This article was originally published on Common Edge.
In this week's reprint, Martin C. Pedersen talks with John Englander, author of Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward, about the “unstoppable” sea-level rise. The article explores the importance of planning for this challenge right away. In fact, "we have some time, but not all the time in the world" states John Englander.
The Southwest United States is known for civic and monumental designs. These projects establish iconic, contemporary expressions that move beyond vernacular traditions. Located on sites throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, they are designed with modern aesthetics and new ideas. Novel spatial experiences and formal approaches are being explored by both local and international architects. Standing in contrast to the intimate, discreet spaces found within southwest residential architecture, these buildings are prominent landmarks and nodes within their respective cities.
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Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), the Ziraat Bank Headquarters towers in Istanbul have topped out. The project is expected to become the centerpiece of the new Istanbul International Financial Centre (IIFF), and will incorporate the bank’s headquarters, commercial office spaces, retail spaces on the ground floor, and underground parking.
_Tom_Spall.jpg?1625127535 "© Tom Spall")
_Tom_Spall.jpg?1625127547 "© Tom Spall")
_Tom_Spall.jpg?1625127574 "© Tom Spall")
_Tom_Spall.jpg?1625127574 "© Tom Spall")
The Jining Art Museum, designed by Japanese architect Ryue Nishizawa in China’s Shandong province, merges architecture and landscape across three structures unified by a distinctive architectural language. Images by photographer Paulo dos Sousa showcases how the museum relates with the adjacent lake and the surrounding greenery while also highlighting how the main architectural gesture of the organically shaped roof creates a series of intermediary spaces that expand the museum’s activities outwards into the environment.
Álvaro Siza's latest project in Portugal is a 16-meter high watchtower built with a lightweight steel structure featuring photovoltaic panels on the roof. This project is very different from most of Siza's works, both in terms of scale and materials. The watchtower is located in Serra das Talhadas, in the municipality of Proença-a-Nova, and is part of a larger project comprising several structures dedicated to ecotourism in the area, including the still unbuilt Miradouro do Zebro.
OMA / Reinier De Graaf have been invited to exhibit at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Titled "Hospital of the Future", the installation explores how after years of medical preparations and technological advancements, one pandemic was able to hinder medical progress, and kill the hospital as we know it, envisioning a new form of medical architecture.
Caius Sergius Orata is credited, by Vitruvius, with inventing the hypocaust. The word, from the Latin hypocaustum, in a literal translation, means access from below. The hypocaust is a raised floor system on ceramic piles where, at one end, a furnace—where firewood is burned uninterruptedly—provides heat to the underground space, which rises through walls constructed of perforated bricks. Hypocausts heated, through the floor, some of the most opulent buildings of the Roman Empire (including some residences) and, above all, the famous Public Baths.
With a similar function, but in the East, there existed the ondol. It is estimated that it was developed during the Three Kingdoms of Korea (57 BC-668 AD), but researchers point out that the solution was used long before that. The system also manipulated the flow of smoke from agungi (rudimentary wood stoves), rather than trying to use fire as a direct heat source like most heating systems. It even caught the attention of Frank Lloyd Wright, as pointed out in this article, who adapted the system to use it in heating homes in the United States and in his important Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. How do radiant floor heating systems currently work?
In a piece, originally published on Metropolis, author Lauren Gallow highlights an urban transformation in California, led by a group of local organizations and designers. The project "replaces a previously hazardous alley with play areas, public art, and native plantings", in order to reveal the untapped potential of the overlooked public realm.
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The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.
Commissioned for the exhibition “Casa Balla - From the house to the universe and back” at MAXXI museum in Rome, Italy, Bêka & Lemoine’s have released their latest film OSLAVIA. The cave of the past future, a tour inside the house-atelier where Giacomo Balla, prominent Futurist painter and major figure of the avant-garde of the early 20th century lived. The Futurist house where the artist lived and worked from 1929 until his death will be open to the public for the first time during the time of the exhibition.
Manifesta 14 recently announced that the 2022 edition of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art will take place in Prishtina, Kosovo. In preparation for the event, Carlo Ratti Associati has been commissioned to create an urban vision for the host city, focusing on sustainable solutions attuned to its current realities. The urban interventions showcase CRA's newly defined participatory urbanism methodology and explore how Prishtina could be transformed by the citizens' act of reclaiming public space.
It is safe to say that living in large urban areas, most of the sounds surrounding us are accidental, and most of them are not very pleasant. According to Julian Treasure, chairman of The Sound Agency, sounds can affect us in many ways: physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally, reducing productivity in workspaces and even affecting sales in retail stores. Therefore, paying attention to acoustic comfort in the built environment is imperative, not only for engineers and consultants but also for architects.
Having been invited to participate in the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale, architecture and design practice AAU ANASTAS presents the exhibition All-Purpose, which translates the craftmanship of stone into a new form of contemporary architecture. Exhibited within the Giardini, the structure featuring an undulating parametrised stone slab supported by thin, slender columns is a material exploration that builds on the Palestinian construction tradition to create a new architectural discourse around stone.
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Several recurring qualities and topics were explored at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, answering curator Hashim Sarkis' question of "How Will We Live Together". Sarkis called upon architects “to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together”, spaces that are unbound by spatial or social contracts, and are flexible enough to welcome individuals and make them find a sense of belonging in an entirely different habitat. Unlike decades ago, migration today is no longer considered as relocating from rural areas to cities, where people needed to be in proximity to their workplaces. Technological advancements, new work modules, and most notably the pandemic altered the way people perceive spaces, making it possible to complete at least 85% of day-to-day responsibilities from practically anywhere in the world. What we have learned from previous cases, and what we are observing now, is that the built environment needs to be flexible.
Richard Meier & Partners Architects announced the retirement of its founder, Pritzker-winning architect Richard Meier, who established the eponymous firm in 1963. The announcement also revealed a major internal reorganisation of the company, as well as its renaming to Meier Partners. The move comes three years after sexual harassment accusations have been made against the now 86-years old architect.
Among the many topics explored at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, the idea of community has been at the forefront, with several national pavilions exploring its many manifestations, evolution, and its relationship with the future of built environments. ArchDaily met with the curators of Testimonial Spaces, Emilio Marín and Rodrigo Sepúlveda, the Chilean Pavilion at the Biennale, and discussed how the project tackled the question of the future of living together and how they bridged the stories from Santiago to Venice. The interview was conducted in Spanish but is provided with English subtitles.
Heatherwick Studio has been selected to design an office building in Madrid for the Spanish department store chain El Corte Ingles. The studio's first project to be built in Spain, Castellana 69 embodies a comprehensive sustainability strategy while also promoting a new vision of the office space. Developed together with local practices CLK architects and BAC Engineering Consultancy Group, Castellana 69 features a green inner courtyard, taking advantage of a strong connection between indoor and outdoor spaces.
“Playground: Artifacts for Interaction”, by curator Felipe Ferrer, aims to transform the fences surrounding Peru's public spaces into tools for social integration. The project proposes removing the gates enclosing public spaces throughout Lima and Peru's other urban centers, inviting residents to freely enter and interact with the spaces. By removing these "security" mechanisms, which really serve as tools of segregation, and installing benches, playgrounds, and soccer fields, the project aims to divert all the energy, time, and resources put into installing fences and channel it into bringing new life to these public spaces.
EFFEKT Architects have been invited to exhibit their work at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Titled "Ego to Eco", the installation focuses on the future of communities and ecosystems, and presents a series of 7 miniature projects created by the architecture firm, nestled within a fictional landscape. Exhibited at the Corderie dell'Arsenale, the exhibition will be on display from May 22nd until November 21st, 2021.
Australia's modern architecture has diverse roots. Grounded in designs like the famous Sydney Opera House, the country’s contemporary projects are radically embracing new aesthetic ideas. Moving beyond traditional pisé construction to create articulated forms, modern designs are emerging as multicultural hybrids both derivative and imported in nature. Exemplifying this dynamic, Australian education projects reinterpret vernacular architecture to embody contemporary culture. Representative of a design language that’s uniquely Australian, these projects build off the continent-nation’s history to create space for learning, recreation and reflection.
Swiss architect Mario Botta is known for his geometrically imposing, spatially captivating structures that are invariably dressed in zebra-like horizontal stripes in either black and white or red and white combinations. These both traditional and strikingly modern villas, chapels, wineries, schools, libraries, museums, company headquarters, banks, and residential blocks are scattered throughout towns and mountainous villages in the architect’s native Ticino region in southern Switzerland, extend all over Europe and can be encountered in places as far away as China, India, South Korea, Japan, and the USA.
In the wake of the fires at Paris’ Notre Dame and the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, in the past years, we have seen many architects propose new ways of rebuilding these sacred spaces, opening them up to new possibilities.
In Europe and in North America, the maintenance costs and the disuse of sacred spaces have led to the eventual abandonment of churches, shrines and monasteries with great architectural and historical value. This opened a new opportunity for investors and architects to rescue and re-contextualize the historical heritage of these buildings. Below we present 15 examples of adaptive reuse in ancient churches--transformed into hotels, homes, museums, libraries and other cultural spaces.
Frank Gehry's long awaited LUMA Arles has finally opened its doors to the public. The stainless-steel-clad tower with a twisting geometric structure sits in a 27-acre creative campus at the Parc des Ateliers in the French city of Arles, housing exhibition galleries, project spaces, and the LUMA’s research and archive facilities. Over 45 world renowned artists and designers, such as Etel Adnan, Olafur Eliasson, Koo Jeong A, Carsten Höller, and Kerstin Brätsch will feature their creations across the tower's 12 levels, making it a focal point for global artists, curators, and art enthusiasts.
.jpg?1624992580 "Romanian Pavilion. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
.jpg?1624992414 "Polish Pavilion. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
.jpg?1624992487 "French Pavilion. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
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_ADRIAN_DEWEERDT_(4).jpg?1624868699 "© Adrian Deweerdt")
_ADRIAN_DEWEERDT_(1).jpg?1624868918 "© Adrian Deweerdt")
