Interviews: The Latest Architecture and News

Studio Symbiosis Architects is amidst the construction process for Punjab Kesari Headquarters, an 18,000 square meter office space in Delhi NCR, India.

Designed as a fusion of traditional Indian architecture and contemporary office space, the main objective of the project is “to reduce heat gain and optimize façade opening ratio, ensuing no artificial lighting is required on a typical day.”

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Architecture and Urban Planning firm group8asia has won third prize in the Seoul Metropolitan Government competition for the design of Nodeul Island with its sustainable project Seoul Green Dot.

Nodeul Dream Island leads with the idea of Neverland in mind, and is designed as “a utopia where nature and serenity are abundant.” Here, it is hoped that environmental economy, and socially sustainable practices can be utilized to create a space to transform the dense urban fabric.

After discovering a vibrant new pigment of blue by accident, chemists at Oregon State University have brought the compound to market in the form of a paint that looks promising to architectural sustainability.

While experimenting with materials to study applications for electronics in 2009, OSU chemist Mas Subramanian and his team mixed black manganese oxide with other chemicals and heated them to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Little did they know, one of their samples would turn into a brilliant blue color.

Netherlands-based Mecanoo Architecten has unveiled its plans for the new Kaohsiung Station, the centerpiece of the massive Kaohsiung Metropolitan Area Underground Railway Project in Taiwan.

The project, which will occupy an 8.5-hectare site, will act as a green connector unifying different modes of transportation and represent Kaohsiung’s vision for its future as a sustainable city.

London-based Studio Bark has revealed its plans for Black Barn, an environmentally conscious family home in Dallinghoo, Suffolk.

Based on an interpretation of local black agricultural barns, the 300-square-meter house will be clad in charred timber, an ancient Japanese form of natural preservation as a way to enhance the longevity and beauty of wood.

One man’s trash is another man’s building material. Researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (commonly known as RMIT University) have developed a technique for making bricks out of one of the world’s most stubborn forms of pollution: discarded cigarette butts. Led by Dr. Abbas Mohajerani, the team discovered that manufacturing fired-clay bricks with as little as 1 percent cigarette butt content could completely offset annual worldwide cigarette production, while also producing a lighter, more efficient brick.

The Swedish exhibition, “The Forests of Venice,” has been selected as a Collateral Event for the 2016 Venice Biennale. Initiated by Kjellander + Sjöberg and Folkhem; and curated by Jan Åman, the exhibit highlights wood as a sustainable material, while looking at "the interaction between nature and the man-made human habitat in order to respond to climate change and limited resources."

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The Aga Khan Award for Architecture has announced a shortlist of 19 projects selected from 348 entries received from 69 countries. Presented once every three years, the award honors new standards of excellence in contemporary design, social housing, community improvement and development, historic preservation, reuse and area conservation, as well as landscape design and improvement of the environment. The basis for the Aga Khan Award is “to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence.” Selected by a Master Jury, the shortlisted projects will compete for $1 million dollars in prize money. Since its establishment in 1977, over 110 projects have received the award and more than 9,000 building projects have been documented.

MVRDV’s design for the Dutch exhibition “Hola Holanda” at the Book Fair of Bogotá (FILBO) features a modular system of crates that will be repurposed as neighbourhood libraries after the Book Fair ends. Avoiding the waste of resources created by one-time pavilions, the Dutch firm has introduced a playful element of sustainability to the fair, maintaining its spirit even after the event ends.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have selected the top ten sustainable architecture and ecological design projects for 2016.

Now in its 20th year, the COTE Top Ten Awards program honors projects that protect and enhance the environment through an integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology.

A recently released study, entitled Lessons from the Leading Edge, reports that design projects recognized through this program are “outpacing the industry by virtually every standard of performance.”

The 2016 COTE Top Ten Green Projects are:

Zhang Ke is the founder and partner of standardarchitecture, an architecture firm based in China. Still relatively new, the firm has roughly 40 staff members, half of which are from China. Despite their status as a fledgling office, standardarchitecture has already completed a varied range of projects, including urban interventions in the iconic hutongs of Beijing and tourism infrastructure in the Nepal region. In 2015, Zhang Ke and his firm were the focus of an exhibition at the AEDES Gallery in Berlin, titled “Contemplating Basics.” In this interview, Zhang Ke talks about the importance of learning at different schools, as well as his own beliefs about the duty of an architect, the importance of context and his desire to tell stories in architecture.