2nd Place
2006 Skyscraper Competition

Gonzalo Pardo, Susana Velasco, Victoria González
Spain

Second Place

When you visit Manhattan as a tourist you keep the city in your memory as a series of fragments, bodies, perceptions, sounds, and atmospheres. The position of everything is engraved in your memory; a new psycho-geographic map of the city is born. We have chosen seven fragments of Manhattan, (5th Avenue, Broadway, piers, Financial District, Brooklyn Bridge, and Central Park), that could be thought about as individual cities; autonomous bodies, landscapes, and infrastructures. Read the rest of this entry »

3rd Place
2006 Skyscraper Competition

Neri Oxman, Mitchell Joachim
United States

Third Place

Peristalsis: The rippling motion of muscles in tubular organs characterized by the alternate contraction and relaxation of the muscles that propel the contents onward.

The core of the skyscraper, its structural and circulatory conventions, as a central obstacle to tall building design is well known. Should the elevator, of all things, persist as the non-negotiable limit of our vertical habitats? The limit is vexing, for not only does it determine compositional forms but, more significantly, the arrangement of social practices with regards to both our labor and leisure. Elevators stifle more than facilitate our movement by virtue of their rigid planes and fleeting occupations. That is to say, the vast space which the elevator shaft occupies is, temporally speaking, useless. But suppose we involved ourselves with a different interpretation of that inactive, rigid, and sequestered domain which much of this central shaft represents. It would demand a vital shift, or at least a conceptual reworking, towards an active utilization of such space. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2006 Skyscraper Competition

Marco Steiner
Germany

Special Mention

How to transform horizontal into vertical?
The famous German architect Erich Mendelssohn once said: “Man can only find tranquility in today fast living in the motionless horizontal line”.

How do we combine the vertical expression of the skyscraper with the serenity of a horizontal space? The “Skyframe” tries to answer this question. The Skyframe is a multifunctional skyscraper in which public areas such as conference center, shopping mall, cinemas, and recreational spaces are located on the ground floor. Restaurants and apartments are located in the upper part while the rising verticals allocate offices and meeting rooms. The vertical segments reflect the active and busy aspects of working life. Read the rest of this entry »

Special Mention
2006 Skyscraper Competition

Justyna Karakiewicz, Jeff Cheng, John Kao
Hong Kong

Special Mention

Hong Kong is a city of extreme landscape conditions in which the majority of the land is defined as high steep terrain. Due to this condition there is a complex infrastructure of trains and escalators for the mobility of the pedestrians. This type of infrastructure accounts for more than 50 percent of the available land. The remaining areas are clustered with isolated skyscrapers surrounded by heavy vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Read the rest of this entry »

Hillside View - © BIG

Bjarke Ingels Group and Fuglark Architects win the largest ever commission on the Faroe Islands for a 19.200 m2 Education Centre in Torshavn.

BIG, in collaboration with Fuglark, Lemming & Eriksson, Sámal Johannesen, Martin E. Leo and KJ Elrad design the new Education Centre in Marknagil situated on a hillside on the outskirts of Torshavn, to serve as a base for coordination and future development of all educational programmes in the region. As the largest educational building project in the country’s history, the institution combines Faroe Islands Gymnasium, Torshavns Technical College and Business College of Faroe Islands in one building, housing 1.200 students and 300 teachers. Read the rest of this entry »

Urban Art Projects’ sustainable artwork revitalises Brisbane car park

Lasercut Drawing

International studio Urban Art Projects (UAP) has completed a major art installation that transforms the streetscape of Albert Street, Brisbane, through the inventive reworking of an existing multi-storey car park into a highly sustainable, visually compelling art project.

The artwork, ‘Landlines’, by Jennifer Marchant was developed and crafted in UAP’s studio in Brisbane. Wrapping around three elevations of the car park, the piece is created from 549 powder coated, laser cut aluminum panels, all 1.2m x 3.6m. Collectively these components of the design have been beautifully worked to represent the contours of a map of Cunningham’s Gap and the Main Range, Brisbane. Read the rest of this entry »

Knut Hamsun Center
Hamarøy, Norway

Perspective - © Ernst Furuhatt

The Knut Hamsun Center, located in Hamarøy, Norway and designed by Steven Holl Architects, will open to the public on August 4, 2009 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Knut Hamsun’s birth. Dedicated to Norway’s most inventive twentieth-century writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2700 square-meter center is located above the Arctic Circle by the village of Presteid of Hamarøy, near the farm where Hamsun grew up. The building includes exhibition areas, a library and reading room, a café, and an auditorium for museum and community use. Read the rest of this entry »

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) / Ole Scheeren
City of Singapore, Singapore

Aerial View - © OMA

Ole Scheeren of OMA introduces a new residential typology to Singapore with The Interlace, a large-scale complex of interconnected apartment buildings stacked in an innovative hexagonal arrangement, developed by CapitaLand and Hotel Properties Limited.

The Interlace is located on an elevated eight-hectare site, bounded by Alexandra Road and the Ayer Rajah Expressway, amidst the verdant Southern Ridges of Singapore. With about 170,000m2 of gross floor area, the development will provide 1,040 apartment units of varying sizes with extensive outdoor spaces and landscaping. The site completes a green belt that stretches between Kent Ridge, Telok Blangah Hill and Mount Faber Parks. Read the rest of this entry »

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
Astana, Kazakhstan

Perspective © BIG

Invited as one of five pre-selected architect led teams, BIG was awarded first prize in an open international design competition which included 19 entrants among others Lord Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid. The new National Library, named after the first President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, encompasses an estimated 33,000 sqm.

The design of the National Library combines four universal archetypes across space and time into a new national symbol: the circle, the rotunda, the arch and the yurt are merged into the form of a Moebius strip. The clarity of the circle, the courtyard of the rotunda, the gateway of the arch and the soft silhouette of the yurt are combined to create a new national monument appearing local and universal, contemporary and timeless, unique and archetypal at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Shift Architecture
Reykjavik, Iceland

© Shift

DIY Reykjavik is a Do-It-Yourself, non-profit design experiment initiated and designed by Arnaldur Scram and Simon Stigsby of New York-based design firm Shift, in collaboration with Angelica Biddle and Dr. Sigurður Gunnarsson. The pavilion is a temporary installation situated in front of the Nordic House in Reykjavik and coincides with the 2009 Reykjavik Design Days and 2009 Reykjavik Art Festival. The structure is declared ownerless and represents a stepping stone for the local community to question Iceland’s future. Read the rest of this entry »