Woods Bagot has won the international competition to design China Southern Airport City, a 988-acre (400-hectare), mixed-use development set on the Liuxi River in Guangzhou, China. The design, which totals 41 million square feet (3.8 million square meters), expands the traditional corporate headquarters to an urban scale, blending business and manufacturing uses with lifestyle and residential components. This new active district will support China Southern Airlines’ brand and continued leadership as Asia’s largest airline.

The design establishes a sweeping physical form that unifies the Airport City site—comprising two wing-shaped parcels bisected by a major highway—and presents a legible identity that is visible from arriving and departing planes. Within this landscape, landmark buildings, parks, lakes and other features define a series of programmatic “neighborhoods” that provide a sense of order and wayfinding at the human scale. Read the rest of this entry »

Once known for its mills, the UK town of Burnley has developed into a regional center for engineering and advanced manufacturing. As a way of acknowledging the town’s pioneering role in the practice of measuring rainfall, architects at Tonkin Liu have designed an installation that embodies two of its major climatic forces. Entering into a dialogue with the elements is often expressed in the Studio’s work through the creation of a sensory output. Their Singing Ringing Tree sculpture, also designed for Burnley, uses wind to articulate sound.

The Rainbow Gate is located in front of the Burnley College, where three main traffic routes converge. Its shape is inspired by the town’s numerous viaducts, and it aims to frame the views of the surrounding landscape in a similar manner. Rain is channeled into the ground along the structure’s dynamic natural geometry, while 133 prisms capture sunlight and array it in a full color spectrum on the ground. At night, the prisms are lit from bellow, casting rainbows into the mist. Read the rest of this entry »

Architects at BIG designed a high-rises that will reshape the city of Guiyang in China. Among several other international architects, BIG will help redefine Guiyang’s Huaxi district, the city’s educational and cultural center. By proposing a generic hotel slab on one of Huaxi’s mountain slopes, architects envisioned a new and unique landmark, attracting visitors to an area already known for its touristic appeal. Read the rest of this entry »

Hundreds of books have been written about New York City. There are books about its history, books on the best restaurants, books about its art and culture, and obviously books on its renowned architecture. A new book exemplary compiles the latest and most relevant architectural additions to the city. John Hill from A Daily Dose of Architecture presented his first book published by W. W. Norton & Company, Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture, in December 2011.

The book is compact enough to be your essential companion to your next visit to New York. The 200 projects selected and built since 2000 are organized according to their location within the city’s five boroughs. Each project is architecturally described according to its formal, spatial, and urban qualities. There is also information on its address, architect, and nearest subway station. A helpful inclusion is a series of neighborhood maps, 22 in total, with the location of the projects, subway stations, landmarks, parks, and a quarter-mile radius scale to help you gauge distance. Apart from the 200 built projects, John Hill included a last chapter with several projects on the drawing board, which will give you an idea of the city’s transformation within the next few years. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Helixxx Bridge’ is a proposal designed by Eugenio Aglietti for a pedestrian bridge in front of the Amsterdam Hermitage Museum. The program includes a bridge which connects the two banks of Amstel river, facilites and public spaces. The concept is based on the latest instruments of computational design and the project development is the result of a progressive series of steps where each pass could be explained and justified.

The starting point of the Helixxx Bridge is based on the span of the bridge (82 meters) and on the museum‘s inner courtyard dimensions. The repetition of the main section towards the Hermitage creates a grid of 25 planar elements and to emphasize the access to the museum the last section is 90° rotated, so the helix is the perfect way to connect the sections with steel pipes. The three ‘X’ created by the shape of the bridge symbolize the Saint Andrew’s Crosses of Amsterdam: “Valiant, Steadfast, Compassionate”. Read the rest of this entry »

“Sheer Pressure” is one of three projects completed during USC School of Architecture’s annual “Top Fuel” workshop, an intensive one-week fabrication charette. This year the workshop focused on pneumatic systems, under the advisement of Achim Menges and Thomas Auer. Our group – composed of eight upper-division students from USC and SCI-Arc – studied the relationship between pneus and constraining tensile forces. Our initial study models looked at the many ways air-inflated structures could puncture through fabric, and generate different lighting effects. Read the rest of this entry »

“Three Spirits” is the master’s thesis of Filip Kurzewski, from the Warsaw University of Technology. The project proposes a floating tourist base and hotel in the form of three ships. Each of the three ships functions as an independent unit. The initial vision of the project was propelled by the author’s numerous personal drawings and painting studies. A great inspiration for the direction of the form, colors, and spatial arrangement came from personal diving experiences. Hand drawing and personal reflections and experiences became a driving force for the author, and are visible throughout the project. They intentionally connect the design with the context of underwater world which hotel guests explore. The thesis topic was carefully selected to reflect the design process, leaving traces of hand sketches and gestures on the final unit. Hand drawings and sketching played an important role in keeping the conceptual idea through all the stages of the design process. The theme was very demanding when it came to the program, justifying the design. The project was also consulted with naval architects. The ships making up a complex ,to a certain degree, differ as for the applied program. If the appropriate localization is chosen, they may form the common assumption – an island “Lang”. Guests can then benefit from the broader scale of supplementary attractions. On the first ship they have a ballroom at their disposal, on the second one – a casino and on the third one – the hall of multifunctional purposes where, inter alia, film shows and theatrical performances are possible. When the ships “meet” they generate a common water area for guests to swim. Read the rest of this entry »

Food as a resource is depleting. Supply is soon to not meet demand. With population growth, food production in the United States is reaching maximum capacity. Our cities need to address this critical issue with an architecture that responds. A new type of residential tower needs to come forth. Utilizing vertical farming, a new model of living can be tested and resolved in a dense vertical community. From farm to market from community to education lets live, leran, and grow within our city. Farm tower is located in a vertical community of tourist resources and developer condos divided by a public promenade. The new tower aims at activating a dead corridor that is underutilized and keying in to an international audience with a daily influx of travelers utilizing the strand of tourist attractions located along the waterfront.  The adjacent Children Museum and its motto of Think, Play, Create will be embraced with a second motto of Live, Grow, Share to foster a new level of social interface. Read the rest of this entry »

Architecture defines, articulates and mediates the relationship between a physical environment and inhabitation. The primary investigation of this project is to balance this relationship through a dynamic study of material behavior. This project therefore proposes a living architecture, and challenges the classical modernist notions of permanence and stability. The theme of this proposal necessitates an equally responsive environment. As such, the project is located on the ice cap of the Arctic Ocean; an environment which exhibits harsh climatic conditions for human survival as well as constantly fluctuating physical surroundings.

This project proposes an adaptable, mutable and contextual scientific research facility on the Arctic ice cap. The model for this research centre is based on the nature of exploratory and cinematographic expeditions, the kind exemplified by a BBC series Human Planet. The duality of needs (investigation and documentation) necessitates an architecture which can accommodate two distinct working environments: one exterior and dynamic; and one interior and stable and controlled. The intervention challenges the basic assumptions of what an architectural demand for an Arctic expedition normally implies: a static and formally simplistic structure. In contrast, the resulting architecture is self-regulating, self-contained and autonomous. Read the rest of this entry »

The 10th anniversary of the Museumsquartier Vienna was celebrated with a commission of a mapping façade projection by Urbanscreen. The 8 minute piece MQ10 | Architectural Staging, projected on two full sides of the Leopold Museum’s austere walls, is based on the architectural elements of the building itself. The non-narrative video mapping immediately ‘folds’ the walls into parametric forms and rebuilds the building in continually abstract ways. Read the rest of this entry »