Patrick is ArchDaily's News Editor. Prior to this position, he was an editorial intern for ArchDaily while working full time as an assistant for a watercolor artist. Patrick holds a B. Arch degree from Penn State University and has spent time studying under architect Paolo Soleri. He is currently based in New York City.
In any city across the world, there are countless examples of unsung architecture – well-designed if inoffensive buildings that strive to please by not standing out from the crowd. For German photographer Paul Eis, these buildings provide the perfect canvas for his work. Displayed on his Instagram account, the_architecture_photographer, Eis captures these buildings in their best light, and then digitally adds in bright colors, elevating these structures from mundane to magnificent.
After a several year battle, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has been approved to maintain its accreditation as an institute of higher learning. The school’s status had earlier been threatened due to new laws by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) that require universities, colleges and other institutions to be financially and administratively independent from "larger institutions with multi-faceted missions."
With the decision, the school will be able to continue to offer its 3-year Master of Architecture program, as well as its additional education programs such as its 8-week-long non-degree Immersion Program.
Competing against a shortlist of internationally acclaimed architects, the team led by newly established practice Vargo Nielsen Palle (in collaboration with ADEPT and Rolvung & Brøndsted Arkitekter) has been selected as the winners of the NEW AARCH competition, which sought designs for several new buildings for the Aarhus School of Architecture and the development of the surrounding area in Aarhus known as Godsbanearealerne.
The restricted competition consisted of three invited practices – BIG, SANAA and Lacaton & Vassal – and the three winners of the earlier open qualifying competition, Vargo Nielsen Palle, Erik Giudice Architects, and ALL (Atelier Lorentzen Langkilde). Vargo Nielsen Palle’s proposal was chosen as the unanimous winner.
Humor is a very rare quality in architecture, most architects are too serious
-Andreas Ruby, director of the Swiss Architecture Museum S AM, Basel
Since its founding in 1996, Slovenia architecture firm Sadar+Vuga has grown to become one of their country’s most influential architectural forces, with a range of projects covering interior design, to stadiums, to city master plans. In a new documentary by director Damjan Kozole, the firm’s history is being archived for the first time.
Tesla has completed a massive, 55,000-panel solar farm on the Hawaiian island of Kauai that will allow them to experiment with medium-term energy storage at a utility scale. Hooked up to the farm are 272 of the company’s lithium Powerpacks, which are capable of storing of combined 52 megawatt-hours of power.
James Corner Field Operations, the urban design and landscape architecture firm behind the High Line in New York City, has been selected by Georgetown Heritage to complete a similar transformation of a historic canal in the Washington D.C. neighborhood of Georgetown. Working with the National Park Service and the D.C. Office of Planning, the team will design a comprehensive master plan for a one-mile section of the Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park (C&O Canal NHP) to update the site from a historic location into a community asset.
As any architect who has played with LEGO can tell you (which, let’s face it, is nearly all of us), one of the most exciting yet struggling steps is just starting off on that tabula rasa of the standard, flat LEGO base. But for anyone looking to build something within the context of their environment, you were flat out of luck. Now, that all may be changing, thanks to a new LEGO-compatible tape, currently being funded on Indiegogo.
“The circle . . . is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. [It] combines the concentric and the excentric in a single form, and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms [triangle, square, circle], it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”
This quote, spoken by artist and Bauhaus professor Wassily Kandinsky, helps to explain the obsession architects, from Palladians to Modernists, have long held with pure geometrical forms – chief among them the circle.
Inspired by this obsession, one Instagram account titled “Circular Spaces” has collected many of the best examples of circles found in architecture. The account tracks the geometries at all scales, from the planet-sized plan of the Death Star to the familiar intimacy of a round dining table. Check out a selection from “Circular Spaces” below.
Cornell Tech has revealed that Snøhetta will be the latest firm to design buildings for its currently under-construction Roosevelt Island Campus, joining structures by top architects including Morphosis, Weiss/Manfredi, Handel Architects, and Skidmore Owings & Merrill. The two new buildings, the Verizon Executive Education Center and Graduate Hotel, will be the final part of phase one of the campus master plan, slated for completion in 2019.
Alison Brooks Architects has revealed designs for their first London highrise as the project receives planning permission. The mixed-use scheme will consist of a cluster of 4 residential towers of varying heights, with co-work and leisure at the ground floor and podium levels, contributing community value to the regeneration of London’s Greenwich Peninsula, the site of Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners’ O2 Arena and a future £1 Billion Mixed-Use Project by Santiago Calatrava.
Renderings have been revealed of KPF’s One Bayfront Plaza, a 92-story mixed-use tower in downtown Miami that when completed will reach 1,049 feet tall, becoming one of 5 new buildings that will share the title of Miami's tallest tower.
The project is being developed by Florida East Coast Realty, and will bring 902 apartments, 200 hotels rooms, 532,000 square feet of office space and 104,000 square feet of retail to downtown Miami. Located at 100 South Biscayne Boulevard, the project will total 3.3 million square feet.
Real Estate firm Related Companies has announced the development of 15 new art gallery spaces to be located in and around the base of Zaha Hadid’s 520 West 28th Street residential building, located along the High Line in the New York neighborhood of Chelsea. The acclaimed Paul Kasmin Gallery, currently located in three West Chelsea locations, will serve as the anchor tenant with a 5,000 square-foot gallery in the base of the Hadid-designed building and additional space in the ‘High Line Nine,’ a collection of full service boutique exhibition spaces located adjacent to the building beneath the High Line.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Competitions has announced that Foster + Partners has been selected as the winners of the Ipswich River Crossings competition, beating out proposals from a shortlist including Adamson Associates, Knight Architects, Marc Mimram and Wilkinson Eyre. The competition sought designs for three bridges crossing the Upper Orwell River that could reinvigorate and increase connectivity within Ipswich’s waterfront district.
Studio Gang has been commissioned to design their first project in Canada, a mixed-use tower that will be located in the Toronto neighborhood of Yonge + St. Clair. The project is one of several commissioned by Toronto’s Slate Asset Management as part of a larger effort to revitalize the district through the use of public art, world-class design and vibrant streetscapes and open spaces. The area’s first intervention, an 8-story mural by renowned artist Phlegm, was completed last summer.
“Yonge + St. Clair is on its way back,” says Brandon Donnelly, Vice President of Development at Slate Asset Management. “Having occasion to bring Studio Gang’s first project in Toronto to the neighbourhood signals to the rest of the city that we would like to create something special here.”
“If it hadn’t been for Frank Gehry, we would have made a simple, straightforward concert hall where students play concerts. But if the space is there, and somebody so gifted, like him, is prepared to do that, then of course you have to do that” - Daniel Barenboim, Founder, Pierre Boulez Saal.
In this Facebook video, Frank Gehry discusses the circumstances of his most recently-completed project, the Pierre Boulez Saal concert hall in Berlin, and the significance of contributing a new venue to Berlin’s historic musical scene.
Dubai’s newest mega-attraction, a 150-meter-high, 93-meter-wide picture frame structure dubbed the “Dubai Frame” is approaching completion after a nearly two-year delay, and is set for opening in the second half of this year. At a cost of $43.60 million, the new building will stand as a symbol of the city’s rapid rise from modest settlement to gleaming metropolis, giving visitors a panoramic view of the boundary-pushing skyscrapers from the coast of the Persian Gulf.
It also may stand as a symbol of something far less idyllic: intellectual property theft.
Hyperloop One has revealed images of its full-scale test track, called the DevLoop, for the first time as it prepares for its first public trial later this year. The 500-meter-long (1,640 feet) DevLoop is located in the flat terrain of the Nevada desert, just 30 minutes from Las Vegas. In its final form, the track will extend two miles between launching and receiving points.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected 14 recipients for the 2017 AIA Young Architects Award. Now in its 24th year, the award was founded to honor young architects - licensed 10 years or fewer regardless of their age - who have “shown exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the profession early in their careers.”
