Archinect - News

Marina Otero is announced as the 2022 Wheelwright Prize winner

2022-06-13T13:47:00-04:00

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced Design Academy Eindhoven program head Marina Otero as the winner of this year’s $100,000 Wheelwright Prize in support of her research proposal titled ‘Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse.’

Through the grant, Otero will look to explore the new architectural paradigms of data stores while considering the potential of digital infrastructure to combat some of society’s most pressing and immediate challenges. She has already begun fieldwork in France, the Netherlands and UK, and will further expand her research to include Singapore, Australia, Nigeria, the U.S., Iceland, Sweden, and Chile as a result of the prize's newly-gained backing.

"Data centers might not seem like an exciting place for an architectural project," the first-place winner explained. "However, the huge scale of the operations of the data industry and its pervasiveness and increasing importance in the contemporary world–coupled with its openness to...

MVRDV's vibrant new Rotterdam Rooftop Walk is officially open. See the first photos here.

2022-05-27T13:13:00-04:00

MVRDV’s latest public installation is underway as Rotterdam Rooftop Walk officially commenced on Thursday, Ascension Day, in the nation’s second-largest city.

Image © Ossip van Duivenbode/MVRDV

The installation is conceived of as the studio’s decades-long experimentation with urban rooftop space and commemorating the start of Rotterdam Architecture Month, the 600-meter-long (1,968 feet) bright orange walkway made its debut for the press ahead of a public unveiling of the adjacent viewing platform called The Podium scheduled for June 1st.

Image courtesy MVRDV

Located on the pergola of the Het Nieuwe Instituut space designed by Jo Coenen in the city’s Museumpark district, the installation is first accessed via a set of 143 bright pink stairs and serves as a showcase for the coterie of creative professionals displaying the capacity for such spaces to be used for greenery, water storage, food production, and energy generation.

Image © Ossip van Dui...

MVRDV's The Podium at Het Nieuwe Instituut seeks to showcase the role rooftops can play in urban design

2022-03-01T19:13:00-05:00

Expanding on its long and studied history of demonstrating the capacity for rooftop spaces to produce a better urban environment, MVRDV has now revealed plans for a bright, new, temporary event space on top of the Jo Coenen-designed Het Nieuwe Instituut that will serve as the heart and arteries of Rotterdam’s Rooftop Walk and Architecture Month this summer.

For a little over ten weeks, the 600-square-meter space can be accessed via a 143-step staircase leading into an elevated viewing platform on the pergola of the Instituut and is meant to engage visitors with an informative view of the neighboring Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen and Museumpark in addition to its built-in program of creative inspiration.

Image © MVRDV

Rising to a height of 29 meters (95 feet), the temporary platform is meant to highlight the city's rooftops' amazing potential to reduce the sprawl as it provides Rotterdammers with the ability to pursue a host of green activities ranging from energy product...

Curator and writer Aric Chen is Het Nieuwe Instituut's new General and Artistic Director

2021-04-09T15:16:00-04:00

The Rotterdam-based institute of architecture, design, and culture Het Nieuwe Instituut ("The New Institute") announces Aric Chen as its new General and Artistic Director. Currently, Chen is based in Shanghai as the professor and founding Director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University. He will be moving to Rotterdam to begin his position full-time in September 2021 but will assume his new role remotely starting in May.

Aric Chen was born and raised in Chicago, IL before his curatorial practices took him around the globe. He is currently based in Shanghai, CN. Chen received his BA in Architecture and BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and received an MA in History of Decorative Arts and Design from Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Parsons School of Design. Image © Yoha Jin

During his time as the Lead Curator for Design and Architecture at M+ Chen curated Shifting Objectives which was on display in from ...