Dubai-based architecture firm ZNera Space has proposed a new type of contemporary symbol for the city: a green and natural landmark that serves as a "continuous metropolis" around Burj Khalifa. Dubbed "Downtown Circle", the project features installing a giant ring-like structure of 550 meters in length around the world’s tallest free-standing structure. The structure will "investigate how at this critical time in the country’s development, architects, and urban planners can move away from previous urban models of isolated skyscrapers, towards a more humane typology that seeks to emulate nature and create diverse public spaces".
To reduce the “green” half of Sweden’s carbon emissions caused by the forest industries, Anders Berensson Architects have proposed to build the worlds largest timber structure titled the Bank of Norrland. The design aims to store carbon dioxide and a year's worth of timber production, ensuring the continuity of the Swedish construction and manufacturing industries regardless of weather and consumption.
Davenport Master Plan . Image Courtesy of Downtown Davenport Partnership
WXY Studio has partnered with the Downtown Davenport Partnership (DDP) to develop Davenport 30: A Resilient City, a new master plan that aims to provide a sustainable and inclusive city that reconnects its citizens to the surrounding neighborhoods. The award-winning architecture and urban design studio’s proposal focuses on revitalizing the city’s urban fabric and turning it into an innovative hub for businesses, entertainment, and leisure, all while prioritizing the citizens’ health.
Brooks + Scarpa along with PCL and BEA, design/build team is one of three finalists selected for a new community mixed-use complex. Located in the heart of Miami Beach, just one block west of the beach, the structure that replaces a municipal surface parking lot, will include pools, libraries, retail, a community center, and a 3-acre park. Designed as a resiliency hub, the building can accommodate future residential and office use when less parking is needed.
MVRDV has just released images of the firm’s competition entry for the next Tencent headquarters campus, located in Qianhai Bay, Shenzhen. Highlighting the green potential of Smart CityTechnology, the project imagines an entire urban district including offices, homes for Tencent employees, commercial units, public amenities, schools, and a conference center.
Along with the municipality of Larvik, Mad Arkitekter has proposed new development plans for Martineåsen, a future new district west of Larvik City Center. The project celebrates the natural context of the site while creating a small-town community with all required amenities, within walking distance.
Since 2017, the Cyprus School of Architecture (CYSOA) holds a series of architectural competitions of installations and design implementations on the public beach of Geroskipou, Greece.
2018’s winning proposal by Russian firm KATARSIS Architects presented a beach cinema project titled Sky Cinema, a translucent structure that serves as both a canopy and screen.
Twine: Series One. Image Courtesy of Antony Gibbon Designs
Experimenting with a very rigid material, Antony Gibbon imagines a residential project where the outer concrete shell twists and turns, in order to create livable spaces. With a very basic function, the proposal is an invitation to push technical boundaries and unleash the imagination.
Hajizadeh & Associates elaborated a proposal for the entrance of the Gilan University in Rasht in Iran. Basing their conceptual approach on the Iranian notion of access, they created not only a passage or a connection space but a social and cultural area.
With the concept of downsizing in mind, Danish architectural company Njordrum is elaborating innovative concepts for housing. Basing their modular design on Scandinavian aesthetics, the office hopes to bring together architecture, nature, light, and people.
In New York, activists and professionals have been working for many years to try to save 10 decommissioned tanks, from demolition by putting forward alternative usage of these structures. Partnering with STUDIO V, an architectural firm and landscape architects Ken Smith Workshop, they came up with an inventive proposal that reimagines these industrial relics as a 21st-century park, a novelty in the traditional definition and configuration of public spaces.
The 2019 CANactions International Architecture Festival focused on an exploration of a notion of "Hromada" — Ukrainian name for the 'community', which is embedded into the country's historic and cultural codes and reflected in contemporary social movements and architectural forms.
Architect Illya Rastvorov is one of the winners of this year’s CANactions Youth Competition presented in Kyiv, Ukraine. For his proposal, the architect transformed the railroad depot of the Copenhagen Railway Station in Denmark into the “Copenhagen Playground”, a recreational area that caters to people of all ages and enhances the social conditions of the city.
AMKNA, the Dubai-based studio, has been shortlisted for the 2018 World Architecture Festival, in recognition of their design proposal of a cultural center in Sedhiou, Senegal. The proposed “Sedhiou Cultural Center” will provide citizens with a rich cultural, social, and educational experience, all while sustaining the surrounding environment and keeping African heritage alive.
Design Winner: Open Shore / Ecosistema Urbano. Image Courtesy of The Van Alen Institute and the West Palm Beach Redevelopment Agency (WPB CRA)
The Van Alen Institute and the West Palm Beach Redevelopment Agency (WPB CRA) have announced Open Shore by Ecosistema Urbano as the winner of the Shore to Core waterfront design competition. The competition invited designers, planners, and architects to envision the future of the West Palm Beach waterfront for the next 20 to 30 years, with elements like changing population, economy, and environment, in mind. Selected from over 40 international teams and two finalists, the winning Open Shore proposal will serve as a “vision board” for the city’s future.
The competition additionally announced a design runner up bu Perkins + Will and a research winner by the team of Happy City, University of Virginia, StreetPlans, and SpaceSyntax.
Jungwoo Ji (of EUS+ Architects), Bosuk Hur (of Folio:), and Suk Lee (a fourth-year student at Iowa State University) have won the Liberty Museum / New York competition with their speculative design for a museum at the site of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in New York City.
Inspired by the concept of civil candlelight marches against social injustice in Korea—the designers’ home country—the proposal is designed to be an architectural device that reflects human rights and social justice disparity in real time. When visitors send messages, namely tweets, about dire events in their cities to the museum with their phones, each unit of the proposal receives electronic signals and changes its position to point towards the region in question.
_photo_credit_-_Kalpesh_Lathigra.jpg?1614596399 "Becontree Estate. Image © Kalpesh Lathigra")
