OnePULSE Foundation has selected Coldefy & Associés with RDAI, Orlando-based HHCP Architects, Xavier Veilhan, dUCKS scéno, Agence TER, and Prof. Laila Farah, to design the National Pulse Memorial & Museum.
Architecture News
Coldefy with RDAI | HHCP Selected to Design the National Pulse Memorial & Museum
The 'Manhattan of the Desert': Shibam, Yemen's Ancient Skyscraper City
Walking through narrow chaotic alleys dwarfed by soaring towers, few would estimate the age of Yemen's city of Shibam at nearly 1,700 years. Located in Yemen's central Hadhramaut district, Shibam has roots in the pre-Islamic period, and evidence of construction dating from the 9th century.
Shibam is known as the first city on earth with a vertical masterplan. A protected UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982, the city is home to densely packed buildings ranging from four to eight storeys, beginning in 300 AD but now mostly built after 1532. Thanks to a fortified ring wall, the city has survived nearly two thousand years despite its precarious position adjacent to the wadi floodplain.
Enter the ancient walled world of Shibam after the break
Snøhetta Designs Arctic Visitor Center for Svalbard's Global Seed Vault
Snøhetta has designed a new a visitor center for Arctic preservation storage called The Arc in Svalbard off the coast of Norway. At 78° north of the Earth’s equator, the project referencing its location in the Arctic and its function as an archive for world memory. Commissioned by Arctic Memory AS, the visitor center will showcase content from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – the world's largest secure seed storage.
RIBA Announces Two New Projects for House of the Year Shortlist 2019
The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced two more homes for the House of the Year 2019 shortlist. A Restorative Rural Retreat for Sartfell, a stone property in the middle of a nature reserve on the Isle of Man and Black House, a cantilevered black timber box in Skye lowered onto a rocky foreshore – are the third and fourth homes to be shortlisted.
Architects Play a Vital Role in Building Maintenance
Architecture and design influence not merely the aesthetics of buildings and other physical surroundings, but also the way individuals perceive and go about performing everyday activities. Contemporary architecture considers and shapes the behavior of people, whether at home, at work or during leisure activities. In this regard, contemporary architecture increasingly incorporates diverse materials with different and unique qualities in order to create surroundings that facilitate the intended and naturally occurring behavior of visitors and everyday users. Architects thus create spaces that enable people to perform daily tasks and a range of everyday social activities. However, architects also play a vital role in securing the future maintenance of newly designed buildings in order to ensure the continued existence of these physical spaces.
Safdie Architects Propose Conceptual Design for the Abrahamic Family House
Safdie Architects’ entry for the Abrahamic Family House competition located in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District, in Abu Dhabi, brings together a mosque, a synagogue, and a church within a shared public park.
2A Continental Architectural Award 2019 Winners
The 2A Continental Architectural Award was founded to pay tribute to the living architect or architects whose architecture and artwork exhibits a blend of those qualities of ability, vision, flair, and dedication. Under the leadership of Ahmad Zohadi, who is head of organizing committee and also an Architecture Scholar himself 2ACAA strives to achieve the vision of cultural integration, honor the architecture and architects that may have produced regular and noteworthy contributions to the human race and the built environment by making use of art and architecture.
Cats in the Right Place at the Wrong Time in Architectural Photography
Cats just don’t care. They don’t care if you bought them gourmet food. They don’t care if you got them customized furniture or luxury cardboard boxes, and they definitely don’t care if they are barging into an architectural photo shoot (although, we do think it’s their way of being the center of attention).
Don't believe us? Here's a collection of photographs collected from our projects database where cats are clearly not trying to steal the spotlight.
Fiber Cement Facades in Architecture: 9 Notable Examples
How to build light and modular facades with a rustic and monolithic appearance?
Composed of cement, cellulose, and mineral materials, fiber cement allows us to clad walls in a light, non-combustible, and rain-resistant way, generating facades with different textures, colors, and tones. Its panels are easily manageable and perforable, and can configure ventilated facades when installed with a certain separation between the rear wall. Check out 9 projects below that have cleverly used fiber cement as the primary material in facades.
Brick by Brick: Rethinking Masonry Construction in Iran
Iran’s architecture has long been rooted in Persian culture. From tea houses and pavilions to domestic huts and elaborate mosques, the country’s built environment is tied to these influences, as well as the landscape and its broader context. At the heart of Iran’s more recent projects is a desire to reinterpret history through new spaces and forms.
Spotlight: Zaha Hadid
In her lifetime, Pritzker prize-winning architect, fashion designer and artist Zaha Hadid (31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) became one of the most recognizable faces of our field. Revered and denounced in equal measure for the sensuous curved forms for which she was known, Hadid rose to prominence not solely through parametricism but by designing spaces to occupy geometries in new ways. Despite her tragically early death in March of 2016, the projects now being completed by her office without their original lead designer continue to push boundaries both creative and technological, while the fearless media presence she cultivated in recent decades has cemented her place in society as a woman who needs just one name: Zaha.
Brooks + Scarpa Design a Toolkit for Affordable Housing
Brooks + Scarpa and Plant Prefab have developed a new toolkit to address housing shortages. Scalable as an infill solution, the Nest toolkit can be configured in multiple ways using site types and typical lot sizes, or a combination of them. The toolkit was made to address LA’s shortage of supportive housing for the homeless and provide flexibility to meet the needs of a particular site, neighborhood, and bed count.
Architecture in Black: A Selection of The Best Dark Interiors
The use of light and shadow in architecture can have several nuances. The traditional Japanese culture stands out for working with spaces of dim light, kind of dull. On the other hand, modern architecture and minimalism work along with illuminating spaces through the use of white spaces and reflection of light as a recurring resource.
Even so, black, dark spaces and minimalism also converse in the same language that provides new possibilities for lighting design and use of new materials. We now present you a selection of the best contemporary interior spaces that use black as the protagonist element, generating introspective but dramatic environments at the same time.
Penthouses Designed by BIG for KING Toronto in Canada
Designed by BIG, in collaboration with Allied and Westbank, KING Toronto portrays architecture’s ability to create a community and meet the challenges faced by society nowadays. Located in Canada’s King Street West neighborhood, the project is a direct response to the context.
Baha’i Temple by Hariri Pontarini Wins 2019 RAIC International Prize
The Baha’i Temple of South America in Santiago, Chile, designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects of Toronto was selected as the winner of the 2019 RAIC International Prize, by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC).
Open Air: Vietnam’s Neo-Traditional Housing Projects
Vietnam has a rich history of traditional architecture. From Rong houses and Trinh Tuong residences to the stilt longhouses of the Ede people, the country has a depth of vernacular construction methods and styles. Today, architects are reinterpreting past building techniques to create neo-traditional homes grounded in contemporary life.
Urban Mining Trilogy at C-LAB Investigates Circular Material Reuse
Located in a prime location in the city of Taipei, the invaluable large open space at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) is historically significant as it used to be home to the Industrial Research Institute of the Taiwanese Governor-General’s Office and also the Air Force Command Headquarters under the Ministry of National Defense. Since the Ministry of Culture took over its operations in 2018, C-LAB has become a place for art and cultural experimentation, with various participatory events and actions initiated and reflections and imaginations for contemporary urban space and lifestyle projected.
The Problem with the “Designification” of Health Care
A wave of service providers and clinics is using catchy branding and interior design to attract patients frustrated with old-guard medical facilities. But is further commodification of health care the answer?
A few years ago I signed up for Oscar health insurance. Cofounded in 2012 by Joshua Kushner and headquartered in New York City, it was the health-care plan most of my similarly freelance friends used. Plus, if you lived in Brooklyn, as I did at the time, you could easily visit its Oscar Center, a primary-care space in a warehouse loft that also boasted the offices of literary magazines. I went in for a checkup, feeling slightly nervous as with any doctor appointment, but was surprised when I opened the door onto a spacious, minimalist, wood-floored, primary-colored office installed with glass walls and snake plants. There was even a yoga room adorned with the decal “Let the Healing Begin.”
ZHA/COX Team Wins Western Sydney Airport Competition
Selected from forty national and international applicants, Zaha Hadid Architects and Cox Architecture won the international design competition for the new Western Sydney Airport (WSA).
First Smart Forest City in Mexico Designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti
Commisionned by Grupo Karim's, and designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, the first Smart Forest City in Mexico will focus on innovation and environmental quality. The city balances green and built spaces, and is completely food and energy self-sufficient.
Spotlight: SANAA
Founded in 1995 by architects Kazuyo Sejima (born 29 October 1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (born 7 February 1966), SANAA is world-renowned for its white, light buildings grounded in the architects’ Japanese cultural origins. Despite the white exteriors, their architecture is far from modernist; the constant incorporation of ambiguity and doubt in SANAA’s buildings is refreshing and playful, taking the reflective properties of glass and brightness of white to a new level.
America's Most Admired Architectural Schools 2020 Ranked
The annual DesignIntelligence architecture school ranking for 2020 classified the establishments according to the “most admired” rather than the “best”, for the second year in a row. The subjective classification is based on the responses of hiring professionals.