David Mirvish, founder of Mirvish Productions, and Toronto-born starchitect Frank Gehry have released updated renderings of their massive, mixed-used project planned to transform Toronto's downtown arts and entertainment district. The Mirvish+Gehry vision will include a triad of residential towers perched on top a six-story, wooden podium inspired by the site’s industrial past and covered in a ‘cloud-like’ sculptural skin.
The towers, rising over 80 stories each, will house condos, a new OCADU campus, and a gallery space to house the Mirvish's collection of modern art.
From 2011 to 2013, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile think tank for exploring urban life, traveled to New York, Berlin, and Mumbai to inspire innovative ideas for urban design and new ways of thinking about cities. To sum up the major themes and ideas that emerged during this two-year global journey, the Guggenheim Museum will present the exhibition Participatory City: 100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab, on view from October 11, 2013, to January 5, 2014.
The efforts of thousands who occupied Gezi Park, and those who joined them in solidarity via social media from around the world, have paid off. According to Reuters, a Turkish court has ruled against the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan-backed development in which proposed to redesign Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square and replace one of the populated city’s few public parks with a mall.
The Holcim Awards is one of the most significant competitions in its field in terms of reputation and international scope. The fourth cycle of the competition offering a total of USD 2 million in prize money is now open for entries. The competition seeks leading projects from industry professionals and bold ideas from the “Next Generation” that contribute to sustainability within architecture, building, civil engineering, landscape and urban design, as well as construction materials and technologies. Entries must be submitted online at www.holcimawards.org by March 24, 2014.
Foster + Partners have released new images of the luxurious, 18-story Faena House currently being constructed in Miami. The project, which is commissioned by Argentinean developer Alan Faena who is best known for transforming Buenos Aires’ abandoned Puerto Madero neighborhood into the city’s most vital culture center, will mark the first phase of the anticipated Faena District Miami Beach. Once complete, the district will include a five-star hotel, a large and versatile Arts Center, an OMA-designed parking complex, a luxury retail complex, and a marina.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named _ distinctive towers from Canada, China, the UK and UAE as the best tall buildings in the world for 2013. Each selected project, judged by a panel of industry executives, have been selected for their “extraordinary contribution in the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment, as well as for achieving sustainability at the broadest level.”
“The winners and finalists include some of the most striking buildings on the global landscape,” said Jeanne Gang, awards jury chair and principal of Studio Gang Architects. “They represent resolutions to a huge range of contemporary issues, from energy consumption to integration with the urban realm on the ground.”
Shortly after confirming the demise of Bertrand Goldberg’s beloved Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, Northwestern has released a shortlist of three firms competing to design the school’s new biomedical research facility. This comes with the support of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and despite strong backlash from architects and preservationists worldwide.
Though temporarily postponed due to the Gezi Park protests, SO? Architecture and Ideas has celebrated the opening of their winning entry - Sky Spotting Stop- for the 2013 Young Architects Program (YAP) at Istanbul Modern in Turkey. Offering refuge from the historic city’s busy streets, the fragmented canopy of reflective circular discs invites visitors to “sit, rest, gather, play, or skyspot” while overlooking the mouth of the Bosphorus.
As the youngest architect ever to design the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, it is no surprise that 41-year-old Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has been selected as winner of the $100,000 Marcus Prize. Awarded by the Milwaukee-based Marcus Corporation Foundation, the biennial prize is dedicated to honoring emerging designers by requiring only a decade of exceptional leadership in their field.
This award doesn’t come with responsibility, as Fujimoto will be required to visit the graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning a handful of times through the next year, in addition to skyping with a class as often as once per week.
Zaha Hadid Architects worked together with design offices Kollision, CAVI and Wahlberg to create the interactive installation 'Parametric Space' for the exhibition 'Zaha Hadid - World Architecture', which is on view at the Danish Architecture Centre through September 29, 2013. The installation is a fully parametric space that reacts to the visitors' movements by changing shape and expression. Learn more after the break.
The Museum of Modern Art has kicked off the popular Warm Up Summer Music series in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 with the grand opening of Party Wall. The towering installation, designed by Ithaca-based studio CODA, was the winning proposal of the 14th annual Young Architects Program in which provides emerging architects a chance to construct an innovative project as long as shades, cools and seats visitors.
With a porous skin made of woven skateboard scraps, the experimental structure has successfully met the challenge by providing a shaded refuge for the crowds with refreshing cooling stations and detachable wooden seats.
President Obama’s ambitious goals to curb the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions will get a fortuitous assist from an incipient shift in American behavior: recent studies suggest that Americans are buying fewer cars, driving less and getting fewer licenses as each year goes by.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced an all-star shortlist of twelve renowned architects - including 2013 Pritzker Prize laureate Toyo Ito and international powerhouse OMA - competing to design their new headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Located on 24,000 square meter site on the banks of Lake Geneva, the 18,000 square meter headquarters will provide an “Olympic campus” of administrative buildings and service for 450 employees.
Come December, the IOC will award one of the following architects £21,000 to develop their designs:
As a continuation to their in-depth review on the render, CLOG has selected 60 images from an international group of architects and design studios - including Zaha Hadid Architects, BIG, Mansilla+Tuñón Architects, and visualhouse - to serve as case studies in the exhibition New Views: The Rendered Image in Architecture. Now on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through January 5th, 2014, New Views will explore the diversity of rendering types being produced today and their effect on contemporary architecture. More information can be found here.
West Kowloon Cultural District Authority has appointed Herzog & de Meuron and TFP Farrells to design a new museum for visual culture on the edge of a reclaimed, 14-hectare park in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. Focusing on 20th and 21st century art, design, architecture and moving image, M+ will be one of the first projects to be completed in the West Kowloon Cultural District, and a key venue in creating interdisciplinary exchange between the visual arts and the performing arts in Asia.
In a few weeks the Senate will likely vote on an amendment that would remove the 2030 sustainability targets for federal buildings that many architects and US citizens fought to put into motion six years ago. The AIA has requested for your help to prevent this and coordinate visits with Senators while they are back home during the Independence holiday recess next week. Please visit the AIA website here to see how you can help protect federal sustainability targets.
Derived from 40 years of research by architect, professor and author Jan Gehl, The Human Scale takes a critical look at the way we build and use our cities. Assumptions about modernity are questioned, as director Andreas M. Dalsgaard urges the viewer to imagine what would happen when we put “people into the center of our equations”.
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