The Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has announced its 41st Annual Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition. Dubbed “KRob,” it is the longest running architectural drawing competition of its kind.
The competition accepts conceptual or final elevations, sections, perspectives, and renderings, drawn by hand, digitally, or by a combination of both. Additionally, this year’s competition features a new category for 3D printed models.
MVRDV’s Markthal in Rotterdam has received a High Commendation in the category of “Mixed-Use Architecture” at the 2015-2016 European Property Awards.
The Canadian Canoe Museum has revealed the five designs shortlisted in its competition to design a new museum on the Peterborough Lift Lock National Historic Site on the Trent-Severn Waterway in southern Ontario.
Out of 97 entered proposals, six teams were originally asked to develop more in-depth concepts over the summer, but one team withdrew. The five remaining teams -- from the United States, Canada, and Ireland -- presented their designs at an open house held by the Museum.
The Architectural Review has revealed the winners of its 2015 AR School Awards, which honor excellent educational design, ranging from kindergartens to universities. The awards seek to recognize “transformative, leading edge projects from around the world,” “challenging and inspiring architects to reflect more deeply on the purpose of architecture and its relationship to the wider world.”
The winners of the AR Schools Awards are:
Thomas Phifer and Partners has unveiled their design for The Museum of Modern Art and TR Warszawa Theater in Warsaw, Poland. Together, the 15,000 square meter museum, 10,000 square meter theater, infrastructure, and outdoor forum, will compose the largest cultural project in Poland’s recent history.
Inspired by abstract works of art, “the building facades manifest creative life in the city and emphasize the Museum of Modern Art and TR Warszawa’s integral role in the formation of Warsaw’s new cultural center.”
“I think one generational shift that’s going on has to do with the interest in architecture students to be involved in the community. Students see architecture not just as a profession, like medicine or law, they see it as a kind of service profession, on the order of social work or social science, where they understand that the work they do affects communities and real people, so they want to involve the communities from the beginning in their design process.”
Aarhus School of Architecture, schmidt hammer lassen architects, VOLA, and the Danish Arts Foundation have announced their collaborative competition, entitled Drawing of the Year 2015, which calls for imaginative student drawings, and aims to “celebrate the oldest tool of architects.”
Students worldwide are invited to submit drawings “that inspire, communicate, and engage” with the theme of Sustainability Through Architecture. Thus, drawings “should focus on sustainability and architecture’s ambition to take an active part in the change of our society,” and “should address architecture’s ability to contribute to a sustainable environment on all scales—concepts, utopias, buildings, landscapes, and cities.”
Archstudies.gr and DeCorbuziers, in partnership with the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, have announced their international student competition to design a conceptual funerary monument for the death of Modernism.
With this year marking the 50th anniversary of Le Corbusier’s death, the team of organizations is seeking “contemporary interpretations concerning multidisciplinary approaches over Modernism and specifically over Le Corbusier’s work, while [exploring] possible themes and directions of the memorial representation” in present day. Designs should emphasize commentary, rather than a tribute to Le Corbusier.
PBS’ American Masters series and Latino Public Broadcasting’s VOCES series have teamed up for the first time to delve into the life and work of Pedro E. Guerrero, a Mexican American photographer from Mesa, Arizona, who is known for his photography of the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, among other artists.
The film, Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer’s Journey, explores Guerrero’s photography, showing his collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright to “produce insightful portraits of important modernist architecture,” which launched him to become “one of the most sought-after photographers of the ‘Mad Men’ era.” While Guerrero was extremely popular at the time, his story today is still largely unknown.
Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde of Studio Roosegaarde, in collaboration with Environmental Nano Studios and professor Bob Ursem, has created the world’s largest smog vacuum cleaner in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Dubbed Smog Free Tower, the 7-meter-tall vacuum acts as a filter that uses patented “ozone free ion technology” to clean 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour using only minimal wind and electrical energy.
Bakpak Architects and EovaStudio have won a competition to design a multifunctional building in Rzeszow, Poland. The design—called The Pottery Courtyard—is based upon the local tradition of ceramic artisans, thus restoring a sense of heritage to the region and city.
Blank Space has announced the winners of its “Dear Architecture” competition, which called designers and architects from around the world to address architecture, as a concept, in a letter of no more than 500 words and one image.
The contest was reviewed by a 17-person jury, including Fernando Romero, Diana Balmori, and ArchDaily’s co-founder David Basulto and executive editor Becky Quintal. The work of the three winners, who were awarded a total of $3,000, as well as 12 honorable mentions will be published in Blank Space’s third book, also called Dear Architecture.
Read on to see the three winners.
HMMD Competitions has announced the winners of its Triple Bridge Waterfront design competition, which called for designs to transform the Liepaja Canal coastline into a leisure avenue in Liepaja, Latvia.
Divided into four individually functioning zones, the site in question connects the famous Fontaine Palace, Great Amer symphony concert hall, Libava Hotel, the former railway bridge, and the newly proposed park in Zirgu Sala. In their submissions, designers thus had to include a “restaurant/café, nightclub/bar, exhibition space/conference hall, and an unprescribed tourist attraction.”
Entrants were additionally asked to consider the relationship between modern and historic developments and influences, as well as sustainable growth.
“Successful entries to the competition were refined, yet nimble to accommodate a vast site flanked by historic building and exposure to a canal.”
The winners of the competition are:
“Students who enter schools of architecture today are entering it at a very young age, perhaps when their total world experience and awareness is relatively narrow, and they’re making the decision to become a practicing architect, and putting aside those studies—general ed., liberal arts studies—that might actually, in the end, make them more contributing architects. […] Fewer and fewer people are having that basic liberal arts, general ed. knowledge in the profession. And it’s a serious problem.”
First-year architecture and urban planning students at the Estonian Academy of Arts have designed and created READER, a shelter based on the concept of removal from daily life, and focusing on oneself. Passers-by are invited to enter the shelter and “escape from the real world of problems into the fictional world of books.” And for those who don’t have a book on hand, the structure is meant to evoke the pages of a book through its ribbed wooden structure.
As a part of the flagship project for the EU-China Urbanization partnership, the Shenzhen Institute of Building Research Co., Ltd. (IBR) has announced its "Demand▪ Technology▪ Space Creative Competition" for the Future Low Carbon Building and Community Innovation New Experimental Center, also known as the Future Center.
Located in the underdeveloped Pingdi Subdistrict of Shenzhen, the project site is a part of the Shenzhen International Low Carbon City, a roughly 53 square kilometer area less than two hours away from Hong Kong with the goal of utilizing low-carbon and carbon-zero technologies in order to significantly boost sustainable development.
IBR is calling for submissions from individuals, teams, and even research institutes, design institutions, and any others, to participate in one, two, or all three of the competition’s categories.
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in partnership with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, has announced the winners of the US Tall Wood Building Prize Competition. The two winning projects—Framework, by Framework, LLC, and 475 West 18th, by 130-134 Holdings LLC—will each receive $1.5 million in funding for their development in Portland and New York, respectively.
Each of the projects took a unique perspective on wood building systems, fulfilling the competition’s call “to showcase the safe application, practicality, and sustainability of a minimum 80-foot structure that uses mass timber, composite wood technologies, and innovative building techniques.”
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has designed a speculative system of interventions for the Los Angeles River that “examines the relationship between urbanization and water use to develop new models of densification that recognize and tap into existing ecological and infrastructural patterns.” Called WATERshed, the design is part of the A+D Museum’s ongoing “Shelter: Rethinking How We Live in Los Angeles” exhibition that explores new typologies of housing in Los Angeles.
With their model for urban regeneration, LOHA hopes to address issues like the ongoing California drought, as well as the United Nation’s prediction that by 2030, nearly half of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress. Thus, the plan utilizes the Los Angeles River as a resource for water use and management in order to provide a path for sustainable growth in Los Angeles, and an example for other cities.
