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Futurism: The Latest Architecture and News

NEOM Unveils Two Futuristic Coastal Skyscrapers in Saudi Arabia

NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s Mega Project, has just announced a new upscale coastal destination within the sustainable regional development in northwest Saudi Arabia. Positioned along the Gulf of Aqaba, Epicon aims to redefine hospitality and architecture standards. Featuring two pointed skyscrapers, it features a prominent hotel and luxury apartments.

The scheme compromises two towers at 225 meters and 275 meters, respectively, housing a premium 41-key hotel and 14 suites and apartments. Nearby, the Epicon resort includes 120 rooms and 45 beach villas, blending coastal living with luxury amenities. Epicon is designed to be a haven from everyday life, providing experiences varying from high-end cuisine to water sports.

Utopian Practice, Political Power, and Community in Architecture: An Interview with Olalekan Jeyifous

After being awarded the prestigious Silver Lion for his contribution to this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous shows no signs of slowing down. Currently in the midst of preparing his entry to the next Sharjah Architecture Triennial, he also recently celebrated the opening of Climate Futurism, a group exhibition that highlights the power and efficacy of artists’ methods and processes to imagine a more equitable future – and is working on a public monument to former United States Representative Shirley Chisholm as part of New York City's She Built NYC initiative, among other projects.

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Balancing Neoclassical and Futuristic Design: The Utopian Dream Bathroom Concept

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Nowadays, the term “utopia” is used to describe an idea that seems unattainable —at least in the contemporary context— intrinsically related to philosophical, scientific, urbanistic, and architectural concepts, among others. The close connection between utopias and architecture is evident, as this discipline is often associated with imagination. Some notable examples include “The Unreliable Utopia of Auroville's Architecture” and “The City in Space: A Utopia by Ricardo Bofill. In this context, architects and designers alike use design as a means to develop innovative and disruptive ideas through various elements.

Although considered an idealized concept that does not exist, some designers have ventured into exploring the notion of utopia. AXOR, in conjunction with the Valencia-based design studio Masquespacio, has turned the page by conceiving and bringing to reality a new bathroom concept for a unique hotel suite that embodies their vision of personal luxury. Titled “Utopian Dream”, this design response blends vibrant colors with unexpected details, a combination that this duo defines as a mystic experience above the clouds.

TOURIST x FUTURO: Immersive Experience at Futuro 13 in Berlin

The Futuro House is a unique, futurist-style dwelling designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the late 1960s. The house was envisioned as a portable, prefabricated structure that could be easily transported to remote or difficult-to-reach locations.The house has a distinctive flying saucer shape, with a circular floor plan and a domed roof. The outer shell of the house is made of reinforced fiberglass, with a high-gloss finish that gives it a futuristic look. It sits on four legs, which elevate it slightly off the ground and provide stability on uneven terrain.

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BIG's Latest Publication Formgiving Explores the Architecture of Turning Fiction into Fact

If we ever wonder what the future could look like, all we have to do is take a look into our past, and observe how far we have come since thousands, a hundred, or even ten years ago. Life was radically different back then and it will be just as different in the future. And since we are well aware that the future merely resembles the present, we have the possibility to shape our future the way we want to. TASCHEN's latest BIG book installment Formgiving. An Architectural Future History explores the past, present, and future, drawing a timeline of the built environment from taking shape to giving form.

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Bêka & Lemoine Wander through the Futurist House of Giacomo Balla in their Latest Film

Commissioned for the exhibition “Casa Balla - From the house to the universe and back” at MAXXI museum in Rome, Italy, Bêka & Lemoine’s have released their latest film OSLAVIA. The cave of the past future, a tour inside the house-atelier where Giacomo Balla, prominent Futurist painter and major figure of the avant-garde of the early 20th century lived. The Futurist house where the artist lived and worked from 1929 until his death will be open to the public for the first time during the time of the exhibition.

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Futuristic Architecture of the 70s: Photographs of a Modern World with a Twist of Science Fiction

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The Manifesto of Futurism, written by Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909, was the rallying cry for the avant-garde movement driven by the writers, musicians, artists, and even architects (among them Antonio Sant'Elia) in the early 20th century. After the manifesto's publication, Futurism quickly came to the forefront of public conscience and opened the way for many other cutting edge movements in the art world and beyond.

While the movement would undergo a significant decline in the years following World War II, it reinvented itself decades later during the Space Age, when faith in technology and industry were at a fever-pitch and the world's powers were racing to put humans on the Moon. All of a sudden, humanity had a new cultural panorama that inspired every facet of society--from musicians, to scientists, to architects. With the combination of engineering and art, not to mention the bountiful scientific achievements of the time, works of architecture turned into works of science fiction. 

Spotlight: Jan Kaplický

Radical neofuturist architect Jan Kaplický (18 April 1937 – 14 January 2009) was the son of a sculptor and a botanical illustrator, and appropriately spent his career creating highly sculptural and organic forms. Working with partner Amanda Levete at his suitably-named practice Future Systems, Kaplický was catapulted to fame after his sensationally avant-garde 1999 Lord's Cricket Ground Media Centre and became a truly innovative icon of avant-garde architecture.

AD Classics: TWA Flight Center / Eero Saarinen

This article was originally published on June 16, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Built in the early days of airline travel, the TWA Terminal is a concrete symbol of the rapid technological transformations which were fueled by the outset of the Second World War. Eero Saarinen sought to capture the sensation of flight in all aspects of the building, from a fluid and open interior, to the wing-like concrete shell of the roof. At TWA’s behest, Saarinen designed more than a functional terminal; he designed a monument to the airline and to aviation itself.

This AD Classic features a series of exclusive images by Cameron Blaylock, photographed in May 2016. Blaylock used a Contax camera and Zeiss lenses with Rollei black and white film to reflect camera technology of the 1960s.

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Vincent Callebaut Architectures Creates a Futurist "Metamorphosis" of Luxembourg's Hotel Des Postes

Vincent Callebaut Architectures has released details of their competition-winning “Metamorphosis of the Hotel Des Postes” in Luxembourg City. The Paris-based firm’s proposition centers on propelling the historic site into a contemporary era, and to “reveal the intrinsic heritage qualities of the building.”

The scheme, which centers on the historic stone and concrete Hotel Des Postes designed by State Architect Sosthène Weis between 1905 and 1910, will be transformed by the addition of a domed “chrysalis” volume in the heart of the building’s courtyard.

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Life on Mars? Foster + Partners to Showcase Extra-Terrestrial Habitats at UK's Goodwood Festival

Foster + Partners will detail its vision of life on Mars and the Moon at the UK’s Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018. Forming part of the festival's Future Lab event, the vision will be presented through a range of models, robotics, and futuristic designs exploring the future of life in space.

The firm's showcase will include a virtual reality experience, allowing visitors to explore the inside of a proposed state-of-the-art habitation pod.

The Man Who Designed the Future: Norman Bel Geddes

B. Alexandra Szerlip gives a free, public talk about her new book, The Man Who Designed the Future: Norman Bel Geddes and the Invention of Twentieth-Century America (Melville House).

A ninth-grade dropout who found himself at the center of the worlds of industry, advertising, theater, and even gaming, Norman Bel Geddes designed everything from the first all-weather stadium to Manhattan’s most exclusive nightclub, to Futurama, the prescient 1939 exhibit that envisioned how America would look in the not-too-distant sixties.

AD Classics: Space Needle / John Graham & Company

AD Classics: Space Needle / John Graham & Company - Landmarks & Monuments, Cityscape
Courtesy of Wikimedia user Rattlhed (Public Domain)

The opening of the Century 21 Exposition on April 21, 1962 transformed the image of Seattle and the American Northwest in the eyes of the world. The region, which had been known until that point more for its natural resources than as a cultural capital, established a new reputation as a center of emergent technologies and aerospace design. This new identity was embodied by the centerpiece of the exposition: the Space Needle, a slender assemblage of steel and reinforced concrete which became—and remains—Seattle’s most iconic landmark.[1]

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Photographer Raphael Olivier Explores the Suspended Reality of North Korea’s Socialist Architecture

North Korea is one of the few countries still under communist rule, and probably the most isolated and unknown worldwide. This is a result of the philosophy of Juche – a political system based on national self-reliance which was partly influenced by principles of Marxism and Leninism.

In recent years though, the country has loosened its restrictions on tourism, allowing access to a limited number of visitors. With his personal photo series “North Korea – Vintage Socialist Architecture,” French photographer Raphael Olivier reports on Pyongyang’s largely unseen architectural heritage. ArchDaily interviewed Olivier about the project, the architecture he captured, and what he understood of North Korea’s architecture and way of life.

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What Will Become of America's Big Box Stores?

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© flickr user walmartmovie. Licensed under CC BY 2.0

The Walmart Supercenter is generally considered one of the great antagonists of architecture around the world – the hulking behemoth who sold its integrity for the consumer convenience of having everything in one place. Though the first Walmart Supercenter didn’t open until 1988, big box stores have existed in some form since the 1960s, luring in shoppers with low prices and curbside loading lanes. For all the user psychology design that goes into them, the original designs of these buildings rarely pay much mind to their architectural or urban consequences, excluding a few notable exceptions.

Regardless, for the past 20 years big box stores have continued to prosper, prompting tenants to leave their homes and move on to even larger structures, leaving behind giant, open frameworks – for sale on the cheap. In a recent essay for 99% Invisible entitled Ghost Boxes: Reusing Abandoned Big-Box Superstores Across America, author Kurt Kohlstedt explores the architectural potential of these megastructures, drawing inspiration from the architects and communities that have successfully converted them into valuable assets.