In early December 2010, Norwegian firm Snohetta was chosen by the University of Guadalajara, Mexico to design their new Museum of Environmental Science. Neither party wasted any time, construction of the Museum is expected to begin within the next few months. Snohetta beat out designs from Shinguru Ban, Diller Scofidio Renfro, Smiljan Radic, and Maurico Rocha among others. Engineering firm AREP assisted Snohetta with the structural, theatre, and acoustic engineering as well as consulted on the implementation of sustainable practices.

According to the CCU website the Museum will contain a library, restaurants, a forum of demonstrations, recreational land, planetarium, classrooms, workshop, and 4 showrooms. The CCU goes on to say the Museum will focus on the natural wealth and environmental problems of the region as well as maintain exhibits on global issues and showcase the latest in green developments. Snohetta embodied scientific progression and sustainability with a modern and biotic design that draws inspiration from the natural landscape of the Guadalajara region. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kralingen Mountain project, also being called the Rotterdam Mountain project started in 2009 and headed by MVRDV has entered a feasibility study phase and moved one step closer to realization.

The Kralingen Mountain project is a vision for an area on the north side of Rotterdam, NL. Kralingen is the name of the neighborhood that the project area is in. The mountain is the focus of the project; the massive hill that will cover the 1.7km of motorway and rail that slices through the center of the project are and the necessary space MVRDV and the other Kralingen Mountain associates had to create to effectively develop the area and leave the vital traffic artery undisturbed.

High income residential neighborhoods and parks will be built on top of the hill, offering residents and parkgoers views of the area surrounding the development, characterized by expansive green space and  meandering Rotte River. Read the rest of this entry »

Following a groundbreaking ceremony this past December, work has begun on the Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) designed NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The stunning €460m headquarters will replace the “temporary” buildings have been in use since 1967. SOM was awarded the contract back in 2003 but it took seven years for construction to begin.

SOM says of their design, “Like fingers interlaced in a symbolic clasp of unity and mutual interdependence, the design for this international treaty organization headquarters represents its changing mission from opposition and prevention to unification and integration”.

SOM made a strong post-modern expression of solidarity in the form of the Headquarters, and infused the strength of design with a sense of inter-transparency in the incorporation of exterior glass facades and the heavy use of transparent interior materials.

The NATO Secretary General sees the design as a desperately needed sign of permanence for NATO, saying “In an unpredictable world, NATO is here to stay. And NATO will stay here in Brussels.” Read the rest of this entry »

Called “The Pearl of West Indies”, Haiti was during a long time the most visited country of the Greater Antilles representing the occidental third of Hispaniola Island. Devastated in 2010 by an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, the country has now to be rebuilt from new innovative architectural and town-planning concepts.

The Coral Reef project designed by Vincent Callebaut Architects plans a matrix to build a three dimensional and energy self-sufficient village from one and only standardised and prefabricated module in order to rehouse the refugees from such humanitarian catastrophes. This basic module is simply made of two passive houses (with metallic structure and tropical wood facades) interlocked in duplex around a transversal horizontal circulation linking every unit.

Inspired from a Coral reef with fluid and organic shapes, the overall project presents itself as a great living structure made of two waves dedicated to accommodate more than one thousand Haitian families. These two inhabited waves undulate along the water on an artificial pier built on seismic piles in the Caribbean Sea. From concave curves to convex curves, the housing modules are aligned and piled up by successive stratums such as a great origami. Between the two inhabited waves is created a sumptuous interior canyon in pixels with terraces and cascades of food gardens.

Actually, the laying-out in staggered rows of the plane-parallel base modules enables to superimpose the passive houses in cantilever and to multiply the vision axes towards an endless number of perspectives. Each roof of each module becomes then an organic suspended garden enabling to each Creole family to cultivate its own food and to use themselves their own wastage as compost. Read the rest of this entry »

A multi-faced design has clinched Spanish architecture firm MADE IN the bid for Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s design of their new Maritime Cultural & Pop Music Center after competing with other firms in an international competition.

MADE IN’s design is built along a bay with zones catering to a myriad of uses. The architects sought to create a design that did more than provide a venue for concerts and events. They wanted a complex that could be used every day by citizens of Kaohsiung.

The Center is split up into zones along a bay, with each accommodating different uses. In Zone 1, for example, there is an outdoor performance area that can hold up to 12,000 people, a performance hall that can hold 5,000, and a music exhibit area that fills two towers, which are 113 and 83 meters tall.

A “night market” and promenade in Zone 2 speaks to the complex’s use by residents every day, and in Zone 3, access to the area as a whole is granted with a ferry stop. Zone 3 also features streets created to attract shoppers with galleries, gardens and a bike and pedestrian path.

In all, the complex will take up 11 waterfront hectares; there will be 80,000 meters of built space, and 20,000 square meters of open, public space. The budget for the project is $100 million Euros. Read the rest of this entry »

The Technical University of Munich’s upgrade of a weather tower has became an iconic symbol for the campus. Deubzer Konig + Rimmel Architekten’s sixty-two meter translucent tower supports a series of weather sensors at five heights collecting data for the collage’s research programs. The stepped concrete core of the facility is wrapped in a rounded Plexiglas shell which provides a semi translucent skin. The skin is attached to a series of metal rings which float off the concrete walls by horizontal rods and vertical guy wires. Piontwise bearings allow for a smooth transition for each level of the skin without supporting channels.

LEDs at the top of the tower spell the Universities acronym TUM. A lower level has 3570 embedded LEDs behind the Plexiglas skin which announces current weather conditions as well as campus news or images. The skin is 88% translucent which during daytime allows the towers concrete core to be revealed. At night the tower is internally illuminated to project the entire mass of the structure through the shell. A series of accessible internal platforms provides a protected gathering space. Read the rest of this entry »

Denton Corker Marshall’s recent design for a mixed use skyscraper in Dubai, which features large, angular shapes stacked on top of one another and held together, seemingly, by thin poles, has won the firm an award in the MIPIM Architectural Review Future Projects “Tall Building” category.

The tower is actually a cluster of four buildings. The top 75 levels of all four serve as separate office buildings, and they are grouped to form, in the middle, a 225 meter-tall atrium. The four office towers sit on a large podium; below, a 21-level apartment tower and a 27-level hotel, along with ample retail space, round out the development.

In choosing this tower as the “Tall Building” winner, judges remarked, “The striking and variegated forms would be in marked contrast to the general run of Dubai’s buildings. The complex as a whole embraces the idea of a mixed use neighborhood into which this tall building seamlessly plugs.” Read the rest of this entry »

With “Expect Amazing” as its slogan, the 2022 FIFA World Cup promises to be, well, amazing. To achieve this “wow” factor, FIFA chose as host a country willing to go the extra mile: Qatar. And Qatar is already bringing big ideas: German architecture firm AS&P (Albert Speer & Partner), along with the help of PROPROJEKT and SERVICEPLAN, has already designed eight of the 12 new stadiums that will be constructed or retrofitted for the global event.

According to AS&P, it’s not just construction of the stadiums that will fill the next 11 years. Billions of dollars in infrastructure will need to be built in the rich desert country. And their plans make the promised World Cup experience unique: with all of the stadiums located within an hour travel time of each other, football fans will be able to see more than one game in a day if they wish to.

Three existing stadiums will be expanded for the project, and nine new stadiums will be built. The firm plans to exceed FIFA’s specifications with every aspect of each stadium: the seats count will grow, environmental efficiency standards will match and exceed FIFA’s figures, and more. Photovoltaic panels will be utilized to this end, and air will be re-circulated within stadiums to help combat the desert heat efficiently. Additionally, the field itself will be cooled for players using innovative carbon-neutral technology. Read the rest of this entry »

Johan Voordouw is a member of the research network Horhizon, a London based collaborative that conducts research through design. This project seeks to establish urban communities through the re-interpretation of existing urban typologies.

Like many mid-sized cities across Western Europe the loss of manufacturing has resulted in continual economic decline. Leicester is but one of the many examples of cities in the United Kingdom that has increasingly suffered from the loss of industry and the inability to attract service industries due to its close proximity to larger centres such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

This project seeks to build a vertically integrated community with a common purpose away from a service led economy and assert a new, small-scale industrial complex intimately linked to housing and retail. The community is a re-interpretation of traditional typologies such as the scale of the Victorian terraced house, the layout of the urban mansion block and the programme of the traditional market village. Bounding the site are urban vectors such as a High Street, and pedestrian pathways along the canal network.

This community will simultaneously densify the city while retaining all the facets for a viable community as a place to work, live and play. Read the rest of this entry »

Kubota & Bachmann Architects unveiled their masterplan for Niderfeld, Dietikon Switzerland. In order to improve the district’s performance, the future identity of Niderfeld shall be developed gradually and reflect the district’s diversity. Wherever required by the districts’ identity, leading principles shall govern the arrangement, the volumetry as well as the formation. This regards the housing, the landscape and public space. Concerning the urban development and architecture, conditions shall be set that motivate the residents to lead a sustainable lifestyle. The objective to allow Niderfeld a multiple identity is achieved by the interaction of different development scenarios. To honor those identities, a multidimensional public space surrounds the buildings. By promoting a differentiated social as well as urban development, those measures will ensure Niderfelds’ success. Not every accumulation of buildings constitutes a city in itself. To create a harmonious overall concept contributing to the districts’ identity, every building has to be understood as part of an urban master plan. Thus, the development process takes account of the existing buildings and integrates it in the big picture.

The typological diversity of the concept and the gradual development facilitate the integration of existing structures (i.e. the Grabacher building). The development may respect individual needs of real estate owners and start from out different places. Through the intended ecological efforts, Niderfeld meets future environmental standards. The concept incorporates possible changes of sociological and demographical nature and adaptation is possible in the course of time. The multi-story car parks might be converted given that they are built above ground. Buildings and their façades might be produced out of wood. So instead of emitting carbon, it will be sequestrated in the building material. Roofs shall either serve as vegetation surface or be equipped with solar panels. Read the rest of this entry »