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 »

KiBiSi Logo - © KiBiSi

Founded by Kilo Design / Lars Holme Larsen, BIG / Bjarke Ingels and Skibsted Ideation / Jens Martin Skibsted, KiBiSi is a Copenhagen based idea-driven industrial design firm. Each partner contributes with intelligence and experience from within his specific field, providing KiBiSi with cutting-edge knowledge and knowhow within the fields of architecture, design, furniture, electronics, transportation, contemporary culture and lifestyle. Having collaborated on multiple projects for years Lars, Bjarke and Jens Martin decided to turn their intuitive inclination to work together into a full time collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »