July 3, 2009 | Broadcast | News
0300TV: Interview with Sou Fujimoto
0300TV speaks to Sou Fujimoto about architecture, school, the media, and practice:
Sou Fujimoto Interview / Part I from 0300TV on Vimeo.
Sou Fujimoto Interview / Part II from 0300TV on Vimeo.
via 0300TV
July 2, 2009 | Broadcast | News
As India’s Airports Modernize, Will They Lose Their Uniqueness?
This isn’t so much of one observer’s gripe with Indian Airports as it is about a real global phenomenon: that of the extended, ubiquitous Generic City, to quote Rem Koolhaas from S,M,L,XL, ‘ In terms of its iconography/performance, the airport is a concentrate of both the hyper-local and the hyper-global - hyper-global in the sense you can get goods there that are not available even in the city, hyper-local in the sense you can get things there that you get nowhere else…’. Novelist J.G. Ballard paid homage to his favourite building type, ‘The terminal concourses are the ramblas and agoras of the future city, time-free zones where all the clocks of the world are displayed, an atlas of arrivals and destinations forever updating itself, where we briefly become true world citizens.’
And while this might be true of many airports today, Ansgar Sickert’s plea for ‘character and local touch’ is one in a sea of discussion about whether the way to be truly global, might be to go local.
June 30, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Forum Architects’ madrasah addition to Al Mukminin mosque blends traditional values with contemporary colour
A mosque in Singapore is a sort of community centre, housing a madrasah, conference halls, social spaces and offices plus the main prayer hall, used day and night. The madrasah extension maximises to the limit what the planning authorities can allow – 4 storeys and a basement.
The most important is the existing prayer hall with its prominent fan-shaped roof. The architects’ choices; to enhance its independence or reverentially engulfing it? Their choice is the latter - flaring open the ends of the corridors of the new block and stretching its new staircases to enwrap the old hall. The staircases flanking the opposite ends of the new block are expressed as sturdy towers, and portals of the new wing. The widened ends of the corridors are also used as external spaces of the classrooms…
June 30, 2009 | Broadcast | Events
4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
Theme: Open City: Designing Coexistence
How and what can architects and urbanists contribute to the way we live in cities? What is the Open City? How do people work, think, dream and act there? And why is it urgent to re-imagine the Open City?
These are just some of the questions that will confront the visitor to Open City: Designing Coexistence.
Six sub-themes
The curators of the 4th IABR have identified six situations in which geographical, spatial, typological, and socio-cultural conditions reveal different qualities and potentials of Open City. Each of these situations will be explored through research and actual projects, and presented as a sub-theme of the Biennale.
The six sub-themes will be shown in the exhibition Open City: Designing Coexistence, in the Nederlands Architecture Institute (NAI), the main location of the 4th IABR. Other exhibitions of the 4th IABR are Parallel Cases//IABR@RDM at RDM Campus and The Free State of Amsterdam (Vrijstaat Amsterdam) in Amsterdam (location to be announced).
Read more about the sub-themes and sub-curators
June 30, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Butterfly Bamboo Homes Are Hope for Thai Orphans
Five students in Thailand are using architecture to make new lives for 24 orphans by providing them with homes to call their own.
Humanitarian design organization TYIN Tegnestue from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology conceived the project in response to a need for more dormitories for Karen refugee children in the village of Noh Bo on the Thai-Burmese border. The six woven bamboo huts, dubbed Soe Ker Tie, or The Butterfly Huts because of their “winged” appearance were designed with the children’s happiness and health in mind. As simple as these new dorms may seem, they provide something wonderful for a growing child - a space to call their own to learn, sleep and play in. This small luxury is one that so many of us take for granted but makes a huge difference in the development and happiness of these youngsters.
Aside from giving 24 orphans brand new homes, the huts are pre-fabricated and assembled on site with sustainability in mind. Most of the bamboo used is harvested locally and woven in the same way that is traditional to the area. The special flapped roof of the Soe Ker Tie House is conducive to natural ventilation. Since the roof also collects rainwater, areas around the huts are more useful during the rainy season, and water can be stored during drier periods. Using foundations cast in repurposed tires, each hut is raised above ground level preventing issues that could arise due to moisture and decay.
via Inhabitat
June 30, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Warner Wong Design / WoW Architects complete Vivanta flagship hotel in Whitefield, Bangalore
Playing with form, the new flagship Vivanta Hotel in the burgeoning business suburb of Whitefield in Bangalore is a playful oasis for the busy IT professionals working in the surrounding International Tech Park. Situated at the entrance to the Park the hotel acts as the new gateway and pushes the design boundaries to create a contemporary hub for the district. continue >>>
June 30, 2009 | Broadcast | Jobs
Job: Architects / Urban Planners, OMA
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is a leading international partnership practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis around the globe. The office is led by six partners – Rem Koolhaas, Ole Scheeren, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu and Managing Partner, Victor van der Chijs – and employs a staff of around 220 of more than 35 nationalities. To accommodate a wide range of projects throughout the world, OMA maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, and Hong Kong.
OMA is seeking the very best people to work on a range of projects in Europe, Asia, and the US. We have an immediate need for architects and urban planners in the following positions. Only those who meet all the criteria should apply: continue >>>
June 29, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Rahul Mehrotra on Bombay Art Deco
Well-known architect Rahul Mehrotra, recently in Chennai to launch his latest book Bombay Deco, talks about his work in an exclusive interview; “My biggest motivation to document aspects of the city is the bizarre rate of change that I have experienced. But more importantly I think the books, as archival records of the architecture and urbanism of the city, are intended to motivate others to engage in the protection of these environments. I think the most critical role that conservation has to play in cities is to act as a modulator of the rate of change.”<
via The Hindu
Image Courtesy The Prakriti Foundation
June 29, 2009 | Broadcast | Competitions
WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture
Whoever Rules the Sewers Rules the City
COMPETITION
Jury: Stan Allen,Cecil Balmond, Elizabeth Diller, Walter Hood, Thom Mayne, Marilyn Jordan Taylor
WPA 2.0: an open design competition for working public architecture organized and sponsored by cityLAB
cityLAB, an urban think tank at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, announces a call for entries to “WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture.” WPA 2.0 is an open competition that seeks innovative, implementable proposals to place infrastructure at the heart of rebuilding our cities during this next era of metropolitan recovery. WPA 2.0 recalls the Depression-era Works Projects Administration (1935-43), which built public buildings, parks, bridges, and roads across the nation as an investment in the future—one that has, in turn, become a lasting legacy. We encourage projects that explore the value of infrastructure not only as an engineering endeavor, but as a robust design opportunity to strengthen communities and revitalize cities. Unlike the previous era, the next generation of such projects will require surgical integration into the existing urban fabric, and will work by intentionally linking systems of points, lines and landscapes; hybridizing economies with ecologies; and overlapping architecture with planning. This notion of infrastructural systems is intentionally broad, including but not limited to parks, schools, open space, vehicle storage, sewers, roads, transportation, storm water, waste, food systems, recreation, local economies, ‘green’ infrastructure, fire prevention, markets, landfills, energy-generating facilities, cemeteries, and smart utilities.
Download the competition brief here:http://wpa2.aud.ucla.edu/inx/files/wpa20brief.pdf
June 29, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Construction begins on Foster’s Spaceport America
Building works began last week on the world’s first ever private spaceport.
Foster and URS Corporation’s winning design for Spaceport America has started on site. The spaceport, located in New Mexico, will host commercial operations by private space travel companies such as Virgin Galactic.
Foster and Partners say of the design, ‘The sinuous shape of the building in the landscape and its interior spaces seek to capture the drama and mystery of space flight itself, articulating the thrill of space travel for the first space tourists.’
The spaceport, over 10, 000 m², is designed to be energy efficient and utilises a variety of green technologies: solar panels on the roof provide hot water and earth-tubes reduce heating, ventilation and air conidtioning costs by 50-70 per cent.
