A cultural and educational space for creative industries, such as movie, TV, web design, fashion and performing arts, the first prize winning proposal for the CASA FIRJAN da Indústria Criativa unifies the educational, cultural and corporate segments. Designed by Lompreta Nolte Arquitetos, the project, located in Rio de Janeiro, creates a hub for producers, consumers, and investors of these disciplines to provide interaction, networking and business opportunities. More images and architects’ description after the break.
How to think about today’s architecture, captured in the pragmatic flows of changing society? Can architecture once more be captivating, romantic, humanistic, visionary, and everyday at the same time? It appears that today’s architecture is becoming increasingly complex and ambiguous, and thus increasingly manipulative. It is lost in the cloud of the everyday. But how can architecture be seen again in its elementary correlations, geometry, form, use? To be derived from the specific, idiosyncratic, everyday, and face the timeless, resistant level. How to find the vertical of the everyday? The everyday that makes sense only if it is reflected in the sublime.
More from exhibitor Metamak – Architectural Collective after the break.
Architects: gmp Architekten Location: Frankfurt, Germany Design: Meinhard von Gerkan and Jürgen Hillmer Design Team: Klaus Lenz, Sebastian Flatau, Ingo Beckmann, Kai Beckmann, Markus Carlsen, Christian Dahle, Henning Fritsch, Ben Joscha Grope, Markus Helmin, Matthias Holtschmidt, Silke Jessen, Eduard Kaiser, Raimund Kinski, Prisca Marschner, Rouven Oberdieck Project Leaders Susanne: Winter, Reiner Schröder Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Marcus Bredt
Yes, it could begin this way, right here, just like that, in a rather slow and ponderous way, in this neutral place that belongs to all and to none, where people pass by almost without seeing each other, where the life of building regularly and distantly resounds. What happens behind the flats’ heavy doors can most often be perceived only through those fragmented echoes, those splinters, remnants, shadows, those first moves or incidents or accidents that happen in what are called “common areas,” soft little sounds damped by the red woolen carpet, embryos of communal life which never go further than the landing. The inhabitants of a single building live a few inches from each other, they are separated by a mere partition wall, they share the same spaces repeated along each corridor, they perform the same movements at the same times, turning on a tap, flushing the water closet, switching on a light, laying the table, a few dozen simultaneous existences repeated from storey to storey, from building to building, from street to street. They entrench themselves in their domestic dwelling space—since that is what it is called—and they would prefer nothing to emerge from it; but the little that they do let out…
The Ministry of Information and Culture of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, in collaboration and sponsorship with the Government of the United States of America and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, has awarded AV62 Arquitectos first prize for the National Museum of Afghanistan Competition. The Spanish team was selected over 72 other design proposals from 31 countries.
A second and third prize winner, along with three honorable mentions, were also recognized at the awards ceremony in Kabul. More details after the break.
ARCHITECT Magazine has released their fourth annual ranking of the most “powerful, philanthropic, talented and profitable” architecture firms in the United States. Don’t be fooled, this doesn’t necessarily mean the biggest firms, as the survey uses the broadest possible criteria to allow practices, both small and large, the opportunity to compete and be recognized.
Firms are ranked by profitability, sustainability and design quality. For the first time this year, the survey included pro bono work and water modeling in response to the challenging realities of the economy, natural disasters and drought.
Additionally, the survey revealed that 66% of the firms reported an increase in their net revenue from 2010 to 2011. No surprise there, when considering the slow, overall improvement of the ABI (check out the latest ABI report here).
The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was designed by Norman Foster in 1979. At the core of the project is the attempt to create a civic space, a piece of common ground for the city. Though the building’s design went through many variations – culminating in the final scheme, completed in 1985 – the common denominator throughout was a desire to create a public arena by lifting the building up to ensure a flow of pedestrian movement across the site. This covered space is lit naturally by an external “sunscoop”, which reflects sunlight down through the glazed “underbelly” of an atrium at the heart of the building. Through the medium of models, sketches, drawings, and photographs, this exhibition shows the evolution of the design of the space and the tower that defines it.
Designed by Space Group + Superunion Architects, their winning proposal for Ruten competition reflects the city of Sandnes’ development and establishes Ruten as a natural center and Sandnes as a future city with strong roots and a proud local history. The proposal, titled ‘Lysning’, consists of a ring that connects and creates the new transport hub and public space below for an attractive unifying roof. As the Central Park in New York was built before the Manhattan grid was condensed around it, Ruten has remained as a buffer in the urban development in anticipation of something bigger. More images and architects’ description after the break.
With the existing Riga Passenger Terminal now outdated and situated in an exclusive location – adjacent to the very center of Riga, the infrastructure needed a new identity and urban response. Therefore, the first prize winning proposal by NRJA envisions the development of the territory and port as a high quality urban environment which offers not only maritime transport, leisure, shopping and business experience but also public space connection to the city. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by MAD Architects for the 2011 international competition for a new national museum in Beijing, their proposal aims at being a city-sized museum where the public space is the greatest good. Situated on the central axis of the 2008 Olympic site, and part of a six mega volume masterplan, the main question became how to design something iconic on an unrealistic and inhuman city scale. Their response became a hybrid between an elevated public square and a floating mega building above. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Born in Finland, Eero Saarinen (1910 – 1961) is recognized today as one of America’s most influential architects of the 20th Century. The exhibition Eero Saarinen: A Reputation for Innovation, opening tomorrow at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, will highlight his short but brilliant career bookended with two iconic buildings: the unbuilt Smithsonian Gallery of Art which was to be Washington, DC’s first museum of modern art and Dulles International Airport which was designed as the nation’s first jet airport.
The World Architecture Festival have just announced the winners of 17 of the awards categories. The jury included Sir Peter Cook, Juergen Mayer H, Moshe Safdie, Willy Alsop, and many more, including our own David Basulto.
Architects: a.gor.a Architects Location: Mae Sot, Thailand Architect In Charge: Albert Company Olmo, Line Ramstad, Jan Glasmeier Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Franc Pallarés López
For the 13th Venice Biennale, Kenneth Frampton was invited to have his exhibit at the Arsenale, where the works of these five practices was presented on a series of videos, on a simple installation designed by Steven Holl.
While we don’t have the videos shown during the Biennale, we present you the full video of the seminar (almost 6 hours), made available online by the GSAPP.
More information about the “Five North American Architects as a Common Ground” videos shown at the Biennale:
Opening tonight in Los Angeles at the WUHO Gallery: Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and Andreas E.G. Larsson.
For more than two years, Iker Gil and Andreas E.G. Larsson documented the lives of residents in the non-Euclidean geometries of architect Bertrand Goldberg’s iconic Marina City (1959-67) in Chicago. Celebrating Goldberg’s original vision for affordable apartments in a central, high-density location, this revealing series of photographs provides a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of the diverse array of people and living spaces within these popular cylindrical residential towers.
The Museum of Copying, curated by British architect’s FAT, was one of my favorite exhibitions at the Venice Biennale. The subject of copy in architecture has always interested me, in relation to how the series of copies in the form of iterations are what make architecture evolve. The concept is explored in this exhibit with three installations, starting with Villa Rotunda Redux, the iconic Palladio building copied (or reinterpreted?) through history now digitally fabricated and casted.
During the Biennale we had the chance to talk with Sam Jacob (@anothersam) from FAT, who explains us more about the Museum of Copying on this video (full interview coming soon!).
More about the Museum of Copying from the architects after the break.
Architects: Espaço Cidade Arquitectos Location: Lisbon, Portugal Architect In Charge: João Silva Vieira Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Courtesy of Espaço Cidade Arquitectos
OMA has been selected from four competing international architectural practices to design the new École Centrale engineering school and its surrounding urban development in the research and innovation zone of Saclay, southwest of Paris.
Spearheaded by Clément Blanchet, director of OMA projects in France, the winning “lab city” concept contrasts the corridor linearity of the typical laboratory. The design proposes a low level, glass-roofed superblock that contains an interior open plan grid, where various activities can interact and be overlooked simultaneously. Continue after the break to learn more.
Curated by Alexander Ponomarev and Olilga Milentiy, the Ukraine Pavilion presents mobile museums projects under the concept of “Mirage Architecture”. The exhibition focuses on a conceptual design for a Museum of Contemporary Arts in the Antarctic.
“In order to build new Utopia, there is no need to raze the world. There are still places on Earth with clean, free spaces, offering room for cooperation and co-creation. On of these places is the Antarctic”, says Milentiy.
Learn the story behind the ukrainian pavilion after the break
