This year at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Collateral Event M9 / Transforming the City will unveil an influential urban regeneration project planned for the heart of Venezia Mestre. Envisioned by British-Berlin practice Sauerbruch Hutton, the competition-winning design will be a new “multifaceted and encyclopedic” cultural center of “international appeal” that showcases the “fundamental” 100 years that “revolutionized the world."
The exhibition will pair a complete architectural presentation of the project alongside the political motives behind it and an overview of the site's history as an attempt to spark a “theoretical digression on the links between cultural institutions and urban-regeneration projects.”
Grupo Talca’s four meter “Wicker Forest” has been announced as winner of the annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in Chile. Designed as an inhabitable landscape of wicker sticks, the red forested structure will “catch particles dragged by the wind, while providing shade and movement” to the visitors of CONSTRUCTO upon completion in Santiago next year.
Just as the 2014 winners of the Young Architects Program (YAP) in Chile and Korea were announced this week, the architecture collective of Orizzontalewas crowned victorious for the program’s MAXXI edition in Rome.
The winning scheme, dubbed “8 1/2,” will be a translucent wall of recycled beer kegs and an inhabitable timber podium that will be used as a stage for summer events within the confines of the MAXXI piazza. Shaded during the day and illuminated at night, the glass wall is intended to inspire people to rest, play, watch and listen.
When the profit-driven bulldozing of virgin desert quickly transformed into unfinished ghost towns in 2008, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, reset their sights on a more sustainable and desirable way of living: walkable communities. With the establishment of the city’s first light rail, the once car-centric communities of its urban core have turned into swaths of pedestrian havens. This has not only improved the city’s desirability, but has also been good for business. See how else Phoenix is trying to “pull off an urban miracle” and reverse it’s sprawled image here on Fast Company.
YAP Korea 2014: Shinseon Play / Moon Ji Bang. Image Courtesy of MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 has announced a partnership with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul that has expanded the international Young Architects Program (YAP) to South Korea. Just as YAP presents opportunities for emerging architects to design and build temporary installations in New York, Chile, Rome and Istanbul, YAP Korea will offer the MMCA’s outdoor Museum Plaza as the summer installation site.
Already, a winner has been chosen from 26 submissions to serve as the inaugural YAPKorea installation. With completion planned for July 8, winning team Moon Ji Bang (Threshold) is amidst the final preparations for mystical, mythology-inspired installation that will transcend visitors from the daily hustle into a cloud-like landscape of air balloon structures.
Apocalyptic panorama for “Ark-Stroy” booth, 2014, Evgeny Katin (Bang! Bang! Studio) / Courtesy — Strelka institute for media, architecture and design
True to the country’s experimental past, Russia’s participation for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale will expose the continued relevance of historical urban ideas by applying them as solutions for contemporary needs. Titled Fair Enough, the exhibition will be presented as an international trade show of ideas, a “marketplace of urban invention” that is both “made in Russia and open to the world.”
The U.S. National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has released a statement endorsing licensure upon graduation from accredited programs. Though the release did not specify a definite plan of action, the announcement acknowledges the benefits of restructuring U.S. licensure so that “rigorous internships and examination requirements” are all fulfilled during the education process.
Envisioned by NCARB’s “Licensure Task Force,” the “new path” concept overhaul will move forward by identifying schools interested in participating in the program. A Request for Information will be sent out later this year, followed by a Request for Proposal process in 2015.
Though many U.S. architects have seemingly longed for news such as this, others argue that there are drawbacks to licensure upon graduation. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section after the break.
Harry Gugger Studio and 6a Architects are among six practices shortlisted in a competition to design a new art gallery at Goldsmiths University in London. Selected from 80 submissions, the final teams, which also include Assemble, Dow Jones Architects, HAT Projects and Jamie Fobert Architects, will now have six weeks to submit designs. Once complete, the 400 square meter gallery will be a "significant showcase for contemporary art" that serves a combination of curated exhibitions, residencies and research projects. It will be built behind the Laurie Grove Baths, a Grade II listed 19th-century municipal bath that is currently used as fine art studios.
This year for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, Portugal will be officially represented by newspaper. This choice in media corresponds to the possibility of framing worldviews by revelling events, culture traits and socio-economic challenges of a country.
Extensively distributed in three different editions, over the six month period of the Biennale, Homeland, News from Portugal intends to report news about current architectural, social and economic life in Portugal, reflecting on and informing about a variety of aspects of the modernization of the country over the past 100 years.
Now through June 9, the city of Sydney will be illuminated by its annual, world-exclusive light festival known as Vivid Sydney. Each night from 6PM until midnight, many of the Harbour City’s most famous landmarks will be transformed into an interactive visual spectacular, paralleled with street side installations, laser shows, (free) live music performances and over 200 creative industry business events.
One of the festival highlights, of course, is the illumination of the Sydney Opera House. Watch as Jørn Utzon’s famous white sails are transformed by a series of mind-bending, 3D projections designed by 59 Productions after the break...
Minsuk Cho of MASS Studies, commissioner and curator of the Korean Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, has announced that he will be responding to director Rem Koolhaas’ theme Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 with an exhibition focused on the architecture of divided Korea. With the exhibition Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula, Cho will present the architecture of North and South Korea as “an agent - a mechanism for generating alternative narratives that are capable of perceiving both the everyday and the monumental in new ways.”
Delving into the fundamentals of architecture by researching the work of Slovene engineer Herman Potočnik Noordung, the pioneer of space architecture, the Pavilion of Slovenia at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale will explore concepts of “space culturalization.” Curated by the Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies (KSEVT), The Problem of Space Travel - Supre:Architecture will parallel solutions from Science and Technology with the Arts and Humanities as a means of envisioning contemporary options for appropriating space.
The curatorial statement and more information, after the break...
Erik Møller Arkitekterhas been commissioned to modernize Alvar Aalto’s white marble Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. As reported by BDOnline, the £14 million renovation will restore parts of the listed museum, as well as transform the building’s basement into a new 600 square meter exhibition space.
French-born, Colombian-based architect Yannick Martin of WHAT has shared with us his latest series of illustrations that reimagines some of architecture’s most famous confined within a box.
“The idea,” describes Martin, “was to deform and stretch houses made by some of the most known architects, put them inside a cube, and reveal what makes them so singular, starting with the decisions the architects made concerning the proportion of their houses and the defining elements that makes them so unique and famous.”
Halley VI Research Station / Hugh Broughton Architects. Image Courtesy of British Antarctic Survey
This year, as the first continent ever to be represented at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Antarctica will bring together leading international architects and artists to explore present and future models of living in the South Polar region. The exhibition, Antarctopia will feature projects and ideas by participants, such as Hugh Broughton, Juergen Mayer H. and Zaha Hadid.
The curatorial statement and complete list of participants, after the break...
The world is experiencing exponential growth and Rio de Janeiro, a true megalopolis of six million people, is a prime example. Thus, TEDGlobal 2014 has announced they will be “setting up shop” in Rio’s Copacabana Beach theater in the search to find “fresh thinking” in emerging geographies.
More than 40 speakers and performers have confirmed their attendance, each focusing on the “many facets of the Global South’s rise in influence and power” and relevant new stories from around the world.
Register here and continue after the break for complete list of confirmed speakers and Rio’s Mayor Eduardo Paes’ TED Talk “Four commandments of cities”...
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