The Chinese Culture University, Taiwan, in collaboration with the municipality of Maccagno con Pino e Veddasca, Italy, is offering to a limited number of architecture and landscape architecture students the opportunity to take part in a twelve-day design workshop in Maccagno, organized by the Landscape Architecture Department, College of Environmental Design, the Chinese Culture University as part of the CCU summer 2017 workshops program.
Buffalo and Erie County Public Library of Buffalo, New York, has recently opened a new exhibit at their Central Library titled Building Buffalo: Buildings From Books, Books From Buildings. The exhibit will feature a large selection of rare, illustrated architectural books from the Library’s collection dating from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The bonus for those who are geographically distant from Buffalo is that, as part of the exhibit, the Library has also made dozens of historical architecture books available online, completely digitized and free to the public.
The design of OMA and Mia Lehrer+Associates’ park at First and Broadway (FAB) in Los Angeles has received a green update, reports LA Downtown News, following a community feedback session in which residents voiced their desire to add additional plantings to the scheme.
You've probably used or heard of the app Shazam, used by millions of people to identify songs and song lyrics. A team of researchers from Cirad, IRA, Inria / IRD and Tela Botanica Network - had the idea of developing a similar application, but instead of identifying songs, the application identifies plant species.
Pl@ntNet is a new tool that helps identify plants using pictures. Collecting data from a large social network that constantly uploads images and information about plant species, Pl@ntNet has a visualization software that recognizes the plant photographed and links it to its plant library.
Founded in 1996 by Buenos Aires-born Martin Rein-Cano, TOPOTEK 1 has quickly developed a reputation as a multidisciplinary landscape architecture firm, focussing on the re-contextualization of objects and spaces and the interdisciplinary approaches to design, framed within contemporary cultural and societal discourse.
The award-winning Berlin-based firm has completed a range of public spaces, from sports complexes and gardens to public squares and international installations. Significant projects include the green rooftop Railway Cover in Munich, Zurich’s hybrid Heerenschürli Sports Complex and the German Embassy in Warsaw. The firm has also recently completed the Schöningen Spears Research and Recreation Centre near Hannover, working with contrasting typologies of the open meadow and the dense forest on a historic site.
Growing like an outcrop amongst the hills of Gothenburg, the Kulturkorgen by Swedish firm Sweco Architects offers the public an opportunity to watch, engage, and perform. The scheme is a result of an architectural competition for a new Culture House in the city, run in collaboration with Architects Sweden. The winning proposal, who’s name translates to ‘Basket of Culture’, acts as both a building and a square – a social arena where flexible interior spaces act in tandem with a generous public green landscape for recreation and gathering.
A competition for the transformation of a former cemetery in Nikea, just west of central Athens, has been won by Greek firm Topio7, with a proposal that creates a revitalized public park as a result of “a mutual osmosis between the park and the city”. A number of green buffer zones – “the elastic limit” – are utilized to frame a procession-like journey from the bustle of the city to the calm of the park’s landscape.
Highlighting the importance of the site’s previous use, the architects explain that the “main objective of the project is the creation of an open, accessible public space, a contemporary urban park with ecological-bioclimatic character, with special emphasis on the social dimension and the site’s memory.”
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UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design is now accepting applications from prospective participants in the 2016 Summer [IN]STITUTE in Environmental Design. This six week intensive summer program gives students the opportunity to test their enthusiasm for the material and culture of environmental design.
The Summer [IN]STITUTE consists of [IN]ARCH, [IN]LAND and [IN]CITY, three introductory programs in architecture, landscape architecture and sustainable city planning for post-baccalaureate students and senior-level undergraduates, as well as [IN]ARCH ADV, an advanced studio for post-baccalaureate students who have a degree in architecture or who are senior-level architecture majors.
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) have awarded Montreal’s Bibliothèque du Boisé with the annual Green Building Award for 2017. Designed by the trio of Consortium Labonté Marcil, Cardinal Hardy and Eric Pelletier architectes, the library is situated in the city’s Saint-Laurent district, and received the distinction as an example of “buildings that are environmentally responsible and promote the health and wellbeing of users.”
"The library offers a variety of beautifully lit and welcoming spaces throughout, maximizing daylight and views and the use of natural elements, such as wood, to create an environment that contributes to health and wellbeing,” said the jury. “Their approach to high-performance building through whole systems design and strategy has resulted in an impressive achievement.”
HENN and C.F. Møller Architects, of Berlin and Aarhus respectively, have jointly won an international competition to extend the iconic University Hospital RWTH Aachen in Germany. The winning entry, chosen amongst twelve others, responds to RWTH Aachen's existing listed 1970’s hospital with a partially-underground extension embedded in the landscape, seeking to minimize visual impact whilst creating lush green parkland for patients, staff, and the public.
In Istanbul, a city with few existing green spaces, studio DROR is proposing something radical – a park filled with innovative interventions as a way to encourage collective experience and gathering. Envisioned as “a love story between people and nature,” the Parkorman forest park will give people a chance to swing through the forest, play in giant ball pits, relax by reflecting pools, and even bounce several stories above the ground on canopy-level trampolines.
Greek architecture firm topio7 has released image of their competition-winning proposal to create an eco-corridor across former lignite mines in the Western Macedonia region of Greece. Despite its past coal mining activity, the 180,000 Ha region has retained its natural beauty, partly due to the site's inaccessibility and fragmentation. Topio7’s winning proposal, through a measured, sensitive approach, seeks to enhance the area’s natural beauty whilst creating a variety of nodes and eco-corridors to enable public interaction.
