Unveiled> A BIG Glassy Box for Paris, Sort Of
BIG's design for the University of Jussieu in Paris. (Courtesy BIG)
In Bjarke Ingels‘ traditional style, what started as a standard box of a building for Paris’ Université Pierre et Marie Curie has been lifted, bent, and deformed to maximize light, sight lines, and air flow for a cramped urban site. Ingels’ firm BIG and Paris-based OFF recently won won a competition to design the new multidisciplinary research center called Paris PARC to reunite the university’s campus with the surrounding city including Jean Nouvel’s adjacent Institut du Monde Arabe and the nearby Notre Dame Cathedral.
Unveiled> Angkasa Raya Tower in Kuala Lumpur
The Angkasa Raya tower proposed for Kuala Lumpur. (Courtesy Buro OS)
Ole Scheeren, a former partner at Rem Koolhaas’ OMA who broke away to start his own firm (Buro OS) in March 2010, has unveiled his latest project in Kuala Lumpur: an 880-foot-tall mixed-use tower called the Angkasa Raya. Adjacent to Cesar Pelli’s Petronas Twin Towers, once the world’s tallest, Scheeren’s new 65-story project progresses a skyscraper typology of stacked volumes made popular at OMA.
Video> It’s 11:11 on 11/11/11
By our watch here at The Architect’s Newspaper HQ, it’s 11:11:11 a.m. on 11/11/11. We’re pretty excited that the date and time looks a little like a miniature Manhattan skyline! Continuing on our theme of absurdity (previously, architectural models), check out this delightful video put together by the New York-based Koren Ensemble to commemorate this special day. Some say so many 11′s is certainly a lucky event, so be sure to make a wish when the clock strikes 11:11 the second time around.
Pictorial> Models Capture the Surreal and Absurd
Tennis half-pipe. (Courtesy Frank Kunert)
German photographer Frank Kunert is out to challenge your sense of perception and expectation with his meticulously crafted and hilariously absurd miniature scenes. His series “Photographs of Small Worlds” presents glimpses into mundane vignettes gone awry, where doors don’t meet balconies, diving boards lead to giant toilets, or an office is eerily underwater. Each model takes weeks—and sometimes months—to build, and Kunert is a perfectionist who won’t stop until every detail is just right. The end result is well worth the wait.
The World’s Best Tall Building Doesn’t Have to be the Tallest
KfW Westarkade in Frankfurt, Germany. (Spiegelneuronen / Flickr)
The Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) sought out a deep understanding of sustainability and contextualization in selecting the Best Tall Building of 2011. This year’s worldwide winner, while hardly as tall as last year’s winning Burj Khalifa, went to the KfW Westarkade tower in Frankfurt Germany. The 184-foot-tall tower is projected to use half as much energy as a typical European office building and only a third the energy of a standard U.S. building. The 10th-annual awards ceremony took place November 3 at a distinctly horizontal building in Chicago, Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall.
The WAF Winner Is
Marlon Blackwell's Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Arkansas
The World Architecture Festival is wrapping up its fourth iteration and AN has been there since the beginning as official United States media sponsor. We have seen it grow from a small mostly British bash in Barcelona to a truly international competition and trade show with over 1,400 participants from 68 countries. One of the functions of our participation is that I serve as official judge in one of the event’s 15 short-listed categories for best built project (plus there are ten categories for unrealized projects). This year I served with Michigan University’s architecture dean Monica Ponce de Leon and Barcelona architect Fermin Vazquez as jurors in the Civic and Community group. We were asked to select the best of show in the category with the winner going on to the final round where it is considered by a super jury including Michael Sorkin, Jo Noera, Odile Decq (who sadly was stuck in China) and engineer wizard Tim Macfarlane.
Zombie Apocalypse Now: Voting Ends on Halloween
There's No Need To Run. (Courtesy Zombie Safe House)
It’s going to happen when you least suspect it: the zombie apocalypse will be upon us and your life will be in your own hands against the living dead (that’s assuming hours behind a studio desk hasn’t already transformed you into a zombie yourself). Luckily, as architecture-types, we possess special skills needed to defend ourselves from those out for our brains. A fantastic display of anti-zombie ingenuity is on display at the 2011 Zombie Safe House Competition, like the above proposal to retrofit existing urban buildings against a future zombie invasion (with a green roof, no less), and you can vote for your favorite. (Here’s last year’s winner: a floating dwelling sailing the Mighty Mississippi.) This year’s voting ends this Monday—Halloween—when you’ll likely encounter a few rogue zombies wandering the streets.
Pictorial> Virgin goes Galactic
The Virgin Galactic Spaceport by Foster + Partners. (Nigel Young / Foster+Partners)
A quick flashback: Back in 2005, Virgin Group’s latest venture, Virgin Galactic, and the State of New Mexico had announced that they had reached an “historic agreement”—that they would build a state-funded $200 million spaceport in New Mexico. Virgin planned to provide sub-orbital space flights to the paying public, along with sub-orbital space science missions and orbital launches of small satellites (and much later, even orbital human space-flights). The facility was to be designed by Foster + Partners, who won Virgin Galactic’s international architectural competition.
Now, the Virgin Galactic Spaceport America—the world’s first commercial spaceport—has officially launched. Aimed to “articulate the thrill of space travel for the first space tourists while making a minimal impact on the environment,” the spaceport is designed to resemble, when viewed from space, Virgin Galactic’s brand logo of the eye, with an elongated pupil–the elevated apron completes the iris. Check out the photos after the jump.
Dean’s List> ASLA Student Awards Reveal the Future of Landscape Architecture
Vegetation House by students from National Chiao Tung University. (Jheng-Ru Li and Chieh-Hsuan Hu)
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has announced the winners of its 2011 Student Awards. This year’s student honorees have developed concepts ranging from hillside habitats in Haiti, to vegetated houses in Taiwan, to a reclaimed airfield in Berlin. Entries demonstrate an idealistic and urgent approach to problem solving for today’s and tomorrow’s pressing social issues.
[ Also be sure to check out the winners of the ASLA 2011 Professional Awards. ]
SOM, with Kung Fu Panda, Wins Nanjing Waterfront Competition
(all images courtesy SOM/MIR Renderings)
Today, SOM announced it has been selected by Beijing-based MCCC Real Estate to redesign the Nanjing waterfront. The redevelopment will extend two-kilometers from the Yangtze River levee to the old city wall. The plan calls for renovating existing rail bridges and an old power station into new cultural and commercial spaces, preserving existing trees, and adding a hotel and other amenities along a renovated shipping canal. The plan also calls for remediating waterways for public access and recreation.
City in China Disappears Overnight
Chaohu city is officially canceled. (Courtesy anhuinews.com)
Chaohu city in China has been canceled. It wasn’t a small city. In fact the population of more than 4 million is comparable to Los Angeles, the Phoenix metro area, and the whole of South Carolina, but that is now irrelevant data, since Chaohu’s official city status was annihilated on August 22. Although buildings and inhabitants remain as proof of a once-coherent city plan and living organism, the land has since been divided into three parts and absorbed by its neighbors, Hefei, Wuhu and Ma’anshan.
“Irish Architecture Now” Looks for the Roots of Irish Identity
Grand Egyptian Museum by heneghan peng architects(Courtesy heneghan peng architects)
Ireland is known for lots of things, but contemporary architecture isn’t necessarily one of them. Irish Architecture Now, the first-ever showcase of Irish architecture to tour the U.S., aims to change that. Curated by Raymund Ryan, co-curator of the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Irish Architecture Now program features six of Ireland’s leading architecture practices and will travel to architectural schools and institutions to highlight top contemporary Irish architecture, which the organizers state, has “over the past two decades firmly established itself with flair on the European scene.”
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