Public Space: The Latest Architecture and News

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Videos

Designing public spaces without considering the circulation and parking of bicycles is no longer an option in today's world. Accessibility for the free traffic of cyclists must also be accompanied by adequate security conditions, incorporating these devices in the best possible way to parks, sidewalks, parking lots, and the streetscape as a whole. 

Are you designing an urban space, or do the exteriors of your project require a correct link with the circulation of bicycles? Check these support elements that can help you to generate a better city for the urban commuter on wheels.

A new children’s urban playground has captured the attention and energy of children of all ages in the center of Valparaíso’s Cultural Park (Chile). The metallic structure is 40 meters long and has a colorful undulating path where children can run, jump, hide and slide.

La Serpentina is one of the public space projects designed by ELEMENTAL (Alejandro Aravena). It was built for Somos Choapa in Chile and is currently in Valparaíso as part of the XX Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism of Chile.

La Serpentina follows a similar design to the equipment at the Bicentenary Children’s Park (2012) in Santiago. La Serpentina is one of two interventions entered by Somos Choapa in the Biennial. The second project is a prototype with a series of touch screens installed in the main area of the Cultural Park of Valparaíso, accounting for over 100 concrete initiatives of the project.

Last week marked the opening of Canada’s first ever funicular in downtown Edmonton, a cable-mechanized incline elevator aimed at making the city’s largest green space more accessible.

Publically funded, the $24million project features the 100 Street Funicular to transport mobility aids, strollers, and bikes, as well as a generous staircase for walking, running and lounging. Concrete sitting blocks are dispersed up the 170 steps from a promenade at the bottom. Visitors can walk along the promenade to a lookout point or ascend the stairs or funicular to the raised lookout for extensive views of the river valley.

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Videos

Heatherwick Studio’s glimmering staircase monument, ‘Vessel,’ has topped out after eight months of construction at New York City’s Hudson Yards development. Consisting of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings, the sculptural public space has now reached its full height of 150 feet, which will allow it to offer sweeping views of Manhattan’s west side when it opens in early 2019.

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MVRDV has collaborated with Korean school children to complete a new permanent urban installation tor the third edition of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation’s Gwangju Folly Festival.

Aimed at exploring how architecture contributes to urban regeneration through both decorative and functional means, the I LOVE STREET was developed through a participatory process that asked students from Seosuk Elementary School to contribute drawings expressing their desires for the street. The end result was a graphic, sensory-stimulating design featuring zones in multitude of materials including grass, fountain, sand, wood, a trampoline and a giant chalk board.

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Jaime Lerner defines urban acupuncture as a series of small-scale, highly focused interventions that have the capacity to regenerate or to begin a regeneration process in dead or damaged spaces and their surroundings.

Rather than urban acupuncture, the intervention that took place in the rugged geography of Medellin’s Comuna 13 was like an open-heart surgery, a large-scale action aimed at bringing about physical and social change of what was once one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the world’s most dangerous city.

The bilingual guides take us through the neighbourhood, showing us the escalators that gave the intervention worldwide fame. At the same time, in one of the many refurbished squares, a CNN team records interviews with locals and foreigners who visit by the hundreds what was, until recently, an unlikely tourist destination. A drone flies over the scene, we do not know if it is operated by the omnipresent police, CNN or tourists.

Continuing a legacy of outstanding public architecture, the General Services Administration (GSA) Design Excellence Program seeks to commission our nation’s most talented designers and artists to design federal buildings of outstanding quality and value. These projects are to demonstrate the value of true integrated design that balances aesthetics, cost, constructability, and reliability; create environmentally responsible and superior workplaces for civilian federal employees; and give contemporary form and meaning to our democratic values.

Oslo-based architecture firm Dark Arkitekter hopes to jumpstart the revitalization of the city’s cultural center with their proposed rehabilitation of the National Theatre and redevelopment of the surrounding public space. The government is currently planning to renovate the 118-year-old structure, but Dark Arkitekter was unimpressed with the minimal-effort plan and so put forth their design on behalf of the Theatre.

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C'est officiel : on peut se baigner en eau vive à #Paris ! Venez vous jeter à l'eau à #ParisPlages #LaVillette! @FrancoisDagnaud @jfmartins pic.twitter.com/bv4B4gw6Qc

— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) 18 de julho de 2017

On July 15, the city of Paris announced the opening of three natural swimming pools that receive their water supply from the Seine River, located in the La Villette Basin in the 19th arrondissement of the city. Spanning a total of 1,600 square meters, the new attraction is divided into a children's area, with depths of up to 40cm; an area of medium depth of 1,2m; and a larger pool, with depths of about two meters.

The swimming pools are part of the "Swimming in Paris" project, presented for the first time by the City Council of The French Capital in June 2015, with the goal of "encouraging the practice of swimming for Parisians and Tourists." According to an official statement from the city government, the project aims to allow, by 2020, the "modernization of water parks and the creation of new swimming pools and areas for bathing."

Emerging international architecture office KOSMOS has unveiled 6 projects exploring potential collective spaces in the city of Basel, Switzerland. Unveiled during Art Basel, the speculative projects were featured in the Forum Basel exhibition curated alongside Museum Director Andreas Ruby and Stéphanie Savio, and emerging Chilean practice Plan Común. Held at the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM), the architecture exhibition was held “in reaction to the increasing commodification of urban space today” and dedicated itself to investigating new possibilities for public space in Basel. Check out the projects, with descriptions from KOSMOS, below.

Of the four finalists selected for Blank Space’s “Driverless Future Challenge”, which was announced last month, “Public Square” has emerged as the winning entry, with a plug-and-play scheme to transform New York’s public realm for its streets and pedestrians. Designed by FXFOWLE and Sam Schwartz Engineering, the proposal was selected by a panel of New York City commissioners, for its response to the competition brief with a flexible system that accommodates a variety of public space typologies, while creating a harmonious coexistence between pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles.

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