Dutch Parliament Extension, The Hague, 1978 [13th century]; OMA’s first preservation project. Watercolor by Madelon Vriesendorp. ©OMA

OMA’s major installation ‘Preservation’ opens next week in Venice at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, alongside exhibits on current work around the world and a new, large-scale preservation project in Venice itself.

OMA’s installation will assert the critical position of preservation in architecture and urbanism and occupies two large rooms in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. The installation includes historic objects and photographs, analysis of the rapid growth of preserved urban and natural territory, and a take-away display of OMA’s own projects spanning 35 years. ‘Preservation’ will redefine this under-explored theme as one of urgency within and beyond architecture’s disciplinary boundaries.

A new OMA project in Venice, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, embodying many of these ideas, will be announced during the Biennale. A former trading post and customs house owned by the Benetton family and dating from 1228, the Fondaco, centrally located and adjacent to the Rialto bridge, will be converted into a culturally-programmed department store which preserves the building’s historic profile.

OMA’s conceptual masterplan for the West Kowloon Cultural District will be presented in an exhibition, Quotidian Architectures, organized by The Hong Kong Institute of Architects and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Part of the government’s ambition to redefine Hong Kong as a cultural as well as financial hub, the proposal includes a diverse program of cultural facilities set on public landscape overlooking Victoria Harbour. Rem Koolhaas will participate in a forum on the competition, ‘Hong Kong Arts: Imagining the Future.’

Koolhaas and OMA partner Reinier de Graaf will also participate in ‘Rethinking Education’, a symposium co-hosted by OMA and the Strelka Institute, to be held in Venice. OMA and its think tank AMO have designed an educational programme for the Moscow-based research platform which addresses the future of cities in Russia and abroad.

As part of the Biennale’s opening events, Rem Koolhaas will be awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement upon the recommendation of Kazuyo Sejima, the director of this year’s Biennale.

“Rem Koolhaas has expanded the possibilities of architecture,” says Sejima. “He creates buildings that bring people together and in this way forms ambitious goals for architecture. His influence on the world has come well beyond architecture. People from very diverse fields feel a great freedom from his work.”

Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Venice, Italy, 2010 [13th century]; OMA’s most recent preservation project. ©OMA

Strelka, a new postgraduate school in Moscow for Media, Architecture and Design, is teaming up with OMA at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition – directed by Kazuyo Sejima and titled People meet in Architecture – for a conversation on architectural education – in Russia and beyond. OMA’s think tank, AMO, has developed an educational programme for Strelka, which will open its doors to students in October.

The conversation in Venice will introduce Strelka to a global audience. Strelka founders Alexander Mamut and Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper will discuss their ambition to raise the standard of architectural education in Russia through this new research platform in the heart of Moscow. Rem Koolhaas will introduce Strelka’s educational team – drawn from AMO’s global network of collaborators – and present the research agenda, based on five interconnected themes: Design, Energy, Preservation, Public Space and Thinning – issues that are critical worldwide and particularly urgent in Russia.

Reinier de Graaf (OMA partner and director of AMO) and Michael Schindhelm (cultural advisor and writer), both co-authors of Strelka’s educational programme, will join the discussion after the keynote presentations. Members of Strelka’s Steering Committee Sergey Adonyev, Dmitry Likin and Oleg Shapiro will be present at the discussion.

Strelka and OMA’s public conversation is in sync with a key curatorial aim of the Biennale Architettura: to reconsider architectural education and to transform the Biennale programme – its lectures, exhibitions and workshops – into educational opportunities for students and the general public. Read the rest of this entry »

A new cultural development in Frederiksberg, Denmark is on the works by BIG architects. The main idea is to create a new city monument for culture and movement that systematically blends programmatic elements with a spontaneous interaction.

The site is located in a crossroads of city bike paths, train routes and pedestrian pathways. While addressing this contextual issue, the project provides a framework for programmatic mixing which first stacks vertically and then fans out horizontally to provide a visual and physical overlap of elements.

This 180 degree array creates a variety of spaces ranging from the intimate to the monumental and provides accessible roofscapes that carry and blend function to the outdoors while engaging the surrounding context. Read the rest of this entry »

Towers designed to house and stand for institutions of finance have tended to portray notions of stability, order, growth and power. The unstable, unpredictable and cyclic nature of economics is rarely acknowledged, even though these qualities are an inherent part of the financial system.

This skyscraper designed by Jessica In from Australia seeks greater meaning in architecture as a reflection of current society, one that is, paradoxically, highly connected yet confused and troubled. A proposal for a financial centre in Melbourne, the design process evolved through extensive reading and exploration of several key themes – the unstable, endogenous nature of the financial system; emergent processes; the tower typology in buildings of commerce; and the application of computational design processes to tease out highly abstract concepts into physical form and spatial experience.

Defined economic conditions inform the degree of irrational ‘behavior’ of spatial generation. This is set against more tangible architectural parameters (site conditions, orientation, and program), and consideration at three different scales (urban/street, building, and human scales). Each ‘block’ of the tower is conceived of as an autonomous agent that has limited knowledge, but their aggregated actions produce a coherent design result. The process is repeated until an acceptable design is produced. Read the rest of this entry »

Wang is a 25 year old construction worker from a small village in the Hubei Province of China. Along with his family and everyone else in his village, Wang was forced to leave the only home he had ever known, because of the construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric power station in the Yangtze River, known as the Three Georges Dam.

Wang is just one of millions of Chinese peasants that migrated from their homes to urban China – in Wang’s case, Beijing. The comfort was a dream, though – more opportunity to future generations, higher salaries and therefore, an improved quality of life. Statistically, this is the case; the average farmer in China has a monthly income of 175 Yuan ($25 US), while an urban Chinese resident receives 580 Yuan ($85 US) , a greater than threefold difference.  The World Bank reports that the average rural-urban income ratio in most of the countries is 1 to 1.5.

When one further considers these numbers, one is forced also to think of health related issues, such as the lack of health and unemployment benefits for rural residents. With a population of 1.3 billion and 900 million farmers in impoverish conditions it is no mystery that China is experiencing one of the biggest, fastest, and continuous exodus in human history. 

It is true that migrants will have a better income, but do they really have anything to be optimistic about? Have the increased wages actually changed their quality of living? It is difficult to say yes with any degree of certainty when one considers what is newly injected into their lives along with the increased capital; long working hours and increased safety hazards. Hence, a social crisis is rumbling in China, fueled by imbalanced economic growth. It is unlikely that it will achieve the wealth and global success it certainly could, as long as they are not able to find a solution to increase their farmers’ income and spread economic wealth to the majority of their population. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time in its modern history, Syria had to import wheat after a serious drought in 2008 where the majority of the farmers’ crops failed. At the same time, the fertile land of their oases is rapidly disappearing under the increasing urban sprawl – water and green open spaces are very precious commodities in this region.

In response to the alarming situation in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, architects James Murray and Toby Lloyd from the United Kingdom proposed a series of vertical hydroponics oases which provide housing and allotments for local residents. It only utilizes ten percent of the water needed in regular farming.  Hydroponic towers can increase the yield and quality of horticulture crops. At the same time, by eliminating the soil, you eliminate soil borne disease and weeds while gaining precise control over quality.

Offices and laboratories are also provided for the scientists as well as housing for the caretakers. A local market is provided at the base of the tower where local produce will be sold.

An external and internal “waffle” structure provides anchor for “growth” pods. A series of structural pipes feed these hydroponic pods which plug-in to the main structural frame. The project also counts with water collectors, purification tanks, wind turbines, and solar panels. Read the rest of this entry »

Inspired by Le Corbusier’s Living Machine, this housing project situated in Johor, Malaysia examines the advantages of a hexagon as building unit. The proposal takes into consideration the rapid development of Asian cities due to an unprecedented exodus from rural to urban settlements.

Tay Yee Wei, a Malaysian architect, proposes plug-in dwellings where the cities will pay the costs of the primary structure (reinforced concrete) and the residents will only be responsible of their individual units. Each unit is based on a hexagon that could be combined with other modules to create larger homes for bigger families. The idea is to provide enough flexibility with one single component. Some of these units could be customized as green terraces and recreational areas while others could be used as research facilities.

Another important aspect of the project is that it could be dismantled with ease and transported to another location. In that way, the architecture responds to the different housing demands of the city according to their growth and economic situation. Read the rest of this entry »

Even before the first pueblo fire was lit in the Los Angeles basin and the first cars arrived in Shanghai, the atmosphere was toast. The dirty yellow glow of Beijing and southern California, although capable of producing beautiful sunsets, stands as a troublesome reminder of an atmosphere in demise. Mere neutrality is not enough. The sheer mass of ineffective and bad building technologies has to be recalibrated and an over-correction applied. We are developing a building that moves beyond itself, and through an act of supererogation, attacks the more global conditions. One building can only have so much of an impact but a collective, that leads by examples and inspires other progressive green thinking, can truly make a difference.

This tower takes an active stance and attacks the problem of dirty air by aiming to help purify the air of our cities. The tower pulls dirt, grease, and bacteria out of the air, producing only oxidation and water as a result. The reaction is triggered by the use of a nano-coating of titanium dioxide on the outer skin of the project. The reaction is naturally powered by sunlight acting on the titanium dioxide during the day and supplemented by ultra violet light at night. These UV lights are powered by energy collected through PV panels during the day. The tower will be a glowing indigo object at night varying in intensity according to the amount of solar energy collected during the day. The indigo glow will become symbolic of the cleansing, counteracting the yellow haze that dominates the daytime hours.

The formal design moves of the tower are shaped by basic passive solar ideas that are amplified in magnitude, by a focused analysis of wind and light. Every twist and pull in the massing is set off by a series of interrelated environmental considerations. The passive solar attributes are enhanced by the additional layer of technological innovation provided by the titanium dioxide. Keeping the technology as simple as possible, we avoid the inherent traps of technological problems by piling on more technological solutions. We realize that the liberating aspects of the technological solution are often tied to the imprisoning traits that follow as a result of the solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) unveiled his design for a crematorium to be located in an untouched forest in Sweden. The main idea of the project is to create a utility building with a religious presence and to be integrated to the overall Woodland Cemetery composition. The main goal was to create an organizing network that would connect the new structure to the existing crematorium and chapel.

The project is composed of three paths that reach the site; two for pedestrian paths that cross each other and one for vehicles. The two intersecting paths carve through the soil and create four slopping roofs encircling an intimate clearing. Beneath the sloping roofs four interconnected spaces accommodate the four elements of the cremation process in a loop. The paths also create a small courtyard with natural daylight and fresh air. Read the rest of this entry »

OMA proposal for the expansion to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland.

“The cruel problem of the annex is its fundamental subservience; typically of inferior scale and compromised aesthetics, it cannot exist on its own, while its predecessor did very well without it. Although the new building clearly needs to extend and complement Basel’s Kunstmuseum, it is equally crucial that it proclaims its independence. If it is to be successful, the institution needs a new name: “Kunst Zwilling”.

The site and its context intimidate – so much history, so little time. Too careful and the project shrivels, too flamboyant and it backfires. We propose a shape that is independent, beautiful and that “accidentally” behaves well in the context. Not exactly aligned, it fits carefully in all the perspectives but is strong enough to declare its independence – both from its immediate neighbors and the older museum – like one of Ellsworth Kelly’s forms. Read the rest of this entry »