Opening up September 4 at 5pm with a lecture by 2012 Pritzker Prize Winner, architect Wang Shu, the exhibition of projects of Chinese architects focuses on the theoretical research on architecture and design as well as building practice currently found fertile ground in any contemporary China but particularly in the city of Shanghai. Organized by La Triennale of Milan and the Degree Course in Engineering/Architecture from the University of Pavia, yhe center of the debate will be on urban development and architecture thanks to the cultural milieu linked to Tongji University. More information on the exhibition after the break.
Architects: A3 Digital Location: Franklin D. Roosevelt 3120, Buenos Aires, Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina Design Team: Santiago Luppi, Javier Ugalde, Andrea Winter Project Year: 2011 Photographs: Alejandro Peral
Located on a prominent corner of Bainbridge Island, Washington, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is not only the anchor tenant of the Island Gateway development, but it will soon become the cultural center of its community. Designed by Coates Design Architects, an inspiring and creative experience is provided to residents and visitors alike. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Thanks to innovations in building materials, design technologies, and construction tools, a new generation of architects can finally realize structures that would have previously remained mere dreams. This emergence of a new vernacular of radically sculpted buildings, rooms, and installations melds rigorous usability with a playful and cutting edge aesthetic, facilitating highly functional yet undeniably exhilarating spaces.
In an industrial section of Düsseldorf squats a relatively unremarkable yellow-tiled modernist-looking building. It looks like the sort of building that went up in the post-war reconstruction (the city was bombed nearly flat in night raids during WWII).
The building, however, betrays obvious categorizations. At first glance it seems easy to place on an historical continuum. But just as it could be from the fifties or sixties, it could just as easily be from the twenties or thirties. It may have miraculously survived the RAF’s gasoline bombs. Post-raid aerial survey photos would always reveal those few exclamation points of untouched buildings dotting the monochromatic wastes. Could this be one of those survivors? Is this why it looks so special sitting amidst the other unremarkable buildings of Mintropstrasse? Or maybe it’s the mere fact of the photograph that makes it special.
Renowned architect Fernando Menishas been invited as the only Canarian architect to present his proposal at the Venice Biennale, starting August 29th. Menis will invite visitors “INTO THE WALL” with his handcrafted installation that will feature a selection of his most innovative projects, represented in black Foamglass. Some of these projects include the Auditorium of Pájara (Fuerteventura), Tower Agora Garden (Taiwan) and the protagonist of the facility, the Auditorium of Torun (Poland).
With a quarter million LEGO bricks and 300 hours of finger intensive labor, Warren Elsmore and his wife constructed a mini replica of the 2012 Olympic Park in London. As Gizmodo reports, the model weighs about 80kg and would cost around $300,000 to build for scratch!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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?
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