Circular Dimensions x Microscape by Cris Cichocki. Photo by Lance Gerber. Image Courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festvial
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2022, an annual festival held in the Colorado Desert in Indio, California, has opened to the public on Friday April 15th with immersive installations by 11 international architects, artists, and designers. Through explorations of scale, light, sound, and colors, the contextual installations explore global themes such as connectedness, environmental sustainability, immigration, social behavior and architecture, pop culture, and the community, and will be on display on April 15-17 and April 22-24, 2022.
As part of the Desert X international contemporary art exhibition, the second edition of the Desert X AlUla features 15 contextual installations across the Saudi Arabian desert that explore "ideas of mirage and oasis". This year's exhibition is curated by Reem Fadda, Raneem Farsi, and Neville Wakefield, under the theme of Sarab (arabic for 'Mirage'), and invites artists to address the history and culture of the desert, its contemporary significance, and the dichotomy between the natural and man-made world.
Disney, the multinational entertainment and media conglomerate announced its new addition to its Signature Experiences Program. Titled "Cotino", part of its new Storyliving by Disneyventure, the master plan is Disney's first master-planned community project, and will feature distinctly-designed housing units and neighborhoods, along with commercial and civic amenities and man-made beaches in the heart of Rancho Mirage, California's Coachella Valley.
Conceived in 1977, and currently, in progress, The Mastaba, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s largest permanent artwork in the world, is designed for Abu Dhabi, to be built in a proposed location approximately 160 kilometers south of the city in the desert of Liwa, in the United Arab Emirates. Made from 410,000 multi-colored barrels, the installation will create “a colorful mosaic, echoing Islamic architecture”. 150 meters high, 300 meters long at the vertical walls and 225 meters wide at the 60 degrees slanted walls, the duo’s final project will take at least three years to be built, once it receives governmental approval.
African nations are fighting climate change with an 8,000 kilometer long Great Green Wall meant to combat the desertification of the Sahel region, home to over 100 million people. Spanning the entire width of the African continent, the movement aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million jobs in rural Africa by 2030. Stretching from Senegal in the West to Djibouti in the East, the project is the joint effort of 21 African nations that strive to restore the once lush region and protect the livelihoods of local communities.
Oppenheim Architecture and Saudi developers The Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC) have unveiled the design of a new mountain resort nestled in the wadi vistas of western Saudi Arabia. Titled Desert Rock, the project draws inspiration from the surrounding geography, allowing guests to connect with the nature and the local culture of the region through a fully nature-integrated architecture.
Delicately excavated from the natural grounds of Jordan’s Wadi Rum, Jordanian architect Rasem Kamal transformed the phrase of “form follows function” into “subtraction follows function”, emphasizing the relationship between external form and internal space with a resort that promises a sanctuary both above and underground.
In the newly-released video of the proposal, the architect uncovers the hidden resort and takes viewers on an enchanting walkthrough of the proposed Wadi RumSanctuaryResort. Kamal complements the desert’s jagged landscape with the resort’s subtle architecture, letting the structure blend seamlessly with its surroundings.
X-Architects’ entry for the DesertResort Competition, generated a luxury 60 keys desert hideaway resort, in an ultra-harsh and empty environment. Placed in Rub’ Al Khali, the world’s biggest sand sea located in the KSA, the project addresses the challenging design in desert-like surroundings.
Located in the sustainability zone of EXPO 2020 Dubai, the Czech pavilion, designed by Formosa AA and R/FRM, is an invitation for discovery. Raising questions concerning desert cultivation, it integrates and exposes the S.A.W.E.R. system cultivation plant. Visible technologies form the main formal and visual components of the pavilion.
The House Challenge 2019 has released the results of this year’s competition that gathered entries from all over the world. With a theme focusing on the Desert House, applicants designed new and original concepts for temporary housing in this harsh environment.
Foster + Partners have released their design for the new Red Sea Airport, expected to welcome one million visitors by 2030. Inspired by the forms of the desert, the green oasis and the sea, the terminal building aims to provide a new type of experience, diverging from the common hassles of airports.
The annual Burning Man festival, where architects from around the world get creative in the Desert of Nevada, has officially started. The burners have begun heading towards Black Rock City. This year’s theme revolves around the notion of “Metamorphosis”, unleashing the creativity of the artists and putting in place exceptional installations and pavilions.
Christophe Benichou Architecture's recent project Sesame is solitary and monolithic. Located in a desert, its facades are split open and fragmented, leaving parts of the walls slightly ajar. In each of these cavities sit icons of domesticity, including a bed, table, bathtub, sink, and toilet.
https://www.archdaily.com/921678/christophe-benichou-architecture-designs-minimalist-desert-residenceLilly Cao
Registration: Sep 30, 2019 Submission: Oct 1, 2019 Language: English Location: Worldwide/Concept Prizes: Cash Prize 1st for $500, 2nd for $300, 3rd for $200 Type: Open/Awards/International
“An idea is salvation by imagination.” - Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect.
HOUSE CHALLENGE is pleased to announce its annual international design competition: House Challenge 2019 - Desert House. The competition is designed to challenge and seek the creation of a temporary dwelling with ideas and concepts in architectural design, landscape design and site planning. The aim of this competition is to promote our ideas of exploring the possibilities for living in harsh environments, as well as simultaneously raising awareness of
Although architecture has been constantly evolving, past builders have laid out a huge amount architectural heritage for us to learn from and get inspired by, and integrating natural elements with man-made structures is no exception.
Shanghai-based architect and architectural photographer Amey Kandalgaonkar found inspiration in the rock cut-tomb of Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia, and with the same architecture approach, designed two residential projects that incorporate architecture with the rigid parts of nature.
The experimental design group Space Saloon has completed their first workshop, LANDING, to create exploratory projects and installations that rethink design-build and hands-on education. Curated by Danny Wills and Gian Maria Socci, the mobile educational camp investigates perceptions of place to develop projects that make territories and environments legible. Studying material, cultural, and energy-based phenomena, students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and the International Program in Design and Architecture at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (INDA) came together in the high desert of Morongo Valley, California.
Every year in August, a temporary metropolis is erected in Black Rock City, Nevada. This is Burning Man, an annual event of art and architecture that attracts some 70,000 participants. The people who come to Burning Man come from all walks of life. What is incredible is that they come together to construct an ephemeral city that lasts for 7 days. These people assume the role of architects and construction workers and use the desert to build all sorts of shelters in a fast, sustainable way. The desert is so remote, and everything built in Black Rock City is packed and taken home at the end of the event, and some of the art is burned on site. This poses a unique architectural challenge. The people who have come to build these structures have to plan them way in advance to accommodate all the challenges of working in the desert, but the result is worth it - a striking, unique city, democratically built, set against a desert landscape, and for only one week.
We had the chance to interview Kim Cook at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin. Kim Cook is Director of Art and Civic Engagement at Burning Man. Kim Cook and her team are tasked with increasing the impact of Burning Man’s arts and civic initiatives. As part of her role, Kim engages with artists and community leaders to increase opportunities for funding, collaboration and learning.
7017: 5,000-Year Geologic Axonometric Projection (12,000’ H x 12,000’ W x 9,500’ D) . Image Courtesy of Arch Out Loud
Architectural research initiative, arch out loud, have released winners for their international competition to design a landmark for a nuclear waste site in New Mexico. As part of the brief, participants were required to design a timeless piece of architecture that could stand for 10,000 years to warn future generations of the unstable by-products of nuclear weapon production that are buried 2,150 feet beneath the surface.
In the competition, many entrants engaged with the local geology of the site where the waste isolation pilot plant (WIPP) is situated for the landmark that would withstand millenniums. Testbed, the winner of the competition, proposed ex-situ mineral sequestration by reacting olivine or basalt with carbon dioxide to form inert and solid carbonate material to capture the gas, that would act as an ‘artificial tree.' The other proposals questioned the site and the underlying issues regarding human involvement with nuclear activities and the consequences, designing structures that heavily juxtaposed the natural landscape.
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.jpg?1650442892 "Circular Dimensions x Microscape by Cris Cichocki. Photo by Lance Gerber. Image Courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festvial")
.jpg?1650443789 "The Playground by Architensions, photo by Lance Gerber. Image Courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festvial")
.jpg?1650443636 "Mutts by Oana Stănescu, photo by Lance Gerber. Image Courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festvial")
_by_Mart%C3%ADn_Huberman__photo_by_Lance_Gerber__courtesy_of_Coachella_Valley_Music___Arts_Festvial_(2).jpg?1650443369 "Cocoon (BKF + H300) by Martín Huberman, photo by Lance Gerber. Image Courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festvial")
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