Focusing on competition entries, this week’s curated selection of the best-unbuilt architecture from our readers' submissions, highlights projects from across the globe, presented part of international contests. Some are winners, some are not but all of the featured schemes have an intriguing conceptual approach, and a different story to tell.
Tackling diverse programming, the entries include an urban public housing proposal in South Korea, the Dianju Village Library in China and a new Future-Oriented Neighborhood in Finland combining urban and sustainable living. Moreover, the article showcases rare and unconventional functions like a hospital for psychiatry & neurological diseases in Turkey and an intervention on a famed Oscar Niemeyer site.
Read on to discover 10 unbuilt projects and their descriptions from the architects.
City Main library Gwangju
The Winning Proposal of the City Main library Gwangju in South Kora consists of 2 phases. The First Phase consists of eight functional cascaded plateaus, 492m2 each. The initial, ‘zero plateau’ of the Hall is the segment of the access plane of the Library Square. All along the north façade of the Library Promenade the system of inclined pathways – ramps run through and at the opposite side, along the south façade, runs a technological, book transportation system. The Second Phase consists of four cascaded plateaus, possible to connect with the existing slabs of the incinerator building.
Hoijakka, future-oriented neighborhood
Hoijakka, or a Finnish sleigh carousel, the winning proposal for Hartaanselänranta design competition, complements the existing urban structure of Oulu, Finland, and offers a new, vivid and versatile living environment that is built on both banks of the Oulujoki river delta. The river delta gives the area a unique identity and acts as a starting point for the design of the new, sustainable and future-oriented neighborhood.
The Erenkoy Hospital for Psychiatry & Neurological Diseases
Winner of the 1st Prize, the proposed design is positioned on the periphery of the eastern part of the competition site where trees are more randomly located, allowing the hospital units to fill in the gaps to form dynamic compositions. Eliminating the boundary effect and creating a large atrium space, patients can, therefore, see the high-quality structures and the designed therapeutic gardens instead of the high walls that isolate them from society.
Repose- City of Dreams Pavilion
Located on Roosevelt Island, New York, the proposal for the City of Dreams Pavilion replaces the first stipulation of the famed mantra reduce with repose, which acts as a semiotic device and serves a conceptual function, being both instrumental and motivational. […] The ambition of this pavilion is to operationalize this sensed instability and derive an architectural language that also informs, directs, and challenges architectural notions of tectonics, structure, and construction.
Collaborative Topographies
Hatch Architects & Planners + Studio Etienne Bastormagi
Hatch Architects and Studio Etienne Bastormagi have collaborated on a proposal for the KIC “knowledge and Innovation Center” competition for the Tripoli Special Economic Zone. The project located next to the UNESCO world heritage nominated site designed by renowned architect Oscar Niemeyer presents an architectural opportunity to create an extension of the exhibition area. The design of an iconic, multifaceted, functional office neighborhood, and micro-scale parks, promotes the intersection between nature, working and public life.
Mardin Mosque
The Mardin Mosque, located in the ancient Mesopotamia lands, translates the local character and historical urban texture of the region into a contemporary approach. Design approaches the notion of religion as an ancient concept and it materializes the prayer space out of it, like a carved and stacked form emerging from the local landscape. The concept evolves by centering the place of worship. Along with the supportive spaces and suggested uses in the program, the overall complex is considered as an urban focus.
Dianju Village Library
Situated in China, the renovation of the library is both an extensive and simple process with the preservation of the existing building linear walls. A generator of the village’s social and cultural experiences, the design acts as a meeting point for agricultural eco-tourists and villagers. The park and the village library has been incorporated into the design as a whole gathering space. […] The library acts as a thoroughfare from one end of the road to another with the attempt of making it public-friendly and welcoming.
Connection City - New Possibility of Urban Public Housing
Unsangdong architects
The key objective of Sinnae Compact City is to present a new role model that realizes new multi-family housing supply for young people and newlyweds, the introduction of job-housing proximity concept, city to restore interregional disconnection by railroad, implementation of living SOC program that coexists with the Jungnang-gu area, a win-win sustainable city as a boundary between urban development area and natural environment, cyclical self-sufficient city of education, culture, production, and consumption.
Alternative Public Workspace Proposal
Baraka Architects
With a concept revolving around the notion of “Sustainability and ecology as a pioneer for a public building”, the proposed design idea contains some premises to re-examine peremptory and problematic modern humans working conditions. It is imagined as a hybrid living center where working, nature, resting, producing, consuming mix together. In this way, the human factor is thought of as a source and it is aimed to use that source accurately.
The Wave
Located in St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia, the winning proposal aims to unite recreational, cultural, economic and ecological functions within a coherent composition that reinstates Brookes Jetty as a significant civic space and injects the site with new urban vitality. The scheme explores the opportunity to design a structure inspired by the fluid geometries of the coast. The new jetty operates, both visually and functionally, as a smooth transition between land and sea, a coastal formation that mediates between solid and liquid.
HOW TO SUBMIT AN UNBUILT PROJECT
We highly appreciate the input from our readers and are always happy to see more projects designed by them. If you have an Unbuilt project to submit, click here and follow the guidelines. Our curators will review your submission and get back to you in case it is selected for a feature.
