Powerhouse Company and De Zwarte Hond (Team A) have won an international competition to redesign the Assen railway station in the Netherlands. The winning scheme, marked by a triangular latticed canopy, is designed to reconnect the east and west side of the city with an “inviting and recognizable” transit hub.
Architects, students and designers worldwide are being summoned to propose innovative design solutions centered around bamboo that explores the material's future potential. The competition, organized by World Bamboo and Damyang-Gun, hopes to “discover fresh ideas related to domestic and foreign industrialization of bamboo.” Architecture is one of three divisions in the competition. Winners will receive up to $10,000 in awards. Submissions are due November 30, 2014. You can learn more about the 2014 World Bamboo Design Competition, here.
Claiming second place in a recent competition for Korea Midland Power (KOMIPO), HAEAHN Architects, in partnership with Haenglim, have put forth a daring new design that combines power plant and office building. The dual use structure, which will include a park and a restaurant, was conceived as a way of breaking the raw, industrial image of the traditional power plant. In keeping with this idea, the design would be built over and replace Danginlee, the first power plant ever constructed in South Korea. The architects intended for the new plant to commemorate the old, while at the same time attracting more local traffic to the area. See the details of this award-winning design, after the break.
Calling all architects and students, the Chicago Architectural Club (CAC) wants to see your ideas for The Barack Obama Presidential Library. The recent media coverage surrounding the announced library, drawing bids from New York, Honolulu, and Chicago, once again initiates the desire for speculations and projections. As the fourteenth of its kind, this civic institution will not only function to house a collection of artifacts and documents relating to the president’s life but will also provide an educational infrastructure and framework for outreach and community programs. Thus, in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF), this year’s Chicago Prize Competition is calling for speculative proposals for the Barack Obama Presidential Library to initiate a debate in order to rethink and redefine this particular building typology.
Porsche Design has narrowed down a list of 20 participating teams to six shortlisted firms for an invited competition to design a new luxury residential tower in Frankfurt, Germany. The project, which will be Porsche Design’s debut in European real estate, will include up to 200 apartments, ranging from “Porsche Design suites” to two-story townhouses and luxury penthouses. The teams moving on to the competition’s second round, include: 3XN (Copenhagen), Stefano Boeri Architetti (Italy), MAD (China), Delugan Meissl (Austria), Neutelings Riedijk (Rotterdam) and Neil M. Denari (Los Angeles).
The January 8th Memorial Foundation has selected four finalists out of the 60 practices and artists, both national and international, who submitted applications to create a permanent memorial and master plan concept for the El Presidio Park in Tucson, Arizona. The permanent memorial would commemorate the January 8, 2011, mass shooting that wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, killed six people and injured 12 others. The memorial is also intended to honor the spirit of the Tucson community in its responses to the tragedy and to inspire future generations to work together on community issues. The four finalists are:
Encouraging young designers and architects to create and design innovative, sustainable solutions for the bathroom, the sixth edition of the international design contest jumpthegap, organized by Roca and the Barcelona Design Centre (BCD), has been launched at the Roca London Gallery with a presentation from the contest’s UK judge Tom Dyckhoff. An ideal platform for new generations to show their talent and visions for the bathroom of the future, jumpthegap is aimed at young professionals and students of architecture and design under 35. Registration closes February 2015. The jury, which will be led by MAD principle Ma Yansong, is expected to announce the winner in October 2015.
designcamp moonpark dmp has won a competition to design the new cultural arts center in Asan, South Korea. The winning proposal, inspired by an "Echoing Sculpture," balances mass and void with two theaters and a cultural arts building that frames a garden and civic waterfront plaza.
More on the winning design, after the break.
RAW Design, Ferris + Associates and Curio have launched Winter Stations, an open international design competition challenging artists, designers, architects and landscape architects re-imagine the life guard stands on Toronto's waterfront as "temporary wintertime installations" that "inject color, movement, humor and more into the landscape.” The theme is “Warmth,” and there is no limit to the size of the installation, but the jurors will take durability and constructibility into account. The selected installations will be built in February 2015. Registration is now open and submissions are due December 5, 2014 with winners announced in early January 2015. All the details can be found, here.
The Busan Port Authority (BPA) has named the SYNWHA Consortium winners of an international competition for the Busan North Port Redevelopment in South Korea. The winning proposal is an "Interactive Pier" slated to transform the original port into a cultural center that celebrates the marriage of mountains, river, and sea, while crafting dynamic connections between the city of Busan and its seaside.
COBE, DISSING+WEITLING and COWI have been announced as winners of an international competition to design a 225-meter-long pedestrian bridge, station, 32,000-square-meter park and associated park-and-ride facility for the Danish city of Køge. The winning design, selected over three other invited submissions, will stretch across a unique traffic “hot-spot” where Denmark’s most trafficked freeway, an existing train line and a planned double-tracked high-speed rail line meet.
More about the Køge North Station, which is expected serve 90,000 people daily as a “new gateway to Copenhagen” by 2018, after the break.
MoMA P.S.1 has announced five finalists to compete in the 2015 Young Architects Program (YAP). Now in it’s 16th edition, the competition will challenge a group of emerging architects to design a temporary installation within the walls of the P.S.1 courtyard for MoMA’s annual summer “Warm-Up” series.
The 2015 shortlist includes Office for Political Innovation (Andres Jaque; NY), brillhart architecture (Jacob Brillhart; Miami, FL), Erin Besler (LA, CA), The Bittertang Farm (Michael Loverich; NY), Studio Benjamin Dillenburger (Benjamin Dillenburger and Michael Hansmeyer; ONT, Canada). The winners will be announced in early 2015.
Previous winners include The Living (Hy-Fi), CODA (Party Wall), Interboro Partners (Holding Pattern), Work AC (Public Farm 1), MOS (Afterparty) and SO-IL (Pole Dance).
By now, when the design competition for the Guggenheim Helsinki is mentioned, one number probably comes to mind: 1,715, the record-breaking number of submissions which the competition received. But how can this number be put into perspective? Why, with more numbers of course. Take 5,769 for example, which is the total height in meters of all the A1 presentation boards arranged vertically. Or take 18,336,780, the estimated value in Euros of all the work submitted.
The city of Esbjerg has selected Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter through a competition to extend and refurbish the Wadden Sea Center in Vester Vedsted. A UNESCO World Heritage area, the Wadden Sea is Denmark’s largest National park. The new center aims to “create awareness and understanding for the marshland and the Wadden Sea,” as jury member and leader of the center Klaus Melbye explains. “The architecture is sustainable, visionary and bold and brings forth the Centre as an didactic information centre of the future.”
More about Dorte Mandrup’s winning design, after the break.
Nadau Architects, the winning team of the Reanimate the Ruins international ideas contest, have shared with us their proposal to revive Detroit's historic Packard Automotive Plant, the former factory which has become an icon of the city's post-industrial decline. By developing a proposal which frees the land from unwanted structures and knits the colossal 1 kilometer-long building back into the urban landscape, Nadau Lavergne Architects have created a design which returns both a sense of community and some economic hope back to the building.
Read more about the proposal after the break
In 2020, the world will celebrate the 250th birthday of Beethoven, and soon after the anniversary of his death. In light of this, a new “world-class” concert hall, a “Festspielhaus”, is being planned for the banks of Beethoven’s beloved Rhine River in his hometown of Bonn, Germany. More than 50 practices were considered in the pulmonary selection process, following a shortlist of ten, and now three final proposals by David Chipperfield Architects, kadawittfeldarchitektur and Valentiny hvp architects have been selected to move on to the competition’s final round.
“The new Festspielhaus will not only bring Beethoven’s music to life, it will serve as an international “house of music” that brings together diverse genres – from classical to crossover to pop – and attracts music lover of all ages,” stated the competition organizer.
The privately-funded “Beethovenhalle” is planned for completion in 2019. You can review the top three final designs after the break, alongside the seven other shortlisted proposals - by Zaha Hadid, UNStudio, Snøhetta, and more - they were selected over.
Architecture for Humanity Vancouver Chapter has unveiled the winners of "NEXT BIG ONE," an open call for design solutions to high-magnitude earthquake and tsunami events that plague cities around the world. Project teams were challenged to propose a solution that "can mitigate natural disasters while simultaneously providing community permanence."
A jury comprised of leading architects and professionals from Architecture Research Office (Stephen Cassell), Perkins + Will (Susan Gushe), Bing Thom Architects (Eileen Keenan), Scott & Scott Architects (David Scott), and the City of Vancouver (Doug Smith) evaluated the projects. Entries were evaluated based on three key criteria: the exemplification of innovation in disaster design, promotion of community resiliency before and after disasters, and compliance with multi-hazard parameters for worst-case disaster scenarios.
BSA Space, home to the Boston Society of Architects and the BSA Foundation, is currently accepting proposals from all designers interested in becoming a guest curator. The selected curator would be responsible for conceiving, fabricating, executing, and installing all aspects of a major exhibit within the BSA's 5,000 square foot gallery space. Proposals should take into consideration a diverse audience and seek to capture the imagination of the public by conveying the power of design as an instrument of change within Boston. All major exhibitions will run four to six months and guest curators will receive a budget of $30-70K. The deadline for submissions is Friday, November 14 at 4:00PM. More details can be found, here.
What makes a city successful? Miami-based Knight Foundation aims to answer this question with their latest contest, the Knight Cities Challenge. Innovators across all disciplines are invited to propose their idea to improve one of 26 Knight communities, cities across the United States with an established network of support for the foundation's initiatives. Proposals should focus on three key levers of city success: attracting and retaining talent, expanding economic opportunity, and creating a culture of robust civic engagement in the chosen community. “No project is too small — so long as your idea is big,” says Carol Coletta, Vice-President of community and national initiatives for Knight Foundation.
The Boston Harbor Association, City of Boston, Boston Redevelopment Authority, and Boston Society of Architects have teamed up to launch Boston Living with Water, “an international call for design solutions envisioning a more resilient, more sustainable, and more beautiful Boston adapted for end-of-the-century climate conditions and rising sea levels.” The two-phase competition, open to all leading planners, designers and thinkers, will award the best overall proposal $20,000; the second and third best will each receive $10,000. Submissions for the first phase are due December 2, 2014. Learn more, here.
NORD Architects has released designs for a new Marine Education Centre in Malmö, Sweden. The Copenhagen-based practice, awarded the commission through an invited competition, hopes to “blur the distinction between architecture and landscape” with a facility that helps users gain a “deeper understanding of marine life.”
“With the changing climate, rising oceans and increased severity of cloudbursts, there is a need more than ever to understand the profound influence that marine life and the oceans have on our lives”, says Johannes Molander Pedersen, partner at NORD Architects.
An international jury behind Budapest’s new National Gallery has launched a second and invited competition for a select few of the industry’s best after the first, open competition lead to “disappointing” results. Jean Nouvel, David Chipperfield, Mecanoo, Nieto Sobejano, Renzo Piano, SANAA and Snøhetta have been asked to submit proposals for a 5-building museum complex on the edge of Városliget, one of the city’s main parks. It will house the new National Gallery, the Ludwig Museum, an ethnography museum, architecture museum and photography museum.
The competition, known as the Liget Project, is being directed by jury members Wim Pijbes, the director of the Rijksmuseum, and Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre in Paris.
The City of Paris has called upon the architects of the world to propose "innovative urban projects" to reimagine the city's urban future. As the first competition of its kind in the world, Mayor Anne Hidalgo and her Deputy, Jean-Louis Missika, will "select and implement the new forms of buildings that will shape the future of Paris," putting innovation at the top of the criteria. Offering 23 sites, located in the centre of Paris and on the peripheries, the City is convinced that "the challenges faced by the world can be addressed through local answers." According to the Mayor, "from today, world creators are given carte blanche to reinvent the ways of living, working and trading in Paris." "Surprise us!"
The Architectural League and Socrates Sculpture Park invite emerging architects and designers to submit proposals for Folly, an annual design/build studio program during March and April 2015 leading to a public exhibition at Socrates opening in early May 2015.
