Text description provided by the architects. Award-winning architectural firm Arca Architects is based in central Manchester, England, and headed by architect John Lee. Arca’s Silver Café on the Morecambe Bay in England transformed the face of a quiet seaside town with a space that is both visually appealing and tactilely exciting.
The Silver Café won the 2009 Small Scale Commercial Award from the Manchester Society of Architects (MSA), and it was a finalist for two coveted Young Architect of the Year Awards in 2000.
RIBACompetitions recently announced their two-stage design ideas competition for the Great Fen Visitor Centre in Cambridgeshire. Great Fen is an internationally acclaimed vision, one of sweeping scale and ambition. Over the next 50-100 years, more than 3,000ha of largely arable land will be transformed into a mosaic of habitat: open water, lakes, ponds and ditches; reedbed; fen, bog and marsh; wet grassland; dry grassland; woodland and scrub. The competition seeks to to create around and between a restored fenland landscape which provides a living landscape for wildlife and people. Registrations will close on December 19. The deadline for Stage 1 design submissions is 2pm on January 10. To register, and for more information, please visit here.
Japanese modernist Fumihiko Maki has been chosen to design a cultural and university complex on a 67-acre Kings Cross development in London. As reported by the Evening Standard, the 84-year-old, Pritzker Prize-winning architect will design two buildings for the Aga Khan Development Network – an organization who leads the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims.
The two projects are among five, totaling a half million square feet, that are being commissioned by the Network at Kings Cross. It is unsaid of who will design the other three buildings. However, preliminary designs studies are under way and formal appointments will be announced shortly.
Located in Trafalgar Square in London, the BE OPEN Sound Portal focuses on an experience that would be all about the sound. Designed by Arup, they thought it would be great if people could really concentrate on sound in Trafalgar Square, which would take people away form hustle and bustle into a space where they can concentrate and immerse themselves in sound. The original idea was that they would be able to take people away from London to another place, to hear the sound of a melting glacier or an acoustic model of the big bang. The plan is effectively two concentric circles: the inner circle for the sound and the outer circle forms the entrances. Both pieces mask the background noise. They are shells to shield the noise. More images and architects’ description after the break.
UP Projects and The Architecture Foundation has announced Duggan Morris Architects as winner of the Open Architecture Challenge to design the next phase of the acclaimed Floating Cinema project. This project has been commissioned by the Legacy List with corporate partner Bloomberg as part of the Bloomberg East series of artist-led programs to animate the waterways in East London working in partnership with the Canal and River Trust.
Commissioned by the Greater London Authority as part of the Wonder series to celebrate the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, BLOOM, designed and developed by Alisa Andrasek and Jose Sanchez from The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, is a crowd sourced garden. Designed in neon pink, which is the official Olympics color, BLOOM is conceptualised as an urban toy, a distributed social game and collective “gardening” experience that seeks the engagement of people in order to construct fuzzy BLOOM formations. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Architects: Serie Architects Location: London, UK Design Architects: Serie Architects Executive Architects: Franken Architekten Structural Engineering: AKT II Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Edmund Sumner
Now in its eighth year, the Maggie’s London Night Hike invites you to participate in a ten to twenty mile “hike” through the capital city and explore a number of landmark buildings and iconic structures. In collaboration with the Open House London, the event aims to raise money for charity and give recognition to important, well-designed places and spaces that have a positive effect on everybody’s well being.
London Night Hike patron actress Hermione Norris said: “I have been involved in the Maggie’s London Night Hike for four years and I am really looking forward to taking part again this year. It is always an incredible event with great buildings, entertainment, support and most importantly – amazing people. I’m looking forward this year to exploring the Roca Gallery, which is a new building on the route as well as having a night time trip on the London Eye.”
Other buildings confirmed include the Sterling Prize-winning Maggie’s West London centre, City Hall, Leadenhall Market, Royal Institute of British Architects, Royal Geographical Society, and 20 Gresham Street with more to be announced.
Maggie’s Night Hike will take place in London on Friday, September 21, 2012. Register here!
With a quarter million LEGO bricks and 300 hours of finger intensive labor, Warren Elsmore and his wife constructed a mini replica of the 2012 Olympic Park in London. As Gizmodo reports, the model weighs about 80kg and would cost around $300,000 to build for scratch!
Dover Street Market has commissioned Zaha Hadid to design this site-specific installation to showcase in their London store during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The concept behind “Aqua” references the formal language of Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre.
Zaha Hadid: “Designing for Dover Street Market is an exciting opportunity to install a piece inspired by the fluid geometries of the London Aquatics Centre: a wave of liquid, frozen in time, right in the heart of London.”
