Tonight, Kengo Kuma will be lecturing at the Woodbury School of Architecture in San Diego at 6:30pm. Shortly following his Woodbury appearance, the Japanese architect will then make his way across the country to Columbia University’s GSAAP (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation)Wood Auditorium in New York City to present his lecture, Minimize: Small Architecture after 3/11, on Wednesday the 10th at 6:30pm. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
Architects: BaksvanWengerden Architecten Location: Oegstgeest, The Netherlands Architects: Gijs Baks, Jacco van Wengerden Project Year: 2009 Photographs: Brandwijk & van Geel
Cinematographer Tomas Koolhaas, son of notorious Rem Koolhaas, has shared with us his latest clips from the feature length documentary film, REM. Set to debut in 2013, the motion picture breaks away from conventional approach to filming architecture and exposes the raw, human experience of Dutch architect’s most famous projects. As Tomas describes, REM gives the audience “a rare insight into the reality of the hidden internal life of the buildings”.
ArchDaily had the chance to discuss the film with Tomas. Continue after the break for the complete interview and another small preview of the film!
New York’s Mayor Bloomberg is pushing for an updated zoning code for Midtown Manhattan which will affect the blocks around Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building, and north toward the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and Lever House. This new code, called Midtown East, would replace existing building height restrictions and allow high-rise towers to soar in the 70-block area currently outfitted with older buildings of lower stature. If Midtown East is approved, developers would be able to build twice the size now permitted in the Grand Central area, bringing an estimated 16,000 employees in a neighborhood that now has 230,000 office workers.
In such a densely populated area of Manhattan, what will be the urban implication of allowing building heights to soar past their current height regulation? While the potential to increase the real estate value is a driving force for such an initiative, will this financial gain outweigh the drawbacks of new stresses that will be placed upon existing infrastructure and city functioning? The Bloomberg administration feels that such an initiative is needed to maintain the Grand Central area as “one of the premier business addresses”; however, the community is not as fast to support the idea and regard the proposal as just another example of Bloomberg’s latest attempts to make his mark on the city before his years in office are through.
More after the break.
Taking place at Princeton University on October 13th from 10:00am-5:30pm, the ‘Performing Architecture’ symposium will bring together significant theorists and practitioners in the fields of architecture and performance and inviting a broader engagement with the artistic and academic community. In parallel with the art world’s return to performance and a renewed search for architecture’s social and political relevance, this symposium seeks to move beyond disciplinary hegemony in the dissemination of architecture today. Including Liz Diller(DS+R), Pedro Gadanho (MoMA), Vito Acconci, Roselee Goldberg, and many others, they hope to offer lasting provocations to how we think of the body, space, structure, and design in the disciplines of performance and architecture – and somewhere between the two. For more information, please visit here.
The summer months have come and gone, which means one thing: the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is winding to an end (on October 14th, to be exact)!
Held at the National Museum on Monday, September 17, the Ministry of Information and Culture and the US Embassy in Kabul announced the winners of their International Architectural Ideas Competition for the National Museum of Afghanistan. The Jury’s decision for the winning design submissions is based on the clarity of the architectural concept that responds effectively to the programmatic, functional, technical, economic and security requirements in the brief, and the architectural quality of the proposed design as a whole. This decision ultimately recognizes the distinguished architectural quality of the winning proposed design solution with the first prize given to AV62 Arquitectos. More images and information on the winning entries after the break.
Taking place at the Museum of Finnish Architecture October 10-November 25, the Norwegian architecture, landscape architecture and interior design office, Snøhetta, is showcasing their firm and its work in videos, computer animations, 3D models, photographs, drawings, and texts. Presented in eight sections, the first section looks at the practice itself and its offices in Oslo and New York. The following five are devoted to five key projects: the National September 11 Memorial Museum, the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, the Ras Al-Khaimah Gateway Development, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, all presented with accompanying scale models. The highlight of the exhibition is a touch-screen display providing fingertip access to data on 100 of Snøhetta’s projects.
As part of the Quito Biennale, the Social Habitat and Development competition is oriented to identify and promote architectural practices and built projects that demonstrate having a positive and tangible impact in the improvements of the living conditions of low income families and the improvement of a built environment of society. The category is open for built projects or programs of new or renovated social habitat, built in the American continent during the period between 2008-2012 and that have not participated in previous BAQ editions. Emphasis will be given to projects or programs that consider the importance of: neighborhood and public space improvement, revitalization of urban environment, participation and management strategies in design, implementation and maintenance, cultural and aesthetic inputs that reinforce a community’s identity, building safety and climatic comfort. Entries are due no later than October 26. For more information, please visit here.
Close to the Port of Rotterdam docks, MVRDV has completed the Spijkenisse Book Mountain, a public library in Spijkenisse’s market square. It features a 480 meter route, lined with bookshelves, that wraps around a stacked, pyramidal form as it is showcased through the library’s glass structure. The “mountain of books” illuminates from within and serves as both an advertisement and an invitation to reading. The adjacent Library Quarter consisting of 42 social housing units, parking and public space is also a project by MVRDV. Together, with the Book Mountain, it strives to form an “exemplary eco-neighborhood”.
Continue after the break for the architects’ description.
The New York-based branding and creative agency dbox has won an Emmy for its CGI and Branding work on the Discovery Channel’s six part mini-series Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero. From executive producer by Steven Spielberg, the series chronicles the activity of the Ground Zero site and the personal stories of the construction workers, engineers and architects who have made the rebuilding vision a reality.
The recently launched FuturArc Green Leadership Award 2013 competition is calling for projects that are new, restored, rehabilitated or converted, and must have been completed before December 31, 2012 in Asia or Australia. The jury seeks to understand how the project delivers specific, measurable outcomes. Entrants are encouraged to make a case for the building against the following criteria: Efficacy, Wellness, Embeddedness, Advocacy, Integration, and Adaptation. The Jury will nominate up to three projects in each category. The deadline for submissions is December 17. For more information, please visit here.
The project proposal for the new Santa Maria Parish Center in Bonavista offers a specific solution to the needs of the program and the liturgy. By focusing on the two premises recurrent throughout the history of the Catholic Church, monumentality and mystery, the design becomes a singular and transcendent space. Designed by Gimeno Guitart Architects, they believe the church, as a collective and community space, must be vindicated as a social and urban event as well as a place for prayer and retreat. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by Ana Cecília Tourinho, Analu Brandão, Gabriel Kozlowski, and Beni Barzellai, their competition entry for the City Hall Várzea Paulista creates a unity among all the planned projects for the downtown of Várzea Paulista. By proposing an infrastructural ring, the project functions as a public connector to embrace the existing green space and north and south. Connected to the public transportation system, it distributes and negotiates the confluence and flow of pedestrians while building a coherent image of the city’s entry. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Using state-of-the-art parametric design tools and digital fabrication, KREOD brings together some of the most talented designers, engineers and innovative materials to challenge current thinking and showcase sustainable and forward-thinking building methods. Designed by Chun Qing Li of Pavilion Architecture, KREOD will be located next to Peninsula Square, between Emirates Air Line and The O2 at Greenwich Peninsula now until January 2013 . More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts will be hosting an exhibition on Russian Modernist Architecture starting October 11 through February 16, 2013. Featuring a wealth of rarely published material on architecture that spanned the empire of the Soviet Union, the 80+ large-scale photographs – documented by British photographer Richard Pare – provide unique insight into the movements of the Soviet revolutionary period. More photos and information after the break.
All Hale, a new film written by Anita Banerji, follows the story of college student Alice Walker who finds herself in a small town in Hale County, Alabama building a home for a family that is going through personal and financial hardship. The movie is filmed on location, with a variety of unique Hale County architecture serving as the backdrop for a story that rekindles a love for “home-grown architecture”. At a time when so much emphasis is focused on “starchitects” and the “Bilbao effect”, the story of this movie has a social agenda that highlights the backlash to this phenomena: the rising trend of design/build architecture.
Join us after the break for more on the underlying social inspiration of this film and a sneak peek at the trailer.
Designed for the ‘Mobilicity: Tirana Multimodal Station’ competition, the second prize winning proposal consists in giving back an identity to the area. Designed by Morfearch, the masterplan is not only a project of a railway station: it is a project about Tirana. The chaotic and informal feature of the city asks for the tracking of a simple and clear sign that would restore order and a hierarchy between the urban parts. The system is configured as a flexible solution in different urban situations: depending on space availability and willingness of densification, the layout of the project can change and respond to city needs. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965) will forever be known as an icon of Modernism, but did you know that the man who changed the face of architecture led quite the colorful personal life?
In honor of his 125th birthday, take a moment to check out some Corbu classics (perhaps Convent of La Tourette, Ronchamp, Villa Savoye, Unite d’Habitation, or Villa Roche) and read on to learn more about the man behind the myth – Charles-Édouard Jeanneret.
Fun Facts About Le Corbusier (including what Salvador Dalí had to say about him. It isn’t pretty) after the break!
Taking place October 18-23 at Ajman University of Science & Technology, UAE, Japanese Architect, Satoshi Okada, will be putting on an architectural workshop titled, ‘Thinking of Shadow’. As the founder of Satoshi Okada Architects, Okada is known for his simplicity with sublimity even in warmhearted spaces for human activities and even spirituality in rich materiality and delicate details. He believes that “…building activities, on one hand, are nothing but destruction of whatever exists; nevertheless, all the more because of it, they have to compensate it by a beautiful gift of artifice more than before”. For more information on the event, please visit here.
Originating from the ‘pure plate’ structure occurring in natural structures such as sea urchins, and based on a hexagonal geometry, the Spaceplates Greenhouse is being used for the first time this term by horticultural staff and students at City of Bristol College’s South Bristol Skills Academy in Hengrove Park, Bristol. Designed by N55, with Architect, Anne Romme, the project is constructed using an innovative building system based on aluminum and polycarbonate and accommodates work, growing and teaching space. More images and architects’ description after the break.
In addition to yesterday’s announcement of the World Building of the Year Award, two further awards have also been awarded at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore:
Kallang River Bishan Park, Singapore, designed by Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl, has won the ‘Landscape of the Year’ Award and Msheireb – Heart of Doha, Qatar, designed by AECOM, has won the ‘Future Project of the Year’ Award.
Find out more about the awarded projects after the break.
Cooled Conservatories at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, has won the World Building of the Year Award at the prestigious World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2012. The project, designed by Wilkinson Eyre, Grant Associates, Atelier One and Atelier Ten, was chosen from over 500 entries. More information and images after the break.
