Urban Plan: The Latest Architecture and News

A look at most of the cities within Latin America reveals striking commonalities across countries, from Mexico down to Argentina: most cities have a well-defined area known as "El Centro" (The Center), anchored by a main plaza (Plaza Mayor), flanked by a church on one side and key buildings like the city hall on another. This is no coincidence, as it can be traced back to an urban planning system established during the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. It gave standardized guidelines for city design across its viceroyalties. Unlike French and English colonies, Spanish settlements adhered to regulations that contributed to the emergence of a shared urban identity, with cities displaying similar spatial logic and architectural cohesion despite differing scales and contexts.

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Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores started their Barcelona-based practice, Flores & Prats Arquitectes in 1998 after both worked at the office of Enric Miralles. They overlapped for about one year there, from 1993 to 1994. After her nine-year stint with Miralles, Eva won the EUROPAN III International Housing Competition with a friend. The success that led to a real commission and was going to be built, served as the springboard for starting their independent practice. Shortly thereafter they won another competition. Ricardo joined Eva after working for five years with Miralles. By then they were a couple for three years and decided to start working together. Today they practice out of the same sprawling apartment where Eva’s original studio rented a room along with several other young architects and designers. Even though the office now occupies the entire space—the architects told me they typically employ ten, no more than twelve people—they keep traces and memories of the former “dwellers” alive. Curiously, Eva and Ricardo implement the same strategy in their architectural projects as well.

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Danish design studio CEBRA won the planning competition to develop the business district at Hannemanns Allé, in Ørestad Syd, Copenhagen, Denmark. With a project emphasizing urban quality, urban life, and area identity, the 150,000 square meters plan will define the framework for future design and completion of the area between the Royal Arena and the Øresund motorway. Expected for completion in 2024, the project is commissioned by Copenhagen Municipality and By&Havn, an organization tasked with developing Ørestad and the city's port.

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KCAP won the design competition for the Coastline of Yantai, Shandong Province, south of Beijing. As one of China's top 10 ports and a gateway city for communication between Japan and South Korea, Yantai Seafront Garden will transform the underused coastal area into an influential economic and technological development zone in Northeast China. The conceptual proposal was selected by its vision of 4 stages along the 95km of waterfront, including water conservation zones, a "sponge city" community, and a resident tidal shoreline.

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Urban Agency, in partnership with COBE, won in 2019 a competition to transform a former steel factory into an 850,000 square meters car-free mixed-use district. The industrial site is planned to become a mixed-use district, with housing for over 8,000 new residents, office spaces, schools, workshop spaces, and 268,000 square meters of landscape, including a reactivated river area. The master plan strategies focus on urban nature, renaturalization, preservation and reuse, car-free streets, and an adapted dense mix of buildings and functions.

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BIG has collaborated with global technology platform for luxury fashion Farfetch and Portuguese real estate developer Castro Group to create "Fuse Valley", a purpose-built urban fashion village on the slopes of the Leça River in Porto, Portugal. The platform's newly unveiled HQ will feature 12 uniquely-designed interconnected buildings that represent the different elements of the company’s organization. The project is set to break ground by early 2023, and open its doors in 2025.

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Herzog & De Meuron presented this week to the public their new vision for the cityscape and the urban life of Munich. The plan revolves around a former postal railway hub, the Paketposthalle, an impressive concrete structure built in the 60’s, used lately as a sorting office for general mail. The 87,000 square meters site was recently acquired by Büschl, a private group of developers, who commissioned Herzog & de Meuron to create a new urban study for the area.

Woods Bagot have announced that they will be leading a redesign effort for the abandoned Hongqi Zhen Sugar Factory in Zhuhai’s Jinwan District. Due to be completed in three phases over the next ten years, their master plan for the almost 80,000 square meter site includes designs that will revitalize the area and transform it into an integrated tourism, cultural and leisure park.

The future development of the Arabia Historic District in Helsinki has culminated in the second round of a two-stage competition.

Arabiazza(s) — one of the four proposals selected for the second stage — was developed by team leader Anssi Lassila and comprised of OOPEAA working in collaboration with Lunden Architecture and Gehl Architects acting as a consultant in urban public space. Through a sequential flow of spaces in the form of public squares, Arabiazza(s) fundamentally aims to encourage public interaction. The intent to engage a broad range of people — from students to tourists to workers — inspired the creation of multiple sheltered inner courtyards.

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Danish firm COBE has been announced as the winner of a competition for the revitalization of Deutzer Hafen, the harbor district of Cologne, Germany. Unanimously selected over proposals from Lorenzen, Diener & Diener Architekten, Scheuvens + Wachten, and Trint + Kreuder dna, the winning design will transform the old industrial harbor into a vibrant, sustainable neighborhood through the addition of a new city landmark: a new public pool and huge waterfall at the end of the harbor.

The pool will be sustained through environmentally-friendly methods, utilizing collected rainwater and excess heat expelled from buildings to provide the public with an exciting new attraction.

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.

CDP Investimenti has selected Studio 015 Paola Viganò as the winner of the Progetto Flaminio International Design Competition to master plan a new district surrounding the City of Science in Rome. After launching the competition in December 2014, CDP Investimenti Sgr and the Municipal Government received over 240 entries. Of those, six teams were shortlisted and given 24,000 euros each to develop and submit their final proposals. Learn more about the winning proposal after the break.

The City of Cardiff has unveiled plans by Foster + Partners to redesign the city's Central Square, close to the Millennium Stadium, adding over a million square feet of office, retail and residential buildings organized around a new civic square. Explaining that it is "the key gateway to Cardiff" for many visitors, City Council leader Phil Bale said that Central Square's "role in providing a positive image for Cardiff and Wales cannot be underestimated," adding that Foster + Partners' design is "reflective of the City’s ambition to be amongst the most ‘liveable’ cities in the world."

More on the plan after the break