Designed by Architetto Matteo Ascani (AMA), their horizontal farm proposal is a flowing architecture system where the farming world meets the Indian slum in New Dehli. The project aims to create a balanced mix with farms, working areas and housing to improve the living conditions for the inhabitants. By doing this, their design is able to avoid the slum situations to enhance the micro-economy. ‘Farmandala’ also provides an urban scale development, involving the street life and a territorial scale development based on vertical flowing connections. This is done by means of ramps that climb shops, farms and the recycle factory connecting to walking trails in the fields on the top of the hills. More images and architects’ description after the break.
David Mirvish, founder of Mirvish Productions, and Toronto-born starchitect Frank Gehry have officially unveiled a massive, mixed-use project that will transform Toronto’s downtown arts and entertainment district. The multi-phase project will significantly alter the city’s skyline with three, “sculptural” residential towers perched atop two, six story podiums.
Mirvish describes, “I am not building three towers, I am building three sculptures that people can live in.”
Andreas G. Gjertsen and Yashar Hanstad, principals of the architecture cooperative TYIN tegnestue Architects in Trondheim, Norway, have been named as this year’s winners of The European Prize for Architecture. The young Norwegian architects were honored for their humanitarian work designing and building with community participation in poor and underdeveloped areas in Africa and Asia.
Annually presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, the prize is awarded to influential European architects “who have demonstrated a significant contribution to humanity and to the built environment through the art of architecture”.
Continue reading for more information and a sample of TYIN tegnestue Architects’ work.
Cube is a movie that cannot be highlighted by its cinematographic features. However, the idea of a perfect space driven by geometrical logics seems an attractive subject for us, architects. Along the film, the characters try to solve the twisted organisation of this “cube” in order to find their way out.
Have you already seen this movie? Share your thoughts about idealisation of space, or let us know any other reference that comes to your minds. As usual, we wait for your comments.
As an architect I am interested (and have always been) in the way in which buildings are put together. To me, at times, the actual process in which a building is constructed is more interesting than the final product. Not to say the final product is not interesting to me, after all that is the intent of my design, but I find much enjoyment in the process that follows the end of my designing and brings my creation into the physical world. At certain stages of the construction, the completed portion of work produces very visually appealing imagery. (At least to this architect)
With that in mind I also enjoy the opposite process: the deconstruction of buildings. And this main fascination stems from the photo above. My obsession really revolves around the slow decay and atrophy of buildings over time due to lack of care. Also the way in which nature can destroy a building over time or in an instant is a study of architecture itself.
More examples of #ArchitectureDecay, after the break…
Presented with the chance to make an impact on an urban skyline can be one of the most exciting opportunities for an architect, albeit one of the most stressful. For, as much as we are driven by the project’s potential prominence, its soon-to-be visibility brings with it heavy criticism and concerns- and, rightly so.
Such is the case with Peter Gluck & Partners’ latest project for Philadelphia, 205 Race Street. Situated on the border of the Old City, the 16 story residential building has sparked debate due to its 197’6″ height – a marker that far surpasses the historic district’s height limit of 65′. Yet, the building’s positioning - immediately adjacent to the Ben Franklin Bridge and PATCO train lines – demands an architectural strategy that can remedy the site’s vastly different edge conditions.
Recently shortlisted into the top 8 for the UK sector and awarded a commendation for its creative and imaginative solution to housing in the UK, the Trent Bank proposal is a design-led framework that centers on self-provision as a sustainable development and procurement model for new neighborhoods. As a competition entry for the Isover Multi-Comfort House and designed by Eric Chancellor, Jordan Lloyd, and Chris Matthews, The development allows for a low density, but high intensity program of start-up businesses and community amenities, with transient commercial use – taking advantage of a piece of planning legislation called a Local Development Order (LDO). More images and architects’ description after the break.
VAUMM shared with us their first prize winning proposal in the competition for the remodeling of Molinao Park and the location of a covered and open fronton in Spain. Their design pretends to be the continuity of the park situated along the riverside and the eastern end of the town to the highway and Don Bosco slope. The fronton (sports space) is situated at the southern end of the park, next to the pedestrian access from the Oarso street bridge, so that releases the largest area of the open space to the north, near the train viaduct and the possible accesses through it to create a space which allows the use of it with temporary uses. More images and architects’ description after the break.
As the winner of ‘Environmental Quality Mention’, the proposed scheme for the HOf – Horizontal Farm International Ideas Competition is conceived of an intricate weave of the ‘farm’ and the ‘dwelling’. Drawing from the traditional Indian courtyard typology, the project, designed by ETT Architecture, enables community living (and farming) through a modular, scalable model that offers residents the benefits of low purchase cost, flexibility to expand as per means, and the potential of skill development and employment through self-build. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Authoring: Re-placing Art and Architecture challenges traditional assumptions about the relationship between art and architecture. From 2008 through 2010, David Adjaye, along with Marc McQuade, taught three studios at the Princeton School of Architecture. Each studio focused on a collaboration with three distinguished artists—Matthew Ritchie, Teresita Fernández, and Jorge Pardo—on interventions in three vastly different sites: the state of New Jersey, the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and the city of Mérida in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
The government of Turkey is considering the possibility of constructing a second canal in Istanbul that would result in carving out one billion cubic meters of soil from Turkey’s main land. In response, Turkish developer Serdar Inan has commissioned New York designer Dror Benshetrit to design a proposal that would reconstitute the soil into an innovative, net-positive community for 300,000 residents off the shore of Istanbul. Inan’s only wish is that the proposal blends “innovative design ideas, state of the art technology and cultural legacy with inspirations from the work of chief Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan”.
After six months of exploratory, interdisciplinary discourse with a team of experts – such as the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Buro Happold, Shoji Sadao from Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects – Dror has unveiled his radical vision this weekend at Istanbul Design Week. Check it out after the break.
Foster + Partners has broke ground on the Hongqiao Vantone SunnyWorld Centre, new dynamic mixed-use community centered on a four-hectare public park in the heart of Shanghai Hongqiao CBD. The large-scale urban plan that extends from Shanghai’s main station and brings together highly efficient, flexible office buildings, animated at ground level by shops, restaurants and a range of new civic spaces.
Today, the Southbank Centre announced its appointment of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS) as lead architect to refurbish and renew the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex. The UK-practice beat OMA, Heneghan Peng, Allies & Morrison, Eric Parry, van Heyningen & Haward and Grimshaw Architects to the job (see shortlist here). A formal appointment will be made after the statutory 10-day standstill period in accordance with EU regulations.
Rick Mather, Southbank Centre’s Masterplan Architect and a member of the selection panel, said: “We heard a huge amount of high quality and serious thinking demonstrating six quite different approaches to this part of the site. Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio’s proposals won because they best understood the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex and how it can be enjoyed and used more effectively. I look forward to seeing their designs develop over the coming months.”
Visionary architect, MacArthur Fellow and National Academician Jeanne Gang joins Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and architecture critic Paul Goldberger as part of the Academy’s annual Architects in Conversation series. Together they will discuss Studio Gang’s past, present, and future projects, as well as Gang’s role within the important architectural tradition of Chicago. The talk will be on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, at 6:30pm at the National Academy Museum. For tickets and for more information, please visit here.
After publishing our 10 Best Apps For Architects, getting your comments, and then polling your votes on Facebook, we are finally ready to introduce our new (and improved) list: The 4 Apps every architect should download now! And we mean now. Trust us.
Find out the 4 contenders who stood out from the pack (and a full list of other awesome Apps) – after the break…
We are happy to share on the beginning of this working week that the Architecture Billings Index has moved into positive territory for the first time in five months! The drastic three-point leap has launched the ABI to 50.2, up from last month’s 48.4, and the new project inquiry index moved to 57.2, up from mark of 56.3. As we have reported previously, the ABI is our profession’s economic indicator and any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings. Regionally, the South leads with 52.2, followed by the West with 51.2, Northeast at 45.5, and Midwest at 45.3. In terms of architectural sectors, multi-family residential and institutional place above 50 while institutional, commercial/industrial, and mixed practice all remain above 46. “Until the economy is on firmer ground, there aren’t likely to be strong increases in demand for design services,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “In the meantime, we can expect to see design activity alternate between modest growth and modest decline.”
Architects: Pitagoras Group Location: Guimarães, Portugal Design Team: Fernando Sá, Raul Roque, Alexandre Lima, Manuel Roque Project Year: 2012 Photographs: Jose Campos
A huge creative and technical challenge was recently undertaken by Moment Factory. They were invited by the City of Barcelona and the City of Montreal to create the first sound and light spectacle to be projected on the complex façade of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. This 15 minute-long multimedia show, using video mapping techniques and their X-Agora playback system, was presented within La Mercè Festival in Barcelona this weekend. The inspiration: to realize Antonio Gaudi’s dream. The architect wished for the façade to be full of colors.
Design Museum Boston recently announced the call for entries for Street Seats Design Challenge — an international outdoor furniture design challenge that will culminate in new waterfront seating, an outdoor design exhibition, and a walking tour around the channel. The Fort Point Channel links the waterfronts of downtown and South Boston – the seam between the Financial District and the emerging Boston Innovation District. o=Open to local and international artists, designers, and enthusiasts, Street Seats falls into the stated goals for the Fort Point Channel Watersheet Activation Plan, a 2002 vision to establish the Fort Point Channel as the next great (public) place in the City of Boston. Submissions are due no later than February 1. For more information, please visit here.
Designed by Urban Playground, the ‘Lighthouse for the Dutchman’ project was proposed for the chapel at the entry of the Los Dutchman State Park in Phoenix, Arizona. Through a rearrangement of an embryological, mathematical reference known as “Shrek’s Surface”, spatial varieties are derived as a way to alter the combined experiences of both the spiritual and natural environment in the Arizona desert. The prototypical, curved surface is morphed and manipulated, creating contextual and functional relationships that are then translated into a series of parameters for the building’s morphology. More images and architects’ description after the break.
