Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in collaboration with landscape architects Grant Associates, has been selected as the unanimous winner of the International Urban Design Ideas Competition for the Financial District and Marina District of the Port City Colombo, Sri Lanka. An extension of the existing Colombo Central Business District (CBD), the new Port City district will comprise a whopping 269 hectares of development, transforming the area into a hub for commerce, tourism, and culture.
Following the news last year that five teams had been shortlisted to redesign and reimagine the grounds of London's iconic Natural History Museum (NHM), five anonymous concept images have been unveiled. The brief called for proposals to "reshape the Museum’s grounds and reinvigorate its public setting" with an aim to creating "an innovative exterior setting that matches Alfred Waterhouse’s Grade I listed building and the award-winning Darwin Centre for architectural excellence, whilst also improving access and engaging visitors."
Read on to see the competing teams, including individual concept images from BIG, Stanton Williams and Feilden Clegg Bradley.
The RIBA Lubetkin Prize, awarded annually to the architects of the best new building outside the European Union, was won this year by Wilkinson Eyre and Grant Associates for Cooled Conservatories, Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. The prize, which was also awarded to Wilkinson Eyre in 2012 for the Guangzhou International Finance Centre, is now in its 13th year.
Upon announcing the news, RIBA President Stephen Hodder stated:
During the World Architecture Festival, held this October in Singapore, we had the opportunity to interview one of the UK’s most succesful landscape architects: Andrew Grant. On the occasion, the project, Gardens by the Bay, in collaboration with Wilkinson Eyre Architects, was awarded the World Building of the Year Award.
Cooled Conservatories at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, has won the World Building of the Year Award at the prestigious World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2012. The project, designed by Wilkinson Eyre, Grant Associates, Atelier One and Atelier Ten, was chosen from over 500 entries. More information and images after the break.
Gardens by the Bay will be Singapore’s largest garden project and is central to the country’s continued development of Marina Bay. Managed by the Singapore‘s National Park Board, the gardens were designed by a team of two firms: landscape architects, Grant Associates and architects, Wilkinson Eyre Architects. The gardens will feature two cooled conservatories – the Flower Dome (cool dry biome) and Cloud Forest (cool moist biome), as well as themed horticulture gardens, heritage gardens, and hundreds of thousands of plants from around the world.
More on this after the break.