A popular bicycle lane and public road that connects the Amsterdam suburbs of Krommenie and Wormerveer has been impregnated with solar panels, making it the world’s first. The 70-meter stretch, serving 2,000 daily cyclists, was embedded with crystalline silicon solar cells encased within concrete and covered with a translucent layer of tempered glass. It is expected to be extended an additional 100-meters in 2016, providing enough energy to power three households. More information, here.
Cool Spaces! The Best New Architecture has released their first full episode online. The PBS television series, hosted by Boston-based architect and professor Stephen Chung, AIA, profiles the most provocative and innovative public space architecture in North America. With the general public as its targeted audience, each hour-long episode is organized around a central theme - such as Art Spaces - and profiles three buildings. In this episode, Chung discusses what makes Tod Williams Billie Tsien’s Barnes Foundation, Steven Holl's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Phil Freelon's Harvey B. Gantt Center so cool.
“People often ask me what Cool Spaces is all about. And I never can answer without giving a bit of background,” says host Stephen Chung. “You see, it really begins over seven years ago, during the recession, which decimated the architecture profession. In a four-year span, approximately 30% of all architecture jobs in the U.S. were lost — including my own. This time away from practice allowed me to reflect on the profession and its problems and to think about what role I might play in bringing about some positive change."
ABSTRAKT Studio Architecture has won a nation-wide competition to design Canada’s national memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa. Select from six finalists, ABSTRAKT’s provocative design superimposes 100 million singular pixel-like memory squares, each representing the fingertip of the lives lost, on a folded triangular concrete plane.
“As the most prolific communist murderer Joseph Stalin famously said: 'One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic’… This 'statistic' takes main stage in our design by realizing its sheer enormity, thus raising awareness that every human life is unique and precious,” stated ABSTRAKT.
On the occasion of Ideas City 2015, the biennial Festival created to explore the future city and to effect change, Storefront for Art and Architecture, along with the New Museum and the New York City Department of Transportation, is launching a competition for the design and construction of an outdoor structure—a work of "Street Architecture" that facilitates new forms of collective gathering and engagement with the city.
Now, after 130 private screenings in 26 countries, you can watch the official world premiere of Archiculture here on ArchDaily. The 25-minute documentary captures a rare glimpse into studio-based design education, trailing five architecture students throughout their final thesis semester at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute.
Friis & Moltke has designed a new housing project in Aarhus inspired by a Scandinavian forest. Just as “moss-covered hillocks and majestic towering trunks with crowns filter light and create shimmering patterns on the forest floor,” says the architect, the Løvhusene housing complex adapts to its natural surroundings as circulatory “boardwalks” weave between a “forest” of clustered wooden residences, all centered around a shared community “clearing.”
Following the highly anticipated world premiere of Archiculture (watch here!), Arbuckle Industries is now releasing over 30 never-before-seen full length interviews with some of the industry’s leading influencers, all discussing the profession and how we are or should be training the next generation of designers. The first of the series featured Columbia’s Kenneth Frampton on whether or not architecture should be considered a luxury. Now, this most recent installation delves into just how policy makers can affect the built environment, interviewing politician and former Governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis.
Along with the holidays often comes many nights sitting fireside with good company. As Frank Lloyd Wright said, ”the hearth is the psychological center of the home.” This is why we have decided to start a new Pinterest board entirely dedicated to the hearth. Take a look after the break. Happy pinning!
Allied Works Architecture has released designs for the Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus. Set to complete by 2016, the billowing museum will be constructed on the banks of the Scioto River, directly across from downtown, as part of Scioto Peninsula’s 56-acre redevelopment masterplan. It will host a variety of galleries, education and interpretive spaces that will house exhibitions and artifacts that serve as a testimonial to the 250 years of military service of Ohio Veterans.
“The Ohio Veterans Memorial and Museum is conceived as an architecture of two acts. The first is an act of landscape, where the surrounding parkland is cut, carved and lifted into the sky, creating a processional path to the sanctuary, a place of ceremony, celebration and reflection - a civic room for the city of Columbus,” explains Allied Works. Continue reading to learn more.
The Award for Architectural Heritage Intervention AADIPA, arises from the belief that heritage, as a vehicle for social integration and an economic vitalizing resource for the community, deserves to be appreciated and encouraged. In the current context, in which architectural heritage is considered not only to be a fundamental instrument of knowledge but also a first rate socioeconomic resource for the sustainable development of the territory, the disclosure, distinction and recognition of works and quality projects contributing to the preservation of the collective memory is imperative.
Sou Fujimoto Architects has been announced as one of three practices chosen to design buildings for the Liget Budapest project, one of Europe’s largest museum developments. Selected through an anonymous competition process, the Japanese firm will realize an undulating House of Hungarian Music that was “inspired by sound waves.” Its distinctive perforated “smart roof” will float on top an airy glass-walled interior illuminated by the canopy’s lightwells.
French practice Vallet de Martinis DIID Architectes was also chosen to construct a striated Museum of Ethnography, while Hungarian firm Középülettervező Zrt will realize the cuboidal PhotoMuseum Budapest and Museum of Hungarian Architecture.
All three projects will be built in Városliget, the city’s largest park, by 2018. Continue after break to view images of each.
In just three short years, Frank Gehry’s 450,000-square-foot Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open. More than 12 times the size of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim New York, the expansive $800 million museum will showcase 1960s art from around the world within an asymmetrical mountain of plaster blocks and self-cooling translucent cones. Anticipating its completion, the New York Times sat down with Gehry to hear the story behind the building’s design. Watch the full interview with Gehry, here.
Of the four locations that are under consideration to host the future Barack Obama presidential library, two have released visions of what could be if their sites were selected - the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the University of Hawaii at Honolulu (UH). UH, who’s offering a stunning oceanside site on Waikiki Beach, paired Snøhetta, MOS, and Allied Works Architecture with local architects to draw up proposals, all of which share a deep connection to nature. UIC, on the other hand, has proposed an idea that reinterprets the library as a systemized network of public infrastructure focused on revitalization.
View all four proposals, after the break.
Samsung Electronics is spearheading a village development project in ThuyHoa, Vietnam, as part of a new social contribution program named “the Nanum Village.” The Nanum Village is a project where the local government cooperates with residents of a village who are willing to develop their neighborhood, improving the public infrastructure and supporting local people’s initiatives for sustainable development of the village. This new community center by Korean architect Choon-Soo Ryu will be built in 2015 as a result of that initiative.
Cultured, one of the leading art, architecture and design magazines, has shared with us part of the 16-page photo essay “No Filter” by Iwan Baan that is being featured in its Winter Issue, on stands now. Enjoy!
If you pore endlessly over images of architecture the way we do, chances are you’ve been drooling over work captured by Iwan Baan. Though he’s adamant that he not be referred to as an “architectural photographer,” Baan has probably captured more buildings, pavilions, residences and just about every other structure in between than any other single lensman. Yet it is Baan’s background in documentary photography that most influences his work. “I choose my projects not so much for the architecture, but for its relationship with the city around it and how people respond to it,” says Baan. “I’m trying to tell the story of the built environment—the places where we live.” Here, Baan tells the story behind 11 projects completed this year, and two others that he has a personal connection to.
“I love great architecture that is very specific for its site and client, it’s for an architect always a dance between him, a site and a client. Here, Gehry was given complete freedom to design every detail, every nook and cranny of a building for Bernard Arnault to house his art collection.”
Read on for more quotes and images by the renowned Iwan Baan.
CREO ARKITEKTER A/S and WE Architecture has been selected as one of three winners in the first phase for a new psychiatric hospital in Ballerup. “Reminiscent of a small village,” the prize-winning scheme steps away from the typical hospital typology to propose a dense cluster of gabled structures connected by therapeutic green space.
“The proposal fits the extension subtly and respectfully into the existing context… It adds a gable motif that opens the communal spaces towards the surrounding park and landscape and at the same time frames terraces and balconies. The committee finds that this simple move adds a subtle, non-institutional appearance with strong positive references to low-dense housing projects of very high quality,” stated the jury. Read on to learn more.
Following the highly anticipated world premiere of Archiculture (watch here!), Arbuckle Industries has now shared with us the first of over 30 never-before-seen full length interviews with some of the industry’s leading practitioners, all discussing the profession and how we are or should be training the next generation of designers.
Not sure if “manic” can be classified as an architectural style, but that is what some are choosing to describe the newly discovered, hand-drawn floor plans of a grand place envisioned by King George III. According to the British Library, the King was “passionately interested” about architecture and drew plans for a future living quarters in Kew - now a district in West London - during a time when he was suffering from severe mental illness in the late 1780s. Learn more about the King’s vision for a grand palace, here.
