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Culture: The Latest Architecture and News

Overland Partners to Design a 6.3-mile Park On the US-Mexico Border

As part of a strategy developed in late 2021 by Ken Salazar (US Ambassador to Mexico), Deanna Kim (US Consul General in Nuevo Laredo), and Esteban Moctezuma (Mexico Ambassador) in collaboration with leaders politicians, and businessmen from the southern region of Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Overland Partners has been announced in conjunction with Able City as the creators of the new 6.3-mile "Binational River Park" that will extend along the Rio Grande - Rio Grande between Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. This new space aims to restore and revitalize the ecosystem as well as attract tourism and celebrate the multiculturalism that takes place in this border territory.

Colombia’s Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai: A Fusion of Geography, City and Culture

The Colombia Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai is thought of as an artefact with the ability to tell the past, present and future stories of the country's culture through its music. Supported by its geography and its cities, the pavilion designed by Pacheco Estudio de Arquitectura intersperses dense vegetation with water, representing the great biodiversity of its plant and animal world, and is composed of a reticular structure in three dimensions symbolising the urban centres that are constantly growing.

By proposing a route from the vegetable and aquatic floor to the open ceiling, the artefact is quickly identifiable from a distance and seeks to remain in the memory of those who visit it as a fresh, open space that reveals itself to all and finds itself in constant development.

World's Most Liveable Cities in 2021: Auckland in New Zealand Tops the Ranking

Auckland in New Zealand has topped the ranking in the 2021 EIU's annual world's most liveable city survey. Classifying 140 cities across five categories including stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, this year’s edition of the review has been highly affected by the global pandemic. Australia, Japan, and New Zealand took leading positions, while European and Canadian cities fell down the ranking.

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MVRDV to Transform Eindhoven Shopping Centre into a Sustainable Cultural Quarter

Reflecting on the future of shopping centres and addressing their decline in visitors, MVRDV's Heuvelkwartier design proposes converting Eindhoven's Heuvel shopping venue into a green cultural quarter. The project brings together retail, culture and recreation, expanding the existing buildings while transforming the roofs into a park. The proposal also expands the Muziekgebouw with a stacked cultural building encased in a "glass mountain", creating a new landmark for Heuvel.

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Free Metropolitan Opera Documentary Stream of "The Opera House"

The Metropolitan Opera offers a free stream each night on the Met website for a period of 23 hours, from 7:30 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. EDT the following day.

Beginning on Saturday, May 9 at 7:30 p.m. EDT, the Met will present a free stream of "The Opera House" by award-winning filmmaker Susan Froemke.

The 2017 documentary is about the fascinating creation of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, which opened in 1966. Through rarely seen archival footage and recent interviews, discover the untold stories of the artists, architects, and politicians who shaped the cultural life of New

OMA Completes the Galleria Department Store in Gwanggyo, South Korea

Designed by OMA / Chris van Duijn, the Department Store Galleria in Gwanggyo, south of Seoul has just opened. The store’s sixth branch is located at the center of the relatively young and new urban development.

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International Competition of Ideas for the multifunctional center, Port of Culture, in Mariupol (UA)

Municipality of Mariupol (UA) invites architects, designers and interdisciplinary teams to submit architectural ideas for a new multifunctional center that will be devoted to the subject of migration, a process that has shaped the city throughout the centuries, becoming an integral part of its identity. The Port of Culture will uncover and explore the less known traits of Mariupol city, and contextualize its local history within larger regional and global processes related to migration.

We are looking for bold and authentic architectural idea for the Port of Culture, that will represent the values and the main themes of the new center,

Herzog & de Meuron Releases Conceptual Images of the Grand Canal Museum Complex in Hangzhou, China

The Grand Canal Museum Complex in Hangzhou, China designed by Herzog & de Meuron reflects on the importance of this area in Chinese cultural and natural landscapes. The project illustrates the story of the Grand Canal, through a continuous dialogue between the water and the museum.

Call for Proposals: 2020 International Garden Festival

Grand-Métis, Canada, 2019-10-08 -
The International Garden Festival, presented at the Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens in the Gaspésie region of Québec, Canada is preparing its 21st edition and is issuing an international call for proposals to select designers who will create the new temporary gardens that will be presented from June 19, 2020. For its 21st edition, the Festival has chosen Métissages as its theme. Continuing the exploration of new ideas and new realms, the Festival is seeking to connect designers from various fields to favour a crossbreeding of practices and professions.

Métissages has historically had negative connotations.

International Competition Open Call: Reviving NPAK

By the initiative of the Boghossian Foundation urbanlab (http://www.urbanlab.am) announces an open international architectural competition “Reviving NPAK” (http://npak.urbanlab.am) for all interested individuals and teams.

The purpose of the present architectural competition is to find the best design solutions for the existing building of NPAK located at 1/3 Buzand Street of Yerevan (Armenia), which needs to reflect the aspects of the competition package through contemporary architectural language that is conscious of social and environmental responsibility, the importance for radical technical experimentation and the need to sustain a dialogue with the Centre’s legacy and its traditions.

Call for Entries : Architectural, programming, engineering and planning services framework agreement for the central residual volumes in the La Défense business district

Paris La Défense is seeking to vitalise the ‘interstitial volumes’ that lie beneath its central esplanade, interlocked with underground infrastructures. Located at the heart of La Défense, those spaces are very close to public transport and offer high potential due to their distinctive size and morphology. The aim is to use them to develop a new offering of activities accessible to the public – and see a lively and unusual destination emerge as a result. Paris La Défense, as the urban planner, developer and manager of the business district, is launching a competitive dialogue process. The purpose to this

Spaces of Culture

Cultural flagships, from trendy breeding grounds to iconic cultural palaces, form the core of many urban cultural landscapes. Spaces of Culture is about the new construction and redevelopment of cultural buildings in Amsterdam in the period 2000-2016.

In the construction and development of new cultural spaces in the city, the precise location and architecture play a major role in connecting the venue to the changing needs of the public, the makers and the neighbourhood. Using various case studies, Spaces of Culture shows that the cultural sector could benefit from knowledge exchange between urban planners, developers and the world of architecture.

This book

Why Heatherwick Studio's Zeitz MOCAA Is "A Call to Arms" For African Museums

Why Heatherwick Studio's Zeitz MOCAA Is "A Call to Arms" For African Museums - Image 8 of 4
© Iwan Baan

The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa—or Zeitz MOCAA for short—recently received first place in ArchDaily's Refurbishment in Architecture awards, with its striking design transforming a formerly derelict industrial building into an iconic landmark in South Africa’s oldest working harbor. Developed by the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town and designed by Heatherwick Studio, the mixed-use project is now “the world’s largest museum dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.” To celebrate the award, we sat down with group leader Matthew Cash to discuss the challenges faced during the project, its cultural importance to Africa, and the practice’s interest in refurbishment as a whole.

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Architecture City Guide: 10 Towns in Colombia That Every Architect Must Visit

Calm and silence prevail in many of the municipalities of Colombia, where the ochre colors intermingle with the green of the landscape to preserve the colonial styles that characterize some of the architectural typologies of the place. Small urban centers that hide an incomparable beauty are the main attraction for many tourists who today travel to know these obscure places, where one can go to learn a little of their traditions and their culture, creating an almost perfect adventure, where heritage value becomes a characteristic in common.

That is why we have chosen 10 Colombian towns that highlight both the physical-spatial value and the socio-cultural value.

What Makes a City Livable to You?

What Makes a City Livable to You? - Arch Daily Interviews
© Flickr user Hafitz Maulana licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ImageA music festival in Singapore

Mercer released their annual list of the Most Livable Cities in the World last month. The list ranks 231 cities based on factors such as crime rates, sanitation, education and health standards, with Vienna at #1 and Baghdad at #231. There’s always some furor over the results, as there ought to be when a city we love does not make the top 20, or when we see a city rank highly but remember that one time we visited and couldn’t wait to leave.

To be clear, Mercer is a global HR consultancy, and their rankings are meant to serve the multinational corporations that are their clients. The list helps with relocation packages and remuneration for their employees. But a company’s first choice on where to send their workers is not always the same place you’d choose to send yourself to.

And these rankings, calculated as they are, also vary depending on who’s calculating. Monocle publishes their own list, as does The Economist, so the editors at ArchDaily decided to throw our hat in as well. Here we discuss what we think makes cities livable, and what we’d hope to see more of in the future.

Hangzhou Normal University / WSP ARCHITECTS

Hangzhou Normal University / WSP ARCHITECTS - University, FacadeHangzhou Normal University / WSP ARCHITECTS - University, FacadeHangzhou Normal University / WSP ARCHITECTS - University, Facade, HandrailHangzhou Normal University / WSP ARCHITECTS - University, Facade, HandrailHangzhou Normal University / WSP ARCHITECTS - More Images+ 21

Hangzhou Shi, China
  • Architects: WSP ARCHITECTS
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  161426
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2016

Somali Architecture Students Digitally Preserve Their Country's Heritage—Before It's Too Late

Somali Architecture Students Digitally Preserve Their Country's Heritage—Before It's Too Late - Featured Image
via Somali Architecture

Since the start of civil war in 1991, the political and architectural landscapes of the East African country of Somalia have been unstable. While the country’s urban centers, such as the capital city Mogadishu, boast a diverse fabric of historic mosques, citadels, and monuments alongside modernist civic structures, the decades of conflict have resulted in the destruction of many important structures. And, while the fighting has substantially subsided in recent years, the future of the country's architectural heritage is still far from secure.

In response, Somali architecture students from across the UK, Italy, and the United States have banded together to form Somali Architecture, an ongoing research project archiving and digitally "rebuilding" iconic structures through 3D models. Their goal is “to preserve the identity and authenticity” of Somalia through its architecture—both existing and destroyed. “We want each iconic building of the past to be reinterpreted for a more coherent future,” they say.

See below for a selection of the structures Somali Architecture has uncovered and re-constructed so far.