Public Facilities: The Latest Architecture and News

Chicago Union Station, by Germany-based Graft Architects will treat the user group as two: the traveler and the inhabitant.

The traveler has a destination, a purpose, a need to get through the process as efficiently as possible. The penetration into the site will be minimal; the tickets purchased en route, the space and time between the city and the outbound areas are optimized. The inhabitant seeks an extended stay; the coffee shop, the sunday morning market, life anchored to the city. The station becomes a rock jutting out of a raging river. The place of the inhabitant is at the center of the chaos, a place to better experience the city, a place to relax, a place to watch the chaos unfold.

The station serves as infrastructure for the city. It’s not a singular building, a place confined by boundaries. The interface with the city is blurred, inside and outside undefined.

Seen at designboom. More images after the break.

It’s Tuesday, that means Round Up day! Over the past weeks we brought you our selection of Patio Houses and Beach Houses. It’s time to go bigger, with our first selection of Public Facilities previously featured on ArchDaily.

drdharchitects has won first place in the international competition to design a new library and concert hall in Bodø, Norway.

The Bodø Kulturhus and Library will consist of two public buildings; a new city library (5,500m²) and a three-auditorium concert hall (7,350m²), creating a new cultural centre for the Norwegian coastal city.

The results of the competition were announced in Bodø, Norway on 27 February. drdharchitects beat five other practices to win the invited competition, including CF Moller, Medplan, General Architecture, Langdon Reis Zahn and Lundgaard & Tranberg.

On winning the competition, practice director Daniel Rosbottom said, “These are the last two sites left in the urban centre of Bodø, following the WWII bombing which devastated the city. We are, in effect, completing the reconstruction through the building of a new cultural heart. It is a great honour to be given such a responsibility.”