Mecanoo has been selected to design the renovation of the historically landmarked Perth City Hall in Scotland, transforming the building into a new cultural facility through a series of sensitive interventions and a reimagined space flow. Envisioned as a new gateway to Perth, the scheme will pull from the city’s history and culture to create a place that is accessible to all.
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The team led by US-based architects wHY has been selected as the winner of the Ross Pavilion International Design Competition, beating out proposals from Adjaye Associates, BIG, Flanagan Lawrence, Page\Park Architects, Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter and William Matthews Associates + Sou Fujimoto Architects.
Featuring an international collaboration of architects, engineers and creative agencies – including Edinburgh-based design studio GRAS, Groves-Raines Architects, Arup, Studio Yann Kersalé, O Street, Stuco, Creative Concern, Noel Kingsbury, Atelier Ten and Lawrence Barth – the team envisioned a rolling terrain for the West Princes Street Gardens site that the jury lauded as both exciting and respectful of its historic setting.
Civic buildings are, as a rule, both austere and intimidating. They are often designed to represent authority above all, taking cues from Classical architectural language to construct an image of power, dominance, and civic unity. Adam Nathaniel Furman, a London-based architect and thinker, has at once eschewed and reengaged this typology in order to propose an entirely new type of civic center ("Town Hall") for British cities. The proposal, which was commissioned by the 2017 Scottish Architectural Fringe as part of a New Typologies exhibition in which architects are imagining "how our shared civic infrastructure will exist in the future, if at all", is currently on display in Glasgow.
By "re-grouping various civic functions into one visually symbolic composition of architectural forms," references and types of ornament and allusions have been configured "depending on the metropolitan area within which it is situated in and embodies." In short, Furman states, the Democratic Monument "is an expression of urban pride, chromatic joy, and architectural complexity" which has universal symbolism but remains a beacon to its vicinity.
Detailed visions of the concept designs from the seven shortlisted teams in the running for the new Ross Pavilion (named for William Henry Ross, the former chairman of the Distillers Company) have been released. Following the announcement of the competition earlier this year—in which the likes of Adjaye Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, Sou Fujimoto Architects and Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter were placed in the running alongside local practices, such as Page\Park—the sensitivity and level of restraint behind the majority of the proposals demonstrates the public and national significance of the site, which sits at the heart of the Scottish capital of Edinburgh.
The V&A Museum of Design Dundee has released new drone footage as the Kengo Kuma-designed project races toward its 2018 opening. At this stage, huge cast stone panels, weighing between 1.5 and 2.5 tonnes each, are being fixed in place on the curving exterior walls. Once complete, a total of 2,466 panels will wrap around the museum’s facade, the design of which has been inspired by the natural seaside terrain of Scotland’s northeastern coast.
Construction on Kengo Kuma’s V&A Museum Dundee is well underway, with the structure’s inclined concrete walls already beginning to take shape. This new video produced by the V&A Museum shows the latest progress of the building, with commentary from several figures working on the project, including Kuma himself.
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The Glasgow City Council has selected a multidisciplinary team lead by MVRDV and Glasgow-based Austin-Smith:Lord to transform downtown Glasgow into a “more livable, attractive, competitive and sustainable center.” Titled (Y)our City Center, the strategy calls for a regeneration of the 400 hectare city center that would reorganize circulation and infrastructure while providing new residential options to support Scotland’s economic center.
The Ross Development Trust in collaboration with the City of Edinburgh Council and Malcolm Reading Consultants has launched a global search for an outstanding team of architects, landscape designers, engineers and other specialists for the new circa £25m Ross Pavilion and Gardens project in the heart of Edinburgh.
The Ross Pavilion International Design Competition will award the commission to regenerate and renew an emblematic site at the heart of West Princes Street Gardens, which is presently occupied by the Ross Bandstand.
A little over two years since a fire devastated parts of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, which was deemed to have been caused by fumes from a can of spray foam entering a projector fan, appointed architects Page\Park are making headway in their restoration of the building's iconic library. As part of the project, and alongside Edinburgh-based joinery firm Laurence McIntosh, the practice will create a full-scale prototype of one of the library bays in order to "test the materials and techniques used to construct the original library."
The International Music and Performing Arts Charitable Trust Scotland (IMPACT Scotland) has announced a shortlist of 6 teams in the running to design a new concert hall and arts center in the heart of the Edinburgh New Town World Heritage Site. The building, estimated to cost up to £45 million ($57 million USD), will house a 1,000 seat auditorium that will become the new home of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
From 69 expressions of interest in the competition, six teams have been selected by IMPACT Scotland’s judging panel as finalists for the commission. The firms are as follows (in alphabetical order):
Last week, Richard Murphy Architects’ ‘Murphy House’ in Edinburgh was named the Royal Institute of British Architects’ 2016 RIBA House of the Year. Built into a hillside lot, the unusual site presented the architects with the opportunity to play, loading the house with an assortment of clever architectural details and mechanics, including a hidden bath in the master bedroom, folding walls, sliding bookshelf ladders and operable clerestory panels.
To capture all these moving parts in their full effect, the architect himself created a video walkthrough of the house. Check it out below.
The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) has announced Hugh Martin & Partners’ Princes Square as Scotland’s Building of the Century at the finale celebration of Scotland’s Festival of Architecture 2016 in Dundee. Open to buildings built in Scotland in the past 100 years, voters selected the winning building from a 10-strong shortlist that included projects by Enric Miralles and Reiach and Hall Architects.
Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter and Dualchas Architects have unveiled their plans for the St Kilda Visitor Center, which will be located on a cliff-top site at Geodha Sgoilt in the Uig area of the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Through the project, visitors will be able to experience the drama of St Kilda without physically visiting the famous archipelago, which lies over 50 miles to the southwest.
A triple world heritage site, St Kilda is famous not only for its sea cliffs and marine life but more for the story of how a community survived at the remote location before being evacuated in 1930.
By telling the story of this abandoned community, the current community of Uig hopes to catalyze economic development and reverse the population decline they have been suffering.
_wHY.jpg?1501596093 "© wHY")
_Malcolm_Reading_Consultants_and_wHY.jpg?1501595222 "© wHY")
_wHY.jpg?1501596107 "© wHY")
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_Malcolm_Reading_Consultants_and_Bjarke_Ingels_Group_(BIG).jpg?1497963815 "Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) with JM Architects, WSP Parsons Brinckerho , GROSS.MAX., Charcoalblue, Speirs + Major, JLL, Alan Baxter and People Friendly. Image © Malcolm Reading Consultants / Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)")
_Malcolm_Reading_Consultants_and_Adjaye_Associates.jpg?1497963803 "Adjaye Associates with Morgan McDonnell, BuroHappold Engineering, Plan A Consultants, JLL, Turley, Arup, Sandy Brown, Charcoalblue, AOC Archaeology, Studio LR, FMDC, Interserve and Thomas & Adamson. Image © Malcolm Reading Consultants / Adjaye Associates")
_Malcolm_Reading_Consultans_and_Page_Park_Architects.jpg?1497963875 "Page \ Park Architects, West 8 Landscape Architects and BuroHappold Engineering with Charcoalblue and Muir Smith Evans. Image © Malcolm Reading Consultants / Page \ Park Architects")
_Malcolm_Reading_Consultants_and_lanagan_Lawrence.jpg?1497964129 "Flanagan Lawrence with Gillespies, Expedition Engineering, JLL, Arup and Alan Baxter. Image © Malcolm Reading Consultants / Flanagan Lawrence")
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our_vibrant_Broomielaw.jpg?1487608889 "(Y)our Vibrant Broomielaw. Image Courtesy of MVRDV")
our_river_park_projects.jpg?1487608968 "(Y)our River Park Projects. Image Courtesy of MVRDV")
our_great_streets_and_spaces.jpg?1487609037 "(Y)our Great Streets and Spaces. Image Courtesy of MVRDV")
our_great_buildings.jpg?1487609017 "(Y)our Great Buildings. Image Courtesy of MVRDV")
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