Archinect - News

A flexible Japanese nursery school that functions like a village

2023-06-07T15:12:00-04:00

Takeru Shoji Architects has designed a nursery school in Niigata, Japan, that forms a seamless connection between its rooms, the building, and the surrounding area. Called The Center for Early Childhood Education and Care, the school is dedicated to the principles of engaging “naturally with nature.”

Image © Koji Fujii (toreal)

The single-story wooden building was designed to establish a mutual relationship between it and the surrounding village, in which the village is involved in the children’s learning and play, and the nursery functions to revitalize the village.

Image © Koji Fujii (toreal)

A series of workshops, including childcare researchers and workers, parents, and local residents, was conducted to discuss the potential of hosting a school that would serve an area with an aging population and declining birthrate. The participants decided on a vision to create the nursery school to work like a village and for the village to function like a nursery ...

Tosin Oshinowo-designed village reconstruction completes first phase in conflict-torn northern Nigeria

2022-11-03T15:43:00-04:00

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has released images of its just-completed first phase of the Tosin Oshinowo-designed Ngarannam village reconstruction project in Northeast Nigeria.

The project to resettle villagers displaced by Boko Haram was begun last year as part of the UNDP’s Regional Stabilisation Facility Initiative, which will rebuild a total of six communities in three of the country’s northeastern states profoundly affected by conflicts with the insurgent group in order to "quickly mend trust between the people and government."

Image courtesy UNDP/Tolulope Sanusi

The new Ngarannam village includes a total of 564 units of housing, a primary school, police station, community health center, shaded market, security forces barracks, government offices, and 16 small shops. Additional defensive trenches were enacted around the perimeter of the site to provide extra security in the case of emergency, and another 240 housing units wil...

VeloCity win The Cambridge to Oxford Connection: Ideas Competition.

2017-12-12T05:45:00-05:00

Winning “The Cambridge to Oxford Connection: Ideas Competition” is the all-women team behind VeloCity. The competition is focused on the Cambridge – Milton Keynes – Oxford arc, which currently is home to leading tech hubs and universities, as well as some 3.3 million people. The area is set to build on its productive history and its skilled workforce to become an area of rich success.

The VeloCity plan is commended for its reimagining of the village model, and its consideration of technology and modern needs in adapting this social structure for the 21st century. Using transport as an impetus for developing the plan, the scheme will benefit from the introduction of a new rail system for the area, which will connect towns and cities. On the smaller scale, the development will put in place a strategical network of pedestrian and cycle routes, which explore and encourage the decreased need for movements by car.

VeloCity clusters around six villages close to a new Oxford-Cambridge...

Javier Senosiain's low-income "bio-architecture" housing proposal

2016-10-18T14:26:00-04:00

Forming a closer, more harmonious bond between humanity and nature is the underlying goal of Javier Senosiain's organic or so-called "bio-architecture." His buildings often take the shape of organic forms--in one case, mythic serpent Quetzalcoatl--while simultaneously harvesting rainwater and providing natural shade and ventilation, among other attributes. The Mexican architect and professor at UNAM has a retrospective exhibition at The Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City displaying his buildings, including a proposed low-income housing complex which breaks away from the cram'em'in monolithic housing milleu and instead creates a walkable, livable village. Check out this CCTV-America video profiling Senosiain and his work:

Could a pop-up village in south-east London be the answer to the city's housing crisis?

2016-03-22T04:50:00-04:00

Rapidly rising property prices and rents, combined with the loss of social housing through right to buy, have put councils under growing pressure to find new ways to help people off their housing lists. In Lewisham one solution is a £4.3m scheme to provide 24 homes and 880 sq m of business space that can be picked up and moved at a later date, allowing the council to make use of vacant brownfield land while longer-term projects are finalised.

Seattle builds village for the homeless

2016-01-21T12:54:00-05:00

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, volunteers put the finishing touches on small houses with the kind of basic amenities you don't see in Seattle homeless camps. "The difference is you have electricity and a lock on the door," said Steve Tucker, a member of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, which is hosting what organizers are calling Seattle's first tiny house village.

Seattle joins several other pioneering cities and states across the U.S. that have chosen to provide housing for the chronically homeless. These programs have shown that the housing actually saves governments money and eventually reduces the overall rate of transient recidivism. Here's a sampling of our coverage:

The Other Disney World: A Creepy, Empty Village

2012-07-26T17:23:00-04:00

Outside of Paris lies a “Truman Show like über-replica of a French village from the last century, which seems to have sprung up overnight.”