Francisco Gonzalez-Pulido, chief designer and president of JAHN, has shared with us his net-zero design proposal for the new Mexico City International Airport competition. Similar to the Norman Foster and Fernando Romero's winning design, JAHN's proposal is a symbiotic blend of sensitive cultural meaning and powerful energy efficiency. As per competition requirements to pair an international firm with a Mexican firm, the project was the result of a collaboration with local architects Francisco Lopez-Guerra of LOGUER and Alonso de Garay of ADG.
Seattle based firm goCstudio have designed a wood-fired floating sauna, a project resonant with the culture of the Pacific Northwest. Aiming to begin construction in spring of 2015 and open in summer, the firm has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the building of their first model. Easily transportable and accessible by kayak, the floating sauna fits within the dimensions of a standard size trailer. Providing a space of refuge and revitalization, along with a uniquely interactive way to experience the landscape of Seattle, the project, named "wa_sauna", requires $43,000 to become a reality. Learn more about the project and how you can help at the firm's Kickstarter page, here. More images after the break.
Anthropic Park: Freshwater ecological reserve and remediation - Saline Joniche, Italy. Image Courtesy of Grupo Aranea
The Holcim Foundation has announced the European winners of its 2014 Holcim Awards for exemplary sustainable design and construction. In light of the complex and interdisciplinary challenges facing the building industry today, the Jury identified target issues of environmental, social, and economical performance alongside architectural excellence and high transferability as intrinsic objectives in the winning projects.
Teams from Italy, France, and Austria were all selected for approaching the challenges of sustainable construction with innovative creativity and social ethos. Each will share over $300,000 in prize money and will be considered for the global awards.
Read more about the winning schemes after the break...
On September 3, 2014, urban design consultancy URBED was announced winner of the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize. The competition has spurred unprecedented conversation and debate over the concept of Garden Cities in the UK, while the finalists call for the development of theoretical ideas and implementation of practical solutions. ArchDaily brought you the winning proposal earlier, and The Building Centre, an independent forum of the built environment, teamed up with the Wolfson Prize organizers to bring you an exhibit further exploring the broad range of design solutions from over 200 brilliant entries.
Snohetta - Maggie's Aberdeen, 2013. Image Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art
Organized by the New York School of Interior Design, and curated for CMOA by Raymund Ryan, curator of architecture, Carnegie Museum of Art is hosting a new exhibit: Maggie's Centres: A Blueprint for Cancer Care. Opening September 13, the exhibit showcases the extraordinary Maggie's Centres, works of integrated architecture designed to address essential human needs and the everyday challenges of cancer patients undergoing treatment. The work of Frank Gehry, Piers Gough, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, and Richard Rogers have been selected to be included in the exhibition, and provide insight into how some of the most influential architects of our age have sought to positively alter the look, and more significantly, the feel, of healthcare facilities.
With over 275 million visitors to the United States' 401 national parks per year, what will be the experience of visitors in the 21st century? The Van Alen Institute has teamed up with the National Park Service to launch a new competition: National Parks Now - a central component of Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape, the Institute's initiative to investigate how the form and organization of the built environment shapes a need and desire for escape. Operating on the belief, stated by Van Alen Institute Executive Director David van der Leer, that "too few people realize what a huge resource these smaller national park sites are for local communities and for larger urban networks," this initiative seeks to make parks relevant for the 21st century audience. More on the competition after the break.
"What does architecture mean? Does it mean something? Where do you put it?" These are a few of the questions Jacques Herzog poses in this 1998 lecture at the Berlage Institute. Inspired by the concept that architecture is inherently a form of communication, Herzog, who co-founded Herzog & de Meuron with Pierre de Meuron, highlights nine of the firm's projects which all share similarities that feed into one another. The lecture, Herzog explains, is about using varied forms of language to create a conversation. Basel, a Swiss city bordering three countries and the home base of the firm, is characterized by many languages. Architecture, Herzog argues, is also a choreographed dance of languages, including those of art, music, light, void and mass, skin and surface, transparency and obscurity, layering and materiality.
Beginning with the Goetz Collection in Munich and describing the bands of light that cut through its cubic form, and continuing on to the play with existing urban factors and natural light to enhance the "impressive mass" of the Tate Modern, Herzog describes the poetry of design. He continues on to discuss Studio Remy Zaugg, a collaboration with Remy Zaugg for the Centre Pompidou, a psychological look at the urban study of Basel, the proposal for the MOMA Extension in New York, the Pritzker winning Signal Box, and the complex conceptual and physical layers of both the Laban Dance Centre in Deptford and the Dominus Winery in Napa. At the end, Herzog requests "critical" questions from the audience, inviting an exploratory conversation that provides insight into the design process of the architects and the experience of the users.
In answering an audience member's question, Herzog describes the mindset behind his dynamic practice: "If I knew what I'm doing, I probably wouldn't do it anymore. I wouldn't be interested in getting up in the morning, if I knew that's exactly how architecture works…it would be boring, if I knew this is my way."
Are Brutalist buildings, once deemed cruel and ugly, making a comeback? Reyner Banham's witty play on the French term for raw concrete, beton brut, was popularized by a movement of hip, young architects counteracting what they perceived as the bourgeois and fanciful Modernism of the 1930s. Though the use of raw concrete in the hands of such artist-architects as Le Corbusier seems beautiful beneath the lush Mediterranean sun, under the overcast skies of northern Europe Brutalist architecture earned a much less flattering reputation. Since the 1990s, however, architects, designers, and artists have celebrated formerly denounced buildings, developing a fashionably artistic following around buildings like Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower, "even if long-term residents held far more ambivalent views of this forceful high-rise housing block." To learn more about this controversial history and to read Jonathan Glancey's speculation for its future, read the full article on BBC, here.
The JS Dorton Arena, originally designed as a livestock judging pavilion for the North Carolina fairgrounds, was a deliberate political statement for the North Carolina State University about the courage of progress and value of taking risks. The architect, Matthew Nowicki, imagined a symphonic spatial experience where design, material and construction are choreographed in a highly challenging and sweeping, ambitious vision. Foregoing interior columns, the building combines intersecting parabolic arches of reinforced concrete with a grid of draped tension cables inspired by the tension system of the Golden Gate Bridge to support the entire span of the roof - the first of its kind.
Donovan Dunkley, Vail Nuguid & Alexia Sanchezm, City College of New York. Image Courtesy of Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
In Borders: A Very Short Introduction, Hagan Diener writes, "…every border has a story. Every line on a map, every maker in the landscape, was derived from some complex negation of power and culture." It is this potency of meaning that makes the physical and conceptual border such a fascinating site. The 2013-2014 ACSA administered and AISC sponsored Steel Design Student Competition challenged students to design a border crossing station addressing the complex factors of cross-border relationships, using structural steel as the primary material. Learn more about the competition and the winning projects after the break.
Videos
Screenshot of video courtesy of Traces Films
The City of Port Phillip near Melbourne is taking bold measures to enhance the vibrant atmosphere and livability of their city through a variety of urban renewal projects. Promoting a four part community plan of working together to take action, neighborhood development, community leadership, and monitoring progress, and fifteen priorities for action, the city's commitment to environmentally and socially conscious design and policy alongside a strong support for the arts has resulted in a number of noteworthy projects, attracting designers such as Simon Oxenham of Convic, Gregory Burgess Architects, and Paul Morgan Architects to take part.
Read on after the break to see three videos featuring the award winning projects, created by our friends at Traces Films.
In this 2009 lecture titled "Fabricating Ideology and Architectural Education," seminal architect, educator, and co-founder of OMA Elia Zenghelis discusses the development of ideologies that shape architectural discourse vis-a-vis architectural education. Arguing that architectural education is motivated by religious, socio-political, and economic principles, Zenghelis makes the case that the war-torn 20th century has been an era of upheaval and conflict, resulting in the loss of historical context and a confused state for artists and architects. Proposing the idea that architecture is a servant of power, and is thus intrinsically intertwined with political and societal trends, Zenghelis urges a return to a contextualized understanding of architectural history in order for contemporary architects to develop a sensitive and nuanced approach to their practice.
Discussing his relationships and collaborations with former students and colleagues Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman, as well as the political and architectural legacy of such giants as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, Elia Zenghelis provides a compelling conversation about the inherent role of architecture in political discourse.
How could hermit crabs teach us a lesson about world peace? In her project, titled, "Why Not Hand Over a "Shelter" to Hermit Crabs?" Japanese media design artist Aki Inomata is inspired by hermit crabs' peaceable exchange of their shells, a metaphor for the peaceful exchange of land between countries. Exploring the theme further, she designs new shelters in the shape of world cities, and provides new homes for the crabs which represent the abstract perception of changing nationalities and identities.
Blurring the boundaries between the Natural world and the Manmade in one wide, sweeping gesture, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's first solo exhibit, aptly titled Riverbed, brings the Outdoors in.
Recreating an enormous, ruggedly enchanting landscape, complete with riverbed and rocky earth, the artist draws heavily from site-specific inspiration. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's location on the Danish coast lends a raw, elemental and powerful character that extends into the building as a major intervention, transforming into a work of art.
Returning for its eighth year, Singapore's annual premiere festival Archifest explores the concept of CROWD, and how it interacts with and becomes an integral aspect of architecture and urbanism. Hailed as a Festival of Ideas for the City, Archifest is a two week long gala focusing this year on the context of Collective Intelligence and Community Capital, and the intricate complexities and interconnectivity between both. The theme is based on the belief that it is "the human aspect of architecture that encourages, facilitates, and enhances the human quality to hold influence and create energy to the makeup of our city."
Wondering what to do with the last, lingering weeks of summer? There's still plenty of time for some enticing summer reading! Peruse this online collection of select books on Architecture, chosen from academic publisher Routledge's titles on themes of Professional Practice and Sustainable Architecture, and available in their entirety for free throughout the month of August.
Including compelling and notable works, these books tackle relevant and significant contemporary issues facing the design world today. See what's available after the break.
As the tide of urban migration sweeps across the developing world, cities experience an overpowering pressure to provide basic services such as electricity and sewage treatment to an enormous amount of people building illegal shacks on city outskirts. When they fail, the slum is born - but is it possible for a city to expand without slums? In Hanoi, Vietnam, officials hope to answer this question, with a number of tactics that have led to a "culture of semi-legal construction." Read this article in The Guardian to learn how Hanoi manages to curb slums and provide a basic standard of living to its poorest inhabitants.
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