Twenty cities from across the U.S. are competing for nine million dollars in grant money that could fund their innovative solution to some of the major urban challenges that face our communities today. These Top 20 finalists were selected from 305 teams, formed by mayors, architects and local professionals, representing a city of 30,000 or more residents that responded to Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Challenge with a bold idea that could potentially make our government more efficient, solve a serious problem, or improve city life.
The five boldest ideas with the greatest potential for impact will win funding as well as national and local recognition. The winning city will receive a $5,000,000 grand prize and four other cities will receive $1,000,000 to help implement their ideas.
In April, Mayor Villaraigosa and City Council Member Huizar announced an international design competition to redesign the historic, 80-year-old Sixth Street Bridge in Los Angeles. The decision to launch the competition came after engineers warned that the bridge was at risk of failing during a major earthquake due to a degenerative structural problem known as “concrete cancer”. After careful consideration and entertaining the idea of constructing a replica of the 1932 icon, the city committed to moving forward with a major redesign. In mid-October, the national infrastructure firm HNTB, along with team members Michael Maltzan Architecture and AC Martin Partners, were announced as winners of the international competition.
The Friends Center at Angkor Hospital for Children was designed by COOKFOX Architects as an accessory to the existing Angkor Hospital founded by Kenro Izu. The pediatric care facility provides free, quality medical services to over 500,000 patients in Siem Reap, Cambodia while also training health care professionals. The center is an outreach pavilion to welcome visitors to the hospital without compromising patient privacy. The center is a space of exchange where visitors, learning about the program may also experience elements of Cambodia’s heritage through exhibitions of art work and the architecture itself.
On view at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery from November 8-February 2, the ‘George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher’ exhibition and symposium examines Nelson’s work in the context of both its own time and its legacy today. The event includes a comprehensive retrospective and symposium of one of the most influential figures in American design during the second half of the twentieth century. It will feature more than 120 three-dimensional objects including furniture, cabinets, lamps, and clocks, as well as fifty-plus historical documents in the form of drawings, photographs, architectural models and films. The symposium, ‘George Nelson: Designs for Living’ will specifically be held November 9-10. For more information, please visit here.
The design proposal for the Keelung New Harbor Service Building aims to reject grand architectural gestures that deliberately exist out of context for the sole intent of making a grandiose statement. ACDF Architecture rejects the use of elaborate sculptural forms that are fashionable, or are required to compensate for poorly planned design that does not respond to the local environment. They favor an architecture that portrays a creative, site specific design that is “grounded” in the local context. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Taking place November 11-18, the ‘Emerging Realities’ international student workshop will take place in Venice as part of the Biennale to feature international guest speakers. The event, put on by the Institute for Architecture and Landscape, LANDLAB ia&l, envisions the Venice lagoon archipelago as a prototype for a future metropolitan regional system. The new productive landscape proposes that it is capable of supporting such community while establishing an integrated and environmentally stable system that builds upon existing biodiversity, cultural practice, and production. For more information on the event, please visit here.
Designed by Gemawang Swaribathoro, Indra Nugraha, and Morian Saspriatnadi, their ‘Urban Sponge’ concept aims to unify, organize and manage, in one solution, the inner power of this marvelous city. Prague, an ancient city that has a long history of its own architecture style is no longer an underdog city in the European region. With the city becoming one of the most important places in this continent, the sponge concept can be described as a tool of connectivity to absorb the quality of life, to attract people, to make a better living. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Lord Foster, Dame Zaha Hadid and David Adjaye join artists and fashion icons to create 100 one-off artworks for the 10×10 Drawing the City London exhibition and auction, hosted by Article 25 – the UK’s leading international development and disaster relief charity. 10×10 Drawing the City London is currently taking place in Somerset House’s newly restored West Wing through November 13th.
Winners of the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative Competition for Freshkills Park in Staten Island, NYC are out. With 4 placed winners and a long list of shortlisted projects, the range of ideas shows how designers are exploring many different options for sustainable energy infrastructure.
The Winners:
First: Scene-Sensor // Crossing Social and Ecological Flows byJames Murray and Shota Vashakmadze
Second: Fresh Hills by Matthew Rosenberg, Structural Engineering Consultant: Matt Melnyk, Production Assistants: Emmy Maruta, Robbie Eleazer
Third: Pivot by Yunxin Hu and Ben Smith
Fourth: 99 Red Balloons by Emeka Nnadi, Scott Rosin, Meaghan Hunter, Danielle Loeb, Kara McDowell, Indrajit Mitra, Narges Ayat and Denis Fleury
On November 5, the Design School at Arizona State University will be hosting a panel discussion centered around the David Wright House and the question of architectural preservation in the city of Phoenix. Speakers will include Burton Barr Central Library architect Will Bruder, The Design School’s director, and more. The conversation will touch on efforts have been underway over the last three months in Arizona to preserve the David Wright House, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “ most innovative, unusual and personal works of architecture,” from demolition by developers.
Composed of ten buildings, the proposal by 10 Design for the Badshahpur IT Park is set across a sinuous series of adjacent plots of varied ownership. The challenge was to create a common identity across the site, a hierarchy of amenity spaces, and a strategy for future expansion (or contraction) of the campus. The ambition was to create a vibrant and inclusive work environment that meets the expectations of today’s IT graduate candidate / employee, and the employers that seek to attract the same talent. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by Dietmar Köring, Simon Takasaki and EyeTry, the proposal for the Haus der Zukunft (‘House of the Future’) responds to Berlin’s strict urban context: the concept of the “urban block” is touched upon and developed further. The building is partially lifted off the ground, and takes up the general building height of common Berlin housing. The fluid ground floor concept takes users into the open and dynamic spaces of the building’s interior. The urban block features three-dimensional cuts on the side facing the park, which creates a contemporary, clear structure, blurring the boundaries between exterior and interior. More images and designers’ description after the break.
Designed by Land+Civilization Compositions and Impressively Simple, their proposal for the Daegu Gosan Public Library, titled ‘Open Source’, is consciously not a singular gesture, but more as a series of interpretable spaces. Previously libraries were seen as places to gain access to books, but this library provides places for the dissemination and sharing of knowledge. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The design for the Busan Opera House by IaN+ aims to define a plurality of relationships between different cultures, and, at the same time, to reflect on the value of the Opera House within the contemporary city. The result is a symbolic place representing the city of Busan, not through an icon, but through the image of the city itself which reflects and resolves, becoming thus a meeting point of urbanity and nature. The Opera House embodies the very idea of a public place: a place for cultural and social meeting and sharing. To observe this building means to observe the city, the nature surrounding it, the image of a nation and a culture. More images and architects’ description after the break.
In partnership with Karuna Cambodia, Habitat for Humanity & the Cambodian Society of Architects (CSA), Building Trust International is looking for designs for the Cambodian Sustainable Housing competition. Proposals should be able to provide a sustainable future for housing in the South-east Asian country. Any proposal will have to stick to a very low budget and deal with the yearly flooding of Tonle Sap, which the majority of Cambodia’s 16 million inhabitants live in close proximity to. The final date for registration, which has been extended, is December 22nd at midnight (11:59 pm.GMT). Proposals are then due to be submitted on January 15th. For more information, please visit here.
Earlier this week, we announced the completion of the world’s narrowest house in Warsaw, Poland. The Keret House was first conceived as a seemingly impossible vision of the Polish architect Jakub Szczesnyof Centrala, who first presented the idea as an artistic concept during the WolaArt festival in 2009. Now, three years later, the vision has become a reality and is drawing a significant amount of international attention to the city of Warsaw.
Built between two existing structures from two historical epochs, the narrow infill is more of an art installation that reacts to the past and present of Warsaw. Although the semi-transparent, windowless structure’s widest point measures only 122 centimeters, it’s naturally lit interior doesn’t seem nearly as claustrophobic as one would think.
The Keret House will serve indefinitely as a temporary home for traveling writers, starting with Israeli writer Etgar Keret.
Images and the architects’ description after the break…
Googie Architecture, shared with us by Sunny & Mild Media, is part one of a series that encapsulates the futuristic design found prevalent in the post-war sprawl of Los Angeles during the 1950s. Popular among coffee shops, motels and gas stations, the ultramodern style originated from the Sunset Boulevard coffee shop, designed by John Lautner, named Googies. A Googie building was a symbol that a business was with the times, which in turn brought traffic and attention to its doors. Form followed function, and it’s function was advertisement.
The Schleifer & Milczanowski Architekci team was asked to prepare several conceptual designs of a prefabricated public convenience unit and to develop a feasibility study for the project. In the future, the project deliverables were supposed to serve as the basis for developing a technical design of a reproducible Gdańsk-specific public convenience. The aim was to create a prefabricated construction that requires minimum earthworks. The public toilet was to be semiautomatic, for use all year round and easy to operate. In architectural terms, they were required to do something seemingly impossible – to create an exceptional building that would suit not only the historical surroundings but also modern city districts. The building should thus suit everywhere. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Simos Vamvakidis Studio shared with is their proposal for the New Landmark for the Faliron Pier in Athens which won the 4th prize. This gesture of “hiding” program under the landscape, combined with other elements of the surrounding man-made and natural context, like the existing landmark / shell structures in the surrounding area, or the small wave breakers that will be formed close to the site, led them to the idea of creating a “hill”, or an island in the sea. More images and architects’ description after the break.
MACA Estudio+ Virai Arquitectos shared with us their proposal for the multi-purpose sports hall in Budapest XVI District, which was selected as a finalist in international competition. Their design aims to be a transition between the urban landscape and the rural agricultural landscape nearby. It looks for an innovative but integrated image into the environment, with materials and colors that resemble the park and the trees of the area, like a still life that copies the tone and appearance of the surrounding vegetation. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Given the opportunity to be engaged in a project with high social concerns, the C Spot comes as a reflex of a sustainable mission where the developer contributes to reduce levels of illiteracy by awarding the communities. This would be done through building roads, viaducts, and bridges with a Spot, which is more than a school, but actually a space that foments social elevations through education. Designed by Segmento Urbano Arquitectos, the proposal was shortlisted as part of the World Architecture Festival competition. More images and architects’ description after the break.
