Design studio Space Encounters has partnered with Creative Holland to build a temporary museum for Milan Design Week. The installation is made to combine room for art and design, with atmospheres that promote relaxation, contemplation and focus amidst the pace of the Salone di Mobile. The Museum was designed as a journey through different spaces in which visitors constantly interact with Dutch creativity.
Italian architect Beatrice Bonzanigo of IB Studio has revealed her design for Casa Ojalá, an off-grid, mobile micro home to be unveiled at Milan Design Week. Designed with over 20 configurations in only 27 square meters, the patented project was made to be easily assembled in any location. Bonzanigo created the design so occupants can better connect with nature while minimizing their environmental impact.
Emporis has announced the results of its annual Emporis Skyscraper Award, recognizing the best new supertall buildings completed in the previous year. This year, the top prize was given to the Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and Baum Architects. The tapered tower, South Korea’s tallest, also houses the world’s highest glass-bottomed observation deck, for architects who can handle the 1820-foot (555-meter) drop.
Andres Gallardo’s photo series “Urban Geometries” continues, this time the self-taught photographer chose to capture the architecture of Milan. The series focuses on the architectural contours of contemporary structures, varying in both age and function while highlighting the materiality of the façades, architectural, industrial details of each building.
Gallardo’s Milan series features the work of Zaha Hadid Architects and Grafton Architects. Other images in the series include elements of the city that often go unnoticed, such as a series of colorful recycling receptacles.
The Basilica di Siponto by Edoardo Tresoldi has been awarded the “Gold Medal for Italian Architecture – Special Prize to Commission,” considered the most prestigious award in Italian architecture.
The wire mesh sculpture reinterprets the volumes of an Early Christian basilica which formerly sat on the site of the sculpture, adjacent to an existing Romanesque church. The scheme serves as a “bridge towards the memory of the place” allowing the public to contemplate time and history.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlist of four finalist projects in the running for the 2018 RIBA International Prize. A biennial award open to any qualified architect in the world, the International Prize seeks to name the world’s “most inspirational and significant” building. Criteria for consideration include the demonstration of “design excellence, architectural ambition, and [delivery of] meaningful social impact.”
The inaugural prize was awarded to Grafton Architects in 2016 for their UTEC university building in Lima, Peru, described as a “modern-day Machu Picchu.”
Carlo Ratti Associati has released details of their schematic design for the University of Milan’s new science campus, featuring robotically-assembled brick facades, porous communal areas, and natural oases. Working in collaboration with Australian real estate group Lendlease, the “Science for Citizens” proposal will sit within a new Milan Innovation District, located on the site of Milan’s 2015 World Expo.
Located within this new district, and home to over 18,000 students and 2,000 researchers, the “Science for Citizens” proposal seeks to “put forward a vision for an open campus that becomes a testing ground for innovative education while fostering exchanges between the university and the surrounding innovation neighborhood.”
Apple’s Piazza Liberty Store, designed by Foster + Partners, has opened to the public in Milan, Italy. The scheme is located under an existing piazza close to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of the most popular pedestrian streets in Milan.
The store is defined by a dramatic waterfall which surrounds the entrance while forming the backdrop to a large outdoor amphitheater. Piazza Liberty is the first Apple Store to be constructed in Italy following their retail design collaboration with Foster + Partners.
The 2018 Milan Design Week is now underway, a festival which this year is expected to attract over 300,000 visitors. Every year, the festival brings together a wide range of practitioners and design companies resulting in unusual yet fascinating collaborations and installations.
Below, we have compiled a list of collaborations to look out for throughout the week, including investigations into water, healthcare, and micro-living.
Milan based office ZarCola and Francisco Rodriguez were tasked with designing a bar and theatre for a new Milanese music festival.
The project site is within the garden of an ancient villa. A baroque trail weaves through the garden’s dense foliage, around many fountains and clearings.
As a trailblazer of Brazilian Modernism, Oscar Niemeyer is celebrated for his bold, sinuous forms, and his use of the “the liberated, sensual curve.” Paul Goldberger described it best when he wrote that “Niemeyer didn’t compromise modernism’s utopian ideals, but when filtered through his sensibility, the stern, unforgiving rigor of so much European modernism became as smooth as Brazilian jazz.”
When Georgio Mondadori, chairman of the Italian publishing house Mondadori, commissioned Niemeyer to design the company’s new headquarters in 1968, he wanted the building to look like the Itamaraty Palace (also known as Palace of the Arches) in Brasília. Niemeyer agreed, but given his playful spirit, he deliberately deviated from the earlier design and proceeded to build what he would later identify as his favorite of the projects he completed in Europe. Read on to see a striking set of sixteen photographs of the Mondadori building by Milan-based photographer and visual artist Karina Castro, who was commissioned by Mondadori to capture their headquarters over 40 years after the building's completion.
In this short film, part of a four-part video series co-produced by Curbed and The Verge, the Bosco Verticale—the towering residential forest in the dense urban environment of Milan—is examined for its architectural prowess, as well as its botanical aptitude. In the film, architect Stefano Boeri and expert arborists explain what makes the skyscraper so unique, as well as it's very real potential effect on air pollution in the city.
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