Cobe Architects has just unveiled its winning design for the future Danish Parliament in Copenhagen. Aiming to revitalize Denmark’s historic administrative center, the studio envisioned an inviting, accessible space, “where everyone can experience democracy up close.” The design features an underground visitor center, leading to facilities within the Parliament Courtyard, and an interconnected pathway uniting historic buildings formerly used by the Danish National Archive.
At the beginning of 2022, curator Lesley Lokko announced the title of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia: “The Laboratory of the Future.” The theme’s intention is to highlight the African continent as the protagonist of the future, a place “where all these questions of equity, race, hope, and fear converge and coalesce,” in the words of the curator. As the fastest urbanizing continent, Africa is viewed as a land of potential, but also of challenges, where matters of racial equity and climate justice are played out with a significant impact on the world at large.
Yet in the late 1950s, another laboratory of the future was taking shape, one where the novel ideas of Modernism produced grand monumental designs and complete urban structures at an unprecedented scale: India. In the search for a modern and democratic image, the newly independent country welcomed Western architectural masters such as Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn and entrusted them with a wide range of commissions, from the urban layout of Chandigarh and its major governmental buildings to universities, museums, and smaller scale domestic projects. The result is a mixture of cultures, influencing one another to unexpected results.
Emerging Ukrainian architecture firm NOVA - New Office of Vital Architecture- designed the new Mariupol City Hall as a proposal to reconstruct the city, almost devastated during the current war in Ukraine. The project seeks to open the discussion on urban democracy and civic life through architecture by replacing traditional hierarchical schemes with an open and accessible government building.
The Dragon Tower in Hanoi by Dewan Architects + Engineers in collaboration with TTA, is the winner of the Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2022 in the Mix-Used category; the tower is projected to transform Vietnam's landmark. Designed to be the longest building in the world, the 700.000 square meters complex will provide ministerial lobbies, meeting rooms, and public spaces, including a nursery, library, supermarket, restaurants, and a learning center. A water reservoir and green terraces are incorporated into the design to increase the building's efficiency and accessibility.
In the world of politics, the notion of “transparency” refers to the honesty constituents expect of their elected officials. In architecture, it means something much more literal: a transparent surface, like a window or glass wall, is one you can see through. In the small Dutch municipality of Albrandswaard, architects Gortemaker Algra Feenstra have melded the two definitions with a circular, glass town hall. As the firm writes of the project, “a single transparent space...shows the process of democracy as soon as you enter.”
In the midst of the tall, rectilinear skyscrapers which make up downtown Chicago appears a short, sloped glass curtain wall, topped by a protruding truncated cylinder structure: Helmut Jahn’s Thompson Center. Opened in 1985, the building was to be home for a variety of agencies of the State of Illinois, and its design was a play off of the traditional American statehouse, updated with glass walls symbolizing government transparency and an immense atrium evoking the atrium spaces found in most United States’ statehouses. The interior spaces, however, stirred further contention with the public. Unconventional red, blue, and white paints coat the interior elements—a design choice many believed to be provocative and even jarring.
Two teams have been announced as the finalists of a competition to rebuild Norway’s government headquarters after it was bombed in 2011 during the country’s worst terrorist attack in modern history. The state building agency Statsbygg selected G8+, comprised of A-Lab and LPO Architects, and Team Urbis, which includes the firms Haptic and Nordic, out of a group of seven teams to create a safe, inviting hub of ministry buildings for central Oslo.
