International design firm NLÉ has recently shared its competition-winning design for the financial headquarters of the microfinance bank Credit Direct Limited. Located in Lagos, Nigeria, in the Ikeja district, the bank’s design abandons the forbidding presence of most financial institutions for one that is open and welcoming. This decision not only invites clientele inside, but creates opportunities for adaptation to the tropical weather of Lagos.
The winners of Metropolis Magazine's Workplace of the Future 2.0 Design Competition have been announced. This year's competition challenged participants to redefine the idea of the office, illustrating their interpretation of the evolution of workplaces within the next 15 years.
Although their approaches are different, each of the winning designs, selected from 153 entries, shows innovation in how they develop new office prototypes by employing technological ingenuity, maintaining much of the same construction while providing different experiences to suit the employees' unique needs. The winning entry (Organic Grid +) and the runner-up (the Hybrid Office) both reflect architecture which is highly receptive to its inhabitants.
Learn more about the winners after the break.
The 2015 winners of the annual Social Economic Environment Design (SEED) Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design have been announced. The international competition celebrates designs which excel in these realms, and strive to create manageable sustainable impacts. The winning projects, selected by a jury, will receive $1000, as well as attendance to the annual Structures for Inclusion conference in Detroit, Michigan in April.
The six winning projects each encompass the ideals of community outreach, socio-economic improvement, and environmental awareness in the context of their unique locations. Though the designs are distinct, the values they embody are universal.
Read more about the winning designs after the break.
Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung has temporarily “pulled the plug” on Sou Fujimoto’s ambitious Taiwan Tower, saying he would rather pay a penalty for breaking the contract than spend an estimated NT$15 billion to realize the “problematic” project.
The Banyan tree-inspired tower was hoped to become the “Taiwanese version of the Eiffel Tower,” as well as a model for sustainable architecture by achieving LEED Gold with its energy producing features. Its steel superstructure, which proposed to hoist a triangular section of the Taichung Gateway Park’s greenbelt 300-meters into the air, intentionally had “no obvious form” and was to be perceived as a natural phenomenon.
Presented by the Ministry of Culture of Albania and Tirana Architecture Week 2014, "Lost Architecture - [En]Visioning New City Squares" attracted international entries from students and practitioners under the age of forty alike. Designers were invited to submit proposals for the improvement of Pyramid Square in Albania's capital, Tirana, and tasked with reflecting the city's rich history and evolving identity.
Amongst the proposals received was one from a Canadian team comprised of architect Naiji Jiao and landscape architect Seven Xiru Chen, whose entry “The Pyramid Park" was awarded first place. Read more about the winning entry after the break.
French media company Le Monde Group has chosen Snøhetta to design their new headquarters in Paris. Clad with a pixelated matrix of glass that offers varying degrees of transparency, the building’s distinct facade will be embedded with clusters of LEDs that project “abstracted levels of data,” symbolically representing the group’s continuous “flow of information.”
“The intention is that the façade gives the building a homogenous character when viewed from distance, but at the same time reveals a greater level of complexity as the view approaches – like headlines and detailed content in a news story,” says Snøhetta. “The façade patterns are intended to represent the building as a complete volume, while the distorted pixel map creates a rich tapestry from inside and out.”
Two winners have been announced for the fifth annual cycle of New York’s “City of Dreams” competition: the “Billion Oyster Pavilion” by locally-based BanG Studio and “Organic Growth” by Izaskun Chinchilla Architects of Madrid and London. Pending approvals and fundraising, both pavilions will be assembled on Governors Island and open to the public for the summer 2015 season. The winning pavilions, after the break.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced Sutherland Hussey Architects and Gross Max Landscape Architects as winners of a competition to design a new community hub for Sessay Village in North Yorkshire. The proposal, which jury chair Robin Snell believed to have “best expressed the client vision,” aims to become a well-used public destination that properly serves more than 20 local organizations, including a primary school, cricket club and the Sessay First Responders.
The narrow, single-story pavilion will stretch between two circular sports fields, connecting it’s inner halls directly to the outdoors. Continue after the break for more images of the project.
64 North, HNTB Engineering, Bionic Landscape Architecture and sculptor Ned Kahn have been chosen by the City of Palo Alto to realized a new bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the 14-lane Highway 101 at Adobe Creek. Their winning proposal, “Confluence” will connect residential and commercial areas in south Palo Alto to the Baylands Nature Preserve and the regional Bay Trail network.
Read on for more information and a video about the design.
The results of the Red Square Tolerance Pavilion Competition, hosted by Homemade Dessert (HMMD), have been announced. Placed directly in the center of Moscow's Red Square, the competition asked designers to advocate the many facets of tolerance (social, religious, and political) by manifesting them in the form of a temporary pavilion. To further enhance these ideas, the pavilion is not only a symbolic space, but an educational one, with lecture halls and exhibition areas as its program, encouraging entrants to promote tolerance in all aspects of their designs.
View the winning designs after the break.
Hello Nature, the most recent ideas-based challenge organised by Combo Competitions, asked participants to design a structure that celebrates nature on an expansive site in northern Sweden at the foot of Omneberget mountain. Located in an area known as the High Coast (Höga Kusten), the site sits within an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Designers were asked to "highlight the relationship between humanity and the rest of the planet" in putting forward proposals which "reconnect to nature." As a twist, entrants had to include both educational and recreational elements to their submissions. The entries, which range from a mountain of 'conservation drones' (with a control tower and charging station at its peak) to a collection of four extruded concrete plinths, all seek to explore our relationship with the wild when 50% of the world's population live in urban centres.
See the winning proposals and read the jury's comments after the break.
Sou Fujimoto Architects has been announced as one of three practices chosen to design buildings for the Liget Budapest project, one of Europe’s largest museum developments. Selected through an anonymous competition process, the Japanese firm will realize an undulating House of Hungarian Music that was “inspired by sound waves.” Its distinctive perforated “smart roof” will float on top an airy glass-walled interior illuminated by the canopy’s lightwells.
French practice Vallet de Martinis DIID Architectes was also chosen to construct a striated Museum of Ethnography, while Hungarian firm Középülettervező Zrt will realize the cuboidal PhotoMuseum Budapest and Museum of Hungarian Architecture.
All three projects will be built in Városliget, the city’s largest park, by 2018. Continue after break to view images of each.
The Athenaeum has just announced the winning proposals of the "Looking Forward: Re-imagining the Athenaeum of Philadelphia" competition. In celebration of its 200th anniversary, the independent library and museum issued a challenge to architects, designers, and artists to illustrate their visions for the "Athenaeum of the Future."
The competition's entries included 46 professional and 42 student proposals from 17 different countries, 15 US States, and 10 schools. Read on after the break to explore the award-winning designs.
A “magical” logistics center fit for the season’s most hardworking man has been awarded first prize for it’s innovation and feasibility in the “Unbelievable Challenge” architectural ideas competition. Submitted by Alexandru Oprita and Laurentiu Constantin of Romania, “Nothing is impossible” was selected from 243 entries spanning 59 countries and five other deserving projects that have been highlighted as runner-ups.
A closer look at Santa Claus’ proposed logistics center, after the break.
Come February 9, New York City will be celebrating the opening of its seventh annual Valentine’s Day installation in Times Square. As part of Times Square Alliance’s heart design competition, Brooklyn- based and Venezuelan-born firm Stereotank will be constructing a heart-beating urban drum in hopes that it will bring together New Yorkers through music.
Steven Holl Architects has been selected to design a new extension to one of India’s oldest museums, the Mumbai City Museum, also known as the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum. Selected over OMA, Studio Mumbai Architecture, Zaha Hadid and four others, Holl is now the first architect ever to be chosen through an international competition to design a public building in Mumbai.
Continue reading to learn more about Holl’s winning design.
The Guggenheim has announced the finalists in the competition to design Guggenheim Helsinki, whittling down the entrants from a record-breaking 1,715 submissions to just six. Representing both emerging and established practices with offices in seven countries, the shortlisted entries show a variety of responses to the challenge of creating a world-class museum.
The six finalists are:
Read on after the break to see all six designs in detail, as well as the jury's comments on each.
A “blind” jury has announced the 2015 winners of the international Warming Huts competition. Selected from 100 entries, two winning “shelter” designs and one “installation” design were awarded. Each winning proposal will be constructed in January alongside the longest naturally frozen skating trail in the world: the Red River Mutual Rivertrail in Winnipeg, Canada. More about the winning designs, and four other highlighted proposals, after the break.
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