yekaterinburg.

Videos

The 2016 Venice Biennale has highlighted that dealing with natural disasters may become one of the main preoccupations of architecture in the future. But nature has its destructive ways, and volcanic eruptions are among the most extreme case in point. On the Island of Fogo (Cape Verde), the Natural Park Venue designed by OTO – and elected Best Building of the Year 2015 by Archdaily readers – was destroyed by molten lava flow only one year after its opening in 2013. The building, which combined a cultural center and administrative activities, helped to activate the economy in the island’s most remote area. Following the disaster, Adrian Kasperski, a student at Krakow University, devoted his master’s thesis to the redevelopment of this area, by proposing the expansion of the existing roads and hiking trails and designing facilities to improve alternative tourism offerings.

A proposal from George Batzios Architects for the Konaki Averof Cultural Center in Greece uses a cutting edge, sustainable approach to revive a deeply historical site. The design intertwines elements of architecture and agriculture to refit an existing structure with reference to the Thessalian plains on which it lies. The new architecture recreates the existing envelopes with straw cladding, regenerating the "golden environment" which defined the place in the late 19th century.

• Architects

  White Arkitekter

• Location

  Skellefteå, Sweden

• Project Year

  2019

• Photographs

  Courtesy of White Arkitekter

PARKOPERA, a cultural facility designed by Alper Derinboğaz, Salon, is a center of attraction that will be situated between apartment buildings and within a neighborhood park in Antalya, Turkey. Through the development of both the building and the outdoor space around it, the center creates multiple opportunities for the community to come together and enjoy various cultural events.

Taller EC (TEC) has released the plans for the Plaza Artesanal Reina Victoria, a cultural project located in the northern, central part of Quito, Ecuador. Situated in front of a traditional artisan’s market, the new proposal consists of a set of autonomous pieces of different sizes connected by an interior plaza.