November 29, 2009 | Broadcast | News
78 Shenton Way’s addition adds new depth to existing structure
An entry for the WorldArchitectureNews.com Award for the Commercial Sector, this project by Forum Architects involved adding a new office tower extension to an existing high rise office tower at 78 Shenton Way. The existing building comprises a 34-storey tower sitting on a large 3-storey podium linked to a 11-decks multi storey carpark. The existing complex has site coverage of 65 %, leaving little space for the new tower without tearing down part of the existing building to make space.
In what will probably be emblematic of future expansion proposals to be seen in an increasingly dense and high-rise Singapore, the architects had allowed for the continuous usage of the existing building throughout the duration of the new structure’s construction. Did I hear someone say “limited undeveloped land” ?
more via WAN
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | News
‘Landscapes of Energy’
The Harvard GSD’s “Landscapes of Energy” investigates energy’s spatial dimension to show “the realities of how the energy machine and the building machine work” .
via Harvard Gazette
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Hooghly: River Of Shame
Image Credits: David Nelson
Great cities, they say, are ones that grow around a river. London developed around the Thames. Rome wasn’t built in a day but it sure grew around the Tiber as did Paris around Siene. Vienna has Danube, Moscow’s got Moskva. Alexandria and Cairo share Nile. Baghdad grew around Tigris, Istanbul around Bosphoros and Amsterdam around Amstel. India is no exception. Delhi was built around Yamuna and Kolkata next to Hooghly. Sadly, that’s where the comparison ends.
Charles Correa claims Kolkata “has turned its back on its river, unlike Paris or London, and paid a heavy price for the apathy” (but all is not lost yet).
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | Competitions
2010 Bentley Student Design Competition
A global pool of infrastructure professionals armed with effective knowledge and tools is essential to meeting basic human needs throughout the world. Critical to expanding the supply of infrastructure professionals is attracting students to those professions and providing them with the appropriate education to enable them to contribute to global sustainability.
Bentley’s Student Design Competition program awards technically advanced projects created by middle school, high school, and university students around the world as well as recognizes the achievements of their educators and mentors. It fosters interest and growth in the AEC and geospatial professions by allowing students to showcase their design work while also preparing them to be future members of the infrastructure community.
via Bentley
details after the jump
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | Events
Inaugural Design Life Bali ’09 conference kicks off this December
Another good reason to head down to Bali from the 4th to 6th December:
An inaugural RMIT Architecture & Design Alumni gathering in Ubud Bali aims to re-connect like-minded individuals from Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Industrial Design and Fashion from all over Asia and Australia.
Speakers include Indonesia’s Made Widjaya and Singapore’s Richard Hassell and Wong Mun Summ, partners of architecture practice WOHA.
via design life Bali
read on for press release details… continue >>>
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | News
In praise of Lor Calma’s architectural forms
After decades in the fields of architecture, and interior and furniture design, Lor Calma returns to the visual arts by exploring the limits and possibilities of metal as a medium in his latest exhibition. All done in 2009, the metal reliefs and sculptures are made of mild steel, black iron, and bronze using primary colors of black, white, red, and yellow.
MANILA, Philippines – Design and architecture has been the province of Lor Calma, the vanguard of Philippine modernism whose creations, in more than half a century, speak a pared down language of glass, stone and steel, evoking the sheer beauty of the straight line. His legacy in Philippine architecture is secured but at 82, Calma is no old fogey about to rest on his laurels. He is showcasing a new body of work—this time in the field of visual arts—in an exhibit which opened at the Ayala Museum last Monday. “Architect Lor Calma: Paintings and Sculptures” will be on view until January next year, after which will move to the pockets of spaces at the Greenbelt Park in Manila.
via Manila Bulletin
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | Exhibitions | Showcase
Landslide 2008: Marvels of Modernism
“Marvels of Modernism” at The Andy Warhol Museum celebrates landscape architects’ “experimental and innovative” public and private spaces that, until recently, “have been misunderstood and under appreciated.”
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Five Ways to Change the World
Jonathan Massey from the Design Observer Group takes us through 5 different cases in American history that purportedly demonstrates architecture’s ability to change the world, including MoMA’s P.S.1 parties, that enable scenarios which in daily life would not present themselves; and Rudolph Schindler’s houses in California that can put forward new ways to go about living.
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | News
A blend of traditional and contemporary
Edwin Heathcote, for FT.com – Qatar has seemed determined to provide a counterbalance to the turbo-charged skyline of Dubai which, before it fizzled out into a prickly line of unfinished skyscrapers, had overshadowed the whole Gulf. Recent headlines have been dominated by Qatar’s foreign investments, most notably in London’s property markets where the city’s three most visible and occasionally controversial schemes, the Shard, Chelsea Barracks and One Hyde Park, have been Qatari-backed.
At home, however, instead of allowing the country’s development to be driven solely by developers and the rental investment market, Qatar has led with ideas and culture. The opening of the Museum of Islamic Art, a commission that drew veteran architect IM Pei out of retirement to create his finest building for decades, began to awaken a realisation that Qatar was searching for something different from the superficial flash of the Emirates.
more via FT.com
November 26, 2009 | Broadcast | Competitions | News
4 individuals, 7 projects win President’s Design Awards
This year's recipients are (clockwise from top left) Tham Khai Meng, Look Boon Gee, Koichiro Ikebuchi, and Chris Lee. -- PHOTOS: OGILVY & MATHER, PRESIDENT'S DESIGN AWARD
SINGAPORE: President S R Nathan gave out the annual awards – aimed at encouraging the local design industry to raise the bar in areas such as architecture and product design – at the Istana on Thursday evening.
The four winners of the Designer of the Year award are Koichiro Ikebuchi, director of Atelier Ikebuchi; Chris Lee, founder and creative director of Asylum Creative; Look Boon Gee, managing director of LOOK Architects; and Tham Khai Meng, worldwide creative director of Ogilvy and Mather.
Architect Look Boon Gee‘s win sees him finally get some much-deserved public recognition for some good work done over the past few years, including the recent Henderson Waves bridge, which has been featured in international journals including the likes of Architectural Record. Also earning accolades was The Asylum‘s Chris Lee, for the firm’s hand in a great many interior design projects that have raised more than a few eyebrows.
One thing that has to be brought up though, are the few statements by the DesignSingapore Council that border on the vague:
“In the last decade, you can see the flair of a more varied, diverse environment – day and night, city and countryside – is now starting to emerge, including the creation of this bridge.”
“The DesignSingapore Council said this year’s winners reflect an increased vibrancy in the design sector.”
What do these cryptic statements mean? Is there a real countryside in Singapore? What is vibrancy anyway? Instead of just mouthing off a few obligatory words to the press, it would help the Council and the curious public, to be more specific and, as one might be inclined to say, earnest with their comments.
November 12, 2009 | Broadcast | News
Whither Korea’s bid to build a world-class city entirely from scratch?
Take a man-made island, roughly the size of London’s Hampstead Heath. Fill it with state-of-the-art schools, hospitals, apartments, office buildings and high-end cultural amenities. Import architectural features from around the world, including New York’s Central Park and Venice’s canals, make English the lingua franca, and hang a sign at the gates that says: “Open for business.”
Built on 1,500 acres of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea off Incheon, about 35 miles West of the South’s capital Seoul, New Songdo City is billed as the largest private real-estate development in history – Korea’s answer to Shanghai and Dubai. Five years ago it barely even existed on a map…
via David McNeill at The Asia-Pacific Journal on JapanFocus
November 12, 2009 | Broadcast | Events | News
Sejima to direct Venice Biennale
by William Menking – The president of the Venice Biennale, Paola Barrata, announced this morning that the director of the 12th International Architecture Exhibition will be Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA Architects. Last week, we reported rumors that the next director was going to be a woman—a first for this most important of international contemporary architecture expositions. The names most frequently bandied about for this major job were Sejima and Liz Diller.
In a formal statement, Sejima said, “The biennale has to be everything and all encompassing, a steady conversation with people who are doing things and the viewer or public who see what they are doing.” The 2008 Architecture Biennale was directed by Aaron Betsky whose selection was announced only in January of that year. In picking Sejima, the Biennale has chosen a practicing architect for the first time since Massimiliano Fuksas in 2000. The Biennale has also announced that the exhibition will open on August 29 (with previews starting on August 26) and run through November 21. Traditionally, the Biennale opening date has been mid September; an earlier date should allow many more people to attend the event.
In addition, a reader provides an excerpt from Sejima herself on The Architect’s Newspaper about what the next VBiennale should be, here’s a sampling:
inside and outside
individual and public
program and form (form and function)
physical and virtual
contemporary and classical
past and future
harmony and discord
structure partition
art and architecture
nature and man
via The Architect’s Newspaper
November 7, 2009 | Features | Reviews | books
Book Review: City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong
by Non Arkaraprasertkul
Harris Manchester College & The Oriental Institute
The University of Oxford
non.arkaraprasertkul@orinst.ox.ac.uk
–
Having for some time been a fan of Professor Leo Ou-Fan Lee’s Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, I did not hesitate to grab Lee’s newest book City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong from the shelves during my last visit to Hong Kong. Like other urbanists, I savor the study of Hong Kong with alacrity. Though I must admit I have never been very clear about what Hong Kong is all about. To me, Hong Kong is a city of hyper-industriousness, located in the point of transition between two political realms, which survives for the sake of China’s financial enterprise. The culture of the place remains intact despite the shifting global economy (and, of course, global economic downturn). Don’t be frightened: it is my intention to obfuscate the previous sentence with conflicted ideas. The sentence, in fact, is intentionally written to represent my confusing perceptions of Hong Kong. Quite simply Lee defines the place as such: “a city of confusion and contradiction.” For some time, in this city of mainly Chinese residents that had been foreshadowed by the colonialist enterprise for almost a hundred years, the use of a question of history – is Hong Kong Chinese? – is the principal manner by which scholars analyze Hong Kong.
November 7, 2009 | Broadcast | News
NOTA: not a story
NOT A STORY is a boxset of 4 books about NOTA Group, a Singapore-bred multi disciplinary design group, documenting their master planning, architecture & interior design projects. With its head office in Singapore, NOTA group is also established in Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and China. The 542 page book tells the story of NOTA and 135 of their projects.
Habitat for Humanity Singapore is the adopted charity for the book.
RRP: SGD$53.50
visit official website for more details
November 7, 2009 | Broadcast | Competitions | Showcase
South African Interpretation Centre wins World Building of the Year at World Architecture Festival Awards 2009
Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa, designed by Peter Rich Architects of Johannesburg, has won global architecture’s most coveted accolade of World Building of the Year at the prestigious World Architecture Festival Awards (WAF Awards) 2009.
The presentation took place during a special awards ceremony, which marked the conclusion of global architecture summit the World Architecture Festival, at the Centre Convencions International Barcelona (CCIB) on 6th November.
Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, which is situated at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, is designed to house artifacts from the region’s prehistory. The project is underpinned by a strong social programme, using the skills and labour of local people and involving them in the design and construction process. Judges praised the project for its roughness and hand-crafted intelligence. They also admired the way in which it handled issues of sustainability and its relationship to the landscape.
The WAF Awards form the biggest architectural awards programme in the world and are designed to celebrate and showcase the work of the international architectural community. The WAF Awards are unique in that they involve shortlisted architects presenting their projects live to more than 1,500 delegates, distinguished architects and renowned industry experts during World Architecture Festival between the 4th and 6th of November.
Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre was selected from a total of 15 finalists, by a ‘super-jury’ chaired by Raphael Viñoly of Rafael Viñoly Architects PC, which included Kengo Kuma, Farshid Moussavi, Suha Ozkan and Matthias Sauerbruch. The finalists were whittled down from a shortlist of over 270 projects.
Speaking at the WAF Awards Paul Finch, WAF programme director and editor of Architectural Review, said: “The super-jury faced a tough challenge to choose a winner from such a strong list of finalists. Yet again we received a huge response to these fiercely contested Awards, with 272 projects shortlisted from a 67 different countries. The wide geographical range and quality of this year’s designs were exceptionally high and offers a real insight into the current condition and diversity of global architecture. Our congratulations go to Peter Rich Architects who thoroughly deserve to receive world architecture’s highest accolade.”
Collecting the World Building of the Year Award, Peter Rich said: “I will continue my quest to be of service to the less privileged, because they deserve it.”
Commenting that his next project would be in Ethiopia, Rich added: “I’m going to continue the good fight and take it to the world.”
This is the 2nd year the World Architecture Festival Awards have been presented. Last year’s overall winner of World Building of the Year 2008 was Luigi Bocconi University, Milan, designed by Irish practice Grafton Architects. The Awards look beyond borders to celebrate the finest work from the world’s greatest architects.
In addition to the 15 categories in the World Building of the Year, for buildings completed in the last year, this year’s Awards feature three new sections – Interiors and Fit-Out, Structural Design and Future Projects, which celebrates excellence in design for projects still on the drawing board.
The World Structural Design of the Year Award went to upi-2m for Arena Zagreb in Croatia, the World Future Project of the Year Award was given to Miralles Tagliabue Embt for the Spanish Pavilion for 2010 Expo Shanghai and the World Interiors & Fit Out of the Year Award was won by Amanda Levete Architects for the Corian Super-Surfaces Showroom.
November 7, 2009 | Broadcast | Competitions
The MET by WOHA wins at World Architecture Festival
Singapore based WOHA’s latest completed high-rise residential tower, The Met in the heart of downtown Bangkok Thailand, towers over its competition by emerging victorious in the Housing category at the ongoing World Architecture Festival in Barcelona, Spain.
The design of the 66-storey tower is an innovative solution to the issues of density in tropical Asian cities, and offers a new model for high-density tropical housing. The Met explores how aspects of low-rise tropical housing can be adapted to provide vast amenities through indoor-outdoor spaces in the sky. The jurors presiding in the Housing category were on the lookout for an exemplary building for other architects and specialists in residential developments. In their selection of The Met as the winner, the jurors felt that the high-rise tower brought the sharpest and most detailed realised concept, and that has great potential for the future.
“The Met by WOHA is an excellent attempt to open a skyscraper to the city and to allow its inhabitants to use
the building as much as possible. A system of pass ways, sky-parks and swimming pools on upper levels forms a real vertical analogue of the city and creates a new quality of living.The wide use of greenery almost as an additional facade material is also an effective way to unite horizontal dimensions of the city with the verticality. The use of passive ways to save energy is also an important aspect of this project.” – jury citation
WOHA is the only asia-based architecture firm to win an award at World Architecture Festival 2009. For more winners, stay tuned for the full post coming up shortly.
More:
Official WOHA website
November 5, 2009 | Broadcast | News
NY firm Perkins Eastman Hired to Master Plan “China Vegas”
China Holdings, Inc. (Pink Sheets: CHHL), an asset holding company engaged in land and real estate development in China, announced today that the Company has contracted award-winning planning and architecture firm Perkins Eastman, the largest firm in New York and the one of the 15th largest architect firms in the world, to provide planning and architectural services to the Master Planning of 100 sq km land for “China Vegas – A New World Resort City” in Inner Mongolia, in the People’s Republic of China.
“China Vegas – The New World Resort City” will incorporate:
Commercial buildings, office buildings, residential development, shopping centers, casinos, golf courses as well as horse racing facilities and recreation and entertainment facilities. The entertainment destinations, including: Five-star hotels, Themed casinos, Pedestrian skyways linking hotels to casinos, Boutiques, Restaurants. Theatrical destinations, including: Broadway-style musical theater, Las Vegas-style floor shows, Traditional Chinese theater, International and Chinese movie premiers. The sports destinations, including: Golf courses with a clubhouse and golf academy and bordered by 250m2 to 500m2 villas, Exhibition hall, Stadiums suitable for Olympic events, Tennis courts, Equestrian center, Car and motorcycle racing, Horse race track.
