Canadian architecture practice Henriquez Partners has designed a series of ten towers for a new suburban development in Vancouver. The mixed-use project was made for developer Westbank to create a new 4.5 million-square-foot residential community for the city. Dubbed Oakridge, the towers will include housing, office and retail as a contemporary architecture for the Pacific Northwest.
“When we started out, our goal was to change the world, to do something that would really make a difference to the lives of people,” said Chad Hamilton, AIA LEED AP BD+C, Principal Architect of Hamilton + Aitken Architects (H+AA). “And education is one of the things that really determines how people live the rest of their lives. “So, for us it’s just a wonderful feeling, to improve kids’ educational spaces.”
The Botan Valley in eastern Turkey has been attracting thousands of tourists annually due to its unique rock formations and canyon-like topography.
To further promote the area's scenic landscape, Turkish architecture firm Fabric.a Architects have proposed the ‘Botan Visitor Center’, an observation pavilion and restaurant overlooking the rocky landscapes of the Botan Valley.
The Midnight Charette is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by architectural designers David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features a variety of creative professionals in unscripted and long-format conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and more personal discussions. Honesty and humor are used to cover a wide array of subjects: some episodes provide useful tips for designers, while others are project reviews, interviews, or simply explorations of everyday life and design. The Midnight Charette is available for free on iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, and all other podcast directories.
On this episode of The Midnight Charette, hosts David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet are joined by Architect David Briggs—Co-Founder of Gowanus by Design and Founding Principal of Loci Architecture—to discuss living in New York City during the 1980s, gentrification, urban preservation, the planning challenges of Gowanus, Brooklyn and its severely polluted canal, designing better cities, wastewater treatment and more.
Antakya Atatürk Stadium of Hatay, Turkey, was originally built in 1950 but closed recently due to its inability to meet growing demand. In a new public project titled Green Wings, ONZ Architects aim to transform this former urban center into a new park with a cultural hub.
Architects and designers, just like all citizens, have a responsibility to participate in global conversations regarding the environment. Their power, however, lies in the fact that they are able to make an impact through the conscious decisions they make with their projects, such as sustainable building materials or expressive artworks.
To shed light on the current climate crisis, artist Alicja Biala and architect Iwo Borkowicz have created Totemy, a series of 9-meter-tall sculptures that translate the state of the environment into an immersive architectural experience.
Olson Kundig is one of the quintessential Seattle-based architectural practices, with a focus on creativity, experimentation, and craftsmanship that has allowed them to expand on a global scale over the past few decades. This expansion has necessitated office improvements and renovations throughout the years, the most recent of which occurred in 2018. As explored in a recent article by Metropolis Magazine, this 2018 expansion reflected key values of collaboration and flexibility, expressed through the firm's unique visual and kinetic language.
In their recently completed thesis project, Sebastian Siggard, Neemat Azizullah, and Thomas Ron propose the revitalization of a 19th century Parisian water reservoir into a new cultural hub. Addressing growing social issues and inequality across Europe, the project, titled “New Parisian Stories,” promotes social interaction in an effort to create a more integrated and cohesive society. Two primary questions motivate their design: With the 2024 Olympics games coming to Paris, what role can architecture play in capturing the opportunities and potential of such events? And how can architecture better the lives of those lowest in society while also creating social and sympathetic spaces for people of all languages, cultures and ages?
Although small residential projects tend to be limited in spatial capacity, the design possibilities remain endless, especially if the project’s site is the biggest source of inspiration.
For a small family’s vacation home, Turin-based architecture firm Wafai Architects proposed a uniquely-designed luxury villa overlooking the picturesque Türlersee lake in Switzerland.
Danish architecture firm Henning Larsen created a new proposal for the Ostrava House of Culture in the Czech Republic. As the the second place winner in an international competition, the project's offset concrete frames set up the form of the new Ostrava Concert Hall as they join together with the existing structure. The design emphasizes openness and connection to the outdoors in the midcentury campus to craft a quiet icon for the city.
Steven Holl Architects and McCarthy Building Companies Inc. have celebrated the topping out of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas’ oldest museum. The 243,600-square foot building will house modern and contemporary art once completed in 2020.
Bryden Wood, Cast, and the Mayor of London have launched a new app to speed up the capital’s home building. The freely-available app, titled PRISM, is aimed at the design and construction of high-quality, factory-built homes to address the current demand of 50,000+ houses per year.
Past, Present, Future is an interview project by Itinerant Office, asking acclaimed architects to share their perspectives on the constantly evolving world of architecture. Each interview is split into three video segments: Past, Present, and Future, in which interviewees discuss their thoughts and experiences of architecture through each of those lenses. The first episode of the project featured 11 architects from Italy and the Netherlands and Episode II is comprised of interviews with 13 architects from Spain, Portugal, France, and Belgium.
The goal of the series is to research these successful firms and attempt to understand their methods and approaches. By hopefully gaining a clearer picture of what it means to be an architect in the 21st century, the videos can also serve as inspiration for the next generation of up-and-coming architects and students as they enter the field.
Initially created for aerospace purposes, materials based on advanced fiber-reinforced thermoset technology are increasingly being considered not only to manufacture specific building elements but also to change the way buildings are conceived, designed and built. Despite being incredibly resistant –almost six times stronger than steel– fiber-reinforced materials are light and easy to handle, allowing the creation of complexly shaped but efficient architectural projects.
We spoke with experts from ShapeShift, the creators of the ShapeShell product, in order to deepen our understanding of this technology and learn more about how we can take advantage of its possibilities in our future projects.
Originally published in Metropolis Magazine as "Inside the Homes and Workspaces of 8 Great Architects", this article shows the spaces occupied by some of the best-known architects in the world. Documented for an exhibition that will be featured at the Milan Design Week 2014, the images give a glimpse inside the private worlds of some of our favorite designers.
It's a cliche that architects have messy workspaces. From chaos comes creation, so the phrase goes. But an upcoming exhibition at this year's Salone del Mobile intends to dispel the myth. Studio Mumbai.
Curator Francesca Molteni interviewed each of the designers in their private homes and came away with one finding: architects are actually quite tidy. The studios are all pristinely ordered; books are neatly stowed away, figurines and objets astutely displayed, and table tops swept clean. The photographs below are part of the exhibition materials, produced with the help of scenographer Davide Pizzigoni, which faithfully document the physical environments in images, video, and audio. These will be used to recreate the architects’ “rooms” at Salone del Mobile in April.
Where Architects Live is not limited to satisfying our curiosity about what these architects’ homes look like. Richard Rogers’ affirmation that “a room is the beginning of a city” resonates with the project’s aim in trying to articulate its subjects’ personal tastes and obsessions, and how those are reflected in their architectural work.
Read on to see more images of the inside of architects' homes and studios
The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced the launch of the RIBA International Awards 2020 to recognize architecture outside of the United Kingdom. Now open for entries, the awards are open to any qualified architect in the world for a building outside of the UK, of any size and budget. The biennial awards celebrate buildings that exemplify design innovation, embrace sustainable technologies and deliver meaningful social impact.
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This article was originally published on Common Edge.
As the architecture and interior design professions have advanced through the centuries, so too have their tools, from drawing on parchment in the Middle Ages to drafting on vellum with graphite in the 20th century. Today, tools like Revit and numerous 3D-modeling programs allow users to create an image of a design more quickly than ever before; in some cases, programs even generate elevations and details. Digital imagery of finish materials and 3D-block libraries of furniture and fixtures allow us to create an entire project without any tactile interaction with the items or finishes specified. But these tools, and the instant gratification offered by them, raise critical questions: Are architects and interior designers losing the physical aspect of design? Has our relationship with the physical qualities of design been watered down because we no longer have to draw a chair or bathtub, but can simply download them, thereby losing the intimacy of working out the details ourselves?
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Architects CHYBIK + KRISTOF have broken ground on a new modular architecture research center in the Czech Republic. Partnering with Czech module manufacturer KOMA MODULAR, the project was made to introduce a new system of modular construction. The design celebrates architecture and organic shapes through the vacancies between each element in modular construction.
Glenn Murcutt’s design for the MPavilion 2019 has been revealed. The scheme relays Murcutt’s longstanding interest in buildings that make efficient use of the researched site and climatic conditions that relate to the Australian landscape. The scheme will strike a white, refined, minimalist design, and will be a milestone summer attraction for Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens.
What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," ArchDaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT.
The acclaimed architect Phil Freelon has passed away. The founder of the Freelon Group, he was diagnosed with ALS in March 2016. Among is most celebrated works are the Harvey B Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, the Anacostia Library, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, designed in collaboration with Adjaye Associates.
With no shortage of historical buildings in need of expansion or repurposing, alterations of older architecture via contemporary interventions have flourished in the past four decades – particularly in service of new or growing art museums. These spaces represent the resilience of our historical legacy through contemporary times, demonstrating that the combination even of two vastly different architectural styles can be both beautiful and impressive. Here are ten of the best examples of contemporary interventions on historical buildings in art museums around the world.
This article was originally published in Metropolismag.com.
Set to screen at the ADFF:NOLA festival, Frank Gehry: Building Justice showcases how Gehry-led student architecture studios developed proposals for more humane prisons.
Thanks to initiatives like the Art for Justice Fund, Open Society Foundations, and a slew of insightful reporting, the American criminal justice system has been under great scrutiny and pressure to reform. Some of these changes have been quite prominent—such as the increasingly-widespread decriminalization of pot and pending major federal legislation—and have faced opposition from the powerful lobbying of the private prison corporations. However, despite the depth and breadth of criminal justice reform, one critically important element has remained mostly overlooked: the design of correctional facilities.
The LAB at Rockwell Group has partnered with The National Building Museum to present the 2019 Summer Block Party installation LAWN. Designed to be an immersive installation taking up the entirety of the Museum’s Great Hall, the project presents a series of interactive experiences for all ages. The lawn itself is programmed with summer entertainment and activities, including movie nights, yoga, and meditation. By creating custom software, the LAB also developed an Augmented Reality game alongside the installation.
