In its new exhibition Peter Cook: City Landscapes, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art showcases drawings by the influential architect, best known for his architectural theories and visionary concepts. Curated by Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Marie Kallehauge, the event is part of the exhibition series Louisiana on Paper, which presented the work of various artists over the years and is now debuting its first show featuring drawings by an architect.
Batlleiroig is an architecture firm based in the city of Barcelona, whose extensive portfolio encompasses urban projects, landscaping, buildings, and interior design. We spoke with Joan Batlle Blay, Architect & Landscape Architect and partner at the firm, about the innovations and challenges in his work. According to him, “In our office, we think that R+D (research and development) is the company’s main tool to innovate and evolve our work method into an absolute creed for the planet.” See the full interview below:
A lot can happen in the space between a book’s title and subtitle, as A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation: Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy (Island Press, 2021) demonstrates. Here, in a reversal from the norm, the subtitle assumes the more evocative bent by elevating design to the same status as economics and policy. To some, this might seem a spurious move, but the volume lives its creed: Its editors include two design academics and a business school professor, to say nothing about the myriad backgrounds of its contributors.
Blueprint goes deep into the policy decisions that have shaped the brittle condition of coastal infrastructure. It coalesces into a convincing picture of the wider context in which design operates, with the aim of making the built environment more equitable for those caught on the front lines of certain climate change cataclysm.
When examining the world of African cinema, there are few names more prominent than that of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène. His films ‘La Noire de…’ and ‘Mandabi’, released in 1966 and 1968 respectively, are films that tell evocative stories on the legacies of colonialism, identity, and immigration. And whilst these two films are relatively slow-spaced, ‘slice-of-life stories, they also offer a valuable spatial critique of the setting where the films are based, providing a helpful framework to understand the intricacies of the post-colonial African city, and the contrast between the African and European metropolises.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation - TCLF has awarded Julie Bargmann, founder of landscape architecture firm D.I.R.T. Studio, with the first ever Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a distinguished award bestowed on designers who are “exceptionally talented, creative, courageous, and visionary, with a significant body of built work that exemplifies the art of landscape architecture.”
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Within the Andes Mountains, the San Pedro Hot Springs is a place to press pause and contemplate, which interrupts a transnational highway between Chile and Argentina. Although these natural pools became a public landmark within the route, they eventually fell over time into a state of abandonment and deterioration as a result of the constant seismic movements in the region.
In response to this situation, Chilean architect Pia Montero sought to highlight the baths for her built-project thesis at the University of Talca in order to consolidate it as a landmark of tourist potential and symbol of the territorial identity of the Maule Region. Moreover, the project is a wake-up call to rediscover and rescue the value of the natural and cultural heritage of the area from the gradual abandonment into which it fell over the years.
Since before the first industrial revolution, sociologists, historians, and urban planners have been addressing the relationship between the city and the countryside, but this debate has become more pressing nowadays with the spread of megacities, typically with a population of more than 10 million people. With more and more people living in urban areas, it is imperative to think of solutions for food production within cities, thereby making cities more independent from rural areas, which have historically been responsible for the supply of food to the entire planet.
The idea that cities will become self-sufficient in food production in the near future is both unrealistic and naive. Nevertheless, small initiatives such as urban gardens, either at home or public gardens run by the community, might be a good starting point for a much bigger change in the future. Or perhaps they simply represent a desire to return to one's roots and achieve a slightly slower lifestyle.
Artist collective Space Saloon recently completed the inaugural Public Art and Ecology Artists-in-Residence in the Okoboji region of Northwest Iowa. Observing local landscapes and diverse ecosystems, the team created a series of temporary installations, site-specific sculptures and multi-species performances. Working in association with Imagine Iowa Great Lakes and the Iowa Lakeside Lab, the process led to a series of public events reimagining how to engage regional ecologies.
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The Xiangshan campus of China Academy of Art was designed by the recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, Shu Wang and Wenyu Lu from Amateur Architecture Studio. The studio was responsible for the overall project completion from master planning to architectural design and landscape design. On the north side of Xiangshan is the first phase of the campus. It was designed in 2001 and completed in 2004. It is a complex of ten buildings and two bridges, with a construction area of about 70,000 square meters. The second phase of the campus is located on the south side of Xiangshan, and it was designed in 2004 and completed in 2007. It consists of ten large buildings and two small buildings with a construction area of nearly 80,000 square meters.
The construction period of the two phases was 14 months each. A large number of craftmanship during the construction has produced many problems that could only be solved on-site, therefore the site was repeatedly touched and shaped by countless hands. In 2007, the photographer Iwan Baan recorded the campus after completion. In 2021, photographer Sai Zhao used the lens of original focal length to take pictures of the campus at the same location. Over the course of more than ten years, green plants have covered and sheltered the structure, and the building now has its own life.
Álvaro Siza's latest project in Portugal is a 16-meter high watchtower built with a lightweight steel structure featuring photovoltaic panels on the roof. This project is very different from most of Siza's works, both in terms of scale and materials. The watchtower is located in Serra das Talhadas, in the municipality of Proença-a-Nova, and is part of a larger project comprising several structures dedicated to ecotourism in the area, including the still unbuilt Miradouro do Zebro.
Humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature, regardless of the physical or geographical conditions in which we find ourselves. As we become increasingly detached from the wilderness, we develop means and strategies to bring nature back into our daily lives, even if only for a few moments.
There are many ways of domesticating nature, as seen throughout the history of mankind, through fascinating structures that challenge technical limitations, such as vertical indoor gardens.
Juan Miró, co-founder of Miró Rivera Architects reflects in an opinion piece on the value of American cities. Stating that "when we idealize cities like Copenhagen, we risk losing focus of the fundamental historical differences between the urban trajectories of European and American cities", the architect and educator draws a timeline of events and urban transformations, in order to explain why it would be more relevant to look on the inside when planning U.S cities, rather than taking examples from the outside.
Designed by Heatherwick Studio, together with landscape architecture firm MNLA, the long-awaited Little Island project is New York’s newest major public space, showcasing a richly-planted piece of topography above the Hudson River. The design featuring a public park and performance venues reinvents the pier typology into an undulating artificial landscape. After surpassing many hurdles, the eight years in the making project is now open to the public, and the bold design is set to become an icon in New York.
The Kuwait Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 tackles notions of discovery, interpretation, and projection of the hinterland, contextualizing the nation’s imminent growth. The exhibition titled Space Wars and curated by curators Asaiel Al Saeed, Aseel AlYaqoub, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, and Yousef Awaad brings the hinterland within the architectural discourse, highlighting the nation’s functional staging ground.
Israel’s Pavilion for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale highlights the impact of intensive mechanized agriculture on landscapes and ecosystems, as well as the disruption caused to local communities. Titled Land. Milk. Honey and curated by an interdisciplinary team comprising Dan Hasson, Iddo Ginat, Rachel Gottesman, Yonatan Cohen and Tamar Novick, the exhibition portrays the fundamental changes experienced by the region through the stories of local animals, constructing a history of the 20th-century development.
“No, I’m not homeless. I’m just houseless. Not the same thing, right?" Questioning the notion of home and house, Nomadland tells the story of a sixty-year-old woman who loses everything during the great recession, leaving her hometown after the collapse of the sole industry that supported the rural settlement and the death of her husband. She decides consequently to embark on a journey and experience life as a modern-day nomad, setting off in her van through the vast landscape of the American West.
Chilean architects Ricardo Azócar and Carolina Catrón founded their architectural and urban planning firm in Concepción, Chile in 2015. In a short time afterward, their project “Two Towers and a Trail” was awarded the Obra Revelación del CA-CCP Prize in 2016 and was recognized in the Young Architects of Latin America Collateral Event at the Bienal of Venice in 2018; their monographic text “Catalejo” won first place out of the Publications category at the 2018 Biennale of Costa Rica. In November 2020, ArchDaily recognized them among the best emerging architectural practices of the year.
We sat down with Azócar and Catrón to discuss their current interests and motivations, their collaborative processes, their career trajectory, their upcoming projects, and their predictions about the future of architecture in their native Chile.
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