OYO - Open Y Office, together with Arch&Teco, has received second prize among nine participants in an invited competition for a new Howest campus building in Kortrijk.
“We envision this new campus as an interactive field where we catch the classrooms in the middle; conceived as areas of focus. This field contains lecture rooms, informal meeting spaces, restaurant, bar, shop and lounge areas and wraps around the area of focus; connecting the park all the way up to the roof garden where students, teachers, alumni, companies and neighbors are invited to shop and exchange knowledge.”
Santiago-based architect Alejandro Aravena of Elemental discusses the sustainable reconstruction of Constitución in Chile following a devastating earthquake in 2010. Given just 100 days to design a resilient masterplan, capable of protecting the city against future natural disasters, Elemental implemented a natural solution: planting a forest that would protect the city from future floods. The design has since receive international recognition, most recently being awarded first prize in the Zumtobel Group Award’s Urban Development & Initiatives category.
Modern Barn Form / Red Architecture. Image Courtesy of ADNZ
Red Architecture’s “innovative black barn” has been awarded the ADNZ's (Architectural Designers New Zealand) 2014 Supreme National Design Award for its “subtle, economical and clever design.” Located in the beautiful rural landscape of Whatawhata in the Waikato, the project houses a private residence and garage within two “crisp barn-like forms” clad in vertical run steel and recycled bricks taken from the devastation caused by the Christchurch earthquakes.
In addition to the Supreme Award winner, eight designs from across the country were presented Resene Architectural Design Awards at the ceremony. View a glimpse of each awarded project, after the break.
Maya Lin has been selected to receive the 21st Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, a $300,000 award presented annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
Pedro Livni and Fernando De Rossa have shared with us their proposal for the Dalseong Citizen’s Gymnasium open ideas competition, which was awarded honorable mention. As part of the district’s centennial anniversary, the competition aimed to replace an existing, outdated sports hall with a new gymnasium complex for the local residents of Hyeonpung-myeon neighborhood within the Daegu district of Dalseong-gun.
Ukrainian practice drozdov&partners has been announced as winners of an open ideas competition for the Dalseong Citizen’s Gymnasium. As part of the district’s centennial anniversary, the competition aims to replace an existing, outdated sports hall with a new gymnasium complex for the local residents of Hyeonpung-myeon, a neighborhood within the Daegu district of Dalseong-gun.
The winning design favors a minimalist approach, integrating a “simple volume” within the hillside site that reactivates an existing public plaza and sports hall, while strengthens its connection to the surrounding neighborhoods, schools and city transit.
Construction is expected to begin in 2015. More project information and images, after the break.
The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) has opened their 2015 call for applications. The biennial award celebrates urban places that are distinguished by quality design and their social and economic contributions to our nation’s cities. Winners offer creative placemaking solutions that transcend the boundaries between architecture, urban design and planning and showcase innovative thinking about American cities. One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 will be awarded. Projects must be a real place, not just a plan or a program, and be located in the 48 contiguous United States. Award winners may use prize money in any way that benefits the project. The deadline for entries is December 9, 2014. Learn how to apply here.
Snøhetta’s pixilated concept for the Norwegian banknote has been selected by the Central Bank of Norway to serve as the “foundation” for the backside of the new kroner notes. This news, announced yesterday in Oslo, also confirmed that the notes’ front will be based off The Metric System’s more “traditional” design featuring a images of sailing vessels.
Both Snøhetta and The Metric System were among seven designers invited to submit ideas under the nautical theme “The Sea,” in which Snøhetta chose to commemorate Norway’s coastal landmarks with a “visual language” of brightly colored, cubical patterns.
More on Snøhetta’s winning concept, after the break.
Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre / Henning Larsen Architects & Batteriid Architects. Image Courtesy of Henning Larsen Architects
The Henning Larsen Foundation is launching an international competition on architecture and film with the intent to “revitalize the use of architecture on film and foster new inspiration to architects and film professionals.” The theme of the competition is the experience of architectural space over time. The task is to create a film sequence of 1-5 minutes which animates architecture by embracing time as the primary dimension. Up to €18,000 in prizes will be awarded to entrants who inspire a new approach to architecture and the film media. Submissions are due by March 15, 2015. A winner will be announced on April 20, Henning Larsen’s birthday. More information can be found here.
On the heels of Mayor Boris Johnson’s announced plan to construct an 18-mile protected bike lane by March 2016, architect David Nixon and artist Anna Hill have released their vision for relieving London’s congested streets with a floating “Thames Deckway” for cyclists. The proposal, though just in its preliminary design phase, claims the river Thames is currently a missed opportunity that could serve as a major travel artery for cyclists. If constructed, the £600 million project would run east-west for seven miles along the river’s southern bank, from Battersea to Canary Wharf, and harness it’s own energy through solar, tidal and wind power. Nixon and Hill have founded the River Cycleway Consortium in support of the project, which includes Arup and Hugh Broughton Architects.
Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) and Bordas+Peiro have been announced as winner among five proposals of a two-stage competition to design the future Clichy - Montfermeil metro station in Paris. The competition, organized by the Société du Grand París, is part of the ambitious Grand Paris Express project which seeks to modernize the existing transport network and create an automatic metro that will connect new neighborhoods to the city.
In addition to the station's design, EMBT’s proposal will provide a new public square for the renewed neighborhood of Clichy-sous-bois that will serve as a symbol of change following the violent riots of 2005. “We want to transform this grey and abandoned area into a vivid and colorful plaza, that will inspire joy and optimism,” stated EMBT.
Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California has won Grand Prize in the NASA Tech Briefs magazine’s “Create the Future” contest for his entry, "Robotic Building Construction by Contour Crafting.” The revolutionary construction method was awarded for being a “major innovation” that could potentially 3D print entire neighborhoods in half the time and at 30 percent less cost than traditional building methods.
Though some have visions of using Contour Crafting (CC) to sculpt the moon's first settlements, Khoshnevis primary desire is combat the world's housing shortage by using the automated construction method to rapidly deploy housing in impoverished and disaster areas.
More information and an interview with Khoshnevis on CNN, after the break.
Breaking New Groundis an international design and ideas competition addressing the urgent affordable housing needs for farmworker and service worker families in the Coachella Valley, where efforts to improve living conditions suffers from a lack of funding and coordination. Going beyond design, the competition seeks to envision new precedents, mechanisms, and policies for affordable housing implementation and development, with implications for California and the nation.
Hufton + Crow have been named “Architectural Photographer of the Year 2014” by Arcaid Images. The news was announced in Singapore at the World Architecture Festival after the duo’s interior image of Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Centre staircase received the highest score from the judges. Hufton + Crow also received runner-up in the award's exterior category with another image from the Heydar Aliyev Centre. You can check it out, after the break.
FIRST PRIZE: Sankofa House / M.A.M.O.T.H (France). Image Courtesy of Nka Foundation
The Nka Foundation recently challenged young graduates and students of architecture to redesign the African mud hut for Ghana. The result, three designs received top honors for being both functional and beautiful, and will now be realized through a series of building workshops that you can participate in. Learn more and check out the winning designs, after the break.
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GOLD: Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park (Medellin, Colombia) . Image Courtesy of the Holcim Foundation
Teams from Mexico and Colombia have received top honors in the 2014 regional Holcim Awards for Latin America, an award which recognizes the most innovative and advanced sustainable construction designs. Among the top three winners is a Colombian water reservoir turned public park and low-impact timber rainforest center in Costa Rica.
The 12 recognized projects will share over $300,000 in prize money, with the top three projects overall going on to be considered for the global Holcim Awards, to be selected in 2015.
The full list of Latin American winners, after the break…
First Prize: The Solar Hourglass / Santiago Muros Cortés . Image Courtesy of LAGI
Winners have been announced for the 2014 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI). The competition, this year sited in Copenhagen, calls on interdisciplinary teams to design large scale site-specific artworks that provide renewable electricity to the city at a utility-scale (equivalent to the demand of hundreds or even thousands of homes). Once constructed, these public infrastructure artworks have the potential to offset thousands of tons of CO2 and provide iconic amenities that will serve to educate and inspire the communities in which they are built.
Check out the winning energy-generating sculptures, after the break.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Nicholas Hare Architects, Orms, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects and Tim Ronalds Architects have been shortlisted in a competition to expand and develop the Marlborough College science building in Wiltshire, England. “The current Science Block has a fascinating heritage but needs a new life to accommodate new teaching methods,” explained Malcolm Reading, the competition’s organizer. “The competition is all about finding a balance between the architectural grain of the existing eclectic campus and a confident and exciting piece of contemporary architecture.” The teams will now develop proposals. A winner will be announced in December.
.jpg?1412975694 "Marina Point, Fiji / Life Style Architecture. Image Courtesy of ADNZ")
