When comparing 44 major cities, Arcadis' 2016 International Construction Costs Index has found New York to be the world's most expensive city to build in. London came in as a close second, reporting cost of building prices (on average) 20 percent higher than Paris. In contrast, Taipei was labeled as the "cheapest" city for construction. According to the study, "strong currencies and significant resource constraints" were a result in higher prices. Read on for the complete lists of most expensive, and least expensive, cities for construction.
Taipei 101, once the world's tallest building before losing the title to the Burj Khalifa, has set a new record. As Popular Mechanics reports, the 1,667-foot-tall skyscraper's internal "tuned mass damper" swayed more than it ever has before in last week's Typhoon Soudelor. Also known as a "harmonic absorber," the massive damper moved a full meter from its central position at the tower's top in an effort to keep Taipei 101 upright during the early morning storm's 100 to 145 mph winds.
The weighted ball, measuring 18-feet in diameter and weighing 728 tons, sits on hydraulic cylinders suspended between the 87th and 92nd floors. It was engineered for winds up to 135 mph. Watch the damper (and building) sway in the video below.
Just over six months have passed since we announced the winners of our 2015 Building of the Year (BOTY) Awards, in which 31,000 of our readers helped us to narrow down over 3,000 projects to just 14 winners. Over six editions of our BOTY Awards, we've given awards to 83 buildings - some of these have gone to established names in the field, from OMA to Álvaro Siza; however over the years our peer-voted awards have also brought attention to emerging architects like Tiago do Vale Arquitectos and given international exposure to architects that were previously only known locally such as sporaarchitects.
Of course, with six months since BOTY 2015 we're also around six months from the award's next installment, making now the perfect time to start looking ahead to 2016. Find out how to ensure your firm has a chance to join the prestigious list of ArchDaily's BOTY winners after the break.
https://www.archdaily.com/771730/submit-your-project-for-inclusion-in-archdailys-2016-building-of-the-year-awardsAD Editorial Team
Exterior Rendered View. Image Courtesy of URBAN AGENCY
Designed by URBAN AGENCY and BET Satge, Le Twist is set to be a series of 10 luxury apartments with a ground floor restaurant that opens onto a semi-public garden. Commissioned in 2013, the architects were asked to re-evaluate an existing proposal for Montpellier, France. By sliding and twisting each storey, the firm was able to "comply with and 'twist' French planning law," gaining an extra 40% of floor space.
Now in their 17th year, the AR Emerging Architecture Awards are one of the world's most popular and prestigious prize for up-and-coming architects, giving emerging practices invaluable impetus on their trajectory to wider recognition and success. Previous winners of the Awards have included Sou Fujimoto (Japan), Thomas Heatherwick (UK), Sean Godsell (Australia), Jurgen Mayer H. (Germany) and Li Xiaodong (China).
The AR Emerging Architecture Awards, with a £10,000 prize fund, celebrate excellence in completed work. Entries can be made across a very broad spectrum of project types. Buildings, interiors, landscaping, refurbishment, urban projects, temporary installations, furniture and product designs are all eligible. Jury members, including David Adjaye, OBE, Odile Decq, Peter Cookwill review each submitted project. The deadline for entries is September 11. Submit you work, here.
KRIS YAO | ARTECH has been selected to design the New Taipei City Museum of Art. The winning competition scheme, a “Contemporary Museum of Art among the Reeds” aims to “fuse local landscape with cultural imagery” to create a “sustainable” platform for emerging artists and an entertainment destination for tourists. Continue reader to learn more.
Videos
Courtesy of OMA; Photography by Philippe Ruault
OMA's Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC) has topped out in a ceremony including Taipei’s mayor Hau Lung-pin, and OMA's Partners in charge of the project, Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten. Even in its current skeletal state, the rigidly geometric form is clearly expressed with it's central cube supporting three protruding auditoriums, two cubic and one spherical. The design of the TPAC is in many ways experimental, incorporating a looped public path which shows off the building's backstage areas, and flexible auditoriums which can even be combined, offering extraordinary stage spaces that allow performances which would be impossible in any other theater.
Ahead of the topping out ceremony we spoke to partner in charge David Gianotten, who explained the building's design concepts and the challenges (or rather, surprising lack of challenges) in the construction, and told us "you will only understand it when you have seen it. It's super exciting, we encourage everybody that loves architecture to come and see it because it's spectacular."
Construction is underway for OMA’s Taipei’s Performing Arts Center! The project, started back in 2012, has generated a buzz in the architecture community for its peculiar form. Conceived as a number of theaters intersecting as a group of three simple geometries, the Performing Arts Center will provide flexible stage space to host experimental theater and art performances. This video—filmed by a drone—shows some of the preliminary structure that has already been erected. The building is expected to be completed in 2015.
Standing outside of the recently completed Stock Exchange headquarters, he answered our questions about urbanization, innovation and the intricacies of running an office in an environment with such rapid urban growth. Shenzhen has proven an experiment of economic openness and is a vivid example of China’s recent growth. The city’s skyline is practically a physical graph of an upward-trending economy, with buildings designed by nearly every internationally renowned architecture firm. But OMA’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange building stands apart from the rest not only because of its impeccable construction (a rarity in the fast-paced building booms of Chinese cities), but also because it houses the institution that lists China’s biggest companies.
The 254 meter tower is an elegant structure that combines pure volumes with an exoskeleton grid clad in translucent glass. It represents a characteristic OMA-approach to innovative architectural solutions, made possible by extensive programmatic and technical research.
Read the full interview (which includes Gianotten’s insights on the study of architecture, the role of architects, and the importance of simplicity when communicating complex innovation) after the break.
OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center Set for Completion in 2015.
It’s official: Taipei has been selected as the 2016 World Design Capital (WDC). This doesn’t come by surprise, as back in August they were the only city selected by International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) to move onto the competition’s final round.
The city campaigned under the slogan “Adaptive City: Design in Motion,” focusing on how design can improve the living standards of their citizens. To strengthen their campaign, officials proposed 20 projects under the “Public Policy by Design” program that intended to strengthen the connection between designers, the public and funders. Over 600 workshops have already been conducted, encouraging collaboration between the city’s top officials and design professionals, and many more are scheduled to take place.
With the recent news that Rafael Viñoly Architects'20 Fenchurch Street (or the "Walkie Talkie") in London has been producing an unusually hot solar reflection, dubbed the "Death Ray," we've put together a list of seven architectural blunders around the world - from the worrying to the downright absurd.
