The key to successfully designing or recovering public spaces is to achieve a series of ingredients that enhance their use as meeting places. Regardless of their scale, some important tips are designing for people's needs, the human scale, a mix of uses, multifunctionality and flexibility, comfort and safety, and integration to the urban fabric.
To give you some ideas on how to design urban furniture, bus stops, lookouts, bridges, playgrounds, squares, sports spaces, small parks, and urban parks, check out these 100 notable public spaces.
Pritzker Prize Laureate Gottfried Böhm Passes Away at 101
Gottfried Böhm, the first German architect to be awarded the Pritzker Prize, has passed away at 101, as reported by Deutsche Welle and WDR.
Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene / NOVOE
Suzdal Estate House / FORM Bureau
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Architects: FORM Bureau
- Area: 500 m²
- Year: 2019
Spotlight: Gottfried Böhm
The career of Gottfried Böhm (born January 23, 1920) spans from simple to complex and from sacred to secular, but has always maintained a commitment to understanding its surroundings. In 1986, Böhm was awarded the eighth Pritzker Prize for what the jury described as his "uncanny and exhilarating marriage" of architectural elements from past and present. Böhm's unique use of materials, as well as his rejection of historical emulation, have made him an influential force in Germany and abroad.
“The Goal Is to Create an Immortal Building”: In Conversation with Boris Bernaskoni
Boris Bernaskoni (born 1977, Moscow, Russia) is the leading Russian architect of his generation. He is interested in what technology can do today, so his architecture would be able to utilize it tomorrow. His work is not about façade aesthetics, which the architect says is the thing of the past. Instead, he is proposing radically new methodologies and prototypes. In the future, Bernaskoni believes, buildings will be immortal because they will continuously evolve and attune themselves to the most current technologies and demands. The ability to transform with the times will be architecture’s most precious commodity.
Moscow's Underappreciated Architecture Now in Digitalized Book
After the success of the original guide-book on underrated Soviet architecture, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is publishing an English version of the bestselling guide: Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955–1991 in a new digitalized format with six new chapters.
Spotlight: Rem Koolhaas
With the extensive list of acclaimed alumni of his firm, OMA, it is not a stretch to call Rem Koolhaas (born 17 November 1944) the godfather of contemporary architecture. Equal parts theorist and designer, over his 40-year career Koolhaas has revolutionized the way architects look at program and interaction of space, and today continues to design buildings that push the capabilities of architecture to new places.
Spotlight: Smiljan Radić
Mainly known outside of his home country for his design of the 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, architect Smiljan Radić (born June 21, 1965) is one of the most prominent figures in current Chilean architecture. With a distinctive approach to form, materials, and natural settings, Radić mostly builds small- to medium-sized projects that flirt with the notion of fragility.
EMA Space / KOSMOS Architects
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Architects: KOSMOS Architects
- Area: 5500 m²
- Year: 2014
Ballet Mechanique / Manuel Herz Architects
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Architects: Manuel Herz Architects
- Area: 600 m²
- Year: 2017
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Professionals: Bühler und Oettli, Odinga und Hagen
Garage Museum Headquarters / FORM Bureau
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Architects: FORM Bureau
- Area: 1400 m²
- Year: 2017
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Manufacturers: Bene, Buzzispace, Dornbracht, &Tradition, Archive store, +13
15 Bars That Combine Texture, Lighting, and Materials to Perfection
Bars are the perfect meeting place to finish the day in the company of friends and a few drinks. The relaxed atmosphere and lighting allow intimate discussions around tables, while the social butterflies can instead meet around the focal element of the space, the bar.
The atmosphere provoked by the mixture of textures, smells, materials, and darkness—ideally accompanied by a cocktail menu—is an essential component in helping us find our favorite watering holes. Read on for a selection of 15 incredible examples of this typology, with images by prominent photographers such as Frank Herfort, Serena Eller Vanicher, and Yann Deret.
AD Classics: Neviges Mariendom / Gottfried Böhm
Standing like a concrete mountain amid a wood, the jagged concrete volume of the Neviges Mariendom [“Cathedral of Saint Mary of Neviges”] towers over its surroundings. Built on a popular pilgrimage site in western Germany, the Mariendom is only the latest iteration of a monastery that has drawn countless visitors and pilgrims from across the world for centuries. Unlike its medieval and Baroque predecessors, however, the unabashedly Modernist Mariendom reflects a significant shift in the outlook of its creators: a new way of thinking for both the people of post-war Germany and the wider Catholic Church.
Public Bar / NOWADAYS office
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Architects: NOWADAYS office
- Area: 65 m²
- Year: 2015
Iskra / NOWADAYS office
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Architects: NOWADAYS office
- Area: 120 m²
- Year: 2015
Sergei Tchoban: “We Cannot Avoid Looking At Architecture; Architecture Should Be Beautiful”
After receiving his education at the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in St. Petersburg, Sergei Tchoban moved to Germany at the age of 30. He now runs parallel practices in both Berlin and Moscow, after becoming managing partner of nps tchoban voss in 2003 and co-founding SPEECH with Sergey Kuznetsov in 2006. In 2009, the Tchoban Foundation was formed in Berlin to celebrate the lost art of drawing through exhibitions and publications. The Foundation’s Museum for Architectural Drawing was built in Berlin in 2013 to Tchoban’s design. In this latest interview for his “City of Ideas” series, Vladimir Belogolovsky spoke to Tchoban during their recent meeting in Paris about architectural identities, inspirations, the architect’s fanatical passion for drawing, and such intangibles as beauty.
Project Meganom's Yuri Grigoryan: “Freedom is When You Realize that Anything is Possible”
Yuri Grigoryan founded Project Meganom in 1999 in Moscow with his partners Alexandra Pavlova, Iliya Kuleshov, and Pavel Ivanchikov. Together, the group all graduated from Moscow’s Architectural Institute, MArchI in 1991, the year of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and then practiced at the studio of Moscow architect Alexander Larin. Today Project Meganom is headed by Grigoryan, Iliya Kuleshov, Artem Staborovsky, and Elena Uglovskaya, and keeps in close contact with the theoretical side of architecture: Grigoryan teaches at his alma mater and until recently he was the Director of Education at Strelka Institute, founded in 2009 under the creative leadership of Rem Koolhaas, while in 2008 the practice was involved in the Venice Architecture Biennale with their San Stae project for curator Yuri Avvakumov's “BornHouse” exhibition. All of this gives Grigoryan an interesting overview of Russia's unique architectural context. In this interview from his “City of Ideas” column, Vladimir Belogolovsky speaks with Grigoryan about the issues facing Russian architecture and how Project Meganom has responded to those challenges.