Interviews: The Latest Architecture and News

“The world’s most sustainable eco-city,” Masdar City, is preparing for its next phase of development, as unveiled in the award-winning detailed master plan (DMP) by CBT. Depicted in a comprehensive masterplan by Foster + Partners, Masdar was originally envisioned as a carbon-neutral elevated city without cars, instead featuring pod-based transportation located below the podium. As the first phase was constructed, including the Masdar Institute of Technology, a new vision for the city began to emerge, eventually leading to CBT’s pedestrian-oriented innovation community plan for Phase 2.

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On a tree-lined avenue in Singapore, fittingly named Orchard Road, Apple has opened its first Flagship store in the city-state, highlighting its role as a global center for creativity and innovation. Designed by Fosters + Partners, in collaboration with the design team at Apple, the Orchard Road Flagship seeks to create a new social focus by working in tandem with nature, blurring the boundaries between inside and out.

As part of a global, interdisciplinary effort to tackle climate change, architects are devoting resources towards optimizing the energy efficiency of buildings old and new. This effort is more than justified, given that buildings account for almost 40% of UK and US emissions. Although sustainability is now a hallmark of many new architectural schemes, the energy inefficiency of structures from the 18th and 19th centuries still contribute to global carbon emissions on a vast scale.

In order to address the challenge of intelligently retrofitting existing buildings, the Harvard Center for Green Buildings (CGBC) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in collaboration with Snøhetta and Skanska Technology, are retrofitting the CGBC’s headquarters in a pre-1940s timber-framed building, aiming to create one of the world’s most ambitious sustainable buildings. HouseZero is driven by uncompromising performance targets, such as 100% natural ventilation, 100% daylight autonomy, and almost zero energy required for heating and cooling. The result will be a prototype for ultra-efficiency, reducing reliance on energy-intensive technology whilst creating a comfortable indoor environment.

The American/Turkish architecture firm Eray Carbajo has unveiled Urban Rural, a new typology of urban living set to become a benchmark for future development in Istanbul, Turkey. The vision behind Urban Rural is for a hybrid model of living, combining close proximity to urban centers with the lush landscape of rural life. Challenging the status quo of typical residential typologies, the scheme will consist of modular hexagonal units with triangular gardens, forming an active façade designed to become a future landmark for the city.

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Growing like an outcrop amongst the hills of Gothenburg, the Kulturkorgen by Swedish firm Sweco Architects offers the public an opportunity to watch, engage, and perform. The scheme is a result of an architectural competition for a new Culture House in the city, run in collaboration with Architects Sweden. The winning proposal, who’s name translates to ‘Basket of Culture’, acts as both a building and a square – a social arena where flexible interior spaces act in tandem with a generous public green landscape for recreation and gathering.

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Calling for entries to design pavilions in line with notions of sustainable construction and fabrication methods, urbanization, and renewable materials, CHART ARCHITECTURE has announced the five finalists for its annual competition, addressing the theme ‘LIVING CITY’. Proposals included the use of IKEA bags, biogas reactors and solar energy amongst other innovative design solutions, judged by a jury headlined by Bjarke Ingels. The eventual winner will be awarded a mentorship program with a professional architect, a construction expert and a developer, intended to “support a young architect’s career as well as to promote cross-sector collaboration and networking.”

Here are the five finalists of the 2017 CHART ARCHITECTURE Competition:

Anne Lacaton (France) is an award-winning architect and part of the duo Lacaton & Vassal, having made reuse of existing materials and integration of daylighting in standard construction their signature architecture and adding a social dimension to architectural design.

Imagine that London becomes the world’s first National Park City. This large-scale and long-term vision has the potential to transform how Londoners live and how the city works. But what would London look like?

Omar Gandhi (Canada) from Omar Gandhi Architect is recognized as one of the world’s top 20 young architects by Wallpaper* Magazine and as one of 2016’s ‘Emerging Voices’ by The Architectural League of New York will be one of four keynote presentations by critically acclaimed architects that will be live-streamed from the international forum for daylight and architecture, the VELUX Daylight Symposium, to be held for the 7th time, 3-4 May 2017.

Future cities have captured our imaginations for centuries. From Thomas F. Anderson’s 1900 vision for a Future Boston, through Le Corbusier’s 1924 Ville Radieuse, to modern ‘future-proof’ cities such as Songdo, South Korea, architects and town planners have considered how cities will respond to the movement of people, capital, technology, and ideas.

Today, groups such as the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT have been created with the goal of suggesting ideas for the city of tomorrow. Through a technique known as ‘Futurecraft’, the Senseable City Lab places the designer in a possible future environment and asks them to generate design proposals which could enhance daily life. As we are about to see, some of their ideas would make heads turn even in a galaxy far far away.

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Researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab have launched a new platform using Google Street View data to measure and compare the green canopies of major cities across the world. Treepedia, created in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, is an interactive website which allows users to view the location and size of their city’s trees, submit information to help tag them, and advocate for more trees in their area. In the development of Treepedia, the Senseable City Lab recognizes the role of green canopies in urban life, and asks how citizens can be more integral to the process of greening their neighborhoods.

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The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have named the recipients of the 2017 Top Ten Awards, celebrating buildings that best exemplify the integration of great design, great performance and sustainable design excellence.

Now in its 21st year, the COTE Top Ten Awards program was established to honor projects that protect and enhance the environment through an integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology.

Chicago-based Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled plans for One Bangkok, a new 16Ha mixed-use development in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand. Working in collaboration with architects, engineers, sustainability experts and landscape architects, both local and international, SOM seeks to create the single largest private-sector development in Thailand to date - a vertical village providing homes and places of work for an estimated 60,000 people. Through One Bangkok, SOM challenged themselves to translate the vibrancy and energy of Bangkok's neighborhoods into a vertical environment, whilst promoting a 'sense of place' and district-level sustainability.