competition: The Latest Architecture and News

Zaha Hadid Architects has ranked first in a design competition for the redevelopment of the Vilnius railway station complex and surrounding area in Lithuania, with its ‘Green Connect’ proposal. Generating an integrated transportation hub for the 21st century with new civic spaces enveloped by nature, ZHA’s project is aligned to the city’s ongoing sustainability agenda.

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The Chicago Architecture Center and the Chicago Architectural Club have announced the three winning designs for the 2021 Chicago Prize Competition, which called for innovative adaptive reuse proposals that would grant a new life to the iconic Illinois Thompson Center. The winning proposals designed by Perkins&Will, Eastman Lee Architects, and Solomon Cordwell Buenz represent alternative visions for the future of the Postmodernist landmark.

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This short essay, written by the author and critic Jonathan Glancey, coincides with the launch of the inaugural Architecture Drawing Prize – a competition curated by the World Architecture Festival, the Sir John Soane's Museum, and Make. The deadline for the award is the 17th of September 2021.

“Is graphicacy a word?” asks Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make Architects and instigator of The Architecture Drawing Prize. It is. “Like literacy”, he says, “, it’s certainly what I’m interested in when looking at and judging drawings. It’s about a fluency in making and understanding them.” The Architecture Drawing Prize is in its fifth year now. “We tend to see very few hand drawings by young architects - they mostly use computers - and, today, most architectural students come from more of a maths and physics than an art background. I still believe, though, that hand drawing is very important.”

The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the second list of 85 works competing for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Joining the batch of first nominations announced in February 2021, the full list comprises now of 532 competing works for the EU Mies Award 2022. The shortlist of 40 will be announced in January 2022, the winners in April 2022, and the Award ceremony will take place in May 2022.

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J. Mayer H. has won a competition to design the new façade of Cologne Main Station on Breslauer Platz in Germany. The design proposal frames the sides of the rail station with an all-around façade that offers an innovative use of space by making the best of the site's circulation and natural resources. The intervention will feature rooftop landscaping with local flowers and greenery, rainwater collection, protection from rain, wind, and sunlight, and a visual emphasis on the station's points of access.

The Chicago Architecture Center and Chicago Architecture Club have announced the seven finalists of the Thompson Center Design Competition, which called for new and innovative visions for the Illinois Thompson Center designed by Helmut Jahn in 1984. The winning design proposal will be announced during the opening of the September 14 pop-up exhibition of finalists work at the Chicago Architecture Center, and will run through October.

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Jasper Architects has recently won a competition to design an immersive hotel experience within the desert landscape of Kuwait. Featuring a curved structure echoing the surrounding dunes, the project is intended to recreate an oasis where visitors can fully observe the natural environment. Through its colors, textures, use of wood, and rammed earth, the concept emulates the surrounding. Reiterating the local topography, a circular roof rises and touches the ground, creating an array of alternating interior and exterior spaces.

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ArchDaily, Strelka Institute, and Strelka KB announce the second edition of their jointly curated award and are accepting applications from the territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Submit your project by August 8th.

C+S Architects and Citizenstudio are among the winners of the Face of Renovation competition, an initiative to redesign the architectural image of housing stock across 31 sites in Moscow. The competition sought to improve the experience of the urban environment through the renovation of urban blocks, fostering a sense of identity through individuality. In redesigning the Metrogorodok area (lot no. 13), the two architecture studios focused on overcoming the uniformity and repetitiveness of the prefab housing estate while also enriching the public space through the plasticity of the facades, the use of colours and the creation of intermediate spaces.

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Heatherwick Studio has been selected to design an office building in Madrid for the Spanish department store chain El Corte Ingles. The studio's first project to be built in Spain, Castellana 69 embodies a comprehensive sustainability strategy while also promoting a new vision of the office space. Developed together with local practices CLK architects and BAC Engineering Consultancy Group, Castellana 69 features a green inner courtyard, taking advantage of a strong connection between indoor and outdoor spaces.

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Snøhetta has proposed Lunar for the International Competition of the Landmark Design of Qianhai's New City Center. Inspired by the city's pioneering past and technology-driven future, the proposal is satellite-like structure that resembles landmarks in the era of data and technology. The proposal ranked second place in the competition alongside Sou Fujimito's floating tower.

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Sou Fujimoto Architects have revealed the winning design of the New City Center Landmark, a monumental floating tower on the bay of the Qianhaiwan district in Shenzhen. The proposed tower is 268m high, and consists of 99 individual tower-like elements connected a strong horizontal plane in the upper part, gradually vanishing as they descend. It is both one tower and a collection of towers all at once, symbolizing the future of societies in an age of diversity.

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Studio Gang and The Community Builders have won the City of Chicago’s C40 Reinventing Cities, a competition that seeks to “transform underutilized sites or buildings into beacons of sustainability and resilience and act as a showcase for future zero-carbon urban developments”. The winning proposal will create 207 residences for the downtown workforce earning as little as minimum wage, revitalize Pritzker Park, and add community spaces and amenities to the Chicago Loop.

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Cobe’s winning design for the new library of the University of Gothenburg proposes a light, clean volume, whose slightly curved facades are a nod to the pages of an open book. The Danish architecture studio translates the concept of knowledge as the heart of a library into the interior spatial configuration of the project, while the architectural image evokes the idea of a lighthouse. Featuring a transparent and open ground floor, the new repository of knowledge creates a strong connection with the surrounding park, becoming a mediator between the city and the university.

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Zhiyuan Library 2021 - International charitable architectural design competition for college students, is the charitable project planning by Zhiyuan Charity. The main features of the competition are”charitable, college students and construction”, aiming at improving the practical ability of college students, through the integrated realization of architectural design to deepening construction.

Ennead Architects have won the international competition to design a dynamic 32-floor commercial tower in the heart of Shenzhen’s high-tech Nanshan District. The architecture studio’s aim was to create a platform that “embraces creative exchange and the sharing of human experiences and ideas”, so they developed a design that offers a flexible working environment with a subtle use of color and materials, complimenting the spatial and functional needs of Chinese tech company ByteDance. The tower, which is expected to be completed by 2024, will employ co-working spaces, commercial, and recreational facilities in a dynamic-looking structure overlooking Shenzhen Bay.

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The United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm announced the winners of the 2021 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Decathlon, a competition that challenges architecture and engineering college students from around the world to design and construct high-performance buildings powered by renewable energy. 72 competing teams hailed from 12 countries and designed energy-efficient residential and commercial spaces, nine of which were constructed and presented in the Solar Decathlon Virtual Village on the National Mall, a first of its kind, in Washington, D.C.

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