‘Umbrella Facade’ for the Madrid Pavilion by 3Gatti

Posted on May 2, 2013

3Gatti Architecture Studio will add a facade of opening and closing steel umbrellas to Foreign Office Architects’ Madrid Pavilion from the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

The new cladding will replace bamboo louvres that currently surround the glazed walls of the building, which was originally designed by the former London studio to accommodate an exhibition about low-cost housing for the six-month-long world fair.

The pavilion was converted into a retail and office complex once the Expo was over, but two years on the bamboo had started to rot and the steel frames were showing signs of rust, so the owners asked 3Gatti Architecture Studio of Rome and Shanghai to come up with a new design. Continue Reading →

MVRDV Start Construction of Business District at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport

Posted on April 26, 2013

Central-Business-District-at-Shanghai-Hongqiao-Airport-by-MVRDV-with-Aedas_ss_1

Sincere Property, MVRDV and Aedas have started construction on a Central Business District at Shanghai’s mostly domestic airport Hongqiao. The 4.5ha site is located near Hongqiao Airport train station at the corner of Shenhai Express Way and Shenbin Road. The plan comprises ten office towers, an underground shopping centre, cultural program, parking and a sunken plaza which will bring a more intimate form of urban life into an area currently dominated by large boulevards and urban expressway’s. The project’s completion is planned for 2015. Continue Reading →

BIG’s Winning Entry for ‘EuropaCity’ just Outside of Paris

Posted on April 19, 2013

Danish firm BIG has won an international design competition for a new green-roofed city, currently in the works for the suburbs of Paris. ‘EuropaCity‘ is a massive sustainable project topped off with a huge park that will combine the urban density of Paris with the bucolic setting of the suburbs. Intimate streets, connections to the metro, trains and adjacent highways as well as a connection to farmland will differentiate this master-planned city. It will combine all the convenient amenities of living in a city (like shops, offices, culture and activities) with the healthy qualities of living in the country. Continue Reading →

ksestudio’s Honorable Mention Entry for Flat Lot Competition

Posted on April 17, 2013

The Flint AIA chapter and Flint Public Art Project have unveiled the winner of the first annual Flat Lot Competition, an initiative to design and build a temporary summer pavilion in the central parking lot in downtown Flint, Michigan. The jury chose ‘Two Islands’, a London-based team of architects and designers, the receive the $25,000 grand prize for their proposal ‘Mark’s House.’ The project opens June 14 for Flint Art Walk and will remain on the site until Fall.

The project shown above is one of the competition’s three honorable mentions, the entry ‘Stage a Lot‘ by Brooklyn-based architects ksestudio. Continue Reading →

River District Architecture in Chicago

Posted on April 8, 2013

Chicago

In the upcoming years, residents of Chicago have a lot to look forward to when it comes to new architectural projects. None of these projects are quite as auspicious, however, as the new office building to be located in the Fulton River District.

This particular project is a few years in the making as it first went to the city’s Plan Commission quite a while ago before they said that they didn’t think the building would be needed.  Not to be deterred, the developers scaled back more than five floors from the top and cut out the adjacent hotel that they had planned to build, finally gaining the city’s approval. Continue Reading →

‘Australia 108′: The Tallest Building in Southern Hemisphere

Posted on March 25, 2013

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A 388-metre-high hotel and apartment building, which will be the tallest building in the southern hemisphere when completed, has been approved by planners in Melbourne, Australia.

The government of Victoria last week gave the go-ahead for ‘Australia 108′, designed by local architects Fender Katsaladis for a location in the Southbank area just a few streets away from another of its skyscrapers, the 297-metre-high ‘Eureka Tower’. Continue Reading →

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects’s Helsingborg Hospital Extension

Posted on March 23, 2013

Located in the southern part of Sweden, the competition to design the 35,000 square metre extension to the Helsingborg Hospital has just been won by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects. In cooperation with Aarhus Arkitekterne, NNE Pharmaplan and landscape architects Kragh & Berglund, the key to the whole design has been flexibility, a clear layout, variety, human scale, green courtyards and optimal conditions for daylight.

The extension will include a new ward for adult psychiatry, an out-patient clinic and medical laboratories. More images and architects’ description after the break. Continue Reading →

‘The Twist’: A Tokyo Olympic Stadium Competition Entry

Posted on March 22, 2013

Designed as not only a sports stadium, but as a city fragment, the design by MenoMenoPiu Architects + FHF Architectes is an attractor: innovative and a generator of vitality. Given the name The Twist, their proposal for the Tokyo Olympic Stadium is expanding in order to better reach users’ requirements: proximity, diversity, and accessibility.

Their conept, unlike other conventional stadiums, is an elliptical spiral which is gradually unrolling and forming.

Continue Reading →