Commissioned by the Greater London Authority as part of the Wonder series to celebrate the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, BLOOM, designed and developed by Alisa Andrasek and Jose Sanchez from The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, is a crowd sourced garden. Designed in neon pink, which is the official Olympics color, BLOOM is conceptualised as an urban toy, a distributed social game and collective “gardening” experience that seeks the engagement of people in order to construct fuzzy BLOOM formations. More images and architects’ description after the break.
With professional cycling rapidly developing in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico in the last decade, there is an interest in building Culiacan’s new velodrome, as well as incorporating policies that favor cycling as a mode of transportation into the city’s plans for new public spaces. The proposal by BNKR Arquitectura channels this new found enthusiasm for cycling into a single thread that unites a professional sports building with a cycling-oriented park development. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Architects: Alejandro García y Arquitectos Location: A Coruña, Spain Design Team: Alejandro García Rodríguez Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Courtesy of Alejandro García y Arquitectos
The Museum of Modern Art, Columbia University and The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation have announced that the vast archives of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) have been jointly acquired by the University and the Museum and will become part of their permanent collections. The archive, which includes some 23,000 architectural drawings, 44,000 historical photographs, large-scale models, manuscripts, extensive correspondence and other documents, has remained in storage at Wright’s former headquarters – Taliesin (Spring Green, WI) and Taliesin West (Scottsdale, AZ) – since his death. Moving the archives to New York will maximize the visibility and research value of the collection for generations of scholars, students and the public.
“The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation takes seriously its responsibility to serve the public good by ensuring the best possible conservation, accessibility, and impact of one of the most important and meaningful archives in the world,” said Sean Malone, CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “Given the individual strengths, resources and abilities of the Foundation, MoMA and Columbia, it became clear that this collaborative stewardship is far and away the best way to guarantee the deepest impact, the highest level of conservation and the best public access.”
Continue after the break for more images and an informative video.
Inspired by Pritzker Prize laureate Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s call “to get architecture out of the making and thinking of isolated objects and to show it as an inexorable transformation of nature”, Dublin practice Grafton Architects presents Architecture as New Geography at the 2012 Venice Biennale. The exhibition explores the work of the Brazilian architect in the context of Grafton’s first South American project for a university in Lima, Peru.
The International Jury has awarded Grafton the Silver Lion for their “impressive” presentation’s ability to connect to the ideas of Paulo Mendes da Rocha and demonstrate the “considerable potential of this architectural practice in reimagining the urban landscape”. While the Golden Lion for ‘Best National Participation’ went to Japan for an engaging exhibition, curated by Toyo Ito, that develops solutions for a Community building on a post Tsunami site,
Continuing our coverage of the Venice Biennale, London-based Farshid Moussavi’sinstallation at the Arsenale explored different experiences within everyday life and culture that are the result of architecture accepting certain “common grounds.” Entitled ‘Architecture and its Affects’, viewers were surrounded by changing projections of textures and patterns, structural configurations and facades, which were organized in such a manner as to highlight their affects, rather than their chronological existence or historical references.
More about Architecture and its Affects after the break.
Undergoing the most significant change since the historic station was completed to Brunel’s design, the new Paddington Station, designed by Weston Williamson Architects, will provide a major new gateway for London. Serving local, national and international passengers, the Crossrail Station balances many design issues including heritage, conservation, transport integration, way-finding, orientation, servicing and security to create a world-class pedestrian space alongside the existing Network Rail buildings. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Marking the entrance to Stockholm’s inner city center, the Stockholm City Station. Designed by 3XN Architects, integrates the station, a hotel, conference center, and apartments. The main idea behind the design was to create a building that gently adjusts to the area’s existing building in scale and expression, and which reinterprets a number of local Swedish design traditions. Containing a number of public and private functions, the building will contribute positively to creating life in the surrounding neighborhood. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Spearheading the development of the new district in Egedal, Demark, the town hall and health center will be the uniting center of the new Municipality of the city as one of the first buildings in the new planned urban area around Egedal Station. Designed by Henning Larsen Architects, their proposal won the highest score for all criteria in the competition to get the first prize. The health center will become an active part of the town hall, while at the same time offering citizens the opportunity to use the area outside town hall opening hours. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Herzog & de Meuron’s exhibition at the Biennale is focused on the architecture of a symbolic project, with a complex history: The Elbphilharmonie, a concert hall on top of a former industry in Hamburg, which also includes a 250 room five-star hotel, and 47 apartments. The project, in a very advanced state, remains halted since last year due to legal issues with the contractor.
In the exhibition, the history of the project is documented with three-dimensional representations of the complex building services; camera shots panning through the construction site; and large-scale models, whose spatial and physical presence represent what the architects wished and still wish to foreground: architecture.
DesignByMany’s latest challenge: Superhero Landmark sponsored by Autodesk and media partners ArchDaily. With the rise of superhero movies dominating the movie screens, we need a permanent place of celebration to honor these great characters and their awesomeness. DesignByMany suggests building a Superhero Theme Park! Designing an entire theme park is way too big of a task to tackle for this scope, but luckily every park has an element that embodies the ethos of the park.
This challenge is to design the central landmark of your Superhero Theme Park. The landmark will serve as the iconic image of the park and the primary means of orientation for the park. It can be inspired by a single character, a group of characters, or event your own imaginary character! The more creative the better!
Architects: a3gm + Mata y asociados Location: Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain Architect In Charge: Salvador Mata Pérez Project Year: 2009 Photographs: Courtesy of Mata y asociados
In the context of the ongoing financial crisis, cities and citizens are going through profound and as yet uncharted transformations. Tomorrow in Naples, Italy, UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum will bring together mayors, international organizations, governments and civil- society organizations to discuss the Urban Future.
This debate aims to blur the boundaries between designers and politicians; researchers and eco- nomists, to highlight new policies and practices which do not require funding from strained public coffers. Can new forms of city development be thought about without the contribution of private enterprise? Can the political and design worlds find “Common ground” in the face of urban decay and austerity? How can policy making and urban planning come together to bring about appropriate norms for improving urbanites’ lives? This will be one of the focus areas for the ANMA Architects’ new foundation ANMA-F.
Architects: EDU Medellín Location: Medellín, Colombia Design Team: Juan Mejia, Gustavo Adolfo Restrepo, John Octavio Ortiz, Alejandra Gomez, Maria Elena Arango, Adolfo Emilio Arboleda, Julian Yepes, Isabel Mejia, Alba Milena Garcia, Diego Alberto Serna, Victor Hugo Garcia, Jerónimo Franco, Jose Puentes, Andres Montoya, Gustavo Ramirez Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Courtesy of EDU Medellín
We’ve already introduced you to the Danish Pavilion exhibition Possible Greenland, on display at the 2012 Venice Biennale, featuring possibilities that lay in store for Greenland in light of geographic changes caused by the increased rate of ice and snow melt. Henning Larsen Architects has now shared with us their portion of the exhibit, Greenland Migrating, a project developed in collaboration with David Garcia Studio and KITAA Architects. Curating the exhibit are Danish-Greenlandic Professor in geology Minik Rosing and Copenhagen-based NORD Architects.
Join us after the break for a closer look at the project.
When people think architecture school they think of training that teaches them how to make things: build spaces or develop sites for, primarily, human use. Over the years, this concept has expanded to encompass social activism. In the States, for example, there are programs like Architecture for Humanity, Project Row Houses, and Make It Right that address issues of poverty, displacement, and housing. Human Rights, however, extends beyond creating spaces for the economically disadvantages or impoverished. In fact, the term Human Rights often conjures up people’s rights within the context of conflict. Most people, however, do not think of architecture as encompassing the lack or destruction of structures.
