Architectural competitions play a crucial role in developing the architectural profession and in advancing the quality of the built environment. They are also an opportunity for architects to showcase their creativity and experiment with innovative or unexpected architectural solutions, be it for real or imagines contexts. This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights different competition-winning designs submitted by the ArchDaily Community.
From a spa and wellness center seamlessly integrated into the mountainous landscape of Austria to a refurbished city center that creates opportunities for social interaction in one of Bulgaria’s largest pedestrian city centers, the round-up spans various programs, scales, and attitudes toward the built or natural environment. The selected projects represent explorations in various design solutions, materials, and construction methods. They also showcase the broadness of possible responses ignited by site-specific conditions, from the volcanic landscape of Iceland, to the picturesque hills of the Kerala region in India or the lively central plaza in one of Israel’s largest cities.
It's not uncommon to see housing complexes integrate commercial spaces at the ground level, but the challenge of mediating between the private and public realm on a smaller scale, especially with the rise of the home office, has forced architects to explore all aspects of the structure, from the topography it sits on, to the direction of light and wind, to the design and organization the domestic space. This interior focus explores different design solutions that show how architects and interior designers transformed their projects from a living space into a mixed-use typology, taking into account privacy, flexibility, functionality, and predefined spatial requirements.
Oscar Niemeyer’s latest work generated a spherical extension for the Kirow plant’s canteen in Leipzig, Germany. The architect was first approached by the factory’s owner in 2011, and following Niemeyer’s death in 2012, his sketches were further developed by assistant Jair Valera, and executed by Harald Kern Architects.
New York NY/USA-July 2, 2020 Outdoor dining at a restaurant in the Greenwich Village neighborhood in New York. Image via Shutterstock/ By rblfmr
Part of New York’s Recovery Agenda, to keep the city safe and healthy, the Open Restaurants program established in June of this year was extended year-round, to be made permanent. In fact, Mayor de Blasio has allowed restaurants to use heating and enclosures, and expand seating to adjacent properties with neighbors’ consent. This extension will also apply to Open Streets: Restaurants, “which currently offers restaurants expanded space on 85 car-free streets citywide on certain days”.
The Town Hall Square in Vilnius, Lithuania. Image via Shutterstock/ By Donatas Dabravolskas
The Lithuanian capital Vilnius has decided to allocate its public spaces to bars and cafes, to encourage the reopening of restaurants under required physical distancing measures. Turning the outdoor space into one vast open-air café, the city is taking new safety measures to step into the next phase of the lockdown.
HUA HUA Architects has imagined a proposal that can reconcile people and public spaces, post Covid-19. The Gastro Safe Zone program aims to awaken stagnant gastronomic businesses by regulating outside eating and ensuring the required social distancing measures. The first prototype has been already installed in the streets of Brno in the Czech Republic.
The second issue of Room will reconvene in the Kitchen; a space that savors the possibilities of both cultural appreciation and cross contamination, serving basic sustenance and special occasions. Taste here is significant though subjective, with its stainless steel tongue wiped perpetually in an attempt to cleanse the palate. Nuanced residues of gender, class, labour, race, and climate cling to the cloth among germs and grains of salt.
The kitchen is a volume of complex geographies. Contents enveloped in their natural and synthetic skin's come together from landscapes distant and near, to land on the counters of the heart of
At a new corporate headquarters in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, there’s a double-height lobby filled with green walls and massive art installations. Travel to its top floor roof deck and you’ll find a cozy fire pit next to a fitness center and bar (happy hours are on Thursday). Elsewhere, stair-seating terraces face floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the Chicago skyline. This vertical campus settles in peaceably among its tony Randolph Street neighbors—Michelin stars, tech giants, and boutique hotels. At first glance, it’s refined and tasteful enough to be any one of these.
Aldo Amoretti has released new photographs as construction continues on Europe's first underwater restaurant in Norway, designed by Snøhetta. The structure is currently being built on a floating barge in close proximity to its final location. Upon completion, the scheme will also house a marine life research center, teetering over the edge of a rocky outcrop, semi-submerged in the ocean.
Built from concrete, the monolithic structure will come to rest on the seabed 16 feet (five meters) below the water's surface, fusing with the ecosystem of the concealed shoreline. Below the waterline, the restaurant’s enormous acrylic windows will frame a view of the seabed.
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