Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
BIG's LEGO House is now under construction, following a one of a kind foundation laying ceremony featuring - what else - supersized lego bricks. Bjarke Ingels himself was in attendance to lay one of the foundation bricks. Constructed in LEGO's hometown of Billund, Denmark, the LEGO House will be a 12,000 square metre "hands-on minds-on experience centre."
More on the LEGO House, and the foundation laying ceremony, after the break
Professor Andy MacMillan, one of Scotland's most important post-war architects, died suddenly this weekend during this year’s Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) Andrew Doolan Awards visits. Macmillan was a professor at the Glasgow School of Art from 1973 to 1994, and a partner at Gillespie, Kidd & Coia in 1966. More on MacMillan's legacy after the break.
London's Science Museum has announced Wilkinson Eyre as the winner of its competition to design new medical galleries. Winning the project over a shortlist of six other architects - including Caruso St John, Amanda Levete Architects and Haworth Tompkins - Wilkinson Eyre's £24 million galleries will occupy 3,000 square metres on the museum's first floor, almost doubling the size of the museum's existing galleries.
More on the Science Museum's transformation after the break
Following the controversial decision to scrap plans by OMA earlier this year, Miami Beach officials have selected Arquitectonica for the redesign of the Miami Beach Convention Center. In a significant scaling-down of OMA's $1 billion masterplan, the new scheme calls for the existing center to be kept and renovated to 'Class A' standards, along with the addition of a new ballroom, meeting space and rooftop parking. The center's existing parking lot will be converted into a 6.5 acre public park, designed by landscape firm West 8.
More on the Convention Center Controversy after the break
At its World Congress event in Durban last week, the International Union of Architects (UIA)'s 124 member organizations declared their commitment to sustainable architecture by unanimously adopting the 2050 Imperative, a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the built environment to zero by mid-century.
The adoption of the 2050 Imperative was planned to coincide with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference that will reconvene in Paris in 2015, and has as one of its aims a plan to phase out CO2 emissions from the power and industrial sectors by 2050. The UIA stated their aim to "send a strong message to the Parties of the UNFCCC, and to the world, that we are committed to a truly sustainable and equitable future."
Read on after the break for more detail from the 2050 Imperative, including 5 key objectives
At the UIA World Congress last week, Joseph Rykwert was awarded the Jean Tschumi Prize for his work in architectural criticism and teaching over the past six decades. The prize adds to a fantastic year for Rykwert in which he received the RIBA Gold Medal and was awarded a CBE by the Queen. Read on after the break for all the winners of the 2014 UIA Prizes.
Details have been leaked of a major new development on the Southern edge of downtown Toronto, just East of Union Station. The scheme, uncovered by UrbanToronto and its inquisitive users, involves the connection of sites on both sides of the railway tracks, and will include three towers and a pedestrian bridge featuring a park and retail space. It is understood that Wilkinson Eyre are the architects, after BD confirmed last week that they have recently won a major competition in Toronto.
Read on for more details of the project
Do you have design skills to crow about? Well the Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque wants to hear from you - to raise money for the National Audubon Society (the US partner of Birdlife International), they've organized NEST, a birdhouse design competition open to architects worldwide which they hope will result in some birdhouses to coo over.
When someone is in the public eye as much as Frank Gehry, it's easy for them to be misrepresented in the media. Fortunately, this interview by Architectural Record's editor-in-chief Cathleen McGuigan sets the record straight: Gehry doesn't consider himself as an artist, and he doesn't think of architecture as sculpture (despite what he once said). He is however hugely influenced by the way artists work, inventing ways to make things when it might otherwise be thought impossible. That's why he's always the one to "jump off the cliff", as he puts it. You can read the full interview here.
Creating designs for cities all over the planet may have just gotten a whole lot easier - thanks to Brandon Liu, a Software Developer from San Francisco who used data from OpenStreetMap to create .DXF CAD files of 241 major cities worldwide. These files are entirely free to download, and from San Francisco to Sydney, Buenos Aires to Beijing and Helsinki to Harare, most of the world's major cities are included.
The Guangzhou Bureau of Science and IT has announced the shortlists for two major projects in Guangzhou. The two museum projects - the Guangzhou Museum and the Guangzhou Science Museum, each worth over $160 million - will be the latest in a host of high profile projects in China's third-largest city, a list which includes Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou Opera House, the 600m tall Canton Tower, IFC Guangzhou by Wilkinson Eyre Architects and the Guangzhou Circle, among others.
The Guangzhou Museum will be located to the West of Lingnan Square near the Canton Tower, while the Guangzhou Science museum will be located to the East. Practices making the two lists include Bjark Ingels Group, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, TFP Farrells, MAD Architects and Steven Holl Architects. Read on after the break for the complete shortlists.
The French government has announced that it is committing €200 million towards restoring the Grande Arche de la Défense, the 110m tall hollow cube which marks the Western end of Paris' Axe Historique. The arch was completed in 1989 to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution, however in its 25-year lifespan it has not fared well: an elevator scare in 2010 forced the rooftop facilities to close, and the area around the North tower has been closed to the public due to the risk of falling marble tiles. Studies conducted between 2004 and 2010 concluded that one in six of the facade tiles had been severely damaged by rain.
The €200 million investment will focus on the arch's Southern tower, where workers for the French ecology and housing ministries who occupy the space have complained of a lack of natural light and poor working conditions.
More on the Grande Arche's future after the break
Set in the bucolic fields of Csórompuszta in the Hungarian countryside, the annual Hello Wood camp was recently back for its fifth year. Every year, students have one week to create wooden installations under the instruction of specially selected tutors, each of whom provide an outline idea of a project in response to a theme. This time around the challenge from the organizers was to "play with balance," which generated ideas that investigated the balance between opposing concepts - but also generated a whole lot of play, too. See all 14 of the weird and wonderful results after the break.
The AIA has announced 8 projects as winners of their annual National Healthcare Design Awards, rewarding the best in medical architecture from built projects to research excellence. The 8 projects were selected in four categories: built (less than $25 million); built (more than $25 million); Unbuilt; and Innovations in Planning and Design Research.
The awarded projects come from locations throughout the US, as well as one project constructed for Haiti. Read on after the break to see all the winners.
If you like magazines, then you'll love this: the New Yorker, celebrating their recent redesign, have made their archive free for a limited period only. And, making up for their hiatus as they wait for a redesign of their own, Places Journal has gone to the effort of rounding up the best architecture reads from the last few years. Here are our top three:
Over 50 Leading figures from architecture, art, film and fashion - Including Norman Foster, the director of London's National Gallery Nicholas Penny, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation Richard Armstrong, and Hollywood stars Cate Blanchett, Michael Douglas, Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton and Rob Lowe - have signed a petition pleading Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the Italian Minister of Culture and Tourism, Dario Franceschini to keep large cruise ships out of Venice.
The petition, created by the UNESCO-backed Association of the International Private Committees for the Safeguarding of Venice, says is a reaction to both the aesthetic intrusion caused by the cruise liners, but also what it believes is a "probable risk of catastrophe" due to the possible effects that such large ships could have on the fragile Lagoon surrounding Venice.
More on the cruise ship controversy after the break
The House of Lords has announced that the proposal to appoint a 'Chief Architect' in the UK, one of the major recommendations of this year's report by Terry Farrell, will be discussed by the UK's minister for architecture Ed Vaizey and Housing and Planning minister Brandon Lewis. The proposal was among 60 recommendations made by the Farrell Review at the end of March. Other proposals due to be discussed by ministers are a the idea of establishing a Place Leadership Council and design review panels for infrastructure projects. More after the break...
7N Architects have revealed their designs for the 8.2 acre Fountainbridge site, one of the largest city centre developments in Edinburgh, where they plan 350 homes, a range of workspaces, a 130 room hotel, canalside retail and café space and two arts buildings. The intention for the former industrial zone is to offer "enhanced canalside features, open space and paths for both pedestrian and cycle use."
More on the proposal after the break
