The first edition of the UIA 2030 Award celebrated projects that contribute to the delivery of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Located in Germany, Hong Kong, Argentina, Bangladesh, and China, the winning interventions were announced during the eleventh session of the World Urban Forum in Katowice, Poland. Organized by the International Union of Architects (UIA), together with the UN-HABITAT, the award program gathered 125 submissions in 40 countries.
ArchDaily had the chance to talk to the winners behind the acclaimed architecture, to discuss furthermore the interventions and certain specificities of each and every project. In addition, the winning teams shared their upcoming and ongoing architectural endeavors as well as their point of view on the importance of architects engaging with the Sustainable Development Goals.
Housing Upcycle Program, Barrio Mugica of Buenos Aires. Image Courtesy of Special Project Unit Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica, Buenos Aires City Government
Organized under six categories: Open Category, Improving Energy Efficiency, Adequate, Safe & Affordable Housing, Participatory, Land-Use Efficient & Inclusive Planning, Access to Green & Public Space, and Utilizing Local Materials, the jurors picked a winner per section, yet were unable to identify an overall winner in the open category and chose instead to recognize six projects as Highly Commended, honoring in total 5 laureates and 15 commendations.
Seoul, similar to numerous large cities across the globe, are characterized by land scarcity, overpopulation, staggering real estate prices, and urban segregation. These living conditions forced architects and urban planners to pursue alternatives, (re)introducing new models of co-living, low-cost housing in suburban areas, and mixed-use developments. However, proximity to work, educational, commercial, health facilities, and public transportation, as well as optimized infrastructure and better governance have sustained living within compact city boundaries desirable. Tucked within the busy streets of Gangseo-gu, Five Story House by stpmj is a project that explores the relationship between single-family housing and dense urban contexts beyond investment value and contextual constraints.
Designed for an insurance company, The Centraal Beheer building by Herman Hertzberger in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, is widely recognized as one of the high points of the structuralist movement. MVRDV, in consultation with Herman Hertzberger’s office AHH, is transforming the celebrated building, making it the centerpiece of a new sustainable residential neighborhood while preserving its structure and core principles. The project is part of a larger area of development, a three-hectare site near the city’s train station. MVRDV’s design proposal introduces approximately 650-800 homes while keeping the focus on preservation, greening, and innovation.
Four years ago, the Pritzker Prize–winner Tadao Ando spectacularly converted a 1920s apartment building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago into exhibition spaces for a gallery named—in deference to its street address—Wrightwood 659. The gallery is currently staging a resourceful exhibition on wood-frame construction, the method by which more than 90% of U.S. houses are built.
Rarely has wood-framing been the subject of an architectural show. It’s too mundane a topic—or at least it seemed that way until two associate professors at the University of Illinois Chicago, Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, conceived the American Framing exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. One year after Venice, the much talked-about exhibition makes its American debut at Wrightwood 659.
Great Gulf Group, Dream, and Westdale Properties, have unveiled renders of Frank Gehry's newest architecture in Toronto, Canada. Set to leave a mark on the city's skyline, Forma, the architect’s first residential tower in Canada and his tallest building yet rises 73 storeys and features a thoughtfully-appointed Gehry-designed lobby along with a striking custom art installation that reflects his visionary approach, as well as interiors by international design studio Paolo Ferrari.
Powerhouse Company has revealed a new design for THIS., a new mixed-use development in Amsterdam’s North District. Overlooking the waterfront of the IJ river, the complex offers the necessary amenities for both working and living in an area close to the city center. The ensemble includes a new office building, two waterfront private sector residential buildings, and two social housing blocks containing a total of 2017 homes. A Hidden Garden, designed by Delva Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, connects the residential and office buildings, creating a space for leisure and social activities.
Manhattan's dense landscape has just received another skyscraper, this time designed by a Portuguese Pritzker Prize Winner. At 137 meters high and with 35 floors, 611 West 56th Street, Álvaro Siza's first building in New York, was just completed, on the outside. The luxury apartment complex, which is also Siza's first work in the United States, has several facilities for its residents, such as a swimming pool, a spa, a gym, a playground for children and rooms for events.
It’s an essential architectural element, one we tend to immediately take note of when we look at buildings new to us – the roof. The roofs that shelter the buildings we see in our cities today are diverse in their typology. Flat roofs are a common sight in the city centers of urban metropolises, hip roofs are a popular choice for dwellings around the world, and the gable roof is arguably the most common of all, a roof type popular in stylized depictions of what a standard house looks like.
MVRDV has revealed the design for its first project in South America. The Hills is a residential project located on the Guayas riverfront in Guayaquil, Ecuador, comprised of six residential towers displayed atop a mixed-use plinth, creating the image of a valley. The towers range in height from 92 to 143 meters, raising taller the further away they are from the riverfront. The whole composition is inspired by the local landscape that merges the natural and the urban environment.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights residential projects submitted by the ArchDaily community. From a small community-dwelling in Ghana to a villa tucked under a hillside in Portugal, this roundup of unbuilt projects explores how architects react to various site topographies, cultures, and material availability when designing spaces that provide more than shelter to their users. The article also includes projects from India, Iran, Ireland, Latvia, Georgia, and Saudi Arabia.
New York-based architecture studio ODA has revealed the design of Ombelle, a duo of residential towers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The two 43-story buildings will accommodate 1,100 rental units, completed with amenities and retail spaces. At the base of the building, an urban plaza connects the development to its neighboring area and Flanger Village. The Ombelle complex is ODA's second large-scale residential project in Fort Lauderdale. The first one, the Kushner tower, is located in the same district.
When cities grow, fuelled by an expanding population, housing becomes an essential component of the urban character of a metropolis. Across the world, housing experiments have been propagated by governments and states, with mixed results, and undoubtedly mixed opinions. The Soviet-era housing estates of Central and Eastern Europe are particularly interesting in that regard. These mass housing projects have been dismissed as eyesores and viewed as unimaginative monolithic structures. The legacy of these developments, however, is a lot more complicated than that.
Foster + Partners has revealed the design of the BWDC Residential Tower, a luxury apartment building in Manila, the Philippines. The new tower combines the city’s vernacular architecture and traditional veranda lifestyle with modern high-rise living. The project is the firm's latest in the tropics which responds to the regions’ intense weather systems, mitigating high temperatures and humidity through passive design strategies.
Housing will always be a theme and challenge for architects. Thinking about it in a way that serves the entire population, including the most precarious contexts, is one of the most complex, and perhaps impossible, tasks to be fully consolidated. Each place and family will always place different priority points on a project, which is why resorting to a standard solution is not ideal. However, several proposals present intervention possibilities that create an intricate seam between the most different factors: basic infrastructure, program, self desires, aesthetics, budget. For this reason, we have gathered here some Brazilian examples of affordable housing, ranging from a single-family house to large residential blocks.
The maid's quarters are "with their days numbered", although they still find a place in the new luxury apartments. The information is from a report published in Folha de S. Paulo in March of this year, which says that in 2018 less than 1% of domestic workers, mostly black women, lived on the premises of their employers - a low number when compared to the 12% of 1995. With the decrease in the number of professionals residing in the employers' homes, the "maid's room" would gradually be no longer part of the architectural plans of Brazilian housing buildings.
The end of the 19th century in the Americas is marked by a wave of historical disputes and political transformations that have as a backdrop the search for a national identity. The period records a series of conflicts and disputes for the independence of what we now know as sovereign countries and republics. In this context, the Pan-American or Spanish-American movements emerged, which, despite having different political influences, aimed at the unification of all the territories of the American continent.
_Domat.jpg?1656485110 "Home modification for low-income Families. Image Courtesy of Domat Architects")
.jpg?1656485127 "Co-creation of Urban Spaces by the Nobogonga River. Image Courtesy of Co.Creation.Architects, Jhenaidah Citywide People's Network, Platform of Community Action and Architecture (POCAA), Community Architects Network (CAN)")
.jpg?1656364895 "Co-creation of Urban Spaces by the Nobogonga River. Image Courtesy of Co.Creation.Architects, Jhenaidah Citywide People's Network, Platform of Community Action and Architecture (POCAA), Community Architects Network (CAN)")
.jpg?1656064406 "© Bae Jihun")
Certitudo_HR.jpg?1655422317&format=webp&width=640&height=580)
.jpg?1655422503 "Herman Hertzberger - Centraal Beheer offices, Apeldoorn (1968-1972). Image via AHH, used under terms of \"fair use\"")
Certitudo_HR.jpg?1655422317)
.jpg?1653990029 "Khayelitsha Township - Cape Town. Image © Olga Ernst under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.")
.jpg?1653955037&format=webp&width=640&height=580)
.jpg?1653955060 "Courtesy of MVRDV")
.jpg?1653955037)
