Yanacancha-Huaquis Cultural Landscape, Peru. Image Courtesy of World Monuments Fund
The World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced a commitment of more than US$10 million to go towards preservation projects to protect culturally significant places from around the globe in urgent need of intervention. The initiatives vary in scope, from winterization efforts at Ukrainian heritage sites to protecting remote archeological sites representative of Peru’s Chachapoyas Civilization. The suite of projects launching in 2023 aims to address and help mitigate the threats that heritage sites are facing: conflict, climate change, and underrepresentation.
Master plans, or large-scale urban planning projects, are one of the main tools for shaping and structuring land use and development to ensure that the built environment is coherent and functional. The interventions vary in scope and approach. While some projects are extending the buildable area by creating floating neighborhoods off the coast of Florida, others are reusing the existing spaces and heritage to reimagine the future of their communities.
Tu Casa by Lutolli Architects + Partners. Image Courtesy of Lutolli Architects + Partners
Architects play an important role in creating healthy, functional and aesthetically pleasing environments. Interior design represents a natural continuation of the same prerogative, and its importance has been accentuated in recent years, from the lockdown forcing many people to remain indoors for extended periods of time, to the rise of remote work. The task of the interior designer is not decorating spaces, but planning for an effective use of space, understanding the needs of the user and highlighting the intrinsic qualities of a space. Acoustics, lighting, material properties and proportions all play a role in achieving a coherent and enjoyable interior space.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights interior design projects submitted by the ArchDaily community. From a pastel-colored library in Turkey to a renovated symphony hall in San Diego, US, this selection of unbuilt projects showcases how architects design interior spaces by integrating textures, materials, light, and color in well-proportioned spaces. The article includes projects from Turkey, US, Switzerland, Indonesia, UK, and Denmark.
As the new year begins, we look forward to the most exciting projects planned to open in 2023. The world's second-tallest tower is currently under construction in Malaysia; Egypt is almost ready to open its largest archeological museum, while MVRDV is currently renovating a large-scale brutalist landmark in Albania. Featuring internationally renown architectural offices such as Snøhetta, OMA, Studio Gang, Zaha Hadid Architects, BIG, along with the latest winner of the Pritzker Prize, Francis Kéré, the following selection presents projects from all around the world. They also range in scale and program, from international airports to sculptural arts galleries or museum expansions.
Several projects presented here have also featured in the previous year's compilation. Resource availability and labor issues generated by the pandemic have also continued to influence opening schedules, but with a diminishing impact. Following the predicted trends for 2023, more and more projects involve the adaptive reuse of existing structures. An underlying theme is visible in the increased interest in expanding artistic and cultural venues and integrating historical heritage into the expression of contemporary architecture.
Lesley Lokko by Jacopo Salvi. Image Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
On Friday, King Charles III has released the New Year Honours List 2023, recognizing those in the UK who have demonstrated exemplary service or achievements in their fields. Ghanian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Lesley Lokko is among those who have been named an Office of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to architecture and education. In December 2021, Lesley Lokko was announced as the Curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, which will be held from Saturday, 20 May to Sunday, 26 November 2023.
Designed by Atkins, a new zero-carbon secondary school in West Sussex has received planning permission from the West Sussex County Council. The school will be created at Homes England’s new Brookleigh development near Burgess Hill and will offer educational facilities to 900 local children. The building is designed to generate its own renewable energy on-site, eliminating the need for any fossil fuels. It also aims to achieve Passivhaus certification, the highest standard od energy efficiency a building can reach.
The Royal Institute of British Architects has awarded RIBA House of the Year 2022, to a "contemporary new family house in rural Dorset," the Red House by David Kohn Architects. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, the structure "reinterprets the style in an intentionally provocative way [...] [with] playful eccentricity, including oversized eaves, patterned red brickwork, and contrasting bold green details".
Architecture office Herzog & de Meuron has unveiled plans to revamp the Liverpool Street station in London. The scheme includes “vital upgrades” aimed at transforming the Victorian-era station into a fully accessible transportation hub fit to accommodate the 135 million people using the station annually. It also includes the addition of 840,000 square feet of offices and a 190,000 square feet hotel in two new structures, 10 and 6 stories high, respectively. These new interventions have attracted criticism from conservation groups. The proposal is currently undergoing its first round of public consultation. The development is overseen by Stellar, working with MTR, the operator of rail transport services and Network Rail.
Foster + Partners has revealed the design for a new mixed-use development in the northern end of the central London high street. The building is located on Queensway, opposite the Whitley, the famous department store, which is also being transformed by Foster + Partners as part of a larger redevelopment scheme. Named The William, after William Whiteley, the eponymous founder of the famous Whiteleys, the project includes six floors of office space, shops, and 32 new homes, 11 of which will be affordable.
Beirut-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh has been announced as the designer of the 22nd annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. Titled “À Table,” the French expression for sitting together to eat, her proposal introduces a slender wooden structure with nine pleated petals supported by radial ribs. Inside the pavilion, a ring of tables and benches invites visitors to enter, sit down and relax, eat or work together. According to the architect, the modest space and low-slung canopy is meant to make people feel close to the earth. The Serpentine Pavilion will be open from June to October 2023.
Updated exterior view. Image Courtesy of Selldorf Architects
Selldorf Architects have released a revised version of the plans to remodel the National Gallery and the Sainsbury Wing, both classified as Grade-I-listed monuments. Sainsbury Wing is also the recipient of the 2019 AIA Twenty-five Year Award. The plans for the Sainsbury Wing, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and opened in 1991, have faced intense criticism, with former RIBA Journal editor Hugh Pearman calling the remodeling plans “unnecessarily destructive”. The plans to remodel were first revealed earlier this year as part of the NG200 Project to celebrate the National Gallery’s bicentennial in 2024. The project proposes the remodeling of the Sainsbury Wing’s front gates, ground-floor entrance sequence, lobby, and first-floor spaces.
Landmark Project 'Swivel' by Sabine Marcelis. Image Courtesy of Sony Design
The London Design Festival is an annual event that brings together designers, practitioners, retailers, and educators from across the globe. This year’s program of events, exhibitions, and installations invites creative leaders to exchange ideas and solutions for some of the most pressing issues of our time, like climate change, pollution, and resource depletion. The festival includes the Landmarks Projects. As part of this initiative, Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis has created “Swivel”, an outdoor installation in central London. Other installations like Sony Design’s “Into Sight” pavilion or Sou Fujimoto’s “Medusa” exhibition explore visual and sensorial effects through physical and virtual mediums.
Muyiwa Oki has been elected as the next President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), one of the highest positions in UK architecture. As RIBA's first Black President, Muyiwa Oki will take over the two-year presidential term from Simon Alfred starting on 1 September 2023.
Every city is a complex environment, bringing together people, cultures, architecture, commerce, and even nature. While experiencing a city, a lot of attention is given to its appearance, but appearance is not everything. The theory of sensory design aims to go beyond vision and explore the richness of the built environment through textures, smells, and sounds. For city officials and planners, a lot of attention generally goes towards how a city looks and sounds, but in terms of smell, the focus is mainly on managing waste or cleaning unsanitary areas. Yet the sense of smell, so often overlooked, is strongly linked to the creation of emotional memories. It contributes to our understanding of the world; it reveals otherwise hidden cultural practices, and it rounds up the experience of an environment.
If one were asked to picture a Catholic Church, the first image to come to mind would probably resemble a medieval gothic cathedral with buttresses, pointed arches, and a spire pointing toward the sky. On second thought, many more styles could easily be identified as catholic architecture: the simple yet grandiose structures of the Romanesque or maybe the ornate styles of Baroque and Rococo. An image more difficult to associate with sacred architecture is that of Modernism. The Roman Catholic Church is a particularly conservative establishment. Modernism, on the other hand, is revolutionary; it is rational, functional, and technical; it rejects ornaments and embraces innovation. Surprisingly, in the years after the end of the Second World War, places of worship defied expectations. Blocks of concrete, raw materials, angular shapes, and exposed structures have all been employed to break from tradition and create churches that barely resemble a church. This article will explore Modernist mid-century Church architecture with the support of images from Jamie McGregor Smith.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the 29 winners of the 2022 RIBA National Awards for architecture. Ranging from net-zero carbon office buildings to family homes, schools and education facilities, urban developments and cultural buildings, this year’s projects provide an insight into the key trends that shape UK’s architectural and economic environment. Many projects focused on uniting communities, by creating spaces as a result of a collaboration between the local residents and the architects, or by offering unique venues for musical or cultural events. The future of housing was also addressed, with projects illustrating a vision for modern rural living or creating new city blocks centered around community gardens. Another area of interest was the restoration and adaptation of existing buildings, be it a 900-year-old former dining hall of the Cathedral or an iconic 1950s Modernist house.
At the turn of the 19th century, a British publishing house would release a book written by an English urban planner – a book with an optimistic title. The title of this book was To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, later reprinted as Garden Cities of To-morrow. The English urban planner in question was Ebenezer Howard – and this book would lay the foundations for what would later become known as the Garden City Movement. This movement would go on to produce green suburbs praised for their lofty aims, but it would also produce satellite communities that only catered to a privileged few.
