Architects: MAP Architects Location: Redcliffs, Christchurch, New Zealand Design Team: Andrew Watson, Mark Bennetts Project Year: 2010 Project Area: 200 sqm Photographs: Lisa Gane

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The proposal for the NUK II National Library, designed by BARCODE Architects, presents a clever and pure univocal shape despite the great complexity of the given plot. By making the design compact and by moving volume from its base to the top, the building makes way and shows the characteristic ruins of Roman Emona on site, while at the same time this creates a public square along the important city junction. Prominently sited at a junction in the heart of perhaps the most important academic centre in Eastern Europe, the 20.000m2 project seeks to become a compelling architectural landmark. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architects: Labor 13 Location: Čeladná, Czech Republic Design Team: Martin Vomastek, Albert prazák, Jiri Bardodej Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Soucek – Vomastek – Straka

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The ContemPLAY pavilion project is a student-led initiative by the Directed Research Studio (DRS) of the McGill School of Architecture, in coordination with the Facility for Architectural Research in Media and Mediation (FARMM), investigating new methods of practice. The project presented a unique opportunity for the students to learn through hands-on experience in an academic context. The pavilion occupies an 8.8m x 6.7m footprint with a total height of 3.7m in front of the Macdonald-Harrington building on the McGill University campus in Montreal, Quebec. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architects: Pich-Aguilera Architects Location: Ametlla de Mar, Spain Architects: Felipe Pich-Aguilera Baurier, Teresa Batlle Pagés Project Team: Angel Sendarrubias, Xavier Milanés, Pau Casaldaliga Project Manager: Iván Acevedo Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Simón García

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R 20th Century is pleased to present AFTER, curated by Kelly Behun and Alex P. White of kelly behun|STUDIO. AFTER, which is on view September 19-October 27, will feature works from kelly behun|STUDIO, one of the most innovative, experimental design studios working today, and R 20th Century, one of the leading galleries for the exhibition of historic and contemporary design.

Designs in the exhibition draw inspiration from methods of sampling, appropriation, and deconstruction and how these ideas relate to postmodern notions of authorship. AFTER acknowledges “reference” in ways that are alternately direct, irreverent, poetic and oblique. More information on the exhibition after the break.

Architects: Pablo Anzilutti Location: Santa Fe, Santa Fe Province, Argentina Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Federico Cairoli

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Architects: Demos Arquitectos Location: Patio Bonito, Bogotá, Bogota, Colombia Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Courtesy of Demos Arquitectos

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The Think Space Past Forward Programme just launched its very first Call for Papers, dedicating itself to writing and publishing critically about architecture. Known for using design competitions, exhibitions, symposiums and publications as its tools, they are leaning on historical discourse which normally takes the form of reflection through writing for the very first time. The deadline for abstracts is September 10 with the final paper due no later than October 10. More information after the break.

OMA partner Reinier de Graaf explores the relationship between the megalopolis and politics at the Berlage Institute, where he conducted a one-week masters class devoted to the concept of Megalopoli(tic)s – “a very large ambitious political structure dealing especially with the act of governing complex metropolitan areas”.

De Graaf begins by stating we must “think globally”. In 1950, New York and London were the only cities with more than 8 million inhabitants. Currently, there are 26 cities of over 8 million people and by 2020 there will be 37. In terms of population and GDP, countries have been surpassed by cities and cities have been surpassed by corporations. De Graaf states that the city is the physical manifestation of globalization, and as cities continue to rapidly grow, it is imperative that we question the logistics that go into governing them.

Imagine Doxiadis’ global Ecumenopolis city (1967) that depicts the city as no longer a product of nations but rather a international product, which he envisioned as a conglomerate of urbanized regions straddling the world.

Architects: Morphosis Architects Location: 1638 Tennessee St, New Orleans, LA 70117, USA Project Year: 2009 Project Area: 88.0 sqm Photographs: Iwan Baan

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Architecture for Humanity has announced the winners of the 2011 Open Architecture Challenge: RESTRICTED ACCESS competition. Designers were challenged to team up with community groups from across the globe and develop innovative solutions that re-envision closed, abandoned and decommissioning military sites. The response was overwhelming, as 600 international teams registered from 70 countries. A jury of 33 professional evaluated the submissions based on community impact, contextual appropriateness, ecological footprint, economic viability and design quality, and filtered the teams down to only 23 semi finalists. Now, the winners of those finalist have been revealed!

“We wanted people to look at former military installations and ask ‘How can we re-envision spaces that exist in difficult, sometimes hostile environments and transform them into something positive?’” stated Architecture for Humanity executive director Cameron Sinclair, as reported on Wired. “We want to use the design process to weave the community back together. It might be a quilt of many different pieces, but in the end, it’s a quilt, and that’s what makes it work.”

Continue after the break to review the winning proposals!

Dover Street Market has commissioned Zaha Hadid to design this site-specific installation to showcase in their London store during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The concept behind “Aqua” references the formal language of Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre.

Zaha Hadid: “Designing for Dover Street Market is an exciting opportunity to install a piece inspired by the fluid geometries of the London Aquatics Centre: a wave of liquid, frozen in time, right in the heart of London.”

Continue after the break for more images.

The 2012 edition of Parckdesign, a biennial event dedicated to green space planning initiated by Brussels Environment and the Brussels Ministry for Environment, Energy and Urban Renovation, aims to reinterpret industrial wastelands, leftover spaces and interstices in Brussels. With this challenge, Raumlabor chose to open the gates to the spacious and pleasant courtyard of Curo Hall and to extend the public space by planning a whole series of concerted developments to comply with the uses of the local associations (whose activity is usually little known to the inhabitants of the neighborhood). More images and architects’ description after the break.

In our second segment of Thinking Past Day 17 – our series examining the larger implications of hosting the Olympic Games – we explore social issues London must address while creating the necessary infrastructure for the Summer Games.

The forty-five minute proposal London presented to the International Olympic Committee in Sinagpore was filled with amazing flyovers of natural terrain depicting the most challenging obstacles, walk-throughs of state-of-the-art athletic facilities, and planning overviews of accommodations for athletes amidst a city speckled with old and new cultural offerings.  When the final votes were counted and London won the bid, it was time to turn those glossy virtual images into reality.

Of course, we are accustomed to the blankness of a site transforming into the awesomeness of a dynamic rendering, but an entire city?  Where is all the available space coming from as London is the most populated municipality in the European Union with 8.17 million residents? And, more importantly, what was on the land before the Olympic transformation?

More after the break.

Designed by kit Architects, in collaboration with schibliholenstein architekten, the winning proposal for a 33 apartment housing development in Nuerensdorf, Zurich, Switerland consists of six buildings, which occupy the land equally. The loose alternating arrangement allows multiple connections to the open countryside in the north and to the garden framed single and multi-family dwellings in the immediate neighborhood. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Created by Paul Scales and Atelier Kit for the 7th annual ‘Le Festival des Architectures Vives ’ in Montpellier, France, Reframe explores the theme of ‘surprise’ through the creation of an object that reframes the relation of the visitor to the space, the historic architecture and the other visitors. The festival is comprised of an architectural walking tour through the historic city center where heritage sites are opened up to modern architecture. Visitors experience a shift from the position of observer to observed, from control to controlled and willingly or not, become engaged in a game of surprise and be surprised. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architects: Gestalten Location: Melbourne VIC, Australia Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Nils Koenning

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Located in front of the Kamiari-mon gate in Asakusa, Kengo Kuma’s Culture Tourist Information Center serves as a beacon to the local area as well as housing programs to serve both tourists and the local community. This video via ja+u takes you through the 7 stacked volumes that make up the 8 internal floors that house a wide variety of programming ranging from meeting rooms to tourist information kiosks. The construction uniquely integrates HVAC equipment in the gaps between the stacked volumes. The interior structure of heavy timber members are left exposed which complement the dynamism of the vertical volumes, while the language of wood is continued onto the exterior by means of laminated timber louvers.

Architects: Estudio BaBO Location: Villa La Angostura, Neuquén Province, Argentina Project Architects: Francisco Kocourek, Francesc Planas Penadés, Marit Haugen Stabell Design Team: Marcos Buceta Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Courtesy of Estudio BaBO

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This week we want to introduce a film by one of the filmmakers that cannot be out of this list. We’re talking about Jacques Tati, the French director, writer, and actor that made his first color movie in 1958, ”Mon Oncle”.

Tati shows how the modern age affects and dramatically changes the way that people live. All the new technologies at that moment are incorporated in the scenes, were the interaction between this new concept of “modern spaces” and people is an element present in most of the movie.

What do you think about this approach of how modernity influenced (or still influencing) the way of living of our societies?

Architects: Make Architects Location: Weihai, Shandong, China Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Shu He

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American retailer Coach has commissioned OMA to develop a new merchandising system that accommodates Coach’s wide diversity of products while returning to the clarity of Coach’s heritage stores. Since establishing its first workshop 1941, Coach has expanded from a specialist leather atelier to a global distributor of “democratized luxury goods”. This expansion has clouded the clarity of the brand’s original library-like stores, which used a rigorous organizational system that categorically sort projects inside minimal wooden shelving at assisted counters. OMA intends to create a flexible, modular system that embodies the clarity of the original stores and responds to the individual needs of locale.

Continue reading for more.