Arch Daily |
- Spotlight: Daniel Libeskind
- Karlshamn Cold Bath House / White Arkitekter
- PC CARITAS / architecten de vylder vinck taillieu
- Private House in Tel Aviv / Bar Orian Architects
- WoW Lab / Wutopia Lab
- British Council for Offices Launches NextGen Competition: Imagining the Office of 2035
- Wow! Sta. / Takeru Shoji Architects
- Henry Street House / Eugene Cheah Architecture
- Winners of 2017 Land Art Competition Create Installations for Art Village in Ghana
- F176 / VOX arquitectura
- 3 Exemplary Projects Win 2017 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards
- Norton Restaurant / BLOCO Arquitetos
- Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Break Ground on Jewish Theological Seminary Renovation in New York
- Canodròm / Dear Design Studio
- SEO for Architects: How to Get Your Website (and Projects) Noticed
- Saint Father Brochero Chapel / Federico Ochoa
- Architecture Gear Giveaway: Complete Samsung 360 Set
- 86% of the Most Dangerous Cities are in This Part of the World
- How Architecture Tells the Story of Conflict and Peace in Northern Ireland
- Malmö Saluhall / Wingårdh Arkitektkontor AB
| Posted: 11 May 2017 09:00 PM PDT  Denver Art Museum. Image © Bitter Brecht In the architecture world, few designers can claim to have a more clearly-defined style than Daniel Libeskind (born May 12, 1946). Much of Libeskind's work is instantly recognizable for its angular forms, intersecting planes, and frequent use of diagonally-sliced windows, a style that he has used to great effect in museums and memorials—but which he has equally adapted to conference centers, skyscrapers, and shopping malls.  © Bundeswehr / Mandt <a href='https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Festakt_zur_Neuer%C3%B6ffnung_des_Milit%C3%A4rhistorischen_Museums_der_Bundeswehr_-_Daniel_Libeskind.jpg'>via Wikimedia</a> licensed under <a href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en'>CC BY 2.0</a> Born in Poland shortly after the end of the second world war, Libeskind's parents were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. As a child, Libeskind was a talented musician, but after his family moved to New York when he was 13, Libeskind set out on the path toward architecture. He received a degree in architecture from The Cooper Union in 1970 and a postgraduate degree from the School of Comparative Studies at Essex University for History and Theory of Architecture.  © Guenter Schneider <a href='https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JewishMuseumBerlinAerial.jpg'>via Wikimedia</a> licensed under <a href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en'>CC BY 3.0</a>. ImageJewish Museum, Berlin In his early career, Libeskind was a theorist and professor, however his career as a practicing architect began in the late 1980s, as he started entering competitions while living in Milan. He finally started his own firm in Germany soon after winning the 1989 competition to design the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which—after a decade-long development period—became a runaway critical success and the platform for a hugely successful career.  Dresden's Military History Museum. Image © Bitter Bredt, Courtesy of Studio Daniel LIbeskind Libeskind transferred his firm's headquarters to New York City in 2003, following his appointment as masterplanner for the redeveloped World Trade Center site. Through projects such as these, Libeskind has established himself as one of the world's foremost architects in projects which deal with tragedy and loss. Yet this has not prevented him from finding success in more commercially-driven markets; Libeskind has even established an industrial design studio, Studio Libeskind Design, which has developed products for clients in over ten different countries since 2012.  Jewish Contemporary Museum San Francisco. Image © Fernando Herrera Besides the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the World Trade Center Masterplan, Libeskind's most well-known projects include the Extension to the Denver Art Museum, his extension to the Royal Ontario Museum and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, UK.  Mons International Congress Xperience (MICX) / Studio Libeskind + H2a Architecte & Associés. Image © Hufton+Crow See all of Daniel Libeskind's completed projects featured on ArchDaily via the thumbnails below, and further coverage at the links below those: Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum Berlin Photographed by Laurian Ghinitoiu TED Talk: Daniel Libeskind's 17 words of architectural inspiration Video: Jewish Museum in Berlin Daniel Libeskind on Italy, Design, & the State of Architecture Today Rising from Tragedy: A Conversation with Calatrava, Childs, and Libeskind by Andrew Caruso Video: Daniel Libeskind on Masterplanning Ground Zero AD Classics: 1988 Deconstructivist Exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) In Residence: Daniel Libeskind VIDEO: Daniel Libeskind on Drawing, Architecture's Forgotten Fundamental Video: Daniel Libeskind on the "Jungle" of New York City Daniel Libeskind Discusses "Building Memory" Daniel Libeskind on Immigration, New York City, and 'the State of the World' Daniel Libeskind to Receive the 2011 Medal of Honor from AIA New York References: Studio Daniel Libeskind, Wikipedia This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Karlshamn Cold Bath House / White Arkitekter Posted: 11 May 2017 08:00 PM PDT  © Bert Leandersson
 © Bert Leandersson From the architect. A classic symbol of Swedish cultural heritage reinterpreted with a modern twist – the award-winning bathhouse fulfils a Swedish coastal town's dream.  © Bert Leandersson Situated on a stretch of beautiful coastline in southern Sweden, it is not difficult to imagine why Karlshamn has had a long surviving tradition of bathing in the sea. The only element missing was a bath house, which is the quintessential symbol in Sweden for year round dips in the water.  © Bert Leandersson Kallbadhusets Vänner (Friends of the Bath house) is the local organisation and catalyst for the town to receive its first bath house. Together with local sponsors and the municipality, they were able to realise their collective long-time dream of offering a forum for enjoying the sea all year round. The public swimming hall, a well-known local establishment, is in close proximity to Kallbadhus; as a group, they form a truly unique opportunity to swim in an indoor pool, outdoor pool or hopping into the water from the new bathhouse.  © Bert Leandersson Kallbadhus – translating literally as "the cold bath house" – is located along a beach promenade and designed to a height of three metres above sea level. The sharply angled volume designed in wood straddles solid land and water while facing a free and open horizon. Two glulam beams work as the structure for a small bridge linking visitors to the entrance of the bathhouse from the beach.  Section A common room with an adjoining terrace are flanked on one side by the women's sauna and the opposite side is balanced with the men's sauna. Designed to maximise the dramatic view of the bay, the saunas are located near the stairs for easy access into the cool water below. Sun terraces are designed to receive as much sun exposure as possible while simultaneously offering protection from the wind. The exterior facades are clad with a flat wood panelling treated with a grey- pigmented oil that will eventually give way to the wood's own natural grey patina.  © Bert Leandersson This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| PC CARITAS / architecten de vylder vinck taillieu Posted: 11 May 2017 07:00 PM PDT  © Filip Dujardin
 © Filip Dujardin From the architect. An open square was expected. A specific place was unexpected. What was to be expected. A first observation.  © Filip Dujardin Change is inevitable. Healthcare changes. The change in care already changed the campus so much. And the campus will change even more when more changes in care occur. What already changed on campus, was likely the right thing at the time. Likely. What will change to the campus tomorrow, will need to be the right thing too. Without question. But after that much change , it is clear that changes today cannot happen on their own. And no longer by their own.  © Filip Dujardin One thing is sure: the campus used to be a real campus. With a specific identity, and yet so much different identities. Buildings vis-à- vis – not buildings. A garden. A park. Green.  © Filip Dujardin And every building the size of a house. A large house, but still a house.With rooms. And bricks, and a sloped roof. The garden was filled with houses. A park with rooms.  © Filip Dujardin Every house had, or still has, a specific element to define the house. The white loggia. Or almost every house. The loggia as a door between the building and the garden. As an open and welcoming doorway. A doorway to linger in. To stay.  Sketch 02 Today, the campus still shows what the campus used to be. At the same time, the campus shows how the changes to the campus – the new buildings – do not seem to consider the campus to be a campus. Which the old buildings still try.  © Filip Dujardin Anymore. Still not today – but maybe in a moment they can, unexpectedly.But this does not explain why those changes – the new buildings – do not consider what was already there. Those changes are there by their own. On their own. Nothing more.  © Filip Dujardin If today, changes in care will change the campus again, it will not be without considering the campus as such. The idea of the campus will be considered – with care. Not only by employing the new, but also by employing what is still there. The houses.  © Filip Dujardin Jozef Sint-Jozef is one of those houses. A nice house. A good house. But no longer a house which can still be a home for care today. So, Jozef is retiring. Surely, Jozef needs to make room. For a square. An open square. Open space for open activities. Care is allowed to desire open space for open activities today. The question is clear. The question is understood. Care changes, and Jozef cannot follow anymore.  Plan 00 But does this mean that Jozef needs to make room? Gone? Demolished? Is that the only way to make room for change? A different question poses itself. How can Jozef change to make room for changing expectations. It seems impossible. A house is not a square. Yet the question should be thought through.  © Filip Dujardin The idea of an encounter should be considered. What this means. What this requires. Is it a square that is needed – as such? Or is it a collection of desires, intentions and expectations to find a space outside, where encounters in its many different forms can and may take place? If an encounter in its many different forms can and may take place – in a square as place – would the square be enough? Can it be more – different? To dismantle Jozef into a square – in many different forms. A place in many different forms. Open, and yet still a house.  Elevation mirror Maybe like this. No roof. Or at least, in some parts. In other parts, a roof of glass. Most of it open, then, except for a few rooms. Wunderkammers – rooms of wonder. A royal greenhouse. An enclosed garden. A house which gives a garden a home. That simple, but that complex too. A square was the question, a range of possibilities was answered with. Rooms that make room for different kinds of care. Without question.  © Filip Dujardin Loggia And then those beautiful loggia's. Again and again. Welcoming doorways. Not only of Jozef, but of all those houses. But now, with Jozef, slightly bigger. Slightly higher. And even a second one. Jozef as Janus.Jozef as – open to all sides.  Plan 01 The idea of the loggia, in all those houses. As an open doorway between every house and the garden. The park. The campus. Between the intimate house and the open world. And maybe even between the houses. Here and there a wandering loggia. Loggia's that wander, and give wandering meaning. And later on, perhaps in the new buildings too. Which will wander along.  © Filip Dujardin Ambition Care changes. Which inspires its context.But context is already there. And could inspire care.Jozef as an inspiration for a changing care.Care as an inspiration for a changing Jozef. Jozef as an unexpected result. A changing care, but not without Jozef. With Jozef. As a context for a new care. As inspiration. And not as something to be left behind.  © Filip Dujardin Unexpected, but basic. Without technology. Without comfort. But with possibilities. By reading the context differently, and giving a different context as result. Maybe just that, maybe just enough. From a very basic reading to a future possibility of what care can be, although then again in an unexpected, different idea.  © Filip Dujardin This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Private House in Tel Aviv / Bar Orian Architects Posted: 11 May 2017 03:00 PM PDT  © Amit Geron
 © Amit Geron From the architect. Functionality and simplicity of materials were the starting points for planning this villa in a northern neighborhood of Tel Aviv. The house was planned as a basic geometric structure– a combination of two raw-concrete boxes on top of each other. Each box has seemingly random openings, and an external shading system that rotates and opens electronically, so that the dynamic façade change with residents' needs, the time of day, and the weather.  © Amit Geron The interior design brings in the same principles of simplicity and climatic efficiency, with the architecture now moving indoors. The interior planning is based on clear and simple movement around two raw concrete supporting walls, which echo the exterior. The staircase to the basement and first floor is located between these two walls. All household functioned emanate freely from this focal point. A spacious kitchen with oak cabinets and a stainless-steel cooking island, with an adjacent living room and dining room are on one side. The other side holds a library with a black-hardware workspace, and a parents' suite facing the front garden. Up on the first floor are a service room and three children's rooms, each with its own bathroom and roof terrace created by moving the upper box. A bright, functional hallway is placed between the two wings, hosting the parallel staircase.  © Amit Geron  Ground floor plan  © Amit Geron The dominant design element in the house – as it is on its facades – is the exterior aluminum, Corten-finished shading system. Each window is set for an interior function, and acts as an interior frame from the shading system that has been positioned to accommodate sunlight and the climactic needs of each interior space. This system allows various degrees of light filtering, creating an additional layer that enriches the space and brings the tangible outdoors experience into the house. This layer changes continuously with the direction of the sun, the amount of opening of the shading system. At time, the rooms are flooded with shades of red, creating unique compositions inside and varying exposure outside. The interior, like the exterior, is not static. This house has life and movement every hour of the day.  © Amit Geron  Section  © Amit Geron This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 11 May 2017 01:00 PM PDT
From the architect. Owner of the famous architectural design company, UDG, invited us to rebuild a gym into a WoW lab. WoW is a household E-commerce brand, and this laboratory is WoW's offline experience center. Why an architect with hundreds of architect employees wants to find an atypical architect to design his carefully cultivated cross-border brand? According to director Bo, Yu Ting and Wutopia Lab's pursuit of publicity and life feature is what the lifestyle brand-WoW Lab needs.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen Interior design should stimulate the city public space The gym's current situation is a glass box. Transparent glass creates an open illusion, but is actually a cell which we want to break. We see WoW Lab as a complex system that grows, it needs to break through its own boundaries. We first set up a distinct entrance on the south side, directly lead the south main road traffic into the laboratory, followed by retaining the north side entrance, once again used fixed furniture to separate the exhibition hall and the office area to keep the aisle in between.
On the east side we used a cantilevered transparent glass space to break the building interface to reach the east side woods. Finally, we studied the roof of the building, decided to design a miniature atrium with a lift inside. People could break through the ceiling to occupy the roof and overlook KongJiang road.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen According to YU Ting, 'In my painting study, the Chinese Yuan Dynasty landscape ink and German expressionist emotional color is two important models. During the long-term modernist architecture education, I slowly isolated colors outside the architectural design. Starting with the Instant Red, I re-tried to use highly saturated colors onto buildings, thus brought the expression of German expressionism back into my heart. In Ergeng Headquarter in SH, I tried to paint all sides of the building into black, embellishing with a blue of high saturation to let the building has a temperance sexy. So in the following One person's Gallery and the Underground Forest in Onepark Gubei, I used black in a large scale.  Courtesy of Wutopia Lab White can reflect all the bad things and create a kind of purity, black, on the other hand is to absorb all the bad things and create a temptation, this is fascinating. WoW Lab LOGO's base color is black and bright yellow, so I used these two colors to shape the basic background of the interior. In the back of the house there is a redundant small corner, echoing the bright green outside, I decided to use its contrast color red.'  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen An interior can be a miniature city WoW Lab's essence is firstly a furniture exhibition hall, the architect decided to use furniture to create a miniature city. The city should consist squares, commercial streets, terraces, elevators, large steps, street facades, skyline and some edge spaces. The architect tried to experiment some conclusions of the book "A Pattern Language " with the design and combination of furniture.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen The architect designed three sets of fixed furniture, the first set is the cabinets which used translucent acrylic backboards to express the street continuous facade and urban skyline. In recent series of works, the architect continued to test translucent on the interface. He noticed that the interface could be closed by luminous beams, or it can be semi-open due to the dissolve of shadow. This kind of interface possesses multiple meanings. The architect wants the city interface to be so.
We designed the acrylic cabinet as a unit with a triangular top. These units can be separated into different areas by needs. As the traditional Chinese screens, this is which furniture redefines spaces.  Courtesy of Wutopia Lab The second set of fixed furniture is partition the of exhibition hall and office area. When the furniture's leafs and concealed cabinets are closed, it is a common wall closet used as partition. When the concealed cabinets and the leafs are open, this is a display area. The third set and the first and second sets of furniture defined the so-called terminal of the commercial street, it is not only a display but also a seat and a facade. But that is still not enough.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen Bo Xi put a prototyped chair which Alva Alto gave the carpenter on top of the transparent glass house. The chair - which was brushed into red by the carpenter's own idea – redefined the glass house into a space for people to daze and think next to the outdoor branches. So that this space can be separated from the main space and exist independently.  Courtesy of Wutopia Lab A chair and a coffee table are placed on the lift, thus the traffic space can be defined as a movable rest space. When the platform slowly gets out of the roof, glass ceilings reflect the person's own body as the lake surface, this is a moment of absence. I think, if this could be just one person's afternoon tea, then how lonely it is.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen A question of city micro-space revival: how to revive the workers new village UDV LianChuang Shanghai Design Valley is converted from the former new Fengcheng Hotel. And its location Fengcheng new village was a famous workers new village which derived from Shanghai municipal government's "twenty thousand" plan to solve the problem of workers 's dwelling problems after liberation. In the past 20 years, Fengcheng new village does not seem to catch up with the pace of Shanghai. Streets in Yangpu distinct are mostly named after the Northeast cities. And the result of Yangpu seems to become the northeast of Shanghai - which had a very brilliant history but lags behind nowadays.Commercial centers and high-rise residential buildings can not cover the decline of Yangpu, but act as a blindfold to conceal the glory of Yangpu's worthy preservation industrial context.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen WoW Lab's city meaning is that design, as an industrial weapon, can borrow architectural and spatial transformation to redefine the workers' new village and the industrial heritage. The lonely afternoon tea is not the so-called romanticism, but a possibility of acupuncture, to create a proud hope in places which people are accustomed to.  © CreatAR Images & Momo Chen This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| British Council for Offices Launches NextGen Competition: Imagining the Office of 2035 Posted: 11 May 2017 12:30 PM PDT  The Enterprise Center, University of East Anglia, Norwich / Architype; 'Best of the Best' winner of BCO's 2016 Awards. Image Courtesy of British Council for Offices The British Council for Offices (BCO) has launched the BCO NextGen competition, this initiative advised by Malcolm Reading Consultants. Competitors are asked to consider 'the office of 2035: what it will look like, and how it will support the way we will work'. The free-to-enter competition is seeking forward-thinking and innovative responses, challenging the conventionalities of today's workplaces and anticipating future needs. Established in 1990, the BCO is Britain's leading forum for the discussion and debate of issues affecting the office sector, with a mission to research, develop and communicate best practice in all aspects of the industry. The NextGen programme allows the BCO to mentor the next generation of professionals – designers, agents, developers, consultants and others – and provides a platform for emerging talent to share their ideas. With social, economic, cultural and technological progress changing the way people work, employers and workers' expectations are in flux. Ubiquitous and instantaneous technology; a growing interest in health and wellbeing; a greater desire for organisational flexibility; and an increased awareness of individuals' needs are now all competing factors within the workplace. David Hamilton, Director of Projects at MRC and competition adviser, said: "The social contract between employers and workers is under intense scrutiny at present: working lives are longer, jobs are vulnerable to automation – not to say robots – and creative fulfilment is increasingly sought by employees. "All of which prompts the question: how can we creatively respond to rapid cultural change and new work patterns? How can we shape office environments that are humane and flexible and dynamic? This is the essential challenge of the competition: we want to see fresh analyses and inventive solutions that could change people's lives for the better." Multi-disciplinary teams of between two and four members are invited to enter the competition. Individuals are also encouraged to register, and will receive the support of the BCO to form teams. Each team must contain a minimum number of BCO members – full details available on the BCO NextGen website. Competitors will need to submit a 15-20 page report, including at least 10 images, graphics and diagrams and with additional media (including a five minute video) encouraged. The deadline for entry to the competition is Friday 6 October 2017. During the competition period, teams will be invited to participate in 'hackathons' led by senior industry figures, and will be offered the opportunity to receive one-on-one mentoring and advice from an expert in a relevant field. A number of regional launch events are planned for the coming weeks, to promote the competition to young professionals throughout the UK. Entries will be judged by an expert panel drawn from a range of disciplines and including David Hamilton. The winning and highly commended teams will be announced at the BCO NextGen Awards Dinner on Wednesday 15 November. The competition's first prize is an invitation for the winning team to attend the 2018 BCO Conference in Berlin, including tickets to all conference events, flights, hotel accommodation, and a financial contribution towards transfers and subsistence. The highly commended team will receive an invitation to an exclusive private dinner hosted by two key industry figures. For full details of the competition, including team and submission requirements and the detailed brief, please visit the BCO NextGen competition website at http://bconextgen.co.uk/competition/. Details of the mentors and judging panel will follow. Press release via Malcolm Reading Consultants
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| Wow! Sta. / Takeru Shoji Architects Posted: 11 May 2017 12:00 PM PDT  © Koichi Satake
 © Koichi Satake From the architect. Wow! Sta. is situated in Horinouchi, in the Central Ward of Niigata City - an area where the city center gradually begins to give way to the suburbs. The scenery lining the nearby main road is dominated by large commercial and retail buildings and their accompanying signage.  © Koichi Satake The businesses, houses and multilevel apartments that sprawl out from Niigata Station constitute this typical inner-city area. Located just one street back from the main road with its dazzling lights and the din of the traffic, we find an area that is surprisingly calm, unlit by even street lights.  © Koichi Satake Our site bisects these two vastly different environs, in an area where rules concerning pace and time, scale and ambiance are not clearly defined. In order to bring some order to this disarray, and to inject life into the area while building a bridge between these contrasting environments, we wanted this project to embody the following two apparent features: First, the inclusive nature of the area, with its associated sense of locality. And second, the attractive nature of the area to outsiders, with its associated suburban accessibility and common spaces.  © Koichi Satake The realization of this project, a multipurpose complex, entailed land selection, programming, construction, management, rethinking the typical problems associated with both urban and suburban projects from a vantage point somewhere between the two.  © Koichi Satake The three story building is steel-framed, employing round steel bar bracing.The first floor is occupied by a restaurant, which spills out into a park-like outdoor dining area. The second floor comprises office space, enclosed by trees rising up from the garden below. Within this area is a large central table seating eight - conducive not only to office work but also less formal gatherings. The third floor houses a multipurpose rental space incorporating a kitchen and bathroom, which opens onto an outdoor area.  Floor Plans All these areas with their varying functions are linked by a path spanning the three floors. Via this path, one can wander the building as one wanders a shopping district, safely enclosed by the building but still able to enjoy the light filtering through the surrounding foliage within touching distance.  © Koichi Satake Wow! Sta. is its own small integrated town, its own small park, and its own cobblestone alley with its attendant nooks and crannies. The activity of those within and without can be seen, heard and wholeheartedly observed. Rather than just a staid building, it's our hope that Wow! Sta. will become an environment from which new ideas will spring forth to involve and invigorate the local community.  Section When evening falls and light flickers out from between the facade's wooden louvers, when children point and gaze up at the lights, when the smell of soup wafts up from the restaurant, and when voices echo through the garden from the floors above and below. When all these everyday stimuli intermingle to fill one's senses, one can get a sense of the effectiveness, and more so the potential, of this project.  © Koichi Satake This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Henry Street House / Eugene Cheah Architecture Posted: 11 May 2017 10:00 AM PDT  © Trevor Mein
 © Trevor Mein From the architect. In keeping with the unassuming character and intent of the original weatherboard cottage, this extension is a modest project, in scale and budget.  © Trevor Mein The project starts with the Victorian cottage - a row of dense enclosed spaces along a narrow circulation space. The new extension inverts this figure-ground diagram, with a density of program in a narrow strip along an expansive open space. The new addition is therefore an extension of, and contrast with, the existing fabric.  © Trevor Mein The structure and cladding of the extension is almost entirely of a singular material - laminated hoop pine - acting as a unifying texture.  © Trevor Mein  Ground Floor Plan  © Trevor Mein Structural elements are employed as the main expression of the building fabric and define the experience of the new space. A full-length skylight on the north edge of the space brings in abundant light, which is filtered and diffused by the exposed rafters, changing through the course of the day, and amplified by the varying depths of the rafters.  © Trevor Mein The experience of the house is of the tracks of sunlight and shadow moving across the space.  © Trevor Mein This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Winners of 2017 Land Art Competition Create Installations for Art Village in Ghana Posted: 11 May 2017 09:00 AM PDT  via Nka Foundation The winners of the 2017 Land Art Competition have been announced, with submissions responding to the challenge of creating site-specific installations in rural Ghana, as part of a larger initiative to enrich the Abetenim Arts Village. The aim was to complement the village's learning center with other creative spaces for communal living and working, thus "creating a truly unique experience that becomes emblematic of what an art village is and how it needs to function as a place." Selected entries will also have the opportunity to be fully realized onsite, through various land art workshops held by the Nka Foundation over the course of the next two years. Here are the winning entries: 1st Prize:  Earth Archive Project / Yusuke Suzuki and Léo Allègre (Yusuke Suzuki Design Office, Japan). Image via Nka Foundation Earth Archive Project /Yusuke Suzuki and Léo Allègre (Yusuke Suzuki Design Office, Japan) The Earth Archive Project is an artifact, a monument, made from compact formed mud beams. The proposal is to elevate the earth with the earth by the earth and its people. The project seeks to establish, to create, on Abetenim site, a new marker to cross on the planet, a new geographic coordinate to visit…to pass. A testimony of time, another same single place…and the silence. Earth Archive Project is also an architecture, a passage that reaching the point zero of the meridian and equator cross. This direction reveals a dimension of land to the project as a collective information. Earth Archive Project is also about to store, to show, to sublime the local ground as a history, a treasure, more, a heritage to care and observe with respect as a "mud demonstration:, a silent and peaceful elevation of matter. A waiting material in its initial context. A product to be simply admired. The Time is obviously but strongly connected to Earth Archive Project, it is the factor of durability and visibility for the next visitors to come on the site. It's just like a passage from now to the future. This project does not conduct a vanishing or ephemeral purpose either, not promote any ideology or dogma. It's a conceptual way of displacement both of earth and humans together. This is a land art project using the context of the site location and information. 2nd Prize:  Nonenegligibe Village / Ruixuan Li, Jiazi Zhang, Qiuming Dong, Rui Xu, Ying Zheng, Xiaoming Wang, Ziyi Zhao, Yanying Zhao, Yuxiang Zhang, Na Li, Henan Wang, Pengzhe He (Urban Active Research Studio, Dalian Polytechnic University of China). Image via Nka Foundation Nonenegligibe Village / Ruixuan Li, Jiazi Zhang, Qiuming Dong, Rui Xu, Ying Zheng, Xiaoming Wang, Ziyi Zhao, Yanying Zhao, Yuxiang Zhang, Na Li, Henan Wang, Pengzhe He (Urban Active Research Studio, Dalian Polytechnic University of China) The main source of the design origin is the local traditional pattern ("Strength" and "Energy") and El Anatsui' art works. The contrast of the inside and outside of the space hinted the gap between ideal and reality. Meanwhile the art space tires to meet some functions: villagers' leisure and parties, children's amusement and festival activities. Bamboo, wood, stone, clay, shell, plastic ropes, cocoa pods as raw materials will be used to build the space by primitive and simple process, and the construction cost will be controlled less than 2075 dollars. We try to create a bright, colourful, gameplay space for Ghanaian villagers to participate in. 3rd Prize:  Ashanti Domino / Sara Arfaian, Junko Yamamoto and Jenny Zhan (USA). Image via Nka Foundation Ashanti Domino / Sara Arfaian, Junko Yamamoto and Jenny Zhan (USA) A rectangular void is dug in the ground. With the removed earth, we propose a wall, roughly the size of a domestic partition, using the construction technique of rammed earth. Often times, land art introduces a foreign entity or removes something from the site creating an aggressive displacement. Here the earth taken is simply put back next to the void vertically as a singular element of architectural delineation, bearing openings of door and windows. One side of the wall is the negative space on the ground, the other side is an array of the cutouts from the wall, creating the Ashanti Domino. The wall and cutouts are painted in patterns similar to the façade of a gurunsi house. The wall together with the displaced pieces simply provide shade during the day, a ledge to sit on, an appealing graphic to look at, a shelf to place a plant – pleasant but insignificant. The negative space in the earth from which the rammed earth wall is formed is a place of gathering under the shade of the wall. Then, a glimpse of the wall from a certain angle. The wall and the cutouts at a distance align, and the graphic is made whole. The completed graphic ambiguously recalls that icon of modernism – the maison domino – abstracted, barely evoked. Modernism painted onto Africa, and Africa which inspired that very Modernism and that very author, Le Corbusier, to begin with. In 1956 Ghana declared independence. But what, exactly, is independence? How does one reconcile African and Modern? These questions are rippled in the Ashanti Domino. Honorable Mentions:  via Nka Foundation  via Nka Foundation  via Nka Foundation  via Nka Foundation  via Nka Foundation  via Nka Foundation  via Nka Foundation News via: Nka Foundation.
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| Posted: 11 May 2017 08:00 AM PDT .jpg?1491564194 "© WELTVOX") © WELTVOX
.jpg?1491564470 "© WELTVOX") © WELTVOX From the architect. Conceived as a 60sqm housing proposal for young families, the project is developed within a little front but great depth site, at Santa María de la Ribera neighborhood. .jpg?1491564375 "© WELTVOX") © WELTVOX Form and function are defined considering the site's context, and reinterpreting the traditional elements and spaces of buildings within the neighborhood, such as verticality and the window gaps repetitions, the absence of elements standing out from facades and the interior patios with natural lighting and ventilation.  1st Level  2nd Level  3rd Level 21 apartments are modulated in a great introverted block, unfolding around several central patios, and fragmenting the volume in small groups of two or three households, creating close cohabitation among neighbors. .jpg?1491564320 "© WELTVOX") © WELTVOX The large access frame is directly related to the street, breaking the mass hermeticity, knitting and reinforcing the connection to the neighborhood.  Section  Section A security gate provides controlled access to the building. Afterwards, a landscaped corridor that plays the role of meeting point, leads to the stair blocks from which give access to each apartment and roof tops located in the fourth floor. .jpg?1491563976 "© WELTVOX") © WELTVOX The use of concrete blocks lattice in the dividing walls allows to take advantage, both for the building and the neighbors, of the crossed ventilation and natural lighting generated by the gaps on both sides of the wall. .jpg?1491564075 "© WELTVOX") © WELTVOX This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 3 Exemplary Projects Win 2017 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards Posted: 11 May 2017 07:30 AM PDT  Monteverde Senior Apartments; Hayward, California / Dahlin Group Architecture Planning. Image © Douglas Sterling Photography and Dahlin Group Architectural Planning Three exemplary housing projects have been awarded 2017 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards. Organized by The American Institute of Architects' (AIA) Housing Knowledge Community, in conjunction with the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the award is given to projects that "demonstrate that design matters… and offer examples of important developments in the housing industry." The prize is given to projects in four categories: Excellence in Affordable Housing Design; Creating Community Connection Award; Community-Informed Design Award; and Housing Accessibility - Alan J. Rothman Award (no projects were selected within this category this year). Read on for a brief description of each of the winners. Category one: Excellence in Affordable Housing Design Award Monteverde Senior Apartments; Hayward, California / Dahlin Group Architecture Planning. Image © Douglas Sterling Photography and Dahlin Group Architectural Planning Monteverde Senior Apartments; Hayward, California / Dahlin Group Architecture Planning Monteverde Senior Apartments is a 67-unit community providing much-needed affordable, age-qualified housing. The development is an architectural feat, located on a hillside with more than 17% slope, a 40-foot grade increase – challenging for building a residence for seniors. Its contemporary design melds with the existing structures, working well with the multi-tiered site and meandering paths designed to connect with the surrounding community. A transit-oriented development, the location links residents to BART and downtown Orinda services. The building is also designed with a Green Point Rated score of 150+, with sustainable features including solar hot water and photovoltaic systems. As the first new senior affordable housing development in three decades, all units were leased within weeks of opening, demonstrating the need for affordable senior housing in the area. The community is the first of hopefully many more senior affordable housing opportunities for those most in need. Category two: Creating Community Connection Award Plaza Roberto Maestas, Beloved Community; Seattle / SMR Architects. Image © William Wright Photography Plaza Roberto Maestas, Beloved Community; Seattle / SMR Architects Plaza Roberto Maestas is a landmark equitable transit-oriented development project in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood. The project incorporates the community's vision into a new mixed-use development in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Completed in September 2016, Plaza Roberto Maestas consists of two six-story buildings that flank an outdoor plaza, which opens onto a Festival Street adjacent to a light rail station. Through nearly eight years of planning with the community, El Centro de la Raza transformed a surfacing parking lot into a multicultural hub for the neighborhood that incorporates 112 units of affordable housing, local small business retail and office, community space, and a bilingual child development center. Plaza Roberto Maestas directly addresses the urgent need for affordable housing and economic opportunity in the Beacon Hill neighborhood and is a model for community-inspired transit-oriented development. Category three: Community-Informed Design Award Flance Early Learning Center; St. Louis / Trivers Associates. Image © Alise O'Brien Photography Flance Early Learning Center; St. Louis / Trivers Associates Sited on one of the last failed public housing high-rise structures in St. Louis, this Early Childhood Center aspires to proactively alter the course of the most impoverished zip code in Missouri. The design process involved meetings with community leaders, volunteers, and private partners to address the needs of children and the neighborhood. The program's instruction, daycare, nutrition education, and integrated wellness center for 164 children of mixed-incomes is unique among other childcare centers. The massing of the center provides an abstracted, organic-formed facade which creates a shaded interstitial porch for each classroom's outdoor access. Like dappling light through a tree canopy, perforated metal filters the light, shading the south and west-facing glass, contributing to the facility's pending LEED® certification. A sophisticated yet playful palate fills the interior with light and energy, allowing the building to remain a canvas for learning and creating. The jury for the 2017 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards included:
See more about each of the winning projects, here. News and project descriptions via AIA.
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| Norton Restaurant / BLOCO Arquitetos Posted: 11 May 2017 06:00 AM PDT  © Haruo Mikami
 © Haruo Mikami "The ceiling used to be decorative, a symbolic plane, a place invested with intense iconography. (…) Now, it has become an entire factory of equipment that enables us to exist, a space so deep that it begins to compete with the architecture. It is a domain over which architects have lost all control, a zone surrendered to other professions." Rem Koolhaas, Venice Biennial. This restaurant is located on the rooftop of one of the newest unit of an international chain hotel located in the centre of Brasília. This is a type of space that is often impersonal, where standardized characteristics are kept throughout its units all over the world. In this project, we were interested in exploring the tension between characteristics that could be understood both as undefined and specific in a hotel building. Therefore, the project aimed to stress the differences between its two main surfaces: the floor and the ceiling. The floor is neutral and impersonal. The ceiling has a specific design with a clear iconographic reference.  © Haruo Mikami  Isometric  © Haruo Mikami The floor: We created an extremely impersonal and "standard" floor plan, flexible enough to allow different configurations of layouts. We took advantage of the irregular geometry of the existing space to create small pockets of space defined by resulting corners. We expanded the space towards an outdoor veranda covered by a glass roof that lets the natural light in, creating different patterns of shadows during the morning. The materials that were used are different from those found in the building, however its similar dark colours allow it to be understood as a continuity of the hotel´s internal spaces. We used mostly neutral colours such as black and grey.  © Haruo Mikami The ceiling: The suspended ceiling is made from natural Tauarí wood slabs, fixed on a steel grid that is clad with perforated steel sheets on the top of that, allowing the air conditioning to flow. The natural wood stand contrasts with its black background and the neutral colours of the floor. The design of the ceiling was based on an abstraction of an imaginary topography plan, which is a very specific way of registering a real topography of an existing place. By redesigning an imaginary curvaceous map using only straight lines we aimed to disconnect it completely from a real place.  © Haruo Mikami This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 11 May 2017 05:15 AM PDT  New York's Jewish Theological Seminary has officially broken ground on its "21st Century Campus" renovation and expansion, designed by Obama Presidential Library architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. The full project will comprise a new resident hall, conference facilities, an auditorium/performing arts space, and a state-of-art library containing the world's largest collection of Judaic and Hebraic books, manuscripts and scrolls. Advanced educational technology will be featured throughout.  © Flickr user patling63. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 "As we break ground on our new project, we also break ground on a new chapter for American Judaism," said Marc Gary, executive vice chancellor and COO at JTS, in a press statement. "The exterior of our new buildings will be brick, but the interior will be filled with Torah study, music, camaraderie, debate, new ideas, and new modalities."  via Jewish Theological Seminary  via Jewish Theological Seminary Funding for the project was obtained through the sale of a portion of the campus' land, estimated to have netted the seminary $96 million. The purchaser, developer Savanna, is planning to construct a 32-story condo building on the site designed by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects that will add 170 apartments to the neighborhood. News via Jewish Theological Seminary, H/T Curbed.  via Jewish Theological Seminary  via Jewish Theological Seminary
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| Posted: 11 May 2017 04:00 AM PDT  © Aitor Estevez
 © Aitor Estevez From the architect. The new Creative Research Park of Barcelona is located in the Canòdrom, an emblematic rationalist building designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Bonet i Castellana in 1961, that used to work as a greyhound track.  © Aitor Estevez After the building refurbishment in 2016, Dear Design Studio won the competition for the building's interior design, and also proposed the corporate identity and signage design, to give the project greater coherence. The challenge was to adapt the facilities of the former greyhound stadium to its new function as a flexible and dynamic space for startups and technology companies in the creative and cultural industries. At the same time, Dear Design proposed to stimulate the neighbourhood by including technological interventions that reflect the processes developed in the building.  © Aitor Estevez The interior design project seeks to develop the flexibility and dynamism of the different spaces, preserving traces of the building's history. The central idea is to respect and honour Bonet´s minimal architecture and through a discreet and careful intervention. Dear Design responds to the need of a "hub" office that encourages interaction among its users and promotes the current ways of working: flexibility and adaptation of the spaces that allow the mobility of the user.  © Aitor Estevez Dear Design also intervened in the visual identity of the project, which features concepts of speed, movement, progress and technology, which graphically results in the irregular decomposition of the typography into vertical lines of different thicknesses and separated by diverse distances.  © Aitor Estevez Warm materials like wood and wwcb acoustic panels were used to contrast with the preexisting steel structure and concrete floors and to create comfortable and pleasant space.  Section The furniture used in the intervention is a clear nod to the architect Bonet. The suspension and foot lamps, designed by Dear Design, combine two original structures of the BKF chair, an original design of Antoni Bonet, with a flexible fabric skin. The pre-existing colours of the original building, yellow mustard and light blue, are recovered in the table lamps, designed by Dear Design, in the metallic structures of the tables, as well as in the vinyls of the facade that protect the offices from the sun.  © Aitor Estevez This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| SEO for Architects: How to Get Your Website (and Projects) Noticed Posted: 11 May 2017 02:30 AM PDT  This article was originally published on Monograph's Blog as "Architect's Guide to SEO — Part 1." More than likely you've heard the term SEO, but, for the uninitiated, SEO literally means Search Engine Optimization— technical jargon for a set of methods used to boost your website's rank in Google's search results. Now, why should you care? Well, according to this article put out by the SEO gurus at MOZ, the top 3 positions in Google's search results account for a whopping 55% of organic clicks, with the number one spot alone netting over 30%. Think about that, over one third of visitors click on the first result they see. Naturally, everyone wants to be number one, so we've outlined below 5 steps you can take to help boost your website's ranking. Take StockThe first step is to make sure your website satisfies the most basic SEO criteria. These are things often forgotten when new content is uploaded but play a critical role in getting your site to rank well. For example:
Publish OftenGoogle rewards websites that stay up-to-date and frequently post new content. Now, this doesn't mean you should just post for the sake of posting, as with most things quality trumps quantity. However, consistently updating your website is far better than mega updates once or twice a year. This will not only help your ranking but will make your site feel alive and provide a more engaging experience for your visitors.
Include KeywordsKeywords help Google determine how relevant your content is to a particular search term. For example, if you're a residential architect and your project descriptions include words like "residence", "home", "single-family", and so on, you'll likely rank higher for those search terms than say, "museum" or "library".
Build BacklinksBacklinks are when another website links back to your site. Here again, quality is better than quantity. Google determines a website's rank in part by how often that site is referenced by others, essentially quality by association. While this happens organically, there are a number of ways you can generate new links on your own.
Employ MetricsThere are any number of free and/or paid tools out there to track and manage your SEO progress. We recommend a couple free ones below that you can start using today. Note, for both you'll need a Google account (fancy that).
Hopefully that's enough to get you started. If you're interested in learning more about how Monograph can help grow your firm's online reputation, send us a note at robert@monograph.io. Monograph is a technology company founded by architects with the mission to help every architect build a beautiful website– simply, without any code. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Saint Father Brochero Chapel / Federico Ochoa Posted: 11 May 2017 02:00 AM PDT  © Gonzalo Viramonte
 © Gonzalo Viramonte From the architect. How to build a chapel in honor of a saint without falling into literal reminiscences? This was the starting point and the biggest challenge of designing a chapel for the first Argentine saint. The most logical solution was, "designing with Brocherian spirit, folowing the values and the intentions of the priest but without falling in morphologic repetitions".  © Gonzalo Viramonte  Plan  © Gonzalo Viramonte First and foremost Father Brochero who was well know because of his social promotion, worked with his feet on the ground and his eyes in the heaven, the chapel emerges from the earth with a rhomboidal shape, while raising it transforms, each section undergoes a metamorphosis process until it ends in a vertex that points to the sky. Also the "Gaucho priest" used to built with local techniques such as clay, straw and wood. This materials are replaced with contemporaneous ones: concrete, steel and aluminum. Finally Saint Brochero always relied on the capacities of his "sheep herd", regardless of the building complexity that the chapel demanded, the entirely team of workers were local people.  © Gonzalo Viramonte In a religious typology the significant and the symbolic have a primordial role in the understanding of the sacred space. This chapel dedicated to the first Argentine saint , a very special person, demanded very special desing. The exterior and interior of the building evidenced a modern language capable of communicating with modern man but with strong roots in tradition.The "plasticity" of Concrete makes it the ideal material to capture the significant morphology of the chapel. Structure, function and space are unify by the two hyperbolic paraboloids of 8 centimeters thickness. The interior space of the chapel is completed with austere and close character materials, present in any local home: bricks, wood and stone.  © Gonzalo Viramonte The centralized distribution, evoques the last supper, institution of the Eucharist, origin of the Holy Mass, easter dinner in where the Christians gathered and participate of the agape around a domestic table.  © Gonzalo Viramonte Last but not least, the perception of light has a strong connection with the experience of God's grace.God is invisible to our eyes, yet his action and grace fill up our lives. The "source" of light of the chapel is inaccessible to the eye, however the clarity floods everywhere while the sacred space is revealed to us.  © Gonzalo Viramonte This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Architecture Gear Giveaway: Complete Samsung 360 Set Posted: 11 May 2017 01:30 AM PDT  Are you planning an architectural odyssey between the months of June and August? If so, we've got some exciting news! We want to equip two ArchDaily readers with a full set of virtual reality products from Samsung--a Galaxy S8 phone, a Gear 360 camera, and a Gear VR headset! With this top-of-the-line, brand new technology you can record, 30 minutes of live stream, and share your site visits between a wide range of devices. For the past year we have been committed to exploring and furthering the potential of Virtual Reality for architectural applications. As part of this initiative, we are thrilled to partner with Samsung, creating the opportunity to collect and disseminate 360 experiences of important projects with the help of the ArchDaily mind hive. Applying for a chance to take the gear on the road is simple!
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| 86% of the Most Dangerous Cities are in This Part of the World Posted: 11 May 2017 01:00 AM PDT  © <a href='https://500px.com/photo/211107851/untitled-by-magdalena-Roeseler'>500px user Magdalena Roesler</a> licensed under <a href='https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/'>CC BY 3.0</a> For the past fifteen years, global headlines have depicted, through harrowing imagery, the effects of war on cities across the Middle East. An inevitable fracturing of law and order leads to an explosion of crime which we imagine could not be tolerated in a region at peace. However, when cities in war zones are set aside, an overwhelming yet underreported narrative emerges – 86% of the world's most dangerous cities are in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although it accounts for only 8% of the world's population, one in three global homicides occur in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Homicide Observatory at the Igarapé Institute in Brazil warns that fourteen of the twenty countries with the highest homicide rates are in Latin America, while the Citizen's Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSPJP) in Mexico reports that 43 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world are located in the region. With the absence of war, cities in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer from a different plight. Writing for the World Economic Forum, Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute notes that Latin American cities are "the most unequal on the planet", with almost one in five people living in slums. While an elite benefit from expanding economies, millions are left without potable water (15% in the Dominican Republic), electricity (18% in Nicaragua) and sewerage (39% in Bolivia). In the annual report of the Citizen's Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSPJP), the most dangerous cities in the world are: 50. Durban, South Africa (34.43 homicides for every 100,000 citizens) 49. Curitiba, Brazil (34.92) 48. Cúcuta, Colombia (37) 47. Vitoria, Brazil (37.54) 46. Manaus, Brazil (38.25) 45. Macapa, Brazil (30.25) 44. Armenia, Colombia (38.54) 43. Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa (39.19) 42. Goiânia and Aparecida de Goiânia, Brazil (39.48) 41. Ciudad Obregón, México (40.95) 40. Chihuahua, México (42.02) 39. Cuiaba, Brazil (42.61) 38. Teresina, Brazil (42.84) 37. Ciudad Juárez, México (43.63) 36. Detroit, United States (44.60) 35. Fortaleza, Brazil (44.98) 34. New Orleans, United States (45.17) 33. São Luís, Brazil (45.41) 32. Kingston, Jamaica (45.43) 31. Palmira, Colombia (46.30) 30. Gran Barcelona, Venezuela (46.86) 29. João Pessoa, Brazil (47.57) 28. Recife, Brazil (47.89) 27. Mazatlán, México (48.75) 26. Baltimore, United States (51.14) 25. Maceio, Brazil (51.78) 24. Culiacán, México (51.81) 23. Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala (52.73) 22. Tijuana, México (53.06) 21. Cali, Colombia (54) 20. Salvador, Brazil (54.71) 19. Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil (56.45) 18. Cumaná, Venezuela (59.31) 17. Barquisimeto, Venezuela (59.38) 16. Vitória da Conquista, Brazil (60.10) 15. Feira de Santana, Brazil (60.23) 14. St. Louis, United States (60.37) 13. Cape Town, South Africa (60.77) 12. Aracaju, Brazil (62.76) 11. Belém, Brazil (67.41) 10. Natal, Brazil (69.56) 9. Valencia, Venezuela (72.02) 8. Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela (82.84) 7. San Salvador, El Salvador (83.39) 6. Maturín, Venezuela (84.21) 5. Ciudad Victoria, México (84.67) 4. Distrito Central, Honduras (85.09) 3. San Pedro Sula, Honduras (112.09) 2. Acapulco, México (113.24) 1. Caracas, Venezuela (130.35) Download the full CCSPJP report here. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How Architecture Tells the Story of Conflict and Peace in Northern Ireland Posted: 10 May 2017 11:00 PM PDT  Over the past fifty years, Northern Ireland has transitioned from war to peace © Robinson McIllwaine Architects / Hufton+Crow / Flickr user: placeni / Flickr user: dr_john2005 / Wikipedia Commons User: Fribbler Architecture is often intertwined with political context. This deep connection is especially evident in Northern Ireland, a place of infamously complex politics. The state came into existence as a consequence of war in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned into an independent Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) and Northern Ireland, an industrious region still controlled by Britain. Conflict has since ensued in Northern Ireland between a majority pro-British Unionist population, and a minority, though significant, Irish Nationalist community. The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a brutal struggle, with over three thousand people killed, thousands more injured, and harrowing images spread across the world. The turbulence of Northern Ireland's conflict is played out in the architectural development of Belfast, its capital city. With thirty years of war from the 1960s to 1990s, the architecture of Belfast embodied a city under siege. When the prospect of peace dawned in the 1990s, an architecture of hope, confidence, and defiance emerged. In the present day, with Northern Ireland firmly on a peaceful path, Belfast has played host to a series of bold architectural ideas and landmark public buildings by award-winning architects. With the rich, bitter, emotive history of Northern Ireland viewed through multiple, often conflicting prisms, the architectural development of Belfast offers a tangible narrative of a city which burned, smoldered, and rose from the ashes.  Aftermath of the 1993 Shankill Road Bombing in Belfast © User: Pacemaker Press / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA-4.0  The Shankill Road, Belfast during the Troubles © User: Fribbler / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA-4.0 The period of Northern Ireland's history known as "The Troubles" began in earnest in the 1960s, an era which saw Belfast became a despondent, disinvested, heavily militarized city. Its urban fabric endured over thirty years of bombing campaigns targeting commercial and civic buildings, with the central Europa Hotel earning the label of "the most bombed hotel in Europe." The architecture of the period by necessity followed the mantra of "Form Follows Security," with public buildings dominated by solid twin walls, security barriers, and no windows.  Donegall Pass Police Station in Belfast represented a city under siege © User: Ross / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA-4.0  Belfast's Europa Hotel was once regarded as the most bombed hotel in Europe © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) During this time, architectural evidence of the city's strife consisted of walls as well buildings. Belfast was carved into sections by Peace Walls designed to prevent clashes between pro-Irish Nationalist and pro-British Unionist communities. Many Peace Walls survive to this day, including the Shankill/Falls Wall, which has now existed for longer than the Berlin Wall did before its 1989 demolition. Barriers dominated the urban landscape, with a security "ring of steel" encircling the commercial core to facilitate checks and searches. The idea of a connected, flowing urban fabric was alien to the Belfast of the late twentieth century.  The oldest Peace Wall in Europe divides the Republican Falls Road and Unionist Shankill Road © Flickr user nicokaiser. Licensed under CC BY 2.0  Nearly 13 miles of walls divide communities in Northern Ireland, laced with reminders of past conflict © Flickr user dr_john2005. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Throughout the 1990s, Northern Ireland moved towards peace. Dialog intensified between prominent political parties, and between the governments of Ireland and Britain, with heavy input from the Clinton administration in the US. Architectural developments reflected the growing optimism of a new era. A notable milestone of the era was the 1996 completion of the Waterfront Hall by local firm Robinson McIllwaine, with its large, curved, glazed façade dominating a generous public realm on the banks the River Lagan. With the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the governmental structure of Northern Ireland that we know today was established, setting the North on a democratic path which, although turbulent, continues to see sustained growth across the region.  The 1996 Waterfront Hall by Robinson McIllwaine represented the growing optimism of a new era. Image Courtesy of Robinson McIllwaine Architects  The Waterfront Hall sits on the banks of the River Lagan in Belfast city centre. © Flickr user infomatique. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 Throughout the last decade, the architecture of Belfast bares the hallmarks of a city transformed. Renewed confidence in the robustness of the Peace Process has seen heavy investment in the tourism and arts industries, laced with the architectural works of award winning architects. The jagged brick massing of the Lyric Theatre by RIBA Gold Medal recipients O'Donnell and Tuomey sits at a threshold between the grid pattern of Belfast's brick suburbs and the serpentine parkland of the River Lagan. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC) by local firm Hall McKnight lies at the heart of Belfast's trendy Cathedral Quarter—a symphony of brick, glass, and basalt, with a sharp robustness harking back to the 19th-century brick warehouses which once dominated the area.  The Lyric Theatre by O'Donnell & Tuomey Architects © Dennis Gilbert  The MAC in Belfast by Hall McKnight © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Reflecting further on Belfast's rich industrial heritage, 2012 saw the completion of the Titanic Centre by TODD Architects, commemorating the ill-fated ship built at Belfast's shipyards. Historically the city's industrial heartland, the surrounding Titanic Quarter will undergo a £7 billion LEED Gold-awarded regeneration project, creating a series of urban villages linked by open, green, public space. The 185-acre masterplan, like the ship whose name it bears, represents Belfast's historic ability to dream big.  The Titanic Centre, Belfast © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)  Titanic: An emerging urban quarter © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) While undoubtedly traveling on a peaceful path, Belfast is still only part-way through its long journey towards harmony, on both a political and architectural front. The recent collapse of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government and uncertainty over the effects of Brexit offer only some evidence of the challenges Northern Ireland faces on its path to inclusive prosperity. In terms of urban development, these variables sit against the backdrop of Belfast's restrictive, divided urban landscape, with thirteen miles of peace walls, and a ring of motorway circling the city's commercial core. The architectural community in Belfast is responding to the challenge, with design-led grassroots organizations such as PLACE NI and the Forum for Alternative Belfast offering a series of urban strategies for a connected, shared, equitable built environment.  The growth of the arts in Belfast shown through the annual Culture Night festival © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)  The growth of the arts in Belfast shown through the annual Culture Night festival © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) The Peace Process in Northern Ireland has been an inspiring success story. The violence which once plagued the region has been consigned to history, replaced by democratic institutions which, though not perfect, have been a vehicle for change. In tandem, the rubble, ruins, and barriers which once defined Belfast have been replaced with architectural works to rival any city in Ireland or Britain.  The growth of the arts in Belfast shown through the annual Culture Night festival © Flickr user placeni. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) As a new generation of designers emerges, removed from bitterness and conflict, the architecture of Belfast will continue to depict the determined, aspirational spirit of its citizens—tangible monuments to the power of equality, respect, and peace. Niall Patrick Walsh is a graduate of architecture from Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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| Malmö Saluhall / Wingårdh Arkitektkontor AB Posted: 10 May 2017 10:00 PM PDT  © André Pihl
 © André Pihl  © André Pihl From the architect. The old freight depot west of Malmö Central Station was no more than a roofless shell when two siblings, Nina Totté Karyd and Martin Karyd, bought it in order to create a market hall. In 2013 Wingårdh Architects was commissioned to transform the ruin into a market hall for about twenty vendors and restaurateurs. The initial intention was to add a similar volume onto the existing oblong brick building, but the plans changed when several layers of underground utilities were discovered on the site, reducing the buildable area of the lot.  © André Pihl  Floor Plan  © André Pihl The solution was to allow the addition to imitate the gable silhouette of the existing building, but only occupy the portion of the site where the conditions were right. A gap in the roof between the existing building and the addition brings daylight to the old brick façade. The area surrounding the market hall is being redeveloped quickly, but the façade cladding of weathering corrugated steel still provides an echo of the industrial character that has dominated the district for so long. The façades' rust red color also serves as a backdrop for the vegetation that will one day grow over the lattices that cover them. That vegetation also fills the narrow space between the market hall and the adjacent parking structure.  © André Pihl This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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