KAMJZ presents this innovative concept wich focuses on creating an earthquake resistant building by making a sustainable design. This idea for the Water Damper Towers for the Taichung City Cultural Center in Taiwan would gather water to perform as a mass damper to regulate the seismic forces. The Taichung City Cultural Center is a project which aims to present the possibility of using local features to protect from the very location itself, turning limiting factors into a project feature. Read the rest of this entry »

Tirana Flux Exchange (FL-EX) by Barker Freeman Design Office is a proposal for a multimodal transportation hub and new urban landscape model for the Albanian capital positioned to greatly expand the scope and connectivity of the city’s infrastructural networks.  FL-EX connects the existing HSH Railway and intercity bus lines with a new airport transit, bike, and pedestrian paths linking the historic urban center to international transportation systems. This hub also acts as a nexus of commerce where strands of retail, office, and housing blocks thread across the landscape to create a new constructed ground that supports urban agricultural production, community recreational and entertainment spaces, and sustainable roof systems. Read the rest of this entry »

RUR Architecture PC announced that the groundbreaking of the Taipei Pop Music Center took place Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at the center’s new site on the edge of Taipei, Taiwan. Envisioned as a coherent environment that challenges the limitations of traditional performances spaces, the innovative new center will consist of several mixed-use spaces woven together into a dynamic, multi-purpose venue that reflects and supports the evolving culture of pop.

Taiwanese pop music, while enmeshed in its local roots, has also transcended them and operates on a global stage. Likewise, the TPMC simultaneously functions as an organic part of everyday Taipei life and as a global center for the music industry. The TPMC integrates theater with public space and commerce to become a cultural hub that will engage visitors independently of scheduled performances. While the scale and grain of the civic programs – retail, dining, offices, etc. – respect the vital fabric of Taipei street life, their architectural identity is unique and distinct. Read the rest of this entry »

ALA Architects, a Helsinki-based firm, supported by Arup Ireland, was announced the winner of the international design competition for a new library. This is a new benchmark for energy consumption in a modern high-technology library facility as the 16,000 m² building will consist almost entirely of public spaces and will serve as the new focal point for the city and Finland’s impressive public library network. It has been estimated that the library will attract 5,000 visitors per day and 1.5 million visitors per year. Read the rest of this entry »

Aedas designed the 100,000-square-meter Bravo Pazhou mixed-use tower, located in the western portion of Pazhou’s central business district in Guangzhou, China with restaurants and a boutique hotel at the lower levels and office space at the upper floors.

The extraordinary thing about this development is its design to cater two owners in one unified composition. This special request from the clients provides opportunities to explore creative ways to amalgamate specific masses in a single iconic composition.  As a result, the distinction between the functions is visible on the elevation. The whole composition is unified by a semi controlled random fenestration using vertical fins at regular intervals. The top portion of the tower uses a simple but effective gesture that combines observation points with the utility nodes. Read the rest of this entry »

Aedas recently won a competition to design a bay front, mixed-use development in Wu Yuan Wan, Xiamen, China.

The mixed-use development is composed of a shopping mall, a five-star hotel and two SOHO towers with a total gross floor area of 175,000 square meters. With an aim to become the center piece of a new master plan, it will be a new retail landmark and an integrated complex responding to its surrounding waters. Read the rest of this entry »