After two weeks and more than 30,000 nominations, we are proud to announce the finalists for the 2011 Building of the Year Award, a selection of the best projects made by our readers.
The shortlist for the awards includes 70 projects in 14 categories, a selection that shows the diversity of projects featured at ArchDaily during the past year. From small interiors to large scale buildings, designed by renowned practices and young architects, in different locations around the world.
I’d like to thank everyone who participated during the nominations round, as the finalists are outstanding.
You can vote for your favorite projects starting today and until March 6th at midnight EST (all the rules here):
During the process we worked very hard to log and flag every attempt to abuse the voting system, removing fake accounts and automated votes, and we wil continue to do so during this stage.
Nearly two years after OMA was announced the winner of a two-stage international competition, the construction of the new Taipei Performing Arts Center has commenced. This ambitious project, led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, generated a lot of debate among architects when it was announced back in 2009 due to its particular form. Morphed by a series of programmatic operations, the form intersects three types of theater in order to accommodate a variety of performances.
The Proscenium Playhouse, which seats 800, is expressed on the exterior as a large sphere while the other two theaters, respectively capable of seating 1,500 and 800, are represented as peripheric cubes. All the stage accommodations are brought together within the central cube, allowing for more flexibility as theaters can be used independently or combined, thus expanding the possibilities for experimental performances – an art that is very strong in Taiwan. At the same time, and in a similar way as OMA’s CCTV building in Beijing, China, a “public loop” channels circulation through the building, exposing the spaces that make the TPAC work, areas typically are hidden from the public but are as revealing as the performances themselves.
In this aspect, the building is like a machine at work with its engine exposed, somehow reminding me of OMA’s Prada Transformer – a machine-like building (the anti-blob) that changed its configuration to host different types of events.
The 180 million dollar project is set to be completed in 2015. More details, including sections and updated renders, after the break:
According to Derek Thompson’s article for The Atlantic, the Brookings Institute recently published a ranking of the world’s 200 largest metropolitan economies. The Global MetroMonitor division of the Brookings Institute, published the report on January 2012. In this brief synopsis, he reveals the “10 Fastest-Growing (and Fastest-Declining) Cities in the World”. Among the fastest growing is Santiago, Chile, the only Latin American country in the top 10. The top 10 is primarily populated by Asian countries – China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all have multiple cities in on the list. Conversly, the tail end of the list is dominated by Western European countries most affected by the economic downturn, with just two cities from the US – Sacramento, California and Richmond, Virginia.
The survey primarily focuses on their economic development comparing income and job growth, to say nothing of the cultural, societal, and political circumstances which may or may not be contributing the dynamism of each city’s economy. Thompson points out, two of the fastest growing cities in the world, Izmir, Turkey and Santiago, Chile are also among the poorest. Developing countries have the most to gain as they join the global economy but it may still be sometime before the economic growth balances a comfortable standard of living. Watch the interview with Alan Berube from MetroMonitor.
With all of that in mind, follow us after the break for a look at the list.
Together, BIG+ Times Square Alliance + Flatcut + Local Projects and Zumtobel celebrates Valentines Day with a BIG red pulsating heart in the middle of Times Square, New York. The 10-foot-tall heart pulsates as the 400 transparent, LED lit, acrylic tubes sway in the wind. Once people touch the heart-shaped sensor, the light grows brighter and the pulse beats faster. Joining hands with more people will increase the intensity of the heart.
“The heart reflects what Times Square is made of: people and light – the more people, the stronger the light,” Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Partner, BIG.
See the love with the video above and more images after the break.
The year 2011 was a great one for ArchDaily, and all thanks to you. In terms of web traffic, in our network we grew to more than 200,000 daily readers who viewed 350 million pages during 2011. Our social media reach has grown to nearly 500,000 Facebook fans, more than 60,000 followers on Twitter and an ever growing presence on Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest, all connecting with architects around our passion: Architecture.
ArchDaily is more than big numbers. It is recognized as the ultimate source of inspiration for thousands of architects around the world, who are covering new ground in architectural discussion, and generating new opportunities by being part of the world’s largest architecture network. During 2011, we participated in important events, such as the Pritzker Prize ceremony in DC, the AIA National Convention in New Orleans, among others, and visiting architects all across the US, in the UK, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. We’ve had the chance to interview renowned architects such as Steven Holl, Renzo Piano, Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, and a long list of people who are advancing this profession. We spoke at the AIA Arkansas Convention, Harvard GSD, along with other events and schools. We launched our first local version, ArchDaily Brasil (more to come during this year!) and introduced our first tool to help architects collect and order information: My ArchDaily. We will continue to work very hard during 2012, with all our passion, to keep you connected to everything that is happening in the architecture world and help you with tools, as you will be the responsible of the noble task to shape our built environment.
Since 2009 we have held the Building of the Year Awards, an instance in which all of you make your voice heard by nominating and voting for the best projects featured on ArchDaily during the year. This is a peer based award that recognizes firms of all sizes, trajectories and locations. You can check the results of the previous editions here: 2009 and 2010.
Once again we have partnered with HP to present the 2011 Building of the Year Awards, starting today Feb 7th, 2012 at the following link:
The nomination stage will run for 2 weeks until Feb 21st, 2011. All buildings featured under the available categories during 2011 are elegible for this round. You can nominate one building (in one category) per day.
Like last year, we will authenticate the votes with the My ArchDaily platform, so we can assure that the nominating and voting processes are conducted by the community. You can nominate once per day, so you can propose your favorite projects from Feb 7th to Feb 21st, after which 5 buildings per category will continue to the voting round, between Feb 22nd and Mar 6th. The winners will be announced on Mar 7th, 2012.
Given that you are in charge of the selection process, we have decided to give away 2 custom engraved iPads 2 during the nominating/voting stages (more details on the rules below). Also, the most voted firm will receive an HP Designjet T2300 eMFP printer (MSRP US$8,000).
Once again I’d like to thank all our readers for your support in 2011, and rest assure that we are working on new ways to improve ArchDaily in 2012. Our inbox is always open, so feel free to leave your feedback, recommendations and support on the contact page.
The Water Cathedral is a large, horizontal urban nave for public use. The structure is made up of numerous slender, vertical components, which hang or rise like stalactites and stalagmites in a cave, varying in height and concentration. The project incorporates water dripping at different pulses and speeds from these hanging elements, fed by a hydraulic irrigation network. When filled with small amounts of water, the stalactite components act as interfaces out of which water droplets gradually flow and cool visitors below. The stalagmites topography provides elements of shade, along with plants and water that collect under the Water Cathedral’s canopy.
When the statistics showed architecture as the field of study where recent graduates had the highest unemployment rate, some suggested that future students ought to pursue different educational backgrounds. Courtney Lukitschhas shared her response to such a claim by defending the merits of an architecture education. ArchDaily reaches a wide range of readers – from established professions to students just entering the field – and we’d like to hear your thoughts on the value of pursuing an architecture education.
“Recently published reports about education degrees ‘not to pursue’ in architecture, design and art, made the rounds in the national press and A&D industry, raising eyebrows and demanding closer scrutiny. Needless to say, this news spread like wildfire on social platforms such as Facebook and twitter, oddly to scant commentary among top-tier critics, academics and educators, architects and designers, a decidedly vocal and opinionated group of incredibly well educated professionals.”
Read the rest of Lukitsch’s article after the break.
By David Fano and Steve Sanderson, edited by Julie Quon
A well-known and often cited truism of architecture notes that forty (as in years) is considered young for an architect and most don’t start hitting their stride until they’re seventy. This may partially explain why well-known architects seem to live forever… they’re simply too busy to die.What is often omitted from this narrative is how the architects spent the first twenty (or so) years of their careers as freshly minted graduates prior to being recognized by their peers in the profession as “making it”.
If you approach any architect about their early-career experience in the profession you will get slightly different versions of the same story. They are all, in essence, about paying your dues.
Taking a low-paying position for an A or B-list architect, where the compensation for long hours is the privilege of anonymous design on important projects, and in return a few hours are spent outside of the studio (usually with a group of similarly indebted classmates) on open design competitions that pay trifle stipends.
Taking a low-paying adjunct teaching position, ideally in a design studio, where compensation for long hours is the privilege of working on your design interests with students in order to become a part of the elite tastemakers and to one day be shortlisted for an exclusive cultural competition.
Taking a slightly better paying position with a corporate firm and spending your hours outside of work designing kitchens and bathrooms for wealthy friends and family with hopes that their social reach is broad enough to lead to additional commissions that will one day be substantial enough to make a living.
Taking a slightly better paying position with a corporate firm and slogging through the incredibly tedious intern development and professional registration process in order to move up the corporate hierarchy. The goal is to eventually become a principal or partner with an established firm or even break off on your own with some of the established firm’s clients.
In each of these scenarios, the only path to a significant commission is to spend the few hours outside of these paying jobs in the pursuit of establishing credibility and reputation through exposure in architectural publications. In any case, it seems that around the age of forty is when all of this hard work finally begins to pay off with consistent commissions. For the vast majority that never succeed by following these models, there is usually a ‘pivot’ (in startup terms, a change in approach) that leads to a stable corporate position, a full-time teaching post, or an exit from the profession altogether (we did the latter, see Fed’s post). The difficulty of ‘being’ an architect is branded about in schools (oftentimes by people with little to no actual experience in the field) as a source of pride, a perverse hazing ritual intended to weed out all but the most dedicated adherents to the ideals of architecture as a pure form of expression, a rationale which further reinforces architecture as an intellectual pursuit for the privileged (that topic is for another post).
French photographer Franck Bohbot has shared with us a series of photographs based on the interiors of historical Parisian theaters. Bohbot strived to capture the cultural life of the architecture with the absence of people, paying homage to the empty theater. Naked, the photographs reveal a sense of grandeur and intimacy. Continue after the break for more images.
Through our interview program, I’ve had the chance to meet with some of the world’s most renowned architects, while creating a moment to share their views about the profession with our readers.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently gave the National Park Service 30 days to revise a truncated and controversial quote inscribed on the newly built Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The inscription, paraphrased by architect Ed Jackson Jr. and artist Lei Yixin, turns a speech about humility into a quote that makes MLK look like, in the words of Maya Angelou, an “arrogant twit.” Thankfully this will be corrected, but it remains unclear to me how the design team will satisfyingly right this wrong.
https://www.archdaily.com/200374/martin-luther-king-jr-national-memorial-controversyChristopher N. Henry
As the New Year begins, architects and designers everywhere search for the latest information in hopes to find inspiration to provide them with ample amounts of motivation. Unsure of my inspiration, I found myself reading Neither Restrospective, Nor Predictive: Dieter Rams & Design of Self on the Semantic Foundry WordPress. I was then reminded of the famous German industrial designer Dieter Rams and his ten principles of “good design”. The straightforward list lays down key points, clearly stating what makes a good design. This information is a timeless source of inspiration that most any designer can appreciate.
Continue reading for Dieter Rams Ten Principles of “Good Design”
