Colors are much more than just aesthetics. They can tamper with the sensations a space conveys, how we perceive the environment, and even comfort issues. With so many factors that they can influence, using them is not an easy task, and that is why many architects choose to stick with the classic white, grayscale, or even exposed materials to avoid any possible visual conflict. However, some architectural practices dare to use bold color palettes and create unique works that stand out precisely because of how colors help compose the project.
With over 100,000 votes cast during the last three weeks, we are happy to present the winners of the 2022 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards. This peer-based, crowdsourced architecture award showcases projects chosen by ArchDaily readers who filtered thousands of projects down to the 15 best works featured on ArchDaily in 2021.
As in previous years, the winners showcase a wide spectrum of different types of building, giving an insight into how diverse the profession has become in recent decades. High-profile practices take their place as ever, with winners such as MVRDV's Housing project in Bordeaux and Kengo Kuma's Casa Batllo's installation, showing that establishment firms are still able to make their mark, as in more traditional award systems. Alongside these are previously unsung heroes, such as PALMA and HANGHAR with their project, Types of Spaces. Among the winners, we also find Ca'n Terra House by ENSAMBLE STUDIO and Plaza of Kanagawa Institute of Technology by Junya Ishigami + Associates, extremely creative projects that today challenge their typologies.
But for all their many beautiful differences, the winners share a crucial element in common: they represent the values of our mission, to bring inspiration, knowledge, and tools to architects everywhere. Neither ArchDaily nor the Building of the Year Awards would be possible without the continued generosity of the firms that choose to publish their projects with ArchDaily every year, or without the engaged readers who take part in the voting process.
The 2022 Building of the Year Awards is brought to you thanks to Dornbracht, renowned for leading designs for architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.
With society's needs and aspirations shifting, spatial typologies and architectural programs are continually being questioned, and this re-evaluation creates the premises for innovation. The following is an exploration of how architecture is metabolizing society's fundamental changes throughout several aspects of everyday life, challenging the existing assumptions regarding program and space.
Another year, another successful ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards! With more than 95,000 votes gathered over the past 20 days, the results of the 2020 edition are in! Once more, the award has proved to be the largest architecture prize centered around people’s opinion. Crowdsourced, the most relevant projects of the year were both nominated and selected by our readers.
Contemporary architecture is increasingly created as a product of the market. Human experience and natural systems are traded for convenience and the bottom dollar, resulting in buildings that become commodities rather than spaces for daily life. When architects SelgasCano set out to design the new Second Home in Los Angeles, they aimed to challenge the status quo. In doing so, the team created one of the city’s most inspiring developments in recent memory.
Los Angeles has long been a testing ground for new ideas on architecture and design. Tapping into the city’s creative energy, the cofounders of Second Home, Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton, are working with Spanish architects Selgascano to finish a new 90,000-square-foot Hollywood outpost. Second Home launched its first office space in east London in 2014 and made its name with smart co-working design featuring bright colors, glass walls and abundant greenery.
In an exclusive interview with ArchDaily, Rohan talks about his background and the early stages of Second Home. Silva touches on the team’s new project, bringing the Serpentine Pavilion to Los Angeles, and what it means to build a creative community through architecture.
Second Home, a London-based creative business, is set to open its first location the U.S. Designed by Madrid-based Selgascano, the project will see the transformation of the historic site of the Anne Banning Community house in East Hollywood through a 90,000-square-foot urban campus.
Five finalist projects have been shortlisted for the 2019 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, an award given jointly by the European Commission and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation. The biennial prize, for which ArchDaily is a media partner, recognizes the Europe-located projects that demonstrate excellence in "conceptual, social, cultural, technical, and constructive terms."
https://www.archdaily.com/911318/5-projects-shortlisted-for-2019-eu-mies-prize-for-contemporary-architectureKatherine Allen
For those in the northern hemisphere, the last full week in January last week kicks off with Blue Monday - the day claimed to be the most depressing of the year. Weather is bleak, sunsets are early, resolutions are broken, and there’s only the vaguest glimpse of a holiday on the horizon. It’s perhaps this miserable context that is making the field seem extra productive, with a spate of new projects, toppings out and, completions announced this week.
The week of 21 January 2019 in review, after the break:
Spanish Pavilion. Image Courtesy of Selgascano & FRPO
Architecture firms Selgascano and FRPO have been announced as a finalist in the competition to design Spain's National Pavilion for EXPO 2020 in Dubai. Their proposal includes an inflatable canopy of nine yellow ETFE cylinders set within a steel framework. Reinterpreting the Spanish plaza, the design creates a new take on the public square. The pavilion was made to be ultralight as a more sustainable structure that could be easily removed and transported. Formed as a 'breathing pavilion', the design allows two inflatables to move up and down to respond to views, light and breeze.
For the Dubai 2020 Expo, the United Arab Emirates and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, selected the theme Connecting Minds, Creating the Future. Organized around ideas of Sustainability, Mobility and Opportunity, the next world Expo will be the first to be held in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia region. Organised every five years, the world expo lasts six months and is created as a global destination for millions of people to share ideas, showcase innovation, encourage collaboration and celebrate human ingenuity.
Lasting for close to two decades now, the annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion Exhibition has become one of the most anticipated architectural events in London and for the global architecture community. Each of the previous eighteen pavilions have been thought-provoking, leaving an indelible mark and strong message to the architectural community. And even though each of the past pavilions are removed from the site after their short summer stints to occupy far-flung private estates, they continue to be shared through photographs, and in architectural lectures. With the launch of the 18th Pavilion, we take a look back at all the previous pavilions and their significance to the architecturally-minded public.
In our rapidly changing world where ideologies and forms of life are under threat, history is being disregarded. The 2018 Bruges Triennale proposes one question: “How flexible, liquid, and resilient can a historic city like Bruges be in an age when nothing seems to be certain any longer?” In parallel, the inspiration behind the concept lies in the geography of the city itself. Bruges is a city wrapped and braided with water and has been a metaphor for Liquid City since early times. Till-Holger Borchert and Michel Dewilde, curators of the 2018 Bruges Viennale, have asked artists and architects to translate the city’s fluidity and artistic legacy into picturesque installations, allowing visitors to become part of the creative process.
September 22nd marked the start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere. This season of the year is excellent for architectural photography due to the effects of nature, which delights us with wonderful red and orange foliage. To mark the beginning of this season, we have created a selection of 10 works captured in fall by prominent photographers such as Francisco Nogueira, Jorge López Conde, and Steve Montpetit.
Rendered Main Entrance View. Image Courtesy of Urban Design AB & Selgascano
U.D. Urban Design AB and Selgascano have won an international, invited competition to design the new Planning and Administrative Offices for the city of Stockholm, Sweden. Their project, "Drivhus” (Danish for "Greenhouse”) will be located south of the Stockholm city center in Söderstaden, an area set for redevelopment.
SelgasCano's Louisiana Hamlet Pavilion, designed in collaboration with Helloeverything, has been dismantled from its Copenhagen home and is set to be reconstructed in the sprawling Kibera slum, Nairobi, where it will begin a new life as a school. The structure, which is in transit to one of the largest slums in the country, will replace a dilapidated shelter which currently houses 600 pupils. The pavilion, originally commissioned by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), has been relocated following discussions between Iwan Baan, SelgasCano, the museum, and Second Home.
Photographer Nikhilesh Haval of nikreations has shared with us this virtual tour of the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion. Taking viewers through a series of 360-degree panoramas shot on a mercifully sunny day, the tour shows off the pavilion's striking colors to good effect and gives some indication of the complex and dynamic arrangement of the design's double skin.
For those won't get the opportunity to visit for themselves, Haval's virtual tour is a great way to experience SelgasCano's psychedelic space as it gives a reasonable impression of what it feels like to actually be there. I can say that with some authority because, since I last wrote about the pavilion, I got the chance to visit it myself - and what I found was completely different to the pavilion I might have expected had I been taking cues from our comments section. I'd like to talk to our readers about that directly, if I may.
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