Archinect - News

Results of Denver’s Micro Housing Ideas Competition

2013-05-31T19:42:00-04:00

The Denver Architectural League recently announced the winners of their Micro Housing Ideas Competition as well as seven formal recognitions. Inspired by a concern about the lack of innovation in Denver's existing multi-family housing market where many banal apartment, townhome and condo complexes continue to be built, this competition offered designers an opportunity to engage in reinventing the notion of "responsible affordable housing" with an emphasis on regenerative design.

Winners of the 2013 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards

2013-05-16T17:16:00-04:00

Also announced this week were the three recipients of the 2013 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards, sponsored by the institute's Housing and Custom Residential Knowledge Community in conjunction with the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD).

Winners of the 2013 AIA Housing Awards

2013-05-16T14:41:00-04:00

Six residential projects have been selected as recipients of the 2013 AIA Housing Awards. The jury recognized projects in four award categories: One/Two Family Custom Housing, One/Two Family Production Housing (none selected this year), Multifamily Housing and Special Housing.

What's hot in housing trends these days?

2013-04-17T19:30:00-04:00

Housing starts in March rose to the highest level in five years. If developers keep building at that rate, there’d be one million new houses by the end of the year. So, what are builders building and what kind of homes do consumers want? The granite countertop of the new kitchen is like the leather interior of a new car -- a standard, special order must-have.

d3 HOUSING TOMORROW - The 2013 Competition Winners

2013-03-14T15:41:00-04:00

The winning entries of the 2013 Housing Tomorrow competition have just been announced, awarding three prizes and sixteen special mentions to design concepts that "explore, document, analyze, transform, and deploy socially‐ and environmentally‐engaged approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects." This year's first prize was presented to Die Hu, Boji Hu, and Yang Zhou for their extreme environments housing proposal, 'Life on the Ropeway.'

Finalists Announced for Breathe, The New Urban Village Project in New Zealand

2013-03-05T16:50:00-05:00

Four finalist entries have been unveiled in the Christchurch, New Zealand urban design competition, Breathe - The New Urban Village Project. The brief called for innovative medium-density housing development designs from collaborative groups containing a designer and a property developer.

POST+CAPITALIST CITY 3#Live - Winning Projects

2013-02-27T15:01:00-05:00

Just a few months ago, we had published the winners of episodes #1 Shop and #2 Work of the international ideas competition series, POST+CAPITALIST CITY. Here are now the three winning proposals of the third installment, #3 Live. The brief invited architects to imagine how a post+capitalist society could affect our daily lives and the way we envision housing.

If you are interested in participating in the most current competition cycle of POST+CAPITALIST CITY, #4 Move which launched last month, click here for more details. Submissions for #4 Move are due by April 15, 2013 (early birds registration: March 1, 2013), and the results will be announced in mid-May on Archinect & Bustler.

Cramped Hong Kong Apartments from Above

2013-02-25T16:53:00-05:00

The Chinese Society for Community Organization produced the vertigo inducing series of photographs as part of a campaign to raise awareness for this type of living. It reminds us a lot of Skott Chandler’s House Watch series and Michael H. Rohde’s From Below, both giving us a unique perspective of the rooms we live in. The series also harkens back to the extremely cramped (and now demolished) Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong’s past. In some ways, things haven’t changed.

Previously: 16-square-foot apartment is a vision of tiny housing taken too far

New York Mayor Bloomberg Announces Winner of adAPT NYC Micro-Unit Apartment Competition

2013-01-22T15:12:00-05:00

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, together with city officials, announced today the winner of the adAPT NYC Competition, a pilot program to develop a new housing model for the city’s growing small-household population [...]. The winning entry, ‘My Micro NY,’ was designed by a development team comprising Monadnock Development LLC, Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation, and nARCHITECTS.

OFIS Arhitekti Finish Basket Apartments in Paris

2012-10-09T19:17:00-04:00

Back in November 2008, we reported on Slovenian firm OFIS Arhitekti taking the first prize in the invited competition for a student apartment building in Paris' 19th district. The project has come together very nicely in the mean time, and we're excited to publish photos of the now completed Basket Apartments.

Compare the completed building with the competition renderings from 2008: OFIS Arhitekti Win Student Housing Competition in Paris

3rd Prize in Green City Graz Competition by CHYBIK+KRISTOF AA / BKK-3

2012-09-10T16:27:00-04:00

Czech architectural studio CHYBIK+KRISTOF ASSOCIATED ARCHITECTS has sent us images of the entry which won the team the Third Place in the international Green City Graz competition. Collaborating with Viennese office BKK-3, the architects participated in the architectural and urbanistic competition to project 700 apartments in the planned housing complex called Green City in Graz, Austria.

“Working with the 99%” Wins a Future Cities Prize in Venice

2012-08-31T19:13:00-04:00

Three winning projects were announced in the Future Cities, Planning for the 90 per cent competition: ateliermob (Portugal), Municipal Housing Secretariat of São Paulo (Brazil), and Interazioni Urbane (Italy). The projects are part of the exhibition Future Cities: Planning for the 90 per cent in Venice during the 13th Architecture Biennale. Ten projects were selected for the exhibition from more than 100 participants from several countries.

Portuguese practice ateliermob presents one of the three winning projects, "Working with the 99%," a case study of the progress and community work of Lisbon's self-built PRODAC neighborhood.

Click here to see more Archinect News posts related to the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

June U.S. housing starts up 6.9% to highest level in four years

2012-07-18T12:51:00-04:00

American builders last month began construction on the highest number of new homes since October 2008, with housing starts jumping 6.9% in another encouraging sign for the housing market.

Why Canada's houses are getting smaller

2012-07-17T12:09:00-04:00

The Milllennials, the generation born from 1983 onwards, enjoyed a childhood free of bunkbeds or even shared bathrooms. Growing up in plush megahomes undoubtedly helped them become, in the words of one author, “self-centred, needy, and entitled with unrealistic work expectations.” Oddly, it also spawned a group of people patently unimpressed with backyards and breakfast nooks.

Home truths: architects tackle the housing crisis

2012-07-12T19:41:00-04:00

As Britain's housing shortage deepens, we asked top architects for their solutions to the affordable living dilemma

UK's The Guardian taps Charles Holland from FAT architects, Glenn Howells of Glenn Howells Architects, Sarah Wigglesworth of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates: An Intimate History (Granta), Kevin McCloud, designer, presenter of TV's Grand Designs, and Dickon Robinson, Chairman of Living Architecture and Building Futures at RIBA, for some ideas.

Zaha Hadid says austerity is not an excuse for low-quality housing

2012-06-26T18:03:00-04:00

"I think that [austerity] is used as a cliche because people don't have ideas, they want to crib [old ones] to do bad stuff," she said, in a Q and A session with Guardian deputy editor Kath Viner. "Schools, housing, hospitals – I think the government should invest in good housing."

will the boomer's housing market go 'boom'?

2012-06-24T12:19:00-04:00

"Despite potential increases in new construction, most of the houses that seniors will release in coming years were built when energy was inexpensive, nuclear families were the rule, incomes were increasing for most Americans, and mortgages were generally predictable and easy to obtain. …the next 20 to 30 years to depart from this historic picture, with more expensive energy, growing diversity in race, ethnicity and in household structure, and more intense international economic competition."

the bipartisan policy center's look at the housing markets 20 years on. the upshot? there's a lot of boomer excess on the way, with no natural built-in market to absorb it. the fallout could affect everything from neighborhood infrastructure to inheritance patterns to social fabrics...

bracket [goes soft]: GROUNDING: Landslide Mitigation Housing

2012-04-18T13:41:00-04:00

In anticipation of this week's event, Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT], we are showcasing a piece from the book each day this week. We hope to see you this Thursday!

GROUNDING: Landslide Mitigation Housing
Jared Winchester / Viktor Ramos

“Landslides and other ‘ground failures’ cost more lives and money each year than all other natural disasters combined, and their incidence appears to be rising. Nevertheless, the government devotes few resources to their study — and the foolhardy continue to build and live in places likely to be consumed one day by avalanches of mud.”
- Brenda Bell, The Atlantic Monthly, (Jan. 1999)

Precarious relationships between human occupation and geophysical metamorphism are a common occurrence along coastal California and Los Angeles County in particular. The architecture of this region is a perpetual game of chance between tranquil domesticity and the danger of its tragic upheaval. To mitigate future catastrophic events, salvage currently unbu...

Gehry Luxury Tower Boasts Hong Kong’s Priciest View

2012-04-12T21:03:00-04:00

Built for Swire Properties Ltd. (962), the structure cost HK$27,000 ($3,477) per square foot to construct, including land premium. A standard high-rise apartment in the city can cost as little as $HK4,000 per square foot to build, according to Swire Chief Executive Officer Martin Cubbon. “Of course, it’s going to be enormously expensive by any standards,” says Cubbon. “In rental values and capital values, it’s going to command the highest numbers that Hong Kong has ever seen.”

Mies van der Rohe's Towers at Lafayette Park, Detroit

2012-04-05T19:47:00-04:00

In 2009 and 2010, we visited residents of Lafayette Park with photographer Corine Vermeulen while researching our forthcoming book Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies. Vermeulen’s portraits of townhouse owners in their homes appeared in the New York Times. Here we present the corollary to that series: tenants of the Pavilion and the Lafayette Towers in their apartments. Vermeulen’s portraits are accompanied by Lana Cavar’s photos of the views from each apartment window and by excerpts from interviews

LAN Architecture Completes 70° Sud Housing Project in Boulogne-Billancourt

2012-03-26T15:08:00-04:00

LAN Architecture recently completed 70° Sud, an apartment building in Boulogne-Billancourt, a western suburb of Paris. The project emerged as the winner of a competition back in 2008.

The Roots of Sprawl: Why We Don't Live Where We Work

2012-03-20T11:54:00-04:00

Los Angeles was one of the first large cities in the U.S. to adopt a kind of modern zoning to keep the industrial away from the residential. If the city would have more mixed use, with people living closer to retail and workplaces, Los Angeles would feel like another city, with less of its land area dedicated to low density, single family residential neighborhoods, and more streets with shops and businesses on the ground floor and homes above.

"The Laws That Shaped L.A." is a weekly series on LA-based radio station KCET, spotlighting regulations that have played a significant role in the development of contemporary Los Angeles. These laws - as nominated and explained each week by a locally-based expert - may be civil or criminal, and they may have been put into practice by city, county, state, federal or even international authority.

Housing with a Mission: Hallway House

2012-03-15T19:55:00-04:00

NL Architects have shared with us a new project "Hallway House". It has been conceived within the framework of a 'match making' program set up by the Dutch Architecture institute (NAi). The Dutch Architecture institute (NAi) together with Housing Corporation VANKE has organized a Sino-Dutch collaboration in social housing. Five Chinese (Urbanus, Standard, NODE, O-Office and CAFA University) and five Dutch architecture firms (NL Architects, Arons en Gelauff, NEXT, KCAP and BARCODE) have created new concepts for high-quality affordable housing on a site in Huilongguan, Beijing.

The exhibition ‘Housing with a Mission’ - was the contribution of the NAi and VANKE, Beijing to the Shenzhen Biennial and was awarded the 'Special Award'. Ole Bouman, director of the NAi will receive the prize in a ceremony Sunday the 18th.

To view the slideshow presentation of the project click here...

Hallway House ‘
Housing with a Mission’ - Affordable Housing for the Ants Tribe  NAi and VANKE, Huilong...

d3 HOUSING TOMORROW - The 2012 Competition Winners

2012-03-06T14:38:00-05:00

The winners of the 2012 Housing Tomorrow competition were just announced. The annual competition promotes the exploration of contextual, cultural, and life cycle flows that offer new housing strategies for living in the future. Sponsored by New York-based d3, the competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore innovative approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.

Bridge Urban Life Typology by FangCheng Architects

2012-02-24T14:22:00-05:00

Young Chinese firm FangCheng Architects has sent us their proposal Bridge Urban Life Typology, a city-wide network of bridge buildings which won the team the Second Prize at the 1.100.10000 Ideas Competition. The contest sought for innovative ideas to rapidly add 240,000 affordable housing units for more than 800,000 people in China's mega-boomtown Shenzhen.

Artist Damien Hirst's eco-homes vision to regenerate town is unveiled

2012-02-18T19:45:00-05:00

ARTIST Damien Hirst has unveiled plans to build more than 500 landmark eco-homes in Ilfracombe, which he hopes will regenerate the town and provide a national blueprint for environmental housing. Architects working for Hirst, said to be the richest living artist in the world, hope to submit a planning application for the development at Winsham Farm in six months.

Housing and the 99%

2012-02-14T21:07:00-05:00

How should the state pursue the goal of making decent housing affordable and accessible to all its citizens? How can we mobilize our collective resources in the service of social justice? In what other ways might we imagine living together? What is a house?

On Places, architectural historian Jonathan Massey puts Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percenters into the historical context of housing in America. Walking us from the 1920s to the present day, he explores how governmental and banking policies have worked to promote the ideal of home ownership — and lately to endanger it.

Building blocks to a new mass housing

2012-02-07T15:39:00-05:00

Goldhoorn’s concept, called Block City, proposes the introduction of a standard size urban block that — as with standard shoe sizing — won’t create standard architecture, but on the contrary, diversity. At the Jaroslav Fragner gallery in an exhibition bearing the concept’s name, Goldhoorn walks viewers through past and present mass housing to his future vision.

More info on the event page: Block City/ The Past, Present and Future of Mass housing

The exhibition is based on a fifteen-year research of Dutch architect Bart Goldhoorn into the possibilities of housing development in the future. His concept of the „Block City“ is a combination of analysed housing complexes of the 1960s and the 1970s as well as the contextual, individual, but also very expensive „Designer City“. Goldhoorn had the opportunity to test this concept in a new town for 40 000 inhabitants south of Moscow. The outcome of his endeavour are four master plans and 150 models of housing blocks created by architects from around the world which are part of a touring exhibition from 2011.
1/2 - 2/3/2012

Mateo Arquitectura Starts Construction of Andromède Housing Blocks in Toulouse

2012-01-26T14:58:00-05:00

Construction work will shortly begin of the Mateo Arquitectura-designed housing blocks in the Andromède district of Toulouse, France, near the airport of Toulouse-Blagnac.

JET, JCI, and Terraplan to Build Eco Community Development in Bangladesh

2012-01-09T18:22:00-05:00

The collaboration of three Toronto-based firms, JET Architecture, JCI Architects, and Terraplan Landscape Architects, has won the commission to build the "Shobuj Pata" (Green Leaf) Eco Community Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh.