UPDATE: Minutes ago Tokyo was announced as the host of the 2020 Olympics. Zaha Hadid’s design to become the Olympic stadium.
Today the International Olympic Comitee (IOC) will choose the city that will host the 2020 Olympics, with Madrid, Tokyo and Istanbul competing for the important event. The three cities just finished their presentations in Buenos Aires, Argentina, including presidents and royal members. As we await for the results, we present you the three stadiums designed to host the Olympics in each city.
Ever expanding population growth coupled with the continuous development of urban centres mean that buildings, in general, will continue to get taller. With the topping out of One World Trade Centre in May this year the worldwide competition to construct towers with soaring altitudes doesn’t seem to be slowing, especially in China and the UAE. The question on many people’s lips, however, is how much of these colossal buildings is actual usable space?
The shortlist for the 2013 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Manser Medal, awarded to the best new house or major extension in the UK, has been revealed. Amongst the five competing projects, which have all won either National or Regional RIBA Awards, is Astley Castle, which has also been shortlisted for the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize.
The post-war city centre of Rotterdam is ruled by commerce. Only five percent of the city's inhabitants live in the centre, which is almost entirely occupied by highstreet fashion chains, fast food restaurants, and offices. After shop closing time, the shutters go down and the streets are deserted. The municipality would like to lure more inhabitants into the centre – but space for new residential buildings is scarce. So in recent years, a 1960s cinema and church had to make way for a huge new housing complex designed by Alsop Architects, and a residential tower by Wiel Arets was speedily attached to Marcel Breuer's department store, De Bijenkorf. It was not until the municipality suggested forcing new housing high-rises into the green courtyards of the Lijnbaanhoven residential complex, designed in 1954 by Hugh Maaskant, that there were protests and the project had to be cancelled. For the time being, that is.
One densification project, however, tried not to destroy or debase the post-war building originally occupying its site. In many respects, the Karel Doorman residential high-rise could even be called the saviour of the old Ter Meulen department store. It might be rather uncommon for a valiant hero to crouch down on the shoulders of the little old lady he intends to rescue – but that's more or less what happened here.
"Architecture is more than creating a place to live," stated the late Dutch architect, Piet Blom, "you create a society." Till his death in 1999, Blom designed homes and urban schemes as if to reject the stern, coldness of post-war Modernism in light of a warmer, more human architecture. His drawings, diagrams and homes portray an affectionate commitment to reconcile elements of culture with the architecture around us. Characterized by his use of lively colors and equally expressive architectural geometries, project's such as the "Kasbah" and the cube houses in Rotterdam stand as testaments to his belief that architecture serves the people, not the other way around.
A true "People's Architect," Blom's work has endeared a growing number supporters, among these are residents who have lived in his houses and are hoping to garner donations to share these artifacts with the public. Ingeborg van der Aa, secretary of the Piet Blom Foundation, mentions that the initiative's mission is to promote recognition, new insight and appreciation with the hopes of encouraging a younger generation to be active creators of their society.
1315 Peachtree, in Atlanta, achieved LEED Platinum Certification. However, will newer buildings in Georgia be held to the same standards? . Image Courtesy of Perkins + Will
The US Green Building Council’s federally adopted LEED certification system has come under legislative siege with lobbyists from the timber, plastics and chemical industries crying out, “monopoly!” Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama have lead efforts to ban LEED, claiming the USGBC’s closed-door approach and narrow-minded material interests have shut out stakeholders in various industries that could otherwise aid in the sustainable construction of environmentally-sensitive buildings.
Gund Hall (home of the Graduate School of Design) during Harvard Graduation. Year 2007. Image Courtesy of Wikimedia User Tebici
Every year thousands of young hopefuls attend architecture school, entering with the expectation that, after their years of struggle and long hours in studio, they’ll come out the other end as legitimate architects doing legitimate architecture.
How quickly they must abandon that unreasonable idea.
From CAD monkeys to baristas, most architecture grads are not doing what they thought they would when they submitted their first tuition checks. And, to add insult to injury, those tuition checks only multiplied, leaving our grads in thousands of dollars of debt.
Surely there must be another way. PAVE, a kind of Kickstarter that connects individuals to investors, offers—if not a solution—then a very intriguing alternative.
Our friend and architectural photographer Felipe Camus recently embarked on an architectural pilgrimage to the valley of the Rhein. Located in the Graubünden region in Switzerland, the valley boasts many of the seminal works of Pritzker Prize Laureate Peter Zumthor, all within a 60-kilometer radius. Born in Graubünden himself, Zumthor designed the works in relation to their location and time by paying special attention to details and materials. As a result, the works all present Zumthor’s unparalleled skills of craftsmanship and his uncompromising integrity.
Join us for a special AD Architectural Mountain Guide, including a detailed map, photos and descriptions of Zumthor’s works, after the break….
The students of the MSArch in Landscape and Urbanism program at Woodbury University in San Diego have shared this video on Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda (PREVI): a late 1960s social housing experiment in Lima, Peru, which, backed by the Peruvian government and the UN, involved the best social housing architects of the day.
The designs, part of the later, more humanist strain of modernism, were intended to allow families - who were used to holding complete control over the construction of their own homes - to appropriate the houses. However, they were also designed to imply how future construction might prevent the proliferation of chaos present in previous slums. The video asks how residents feel about their experimental homes today, questioning the success of this design strategy, 40 years after the project's completion.
Find out more about the outcome of the PREVI experiment, after the break...
For much of its existence, American suburbia has been considered an architectural wasteland. From shopping malls to McMansions to residential developments, suburbs from Connecticut to California look eerily similar and share a similar pattern of quick, cheap construction that has left little if any room for thoughtful design.
But with the recent foreclosure crisis and growing environmental concerns, new opportunities have emerged to re-imagine the suburbs into sustainable, architecturally innovative communities. Although the other art forms examined in this issue have fully established themselves, suburban design -- traditionally the realm of profit-driven developers -- is only now beginning to emerge as an artistic field. Fueled by exhibits such as the Museum of Modern Art's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream and Dwell magazine's Reburbia Design Competition, architects and designers are beginning to explore what the suburbs could potentially look and feel like. We spoke with several architects who are leaders within this growing trend, and are quite literally designing new artistic possibilities for all those "little boxes on the hillside." In their own words, here are some of their concerns, projects, and visions.
Zaha Hadid Architects, Coop Himmelb(l)au, UNStudio, and Snøhetta are some of the 45 shortlisted practices competing to design the International Specialized Exposition (Expo 2017) in Astana, Kazakhstan. Each practice, selected from more than a 100 proposals worldwide, has submitted their own interpretation of the expo’s theme: "Future Energy". Come September, the jury will announce which vision best represents what will be the country’s first world fair.
“The theme of our exhibition is closely related to 'green economy', which takes into account the possibility of using alternative energy sources and the autonomous water and heat provision in each of the constructions," said Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
We've recently covered the topic of prison design on a number of occasions - more specifically the work of Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility, led by Raphael Sperry. ADPSR is campaigning to have the AIA forbid its members from designing prisons; however, we have previously questioned the effectiveness of this tactic, with other professionals, such as engineers, often willing to design prisons in the absence of architects. In another article on the topic, we suggested that the problem lies not with the ethics of architects, but with the US prison system itself.
This raised the question of how architects might actually change the system - are we stuck with the political landscape we are given, or are we capable of leveraging our expertise to make positive changes to society?
It turns out that Deanna VanBuren of FOURM Design Studio is doing exactly that. Through her designs, as well as workshops and events with the public and with prisoners, VanBuren is championing restorative justice: a form of incarceration centered around rehabilitation rather than punishment. We interviewed VanBuren to find out how she is encouraging people to accept restorative justice above punishment.
The Saint Benedict Chapel, located in the village of Sumvitg, Graubünden, was designed by the Pritzker Prize Laureate Peter Zumthor in 1988. The modest, human-scaled exterior of the chapel encapsulates the beauty and simplicity of Zumthor’s works, while the interior showcases his unparalleled craftsmanship.
The advent of electrical lighting has allowed us to colonise the night. Not only have kilometres of street lighting ensured higher levels of safety, but signs, advertisements, etc. continue to draw us into nocturnal landscapes. As Rem Koolhaas explored in Delirious New York, Manhattan and Coney Island were the early luminous prototypes for today’s continuously vibrant metropolises: cities that establish new rhythms, a new balance between work and life.
But what happens when lighting upsets our natural balance? When we lose the beauty of the dark sky, the stars? What happens when lighting turns into pollution?
The World Architecture Festivalis around the corner! On October 2nd-4th, hundreds of architects will gather inSingaporefor an intense dose of architecture, in the form of panels, lectures, live crits, and more. You can see all the shortlisted projects here.
Helicon Building, an example of what Curtis B. Wayne calls "The Fourth Architecture". Image Courtesy of Paul Grundy, bdonline.co.uk
When New York City architect Curtis B. Wayne first started talking about “The Fourth Architecture,” it was clear he was not doing so to make friends. You do not write manifestos to make friends. You write them because of some perceived urgency, because the time is right.
As a long-standing practitioner, radio host, and graduate of Cooper Union and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, he already has a lot of friends. What he’s interested in is saving architecture from the current orthodoxy of form-making over substance, or “sculpture you can live in.” “We are too wise for this,” writes Wayne.
In fact, I can go further. Judging from the little red book that has finally emerged from Wayne’s brain, appropriately titled, The Shape of Things that Work: The Fourth Architecture, I’m almost certain he set out to piss people off. But not without a purpose.
Like many architecture students, Hank Butitta was frustrated. Frustrated that the projects he and his fellow classmates were painstakingly, time-consumingly crafting at architecture school resulted—almost always—in nothing. But Hank Butitta, unlike many architecture students, decided that, for his thesis, he would buy an old school bus and turn it into a flexible living space. The result: a 225 square foot mobile home—complete with reclaimed gym flooring and dimmable LED mood lighting.
On his website (www.hankboughtabus.com), Butitta says, “This project was a way to show how building a small structure with simple detailing can be more valuable than drawing a complex project that is theoretical and poorly understood.” Since the project (which was envisioned with a nod to the tiny house movement) was picked up by the media last week, fans and commenters have flooded the site, asking Hank how he resolved certain problems and where he sourced the materials.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen's researches and writes about the social, economic and political dimensions of globalization, immigration, and networked technologies in cities around the globe. Her books and writings—published in over sixteen languages—have sustained the interests of architects and planners who seek to better understand the city via the systemic conditions that find expression in the reality of urban space.
Now actively involved in teaching Columbia University, we caught up with Sassen at the Arquine Congress in Mexico City, where she shared some interesting views on the role of architects, her contemplations on the future of the city, and her thoughts on the impact of the internet on the city.
Check out a full transcript of our interview with Sassen after the break.
