Saemangum is the name for the newly reclaimed area on the west coast of Korea by the architecture and urbanism firm poly.m.ur. It has been the country’s most anticipated reclamation project of recent years and promises enormous new opportunities for cultural commercial developments in the region. The brief was to provide an exhibition space to commemorate the completion of the work and showcase the visions and plans for this new land. The concept of the design was inspired by the lost mud flat in the area as the result of reclamation. Analogous to the mud flat, the building was designed to act as a ‘living field’, which breathe environment, programs, and activities.
This video features an exclusive interview with Rem Koolhaas by BD online discussing the launch on October 6th of ‘OMA/Progress Exhibition’ at the Barbican Art Gallery. Curated and designed by Rotor, a Belguim-based collective, member Maarten Gielen and OMA founding partner Rem Koolhaas discuss the importance of this major retrospective, the stories being told, and the discoveries Rotor made after having a unique and unheard of ‘behind the scenes access’ to OMA – asking candid questions and reviewing materials from the archives of OMA offices.
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO) will host ‘Richard Meier Retrospective’ his first exhibition in Latin America beginning October 20th. The works on display will make it possible to view Meier’s design philosophy as a whole and in depth for the first time, with examples of nearly every type of work.
The retrospective includes a selection of models, original sketches, renderings, photographs, and product design. Some of the iconic projects exhibited on the show include the Smith House, The Getty Center, The Neugebauer Residence and the Jubilee Church. Other projects on view in the retrospective are well-known architectural projects such as the Perry Street Towers, the High Museum of Art, the Ara Pacis Museum, and the recently completed Arp Museum in Germany.
Arata Isozaki and Anish Kapoor have joined forces to create a mobile concert hall that will travel across the devastated region of Higashi Nihon, brining a promise of hope to those still suffering from the earthquake of March 2011. Using music as the means to bring an uplifting message, Ark Nova will provide seating for approximately 700 spectators to watch interdisciplinary artistic projects, musical ensembles and multimedia exhibitions. The hall will serve not only as a platform for performances but also as a place to meet and find creative inspiration; thus, make a lasting contribution toward returning normalcy to the region.
More about the project, including a video clip, after the break.
The recipients of the Good Design Award 2011 were recently announced. Both yotsuya tenera and ReNOA Motosumiyoshi won the award for their design of an apartment house and the renovation of complex housing respectively. More information on both projects after the break.
Following their success in winning first prize in an international competition, the architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have been commissioned to realize a tower block complex of ten buildings in Nanjing. The design by gmp is for a financial enterprise center on a site of about 80,000 square meters in this large eastern Chinese metropolis. The above ground gross floor space of the 120 to 200 meter high tower blocks will be about 500,000 square meters. More images and architects’ description after the break.
DesignByMany‘s latest challenge: Pop-up Retail Store sponsored by HP and media partners ArchDaily. For new Fall fashions and back-to-school shopping, ‘pop-up’ retail shops are the hottest trend. These small, temporary shops are bringing fashion and an urban edge to under-utilized and vacant spaces. This challenge is to design a quickly constructed or prefabricated, free-standing shop of no more than 200 square feet.
DesignByMany is a challenge based design technology community where users post challenges to the community along with their design source files. The community can then post responses with their own source files to solve the challenge. They can also comment on the challenge and interact with other designers throughout the process.
An additional music room or a performance hall for schools, a pleasant social space for residential apartments or a self-sufficient housing for the homeless. The “Bird’s Nest”, designed by Onat Öktem, Ziya Imren and Zeynep Öktem, can adopt itself both in content and in size to where it “perches”. By placing two-meter long units side by side, the “Bird Nest” can be elongated to the desired dimensions. Their concept was selected as Special Mention: Director’s Choice for the 2011 d3 Natural Systems international architectural design competition. More images and project description after the break.
Modern architecture has a complicated relationship with originality. For centuries, emulating your elders was not only a compliment but a fundamental part of your education. But with the cult of personality surrounding early greats like Loos and Corbusier, everything changed, and emphasis was placed on the “lone genius” who could push the profession forward with a stroke of his (let’s be real, before the ’70s it was usually a “his”) pen. “Due to myths of authorship, and the media’s desire to simplify and personalize the design process, buildings are often attributed to a single person,” writes Sam Jacobs, the founder of UK design office FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste). In reality, great architecture is almost always the product of a team, usually building on the success of their past work.
The 2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winners were recently announced with an official presentation ceremony to follow on November 7th at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Hsieh Ying-Chun is the Grand Prize Winner; he will receive $100,000 from the foundation with no strings attached. Hsieh is a leading Taiwanese architect who for over a decade has deployed his talents in rural areas decimated by natural disaster. Hsieh works throughout Asia, training villagers to build locally appropriate dwellings in response to devastation such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Two additional 2011 Winner Prizes, of $10,000 each, will be awarded to Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) and FrontlineSMS. More information on the prize winners after the break.
For those of you who may not know who Simon & Garfunkel are (don’t worry I wouldn’t admit to it either), they were an American duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. Most notably known for their hit single “The Sound of Silence” and also for their music being featured in the film The Graduate which featured another one of their hits “Mrs. Robinson”.
The architecture of the Museum of Fromelles, designed by SERERO Architectes, is aiming at establishing a link between sky and earth, between visitors and the “burial” of soldiers. This is a building with a low profile, which is half-sunk on its northeast facade. The work on natural topography has helped to improve the natural slope of the site and cover, partially, the technical space of the museum. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The New York Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, nycobaNOMA, is excited to kick off their 2011 Membership Drive! Take the survey, win amazing prizes, and come out to support nycobaNOMA at their Fall Design Talk/Networking Mixer at Wilkahn’s Showroom October 25th!
SHRM‘s Umbra_vela was announced as the winner of DesignByMany‘s latest challenge: “A Rapidly-Deployable Shade Structure”. The challenge asked professionals and students in the AEC community to submit proposals for a rapidly-deployable shade structure that could just as easily be deployed during a day at the beach or park, or in a desert environment. SHRM were chosen by a select group of judges, Andrew Payne, David Benjamin and Kevin Klinger. For winning the HP-supported challenge, SHRM will take home a brand-new HP Designjet T790 24″ PostScript ePrinter.
Among the updates was a Herzog & de Meuron design described as a ‘stunning crown for the historical walls: the beautiful rooftop of irregular folds fits harmoniously into the rooftops surrounding the cathedral’.
On October 18th, starting at 7pm, Storefront for Art and Architecture presents Kissing vs Komplex, a Productive Disagreement Series Event with Sylvia Lavin and Hal Foster on conversation about contemporary relations between art and architecture, and the forces that bring them together.
Check out this interview we spotted over on DutchDesign- a research program from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. This interview with Jan Gehl, a Danish architect and urban consultant for Copenhagen, is part of the program’s research to understand how cities function on a larger scale. Within just the first few minutes of the interview – when Gehl explains the importance of the “people scale” of the city and studying human behavior – we were interested and wanted hear more of his thoughts on planning. Further into the interview, Gehl notes that a successful piece of architecture is not merely creating a form, but rather a project that encourages some kind of interaction with the form. As Gehl explains, “ Form is center of attention, and life has been almost forgotten, and the interaction is something we don’t talk about much….” This interview touches upon large issues of planning such as redefining the streetscape to widen the sidewalks for pedestrian and cyclists access, and the notion of “parachuting the little scale into the big scale” to infuse small structures in bigger spaces to make them more relatable…all within the underlying concept of making the city for the people.
’1K house’ was a design studio in the Department of Architecture, MIT in 2009 co-taught by Professor Yung Ho Chang, Chairman of Department of Architecture, MIT, Professor Tony Ciochetti, Chairman of Center for Real Estate, MIT, and Professor Dennis Shelden, Department of Architecture, MIT. It is a project designed for the rural poor in the earthquake area, Sichuan, China who lost their home during the seismic disaster in 2008. The Pinwheel house is the selected project to be built in China and it became the first built project, by architect, Ying chee Chui, an MArch’11 student at MIT, in summer 2010.
As MIT’s first low cost housing prototype, this project set the stage for the importance of low-cost developments for locations around the globe that have had natural disasters that are beyond society’s control. By reaching out, architects everywhere can take advantage of opportunities such as theses to help a society recover and rebuild. More information on the project after the break.
Architecture, in its most idealistic sense, is always geared towards the construction of the public good. Thus, the notion of architecture pro bono appears as a redundant affirmation. However, the real meaning lying behind the beautiful latinism of pro bono, is the contemporary capitalist counterpart and less exotic “for free” and more precisely, for free for those who are unable to afford it.
Highlight Gallery recently announced that they will be featuring two artists whose bodies of work are influenced by architecture, Filip Dujardin and Renato Nicolodi. Their work, which will be up from November 3rd to December 12th, reflects the passion and interest which Highlight Gallery founder and curator Amir Mortazavi cultivates for architecture. With these two artists, the answer to the eternal question, ‘Is architecture art?’ is easy to find. More information on the event and their work after the break.
Now he is sitting in his hotel room in Beijing and the world seems far away. He flew coach and there is a pain in his neck that won’t go away. The room is small and smells a little mildewy despite being new and relatively upscale. The window is not operable. The air-conditioner purrs. The TV is on constantly. He leaves it on. The bed is the desk. Laptop and papers spread out. He doesn’t move them when he sleeps. He hasn’t changed his clothes. He has one small bag.
Every few hours he takes the elevator down, walks past the lobby fountains, the bar, the tired tourists in their shorts and caps, fanning themselves, young women standing around, pouting, waiting, looking bored, men in dark suits on cell phones. Lots of black leather shoes with metal buckles.
Today Lord Norman Foster issued a tribute to Steve Jobs (1955-2011), who passed away yesterday at the age of 56. Foster + Partners is working on the new Apple Campus in Cupertino, scheduled to be completed in 2015.
