Karissa Rosenfield

BROWSE ALL FROM THIS AUTHOR HERE

Gallery: SANAA's Grace Farms Through the Lens of Songkai Liu

Columbia University student and architectural photographer Songkai Liu has shared images with us from his recent trip to Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut. The 80-acre non-profit farm, landscaped by OLIN, boasts a newly completed multipurpose pavilion designed by SANAA that provides a non-intrusive space for community events, services and worship.

"SANAA’s goal was to make the architecture of the River become part of the landscape without drawing attention to itself, or even feeling like a building, with the hope that those who are on the property will have a greater enjoyment of the beautiful environment and changing seasons through the spaces and experience created by the River," described the architect.

Gallery: SANAA's Grace Farms Through the Lens of Songkai Liu - Image 1 of 4Gallery: SANAA's Grace Farms Through the Lens of Songkai Liu - Image 2 of 4Gallery: SANAA's Grace Farms Through the Lens of Songkai Liu - Image 3 of 4Gallery: SANAA's Grace Farms Through the Lens of Songkai Liu - Image 4 of 4Gallery: SANAA's Grace Farms Through the Lens of Songkai Liu - More Images+ 16

New LEGO® Collection Lets You Recreate Skylines

New LEGO® Collection Lets You Recreate Skylines - Image 3 of 4
New York City. Image © LEGO®

Venice, Berlin and New York City are the first to be featured in LEGO®'s new Architecture Skyline Collection. Unlike its single-building series, these new kits will allow you to recreate famous skylines by constructing up to 5 of each city's most iconic buildings.

New York City's skyline will be represented by the One World Trade Center, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Statue of Liberty, and Flatiron Building. Venice will feature the Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Basilica, St. Mark’s Campanile, St. Theodore and the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs. And Berlin's skyline will include the Reichstag, Victory Column, Deutsche Bahn Tower, Berlin TV Tower, and Brandenburg Gate.

Heatherwick and Diamond Schmitt to Reimagine Lincoln Center's Largest Concert Hall

Heatherwick Studio and Diamond Schmitt Architects have been chosen to collaborate on the "renovation and reimagination" of David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center’s largest concert hall in New York City. The team, chosen through a two-year competition and over 100 firms, will design a 21st-century concert hall for the New York Philharmonic home and transform it into a center capable of hosting "a broader, ongoing array of community activities and events."

"The inspiring combination of Heatherwick and Diamond Schmitt will bring contemporary design excellence, respect for the historic architecture of the hall, and extensive experience creating acoustically superb performance halls," said Katherine Farley, chairman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

ArchDaily Architect’s Holiday Gift Guide 2015 (Part I)

ArchDaily Architect’s Holiday Gift Guide 2015 (Part I) - Featured Image
ArchDaily Architect's Holiday Gift Guide 2015. Image

Still searching for the perfect gift for that hard to please architect in your life? No need to look any further, we've compiled a list of items any architect would love to receive. Read on to see ArchDaily’s top 16 gifts for architects! 

4 Shortlisted to Revamp Palace of Westminster

Foster + Partners, HOK, BDP and Allies and Morrison have been shortlisted in a bid to "restore and renew" London's Palace of Westminster. As BD reports, the massive project is estimated to cost at least £3.5 billion and last more than six years (possibly up to 32 years). A team will be selected next year. Work will begin in 2020.

Santiago Calatrava Designs 3 New Bridges for Huashan

Santiago Calatrava has been commissioned to design a trio of bridges in the Chinese city of Huashan, east of Wuhan. The three steel bridges - Xihu, Xianbi and Lincong - will span 1.5 kilometers of the city's new Yangtze River canal, providing access to pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles.

“Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalize cities both artistically and functionally,” said Calatrava. “The Huashan project is a clear example of how an urban element, key to the successful growth of the city, can at the same time improve the quality of life for its citizens, thanks to an integration of all three bridges and the creation of boulevards on the banks of the canal.”

FR-EE Installation Explores Man's Relationship with Sun at Design Miami/

Swarovski commissioned FR-EE / Fernando Romero EnterprisE to design an installation for Design Miami/ that "explores man's relationship with the sun." One billion times smaller than the sun, the installation - El Sol - is a spherical geodesic dome made from 2880 Swarovski crystals that "augment light emitted from its core" to "evoke the sun's gaseous, moving terrain."

"The project has allowed me to explore mathematics in relation to nature and my Mexican ancestry, which is very important and personal to my practice," said Fernando Romero.  

Hadid and Safdie Among 6 Competing to Design Traffic Control Tower at Istanbul New Airport

iGA has shared a glimpse of 6 proposed designs competing to be the Istanbul New Airport's Traffic Control Tower. With designs by Zaha Hadid, Moshe Safdie, Grimsaw-Nordic, Massimiliano Fuksas, Pininfarina-Aecom, and RMJM Architects, the competition seeks to chose an innovative tower that is "inspired by the authentic symbols of Turkey."

“We are developing a unique project inspired by the local architecture. That is why we have organized this contest, hoping that Airport Traffic Control Tower design would symbolically contribute great deal to Istanbul New Airport and also will be the most important figure of Istanbul. We particularly asked contestants to get inspired from icons of Turkey. Currently we are evaluating the submitted projects and will be announcing the results as soon as possible,” said Yusuf Akçayoğlu, CEO of İGA.

schmidt hammer lassen Wins Competition to Masterplan Skøyen in Central Oslo

schmidt hammer lassen architects has won an international competition to masterplan a 87,000-square-meter area of Skøyen in central Oslo, dubbed Eureka Kvarteret. The multi-phased plan aims to unify the area's connection to the Oslo fjord, nearby transportation hubs and its main street, Hoff, while generating a versatile new skyline that compliments its context.

“We have proposed a framework that builds upon a basic idea about the space between the buildings," explains Senior Partner Kristian Lars Ahlmark.

AMBS Proposes World's Tallest Tower in Iraq

An 1152-meter super tall tower is being proposed for the Iraqi city of Basra as part of a government-backed masterplan that aims to expand the city's capacity by 2025. As reported by Slate, the "Bride of the Gulf" was designed by AMBS Architects as a cluster of four net-zero towers interconnected by sky gardens and independent of the city grid. Together, they would add nearly 17-million-square-feet of usable space to the city's growing business center. Parks, "sky-squares," schools, hotels, clinics, commercial centers, offices and much more would provide all the amenities needed for a self-sustaining vertical city.

Deutsches Architekturmuseum to Curate German Pavilion at 2016 Venice Biennale

Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) has been chosen to represent Germany at Venice Biennale 2016 with the exhibition Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country. The DAM team - including general commissioner and director Peter Cachola Schmal, curator Oliver Elser, and project coordinator Anna Scheuermann - has already begun to collect examples of buildings that are being transformed for refugees and migrants - from large reception centers to refugee-led bicycle workshops. All work will be presented to the public in early 2016 as "an information pool for planners and policy-makers."

David Chipperfield Selected as Mentor for Rolex Arts Initiative

Succeeding Peter Zumthor, David Chipperfield has been selected as the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative's new architecture mentor. The British architect will join six other "master artists" - Mia Couto (literature), Alfonso Cuarón (film), Philip Glass (music), Joan Jonas (visual arts), Robert Lepage (theatre) and Ohad Naharin (dance) - in selecting their own protégé from a pool of finalists this coming spring; mentoring will begin mid-2016.

Video: Garden School / OPEN Architecture

"A counteraction to what is happening today in China," OPEN Architecture's Garden School in Beijing seeks to reconnect its students with nature. Located in a new town that, as founding partner Li Hu says, was built "too fast," the school serves as one of the few spaces students can interact with nature. The school is designed like a garden, from its sloping "floor zero" to rooftop gardens, offering unconventional spaces for teaching and inviting public areas that encourage social interaction.

“What is problematic is that these new towns are designed too fast, without much thinking about how the spaces are going to be used, and what kind of space they are going to create. I think it is a problem for human psychology. Living in a new town with not enough good green space, good social space, we’ll become very problematic urban animals,” Hu told Spirit of Space.

Read on for a conversation with the architects. 

Tadao Ando Wins 2016 Isamu Noguchi Award

The Noguchi Museum has selected Tadao Ando, alongside artist Elyn Zimmerman, as recipient of the third annual Isamu Noguchi Award, "given to recognize individuals who share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, global consciousness, and East-West exchange." Complimenting Ando's "minimalist approach, sensitivity to light, and incorporation of natural elements," the judges believe the self-taught Japanese architect's "unparalleled work with concrete" embodies many of the principles embraced by Noguchi.

"Like Noguchi’s sculpture, which gave equal importance to the object and the space it inhabited, Ando’s work harmoniously integrates edifice and environment, while interior and exterior are intimately connected through his incorporation of water, light, wind, sky, and landscape into his building designs," the museum described in a press release.

AIA Awards 3 for Impact on US Architecture and Education

Alongside the release of this year's Gold Medal and firm award winners, the American Institute of Architects has named recipients of three other national awards: Edward C. Kemper Award, Topaz Medallion, and Whitney M. Young Jr. Award.

Honored for being a "tireless advocate for social justice and diversity within architecture," R. Steven Lewis, AIA, has been selected to receive the 2016 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. "Steve enlightened a generation of architects on the importance of knowing the history of those who came before them. He built bridges that they crossed," Purnell wrote in support of Lewis's nomination for the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. "He has mentored minority architects through his brilliant leadership by example.”

Video: Inside FR-EE's Mexico City Office

FR-EE / Fernando Romero Enterprise, a global architecture and design firm founded by Fernando Romero that is known for its radically diverse portfolio, is currently working on designs for Mexico City's new international airport. Watch the video above, filmed by German photographer Yannick Wegner and his colleague Julián Cáceres Aravena, for an introduction on the massive project and insight on the firm's overall design approach.

Skene Catling De La Pena's Rothschild Project Named UK's Best New House

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named Skene Catling De La Pena's Flint House the winner of its annual "House of the Year" award. A "marvel of geological evolution and construction," the home was formed within the "flint-layered fields" of Rothschild’s estate at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. As the judges say, the home's clever use of a locally prevalent materials and intelligent layering of space "delivers a stunning piece of livable, provoking, modern architecture that marries into the earthly yet beautiful countryside."

LMN Architects Win 2016 AIA Architecture Firm Award

LMN Architects, a 145-employee firm based in Seattle, has been chosen as the recipient of the 2016 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Architecture Firm Award.

“LMN Architects exemplify the best in architecture firm culture,” said 2015 AIA President Elizabeth Chu Richter, FAIA. “Not only is their work proof of this, but the amazing talent they are cultivating will have a reverberating impact on the profession for years to come.”