Danish firm C.F. Møller has won first place in a competition to design an extension and renovation of Vendsyssel Hospital in Hjørring, Denmark. This winning proposal will add 14,000 square meters to the existing structure, incorporating a new treatment center, a ward for mothers and children, and a rooftop children’s playground. The new facilities are arranged around large courtyards, and make use of large windows to display the path of travel through the hospital. This helps make navigating through the large building as easy as possible.
Non-profit organization DawnTown has chosen Design with Company as the winner of its second official design-build competition. The Chicago-based practice’s winning entry, Pavilion MMM (Miami Many-a-chair Monument), will tell the multicultural story of Miami through metaphor by constructing a temporary monument of recycled chairs collected from local yard sales on Miami’s Cultural Plaza.
The results of the 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space have been announced. The prize organized by the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) rewards both the designers and the facilitators (such as councils or community groups) that have contributed to the best urban interventions of the year. The award is given for ingenuity and social impact, regardless of the scale of intervention, meaning that small, relatively unknown practices can rub shoulders with some of the best-known practices in Europe.
See the 2 Joint Winners and 4 Special Mentions after the break
Danish architecture firm ADEPT has won first place in a competition to add three new buildings to the Danish Armed Forces Complex in Aalborg, Denmark. In keeping with the Armed Forces’ Green Establishments initiative, a project that encourages the lowering of energy use and CO2 emissions, the new barracks will be a visible model of sustainability.
The Hamedanian, a proposal by CAAT Studio in collaboration with TTBP, seeks to design a large scale commercial complex in the centre of one of the oldest streets in the Iranian city of Isfahan. If built, the mixed use development, half which is parking facilities, would feature commercial and office space.
Major natural disasters caused by climate change are becoming an unfortunate certainty worldwide. Prevention of these events is something that no single architect can accomplish, but preparation for them can be. To that end, Open Online Academy (OOAc) has challenged architects worldwide to design disaster-resistant architecture with their online course "Designing Resilient Schools." Architecture firm MAT-TERhas responded to this challenge with a new design for Guiuan National High School in the Philippines, an area hit especially hard by last year’s Typhoon Haiyan. The design is a singular, compact structure designed to better withstand the forces of major storms, doubling as both a school and a community emergency shelter.
The winners of the international competition to design Berlin's new Natural Science Museum have been announced. The brief, which called for a large scale iconic building in the heart of the German capital, offered the opportunity for architects and students to design in a city founded in the 13th century.
Understanding that natural science museums are often simply seen as places for public spectacle, the organization behind the competition wanted to ensure that the "importance of the museum's specimen collections for documenting historical and present-day patterns of biological diversity cannot be overstated."
See the winning entry, along with the runners up, after the break.
An aerial rendering from the Sasaki/Rutgers/Arup team shows Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. A threatened barrier island is visible on the right, and in the middle is a redeveloped area where people could, in theory, move. Image Courtesy of The Atlantic Cities
If you lived in a region repeatedly devastated by storms, would common sense be enough to make you leave your memories behind? Two of the ten proposals for the Rebuild by Design competition (which included proposals from OMA and BIG) tackle this issue, providing designs that compel communities to move to safety. To learn more about this sensitive and increasingly relevant social and political issue, known as "Managed Retreat," check out James Russell's article on The Atlantic Cities.
International design firm 3XN has recently won a competition to design a residential building in downtown Vienna, Austria. Being so close to the historic center of the city, the project required a unique but unobtrusive appearance. With this in mind, a subtle, curving façade composed of warm colors was developed for the exterior.
The honor of designing Thailand’s pavilion for the 2015 Milan Exposition has officially been awarded to The Office of Bangkok Architects (OBA). The firm’s winning design incorporates the Expo’s theme of “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” with the agrarian and religious qualities that define the Kingdom of Thailand. Located centrally on the Expo’s main avenue, the pavilion will be adjacent to a canal that will be used as a part of the exhibition, relating back to Bangkok’s informal title as the “Venice of Asia.”
Ombres Lumineuses. Image Courtesy of Sukkahville Design Competition
Registration is now open for the fourth annual Sukkahville Design Competition. The open competition challenges entrants to re-imagine the traditional Sukkah. All finalists will be invited to construct their designs on the Nathan Philips Square in front of Toronto’s City Hall for the week-long holiday of Sukkot.
Find out how to enter and continue after the break to view the winners of 2013...
San Francisco’s Presidio Trust isn’t giving up. After rejecting three shortlisted schemes earlier this year that envisioned a “cultural institution of distinction” for the underdeveloped Crissy Field, the Trust has now invited five new teams to envision “kid-friendly” plans for a 13 acre portion of the site.
The five teams, which include James Corner Field Operations, Olson Kundig Architects and Snøhetta, are expected to present their ideas publicly in just three months. A winner will not be selected, though each team will receive $25,000 for their efforts. However, the Trust will be inclined to work with one of the teams should their concepts “dazzle” the audience.
A complete list of the five teams and more project information, after the break...
Metro 1 has partnered with DawnTown Miami to present an international ideas, design and build competition for a true urban park in the heart of the burgeoning Wynwood Arts District in Miami, Florida. The winning design team will have their idea and proposal built as well as a cash prize of $10,000.
Paris-based X-TU has envisioned a more cohesive, sustainable market where food is not only grown and harvested, but sold and consumed on the spot. Serving as the French pavilion for the 2015 Milan Expo, X-TU’s competition-winning scheme will celebrate the country’s “rich genetic heritage” and future in innovative food production with a timber “fertile market” that supports the growth of the produce it sells.
The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) is calling for submissions that respond to the thematic of an upcoming exhibition, entitled TBD, that will be on view September 5 to October 25, 2014 in Toronto, Canada.
Manhattan-based Zerafa Architecture Studiohas been announced as winner of a competition to design a monument to Orange County’s crime victims. Placed between two natural mounds on axis with Irvine’s Mason Regional Park office, the winning scheme carves a subtle, circular void within the park’s forested landscape that offers a range of experiences to the community.
Once the fourth largest city in America, Michigan’s primary Metropolis, Detroit has recently filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States. Among the many reasons for Detroit’s decline, two stand out: an undiversified economic model, reliant on the production and sale of automobiles, and an unprecedented degree of sprawl. Currently more than 77% of jobs in the metropolitan area reside more than ten miles from the city center, making Detroit the most job-sprawled city in the US and stretching city services beyond capacity. Detroit’s deterioration is just as much about urban decline as it is about industrial decline. Detroit is located in the Midwest portion of the United States and is part of a larger band of cities known as the Rust Belt which have gone through a process of decline over the past decades.
amphibianArc has been announced as winner of the Ningbo Yinzhou Southern CBD Portal Planning competition. Commissioned by the same developers of the Ningbo Museum designed by Wang Shu, the "transit-oriented" proposal aims to become the "driving force" of urban life in the masterplan's fourth and final phase.
UNStudiohas won a competition to remodel the Hanwha headquarters in Seoul. With an aim to transform a building into a symbol of the leading environmental technology company’s values, UNStudio's winning scheme will replace the skyscraper’s opaque panelling and single layer of dark glass with an animated facade designed to reduce solar gain, increase natural light, generate energy, and interact with its surrounding.
The City-County Building Plaza Design Competition is seeking a final conceptual design that would be implemented on an existing 1.94 acre open space on the City-County Building Property also known as the City-County Building Plaza (CCB Plaza).
Henning Larsen Architectshas won an invited competition to design a new headquarters for the Central Bank of Libya in Tripoli. Inspired by Libyan vernacular architecture, the structure will occupy two existing site excavations. The first, and largest, excavation will be transformed into a “shaded oasis” that serves both the bank and Gurji district by providing areas for operations, an education center, restaurant and hotel. The second will allow vehicular access to the treasuries.
BPA (Busan Port Authority) has just announced an international competition for the Waterfront Park Master Plan of the Busan North Port, South Korea. The deadline for registration is June 10. To download all the necessary requirements to participate in the competition, please go to the official website.
The Municipality of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) and One Architecture Week invite worldwide architects to participate in an open international competition for concept design. The competition is to outline the future of the Central Square in Plovdiv—an emblematic location where most of the significant historical periods of the city overlap. A solution for their untroubled co-existence is yet to be found.
Visualisation (day). Image Courtesy of Boogertman + Partners
South African-based practice Boogertman + Partners has recently won a competition to design a new education centre for the Karura Forest Environmental Education Trust in Kenya'sKarura Forest Reserve. The centre, situated on around fifteen acres of a former sports club, will be surrounded by the closed-canopy forest close to the Kenya Teachers Training College, the International Center for Research in Agro-forestryand the United Nations Environment Programme Headquarters.
Located in the northern part of Nairobi County, bordering the Muthaiga, Gigiri and Runda residential areas, the centre will seek to educate people on the many species of plants, birds, insects and mammals to be found within Karura's diverse landscape.
