The Asia Pacific winners of the Holcim Awards for sustainable construction were recently announced in Singapore. The Holcim Awards is an international competition that recognizes innovative projects and future-oriented concepts on regional and global levels. The competition is designed to encourage architects, planners, engineers and project owners to go beyond conventional notions of sustainable construction in their work and to harmonize ecological, social and economic concerns. Projects and concepts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and related fields are eligible for entry in the competition. More images and information on the winning competition proposals after the break.
Along with Moszkva square, Móricz Zsigmond circus is a very busy public transportation junction, located in south Buda. With a round art relic in its middle – the Gomba (meaning mushroom because of its form) is a popular public space for people to meet, with several trams and buses intersecting, along with the Budapest Metro – subway line 4, presently under construction. The concept by Hetedik Műterem Ltd. was to treat the art relic of József Schall (from 1942) with proper respect but determined courage. At the same time, they redefined the currently closed space structure, to put forward and intensify the presence of the urban public space. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located on the floodplain of Rio Tamanduateí, one of the most important rivers of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Park D. Pedro II is a symbolic public space, with important historic buildings with its connection between the center of town (the historical hill) and the east zone. The transformation by Una Architects, H+F Architects, Metrópole Architects and Lume of the Park D. Pedro II, beyond its internal limits, has as premise of an urban redevelopment that could radiate qualities to the surrounding neighborhoods. Briefly, the plan provides three axes of intervention. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The new extension designed by 1+1=1 Claudio Silvestrin Giuliana Salmaso architects and planners for laRinascente in Piazza della Repubblica, Florence, is conceived as a symbol of strength through the square, yet of lightness, in the detail of the Archangel’s wing in Filippo Lippi’s painting of the Annunciation. Visually, the new extension is floating above Palazzo del Trianon while preserving its authentic architectural structure. More images and project description after the break.
Located at the heart of the city of London, the Barbican will be featuring the upcoming screening of Mur Murs (1981) and Get Out of the Car (2010) as part of their Architecture on Film season on November 29th at 7pm. More information on the films after the break.
DesCours is a free, public, ten-night architecture and art event now in its fifth year, held December 2-December 11 in New Orleans.
This event invites internationally renowned architects and artists to create architecture installations within ‘hidden’ locations in the heart of New Orleans, including private courtyards, rooftops, abandoned buildings and walkways, all locations normally unseen, inaccessible or unused by the public.
For the International Conceptual Design Competition of The Two Towers – CDB Tower & Minsheng Financial Tower, Saraiva + Associados focused on a unique and harmonious force, along with a modern and innovative approach to create a building of intense character. The essence found in this project was the result of an international competition in which Saraiva & Associados reached the six finalists: The Two Towers in Shenzhen. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The 17th International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development in the Information Society GeoMultimedia, hosted by CORP is part of their annual events which has been taking place since 1996 and are Europe’s major congresses on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society. The events are extraordinarily interdisciplinary, whereby usually a lot of new ideas and projects are generated.
Jaeger and Partners Architects’ design for the Shenzhen Archive Towers recently received a Design Excellence Award in the AIA Chicago 2011 Design Awards program. This competition scheme was acknowledged in the Unbuilt Design Award category. Shenzhen’s Meiling District resides between City Center and new north railway station, forming an urban center with the Archive site at its heart. Creating an authentic urban space, the design unifies four parcels (city blocks) by removing dividing streets. Circulation is re-organized, thereby harnessed, by introducing a perimeter one-way street system. The enlarged spatial boundary establishes an appropriate scale and symbolic relationship with the City Plaza. More images and project description after the break.
The detailed master plan for the Jordan Development Zones Company (JDZ) by Sasaki Associates encompasses 40 square kilometers of land along the north and east coast of the historic Dead Sea. Over the past 15 years, the Kingdom of Jordan has focused on a balanced approach towards development and preservation in order to capitalize on increased tourism and to provide improvements to local existing communities. In 2008, a development authority was created to establish a detailed master plan as a sustainable framework for existing committed lands, future development parcels, infrastructure provisions, and natural resources protection. The resulting master plan establishes a comprehensive and site specific approach to the social, economic and environmental sustainability issues facing this stunning setting. More images and project description after the break.
Visual Workshop shared with us their proposal for the Hotel Liesma competition. The aim of their concept is to make a new landmark of the surrounding neighborhood as a contemporary, sustainable and functional hotel. More images and brief description after the break.
Australian studioINDEX Architecture has completed a proposal for a new hotel on the beach side of a resort in Jurmala, Latvia. The design is located a short walk from the beachfront and includes 130 rooms, a restaurant, conference and health club facilities. The brief called for a design based around the theme of music that reused an existing tower on the site. The ground floor is to be constructed from a curved timber LVL framed roof structure, which was drawn from the waveforms of Handel’s ‘Water Music.’ The tower reuses the existing concrete structure with a new curtain wall featuring a white ceramic interlayer pattern. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Museum of Architecture and Design has published the first film from the series of six Small and Smart – Expressions of Contemporary Slovenian Architecture in Film: Biotechnical Faculty, ARK arhitektura Krušec (Ljubljana, 2009-2010). Small and Smart consists of six short films, one of each of six built architectural projects. Each employs a simple story – a development, an exchange – to move through and relate the experience of the architecture. As the films move through and document the spaces and exchanges, certain key features of the architectures are revealed and emphasized. All architectures here are recent builds (2006 and later) and are of varied types, programs and scales: private house, row house, industrial facility, sacred, educational/institutional, public/sports. Together they reflect representative currents, developments and practices in the best of Slovenian architecture today.
“Chapeau”, a sports park and new urban place for the woods is characterized by an unprecedented relief, introduced in the process of design thinking related to soil and the empty space it creates. The buildings that make up the urban landscape, perfectly calibrated on the urban fabric, have complicated the delicate choice of the approach and the relationship to the existing building of the hall. Early in the project, the intention of Michel Carlana, Luca Mezzalira, Curzio Pentimalli and Riccardo Sanquerin was to integrate the gym in the environment in a local sense. By isolating it from the front of the hall, the building became one of the five elements of life. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The project for the central bus terminal of the city of Majes, designed by the team of Jimmy Liendo Terán, Kátia de Oliveira Vieira and Carlos Arellano Rivera, is located in an irrigated desert area and is part of a plan to provide an equal distribution of the production activities by improving the circulation between the cities in the South of Peru. Their concept, which won the second prize in the national competition, is based on two ideas: first, the separation of the movement for arrival and departure; and second, the plot with a difference in height, about 4,5 meters between parallel sides, which is hard to notice because of the size of the terrain. More images and project description after the break.
oiio architecture office shared with us their proposal for the ‘Regeneration and Reuse of the Western Historical Docks and their surroundings’ for the Municipality of the City of Heraklion where they won the 2nd prize in the national architectural competition. Facing all the demands that emerge from the restoration of the Western Arsenali the compositional process tackles to organize the articulation of a visually legible cultural hub at the point where the old city meets the sea. More images and project description after the break.
Published by Analist Group and organized and curated by the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism_presS/Tfactory, the OUTSIDE THE BOX competition is focused on identifying design ideas for resolving various problems in emergency situations. During recent years, numerous natural phenomena have upset the lives of many communities scattered across the globe. Examples include Fukushima in Japan, Haiti, L’Aquila and New Orleans. The Box is a small temporary structure capable of offering various services: a space that is simultaneously a workstation and information center open to public to allow people remain in touch with the rest of the world. A fundamental role in the elaboration of the design proposal must be entrusted to technology, whether low- or high-tech. The challenge launched by the competition is to combine sustainability and parametric design. The submission deadline is 15 January, 2012. More information on the competition after the break.
Conceived and promoted by the Ferrara Faculty of Architecture, Italy, with the financial support of the Fassa Bortolo company, the aim of the International Award for Sustainable Architecture, now in its ninth edition, is to contribute to the research of a system of development in the building sector. This represents one of the fields of human activity with the greatest impact on the environment, that is more sustainable than our current model, which has lead to a state of deterioration and pollution, bringing us to the verge of a global crisis of the Earth’s entire ecological system.
