Cultural Center: The Latest Architecture and News

This article was originally published on November 25, 2014. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Architects have never enjoyed a position of such supreme prominence as they did in the worldview of Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller. To him, architects alone were capable of understanding and navigating the complex interrelationships of society, technology, and environment as viewed through the comprehensive paradigm of systems theory. Architecture, in this model, was intended to exist in close contact with both mankind and nature, playing civilization’s most critical role in elevating the state of humanity and promoting its responsible stewardship of the environment. Emerging from the ethical positivity of postwar modernism, this melioristic perspective marks perhaps the zenith of optimism’s ascent in mid-twentieth century thought, and gave Fuller a uniquely moral blueprint for his revolutionary designs.

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Lithuanian city Panevezys will have a new cultural hub thanks to the winning design of architecture firm, IMPLMNT. The proposed design of the Stasys Eidrigevicius Arts Centre, which will be built in the northern part of the city center, won the competition due to its function, location, architecture, and the social/economic value it will be adding to the city.

The center will take the place of an existing movie theater, a historic landmark in the Lithuanian city. After performing structural analysis on the existing theater, a study of the conditions indicated that it can no longer be preserved or saved. Keeping in mind the importance of the movie theater to the city, the architects at IMPLMNT decided to draw inspiration from the existing building, as well as use its proportions to create the newly-designed structure.

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Oslo-based architecture firm Ekberg Lous Arkitekter have designed Norway’s first World Heritage Visitor Center, after having won the open international architectural competition in 2008. Following the competition, the project was halted for seven years due to a lack of funding, but has been given the green light in 2015 with revised plans and a new site. The center, which will be built on the tip of the northern shore of Vega Island, is expected to be a gathering point for both locals and foreigners. It will provide visitors with knowledge about the natural and cultural values of the Vega Archipelago and world heritage sites in general. The center is set to be open in spring 2019.

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Offices and cultural buildings both offer the perfect opportunity to design the atrium of your dreams. These central spaces, designed to allow serendipitous meetings of users or to help with orientation in the building, are spacious and offer a lot of design freedom. Imposing scales, sculptural stairs, eccentric materials, and indoor vegetation are just some of the resources used to give life to these spaces. To help you with your design ideas, below we have gathered a selection of 15 notable atriums and their section drawings.

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UNStudio has been selected as the winner of the largest ever private initiative architectural competition to be held in France – for the keystone ‘Centre Culturel’ of the new EuropaCity development currently being developed in the Triangle de Gonesse region just north of Paris.

As a brand new ground-up district, in 2017 EuropaCity launched a call for the design of 8 key buildings to be located within BIG’s competition winning master plan, including a concert hall, hotels, contemporary circus and exhibition hall. UNStudio was chosen to design the new Centre Culturel Dédié Au 7è Art, which will house a cinema complex and “cultural laboratory.”

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SPF:a has revealed their design for the new Anaheim Performing Arts Center (APAC) to be located adjacent to Angels Stadium in Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle District. The $500 million, 500,000-square-foot cultural campus will contain three theaters and a range of culture and entertainment program elements, housed within striking buildings inspired by the orange tree.

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Clément Blanchet Architecture has been selected as the winner of an international competition for the design of a new cultural center to be located in the Paris suburb of Gonesse, France, beating out proposals from Bernard Tschumi & Moreau Kusunoki.

Named Circus³, the facility features a unique tensile roof evocative of a circus pavilion, and will house a 1,500 seat theater for a variety of cultural performances and events.

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From Greek architect and photographer, Yiorgis Yerolymbos comes a book which captures the construction process of Renzo Piano’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece. Yerolymbos carefully documented every moment where the superfluous Olympic parking lot became a cultural center and sloping park with waterfront views. For almost a decade, and from every angle, the photographer watched the site transform. Birds-eye imagery proved to be some of the most captivating. As photographs, they manage to possess the characteristics of an architectural drawing.

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New York based Büro Koray Duman Architects are collaborating with the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) to design a cultural center prototype, named Cordoba House, in order to facilitate the total integration of American Muslims, without compromising their religious identities. The center will be the first Muslim sponsored multi-faith community center in New York City, aiming to help promote “progressive change, inter-religious coexistence, and cultural exchange”.

Highlighting the necessity of such a project, the design team explain: “There are approximately 800,000 Muslims living in NYC. A majority of the gathering places for Muslims are Mosques that focuses on Religion as Practice, which does not leave enough room for developing Religion as Culture.”

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Situated at the intersection of a forest-scape and harbor, Helen & Hard’s winning museum competition entry, Navet, offers the Norwegian island of Odderøya a place to reflect on the area’s heritage and naval history. Located in the city of Kristiansand, Navet will join a group of institutions in the region called the Vest Agder Museums that celebrate Norway’s past. Developed through careful consideration of its surrounding landscape, the form of the building situates itself to activate both the water and existing mountain front.

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Liverpool will soon be home to the Royal Institute of British Architect’s (RIBA) new national centre for architecture, RIBA North, which will be a new focal point for visitors to learn about architecture, as well as the culture and history behind Liverpool’s built environment. Occupying a part of the Mann Island Buildings designed by Broadway Malyan in 2013, RIBA North will offer a host of new opportunities for architectural discovery and education, including exhibitions, lectures, tours, and a digital model of the city.

“At RIBA North, we have a building with museum conditions which will offer a magnificent opportunity to view RIBA’s world-renowned historic collections showing hundreds of years of the UK’s extraordinary architectural history,” explained RIBA President Jane Duncan. “We are particularly proud to strengthen our cultural and creative offering in the north of England, and to enable many more people to explore and understand the enormous impact that architecture and design has on all our lives.”