Niall served as Senior Editor at ArchDaily.
London-based architecture collective Assemble is set to transform an outdoor courtyard at A/D/O in Brooklyn into a ‘model factory’ to explore utopian ideals of work. The Turner Prize-winning architects will use their first site-specific installation in the U.S. entitled ‘A Factory As It Might Be’ to depict a vision of how society should build and function using abundant, malleable materials.
London-based firm Studioshaw has won a competition to design a hub facility for children and young people in Dundee, Scotland. The Interactive Hub will be located on the site of a former railway depot at the Seabraes Yards Digital Media Park. The competition, hosted by the Dundee Institute of Architects (DIA) and Scottish Enterprise, was one of 400 events taking place across Scotland as part of the RIAS 2016 Festival of Architecture.
Australian firm deciBel(Architecture))) has released images of their proposed multi-purpose theater and cultural center in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. The Hanoi Lotus draws inspiration from Vietnam’s national flower, creating a city-defining piece of public architecture to place Hanoi and Vietnam on the global stage.
The Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Massachusetts has announced the winners of the Richard Rogers Fellowship 2017. Launched in October 2016, the Fellowship seeks to act as an international platform assembling experts and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines, using the built environment to positively impact on the quality of human life. The six inaugural Fellows, selected from 200 applicants worldwide, will undertake three months of research at the Wimbledon House, a Grade II listed residence in London gifted to the School by world-renowned British architect Richard Rogers.
Dutch studio Rietveld-Architecture-Art-Affordances (RAAAF) has unveiled its latest installation ‘Breaking Habits’ at the Mondriaan Fund for Visual Arts in Amsterdam. Breaking Habits envisages a domestic environment without chairs and couches, exploring a model of diagonal living through a system of flexible carpets.
London-based firm Tonkin Liu has released images of its competition-winning Trade Centre in Zhengzhou, China. The Cradle Towers of Zhengzhou will comprise of five mixed-use towers swooping out of a ring-shaped podium. Inspired by the nearby Songshan mountainscape, the scheme aims to celebrate the city’s origins as it rockets into a high-tech future.
The One Heart Foundation has announced the winners of the Children’s Eco-Village Design Competition. Attracting 45 submissions from 21 countries, the brief asked participants to propose an environmentally-friendly campus for orphaned and abandoned children, to be built in Soy, Kenya.
Van Dongen–Kuschuch Architects and Planners has released images for its ‘House of Delft’ mixed-use hub in the Netherlands. Located beside Delft Central Train Station, the scheme will act as a gateway to both the historic city center and the renowned University of Technology. The architectural intent behind the proposal is to celebrate the artistic, scientific and innovative achievements which came from the city throughout its history. As visitors step off the train, it will be both an introduction to the city, and an indicator of what it has to offer.
Jordanian artist Raya Kassisieh, with the support of American firm NADAAA, has repurposed her exhibit from the Amman Design Week in Jordan to create blankets for Syrian refugees and Jordanian families. The Entrelac exhibit, created by Kassisieh and NADAAA, consists of 300kg of hand-knit, un-dyed wool which was later cut and stitched to create blankets for those fleeing the Syrian Civil War, now approaching its sixth year.
The results of a competition to propose an openable roof over the Arena di Verona, Italy have been announced. Three winners were chosen out of eighty-seven proposals to cover the famous amphitheater, a defining symbol of the city of Verona. The competition was announced in March 2016 in order to protect the Roman monument from the elements and to ensure that it continues to provide quality entertainment to spectators two thousand years after its construction.
Dutch firm de Architekten Cie, in collaboration with Felixx Landscape Architects and Planners, has won an international competition to transform the historic Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The winning masterplan, chosen by the City Administration of Chelyabinsk from five proposals, seeks to activate the city’s existing grid structure and to use it as a vehicle for spatial transformation.
Henley Halebrown has released updates for their proposed mixed-use scheme in Hackney, London. 333 Kingland Road, previously occupied by a fire station, will soon be home to the Hackney New Primary School, commercial units, and dual aspect apartments. The scheme aims to address a need for school places and homes in London and to maintain a connection between learning and living in a dense urban environment.
MIT has published new research revealing how the reconstruction of the British Houses of Parliament paved the way for legislation to tackle air pollution in Victorian London. Through original archival work into the 1840-1870 reconstruction, MIT architectural historian Timothy Hyde has revealed that work on the Parliament building was so hindered by air pollution that the British government ordered an inquiry into the effects of the atmosphere on new buildings.
The New York Times has published an in-depth article entitled ‘How China Built iPhone City With Billions in Perks for Apple’s Partners’, revealing a treasure chest of public benefits for the world’s biggest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China. In a city of six million inhabitants in an impoverished region of China, the local government has contributed $1.5 billion to Foxconn, Apple’s supplier of iPhones. The money is used, in part, to improve local infrastructure, reduce Foxconn's export costs, and build housing for the factory’s 350,000-strong workforce (five times the number of people employed directly by Apple in the United States).
