Berlin's Barkow Leibinger has won an invited competition to design a new hotel tower and conference centre as part of Berlin's largest hotel complex, the Estrel. Establishing a new gateway to the center of Berlin from Schönefeld International Airport, the tower will stand at 175 meters (578 feet) making it the tallest high-rise in Berlin to date. Located on the Sonnenalle at the intersection of the Ship Canal, S-Bahn and Autobahn, the site acts as a threshold between the heterogeneous industrial and residential periphery of the city and the historical neighborhoods of Neukölln.

GRAFT Architects have won an invited competition to restore and extend one of Germany's oldest youth hostels in central Munich, Germany. Their proposal, which was judged alongside designs by haascookzemmrich (Stuttgart), Snøhetta (Oslo), and YES Architecture (Munich), centers around the idea of "experiencing community." Their proposal enables exchange and communication whilst also alluding to the "established traditions of simple traveling, youthful curiosity and the thirst for encounter." Connecting the historic quality of the building with the challenges of modern habits and traveling practices, their design "builds a bridge between origins and departure."

After a nine-month long competition, LAN Architecture has been commissioned to restructure and extend the historic Grand Palais in Paris. With the intent to “restore the building’s original coherence and sense of transparency,” LAN plans to revamp the 1900 World’s Fair building by resorting its unity and circulation, as well as the volume of its galleries around the Grand Nave and the addition of a new entrance court.

Review the plan in more detail, after the break...

ArchiPlan has won first prize in an international competition for a contemporary art museum designed solely for the work of Korean painter Kim Tschang-Yeul. Planned for the volcanic Jeju Island, a province in South Korea, the single-story museum is designed to be the physical manifestation of Kim’s philosophy regarding the water drop.

“We spent a long time understanding [Kim] - understanding his life, intention and his philosophy,” described the architects. “It is necessary to transform his philosophy into a constructed architectural space.” 

Urban Architecture (UA Studio 7) and Aedas' winning proposal for the Hongqiao Central Business District has broke ground at Shanghai’s domestic Hongqiao Airport, mainland China's fourth busiest airport. The 18.4 hectare office and retail center, masterplanned by UA, has been divided into two parts: UA Studio 7 will design the office district, “a flower with eight leaves,” while Aedas designs the shopping, hotel, and conference center along a "bow curve" of pedestrian flow.

According to UA, the winning scheme's success was "due to a highly energy-efficient architecture proposal combined with an urban plan that allows for pedestrian-friendly spaces."

Arctic Harvester was the first prize winning entry in the “Innovation and Architecture for the Sea” category of the Jacques Rougerie Foundation International Architecture Competition, 2013. It proposes an itinerant soil-less agricultural infrastructure designed to drift the circulating ocean currents between Greenland and Canada, exploiting the nutrient-rich fresh water released by melting icebergs as the basis for a large-scale hydroponic-farming system. The floating facility is equipped to house a community of 800 people, inspired in its compact urban form by vertically oriented, bayside Greenlandic villages and their social, cultural and economic relationship to the sea.

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Smiljan Radic, Gabriela Medrano, and Ricardo Serpell have won a competition to design a new landmark for Santiago, Chile: an antenna tower to be placed on the summit of San Cristobal Hill, in the heart of the city.

The 'Santiago Antenna Tower,' a unique telecommunications tower with panoramic views, should be completed in 2017, in time for the centenary of the Metropolitan Park of Santiago.

Further detail and the architect's description of the project, after the break.

Latitude Studio, based in Barcelona and Beijing, have unveiled designs for a showroom exhibition centre in China's capital city. Integral to the design is how visitors circulate and interact with the spaces centred around the "future shopping mall". Including an auditorium, model spaces and views onto an area which is expected to see enormous retail development, the building's central atrium and "thematic sightseeing walk" offer a unique journey for the visitor.

A design team led by Carlos Marín and José Muñoz-Villers has claimed first prize in Mexico City’s "La Merced" competition for their masterplan proposal to re-conceive the popular marketplace, Plaza Central La Merced. The team’s design, which beat out about 100 other entries, proposed the realization of a new public square to centralize pedestrian activity and to anchor strategies for urban revitalization, such as the reclamation of local heritage sites, the careful manipulation of natural elements, and the installation of urban furniture as a means for placemaking.

J. Mayer H. has been crowned as winner of an invited competition to design a 19-story medical services and residential high-rise in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. The “sculptural” tower, which is defined by the horizontal “cloud-shaped” aluminum strips that cloak its facade, is designed to “provide a natural atmosphere” enhanced by planted terraces and balconies overlooking the adjacent landscape of the Rheinaue and views of Duesseldorf.

Toronto-based RAW Design has been crowned winner of the annual Warming Huts competition, which is intended to “push the envelop of design, craft and art” by encouraging architects to design innovative warming shelters along the frozen Red River Mutual Trail in Winnipeg, Canada.

Moving away from the traditional notion of an enclosed shelter, the firm’s winning proposal “Nuzzles” engages skaters with a playful arrangement of “insulated appendages” (a.k.a. pool noodles) supported by a geodesic lattice structure that is illuminated and heated from within. Users are encouraged to “nestle into the structure” and manipulate its fur-like exterior into informal resting areas. 

Ziya İmren Architects has recently won an invited competition for the design of the Beykoz School complex in Istanbul. The firm’s winning proposal distinguished itself by embedding its layout within the steep site’s natural surrounding and organizing school as a “cascading” hierarchy of spaces.

In a competition that ultimately crowned Frank Gehry as winner, Berlin’s Barkow Leibinger placed third with their 150-meter “faceted stacked building” proposal clad in glass. Aimed to be Berlin’s tallest building, the apartment and hotel tower is planned to be the city’s first high-rise residential development since the 1970s.

Australian practice Crone Partners has recently won a competition to design a new community precinct in Rhodes, New South Wales. Starting with the intention to rethink the traditional community building and civic space typology, Crone Partner's winning design features clusters of spaces with programs subdividing by size and demands. In moving away from traditional public buildings, which are "characterised by [their] scale, elaborate and sometimes extravagant aesthetic", their proposal was no longer "constrained by a singular form".

Marc Koehler Architects, in collaboration with ONZ Architects, have recently won an invited competition for their design of the Kastamonu Campus in Turkey. Their winning proposal, described as "an asymmetrical star", embodies excellence and is an endeavor to create the largest high school campus ever designed. Featuring laboratories, libraries, performance spaces, sports centers, a health centre, places of worship, dormitories and 29,000 square meters of educational spaces, the campus is expected to welcome 10,000 students.

PLASMA Studio, in collaboration with Groundlab, won first prize in an international competition to masterplan the relocation of the Innichen/San Candido train station in North Italy. The project, now under construction, forms a new "Mobile Centre" that integrates a new public plaza, skate park, youth centre and more into a streamlined rail station that enhances connectivity throughout the town.

More information, after the break...

schmidt hammer lassen architects, in collaboration with Thomas Chow Architects, has won a commission to design a new Island School in Hong Kong. Envisioned as a “sustainable learning landscape,” the 28,000-square-meter, state-of-the-art facility aims to promote optimal learning through flexible classroom spaces and by establishing a deep connection with the surrounding landscape and local community.

Naqsh,E,Jahan-Pars (NJP), in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Architettura e Design (LAD), has been named winner of an international competition for the Iranian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Based on “a living process narrative in the central plateau of Iran,” the winning scheme responds to the Expo’s “Feeding the Planet” theme by exposing the underground channels of water that give life to Iran’s many desert cities.

This proposal by architects Bence Pap and Mario Gasser of Studio Greg Lynn / University of Applied Arts Vienna has been ranked fourth in an international competition for the Austrian Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. Inspired by the Expo’s theme, “We feed the World – Energy for Life,” the pavilion aims to highlight Austria’s rich culture of craft and agriculture by offering a two-story experience that exhibits goods unique to the country.

The Italian joint-venture between Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners and C+S Architects has been announced as winner of an international competition for the requalification of a former railway station site in Chiasso, Switzerland. The team’s winning scheme proposes a “soft urban design” aimed at giving value to the pre-existing buildings, which are substantially maintained and sewn to the newly designed complex of two fashion schools: SAMS and STA.

Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have been commissioned to design of a new urban development project on a 45 hectare site in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. The competition-winning proposal comprises a transportation hub including five underground railway stations, a border control point and numerous commercial areas. Above ground there will be a range of tower blocks of different heights with apartments, shops and offices to form multi-functional city quarters.

TC Design Architects have been announced as one of the four winners in a country-wide architectural competition to design the University of Mpumalanga in Nelspruit, the first public university in South Africa since the end of Apartheid. Of 147 architectural practices, the Department of Higher Education and Training has narrowed the pool of entries down to TC Design, Conco Bryan Architects, Cohen and Garson, and Gapp Architects & Urban Designers.

More on TC Design's proposal after the break…

Heneghan Peng Architects has won an international competition for a new National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) at Moscow’s Khodynskoe Pole. Selected from a shortlist of three, the Dublin-based practice will now further develop their winning scheme which vertically stacks exhibition spaces as flexible “trays” to maximize accessibility and visually connect the NCCA’s activities to the surrounding landscape.

Once complete, the large-scale building will host a variety of permanent and temporary exhibitions, as well as lectures, professional conferences, concerts, performances, studios, art education facilities and more.

Czech architect Ales Javurek has been awarded first prize in the [AC-CA] Architectural Competition for his design of a two-story, 340 square meter vacation home utilizing shipping containers in Sydney, Australia. The proposal situates the home on the edge of a 1500 square meter hillside to maximize the striking panoramic view of Bondi Beach. By preserving current trees and the slope's profile, consisting of "three platforms," the proposal successfully addresses the main brief: to design a contemporary, sustainable vacation house which sensitively fits into its context and considers Sydney's climate conditions.

Learn more after the break…