Infrastructures: The Latest Architecture and News

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Silvio d’Ascia Architecture, Omar Kobité Architecture and Eric Giudice Architects have been announced as winner of an international competition to design the new TGV high-speed railway station in Kénitra. The winning design aims to unite the northern and southern parts of the city by providing two entryways joined by one geometrical volume whose triangular framework recalls traditional shapes found in vernacular Moroccan architecture.

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Beating out an impressive shortlist of architectural heavyweights, including Sou Fujimoto Architects, Snøhetta, and FR-EE/Fernando Romero Enterprise, IND [Inter.National.Design] + Powerhouse Company, in collaboration with ABT, have won the Çanakkale Antenna Tower Competition to design a 100-meter Observation and Broadcast Tower for the historic city of Çanakkale in western Turkey.The tower will be completed in 2015, in time for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Galipoli.

Interestingly, this is the second design for an "iconic" antenna tower we've seen this month; you can check out Smiljan Radic's winning design for the antenna tower that will alter the skyline of Santiago, Chile here. And read after the break for IND + Powerhouse Company's description of their winning design.

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Smiljan Radic, Gabriela Medrano, and Ricardo Serpell have won a competition to design a new landmark for Santiago, Chile: an antenna tower to be placed on the summit of San Cristobal Hill, in the heart of the city.

The 'Santiago Antenna Tower,' a unique telecommunications tower with panoramic views, should be completed in 2017, in time for the centenary of the Metropolitan Park of Santiago.

Further detail and the architect's description of the project, after the break.

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With minimal intervention, Swedish architecture firm visiondivision claims that the underused structure beneath Stockholm’s Tranebergsbron bridge could be transformed into a pedestrian walkway and informal cinema. If built, this proposal would not only remove pedestrians from the dismal walking space provided alongside the bridge’s bustling car lanes, but it would also dramatically shorten the walking distance between the city island of Kungsholmen and western suburb of Bromma.

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PLASMA Studio, in collaboration with Groundlab, won first prize in an international competition to masterplan the relocation of the Innichen/San Candido train station in North Italy. The project, now under construction, forms a new "Mobile Centre" that integrates a new public plaza, skate park, youth centre and more into a streamlined rail station that enhances connectivity throughout the town.

More information, after the break...

Writing for Future Cape Town, this article by Julia Thayne - originally titled The Skycycle: A Plan for the People? - explores the proposal by Foster + Partners to build an elevated cycle highway above London's, explaining why it is little more than an optimistic pipe-dream.

Headlines in London this November were grim. Six cyclist deaths in less than a fortnight. All but one cyclist killed in accidents involving trucks, buses, or coaches. People were understandably concerned. From 3,000 miles away, my mother sent me a fluorescent coat and another set of bike lights, and as a cyclist commuter, I avoided roundabouts that I had previously sailed through, noting that cars seemed to be driving more slowly and other cyclists thinking twice before flouting traffic laws.

In response to the deaths, the public and public sector alike launched a “cycling state of emergency.” Officers patrolled the streets to ticket both vehicles driving unsafely and cyclists disobeying road rules. A thousand citizens gathered for a candlelight vigil at the roundabout where three cyclists’ lives had been claimed. Another thousand staged a “die-in” outside of Transport for London’s headquarters, in which protesters lay down in the streets, using their bicycles to block traffic. Newspaper columns, magazine articles, and blog spots examined and re-examined the safety of cycling routes around London. Mayor Boris Johnson’s Cycle Superhighways (four blue-painted, supposedly safety-enhanced cycling routes around London) became a particularly contentious topic of discussion, as three of the six cyclist deaths during those two weeks (and of the 14 deaths thus far in 2013) had occurred on or near one of these routes.

From the conversation about cycling and safety, the Skycycle has emerged.

Read on for the problems with the Skycycle project

The AIA has given the 25 year award - for architectural projects which have stood the test of time - to the Washington DC Metro System. Designed by Harry Weese and opened in 1976, the metro system has been praised for its application of a sense of civic dignity to the function of transportation, as well as the consistency of the design across its 86 stations. You can read an accompanying article about the design of the Metro System here.

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Located in Doha, Sharq Crossing is a set of three interconnected bridges spanning almost ten kilometres in the Doha Bay. Designed by the famed architect Santiago Calatrava, the bridge will connect the city's cultural district in the north to Hamad International Airport and the central business district in West Bay. The bridges, which are designed to accomodate as many as 2,000 vehicles an hour per lane, are also flanked by a series of subsea tunnels to manage and direct the flow of traffic across the bay.