Archinect - News

Studio Gang to lead Denver's Civic Center Next 100 Phase 1 implementation

2023-11-01T11:56:00-04:00

Studio Gang has been selected to lead the Phase 1 Implementation of Denver’s Civic Center Next 100 revitalization plan targeted at its Greek Theater and Central Promenade along 14th Avenue.

The firm received a $2.8 million design contract for the project and was chosen based on an approach that was “rooted in a community-centered process [and] respects the historic aspects of the park while bringing innovative architectural design,” according to a press announcement.

The project is being delivered with extensive community and stakeholder engagement. The Concept Design also calls for improvements to the Central Gathering Space and Bannock Street between Colfax Avenue and 14th Avenue. Denver’s Mayor Mike Johnston said it will prepare the space for “the next 100 years.”

“We are looking forward to working closely with the city, the conservancy, and the communities of Denver on the design for Civic Center that extends its democratic legacy and invites everyone to come together around per...

Arup’s VR95 experience tool offers the vantage point of small children for urban planners

2023-04-29T08:00:00-04:00

An immersive new VR experience tool developed by Arup called VR95 is helping architects and urban designers immerse themselves in the unique perspective of children in the hopes of creating a better environment for them to dwell in.

Arup feels this is an important venture as nearly 70% of the world’s population is expected to inhabit cities by mid-century. In order to prepare, they reached out to the Bernard Van Leer Foundation for help developing an experience that gives users a sense of the world at only 95 centimeters (or a little over three feet) tall.

According to the creators of the tool, it aims to "raise awareness about some of the common challenges currently faced by young children in cities around the world, and encourage decision-makers and thought leaders into thinking from the perspective of a 3-year-old."

Related Feature on Archinect: How Digital Spaces Can Shape Cities as We Exit the Pandemic

It is included as part of the Proximity of Care Design Guide, a tool that ap...

Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Moscow park sparks wild urbanism on another level

2018-08-24T13:58:00-04:00

As Moscow’s Zaryadye Park approaches its first birthday next month, the city’s chief architect, Sergei Kuznetsov, is defending the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed green space for an unexpected feature: its aphrodisiacal properties. Just a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, the firm’s carefully crafted experiment in “wild urbanism” has lived up to its billing, apparently, becoming something of a hotbed for outdoor lovemaking.

Moscow's one year old $245 million public park by Diller Scofidio + Renfro was meant to bring freedom of exploration and a feeling of comfort within the urban setting. The space provides visitors with an amphitheater, flora-covered terraces, green spaces with views of the city, and a 230 foot walkway over the Moscow river. The public space has also seen a high number of couples caught on park cameras having sex. "Wild urbanism" indeed.

Charles Renfro exclaims, “I love this! What freedom our park has brought to Moscow, and what tolerance it seems to be engendering from the authorities.”

A call to embrace automation in the job market with a collaborative vision

2018-07-18T17:17:00-04:00

This partnership between human and machine is what lies ahead as automation tools permeate our lives at a quickening pace. As many worry about the potential for robots to steal our jobs (or lead a violent overthrow of society), the reality may be more nuanced: They may end up being something more like creative collaborators [...] We must re-tool the workforce, be ever learning, and open to rapid change to reduce the negative impact.

Brooks Rainwater asserts urban spaces as the testing grounds for the impending automation revolution and asks whether this will simply eliminate jobs or create new, better ones. While job displacement estimations vary, there is no denying the tremendous impact emerging technologies will have on our future workforce. Rainwater empowers present decisions of embracing these inevitable changes through forming collaborative partnerships with automation.

Naoya Hatakeyama: The Photographer and Architecture

2018-04-03T15:34:00-04:00

Taking a photograph of architecture by using a camera is tantamount to placing a small architecture against another large architecture and having the small one swallow the larger one.

The Japanese word for buildings, tatemono, means “things that are standing.” On the occasion of a major career retrospective at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Naoya Hatakeyama considers the meaning and the practice of photographing the built environment, and the distinction between the architecture of standing things and lying things that can be made to stand up.

Artist Joshua Smith builds urban decay miniatures

2017-12-01T13:14:00-05:00

Australia-based artist Joshua Smith expresses his love of decrepit urban spaces by recreating them in 1:20 scale. Building all of his miniatures from scratch, Smith designs every element himself. The artist's work is built on his past experiences as a stencil artist and gallery director. Inspired by street art, graffiti, and old forgotten buildings, Smith is fascinated by the layers and history found within the dirt and grime of city spaces.

Pictured above is a recreation of 23 Temple Street, a building in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong, made by the artist for New York's VOLTA art fair. Smith's process starts with hours of searching on google street view for his next subject. Once his next project is underway, it can take months to finish a piece. The 23 Temple Street miniature took Smith three months of full time work to complete.

Scroll down and check out these mini architectural masterpieces.

'Big Bang Fireworks Company', based on 10 Pell Street in Chinatown NYC, by Joshua Smi...

Downtown Portland says hello to new student-designed public parklet

2015-07-09T15:01:00-04:00

The first public parklet in downtown Portland, the installation is intended to help revitalize this stretch of SW Fourth Avenue in the heart of the SoMa EcoDistrict (for “South of Market Street”), giving students, faculty, and workers from surrounding offices a place to sit and enjoy their food-cart lunches in the sunshine, rather than racing back to their desks to eat.

Downtown Portland is no stranger to green public spaces, but the recently opened Fourth Avenue Parklet has that ideal recipe for a do-good-feel-good collaborative project. Twenty-six architecture students from Portland State University spent 18 months to design and construct the parklet, which also crowdsourced $15,640 in cash and in-kind donations from the local community.

The new parklet flaunts 3,475 pounds of steel, 250 feet of repurposed escalator handrail, 768 linear feet of sustainably harvested juniper, and drought-resistant native plants. It was built as a complementary hangout spot for people to relax and enjoy their grub from the nearby diners and food-cart pod along SW Fourth Avenue in Portland's SoMa EcoDistrict.

Keep doing you, Portland.

Image via.

Mecanoo's newly opened Delft train station hall stays true to its city roots

2015-03-03T21:46:00-05:00

Six years after the project was first announced, Delft's new railway station hall opened its doors to the public this past Saturday. Designed by native Dutch firm Mecanoo, the new building purposefully nods to its cultural roots so that visitors arriving at the station will know from the get-go that they are in Delft indeed.

The station hall, which is the first phase of the development, is built above a new train tunnel that will replace an old 1965 concrete viaduct by 2017. Amsterdam/Aachen-based Benthem Crouwel, who worked on the Rotterdam Centraal Station, designed the station's below-ground platforms.

With Francesco Veenstra as design lead, Mecanoo focused on balancing Delft's rich history with its present and future for their design concept. As expected, the Delft Blue color scheme is rampant throughout the building's exterior and interior.

The building's outer fused-glass skin was designed to "reflect the Dutch skies" and features a lens-like sphere pattern that refers to a commo...

Submit your Vision42 entries to transform Manhattan's 42nd Street – Registration due September 8

2014-08-20T19:04:00-04:00

You don't have to be a New Yorker to submit design ideas for a river-to-river, auto-free light rail boulevard in Manhattan's iconic 42nd Street: Open to all architects, planners, and urban designers, the Vision42 design competition invites proposals from around the world to transform the street into a "world-class boulevard complete with a high-quality public spaces and a light-rail tram."

Registration ends September 8, 2014, and (digital) submissions for phase 1 are expected by October 1. And did we mention that $10,000 are waiting for the lucky winner as well as a feature in the Architect's Newspaper for the jury’s top selected projects? Well, there you go.

From the competition brief:

"The first phase of the competition will be entirely digital, permitting applicants to submit their entries electronically, greatly expanding opportunities for participation globally. Upon selection of finalists by the jury, those selected shall prepare and send boards for the exhibition to a designated...

Have a seat at the "Urban Reef" installation in downtown Vancouver, Canada

2014-08-12T18:52:00-04:00

Meandering down a section of Robson Street on the iconic 800 block in downtown Vancouver, passers-by can sit, relax, play, and socialize on the "Urban Reef" installation. Designed by Kaz Bremner and Jeremiah Deutscher with local furniture collective Higher Works, Urban Reef won the inaugural VIVA Vancouver: Robson Redux design-build competition out of 78 submissions worldwide.

The competition had entrants create a temporary urban installation to transform the block to a welcoming public plaza from Canada Day (July 1) until Labor Day (September 1).

More details on Bustler.

Check out a timelapse video and the making-of teaser below.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Vision42 is now accepting proposals to repurpose NYC’s iconic 42nd Street

2014-07-02T21:12:00-04:00

Vision42's Design International Competition is inviting architects, planners, and urban designers worldwide to send their ideas for a river-to-river and auto-free light rail boulevard in New York City's 42nd Street.

To address the iconic street's heavy traffic and noise, Vision42 set up the competition to garner interest in their initiative and potentially repurpose 42nd Street into a pedestrian-friendly urban space. From there, they hope the competition will serve as a 21st-century model for a live/work urban environment and transportation hub.

More details below:

The winning design will be one that utilizes the potential of the boulevard to inspire New Yorkers...

Results of the 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space

2014-05-08T13:37:00-04:00

The 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space adds a dose of reality to often romanticized European cities, showing that every city no matter where has its own set of pressing issues. The annual prize recognizes exemplary projects that have transformed and improved public spaces throughout the continent. Starting with a total of 274 projects from 30 European countries, the international jury selected 25 finalists, and finally two joint winners and four special mentions.

(Pictured above) JOINT WINNER: The Braided Valley, Elx, Spain - 2013
AUTHORS: Francisco Leiva Ivorra, Marta García Chico, Prócoro del Real Baeza

JOINT WINNER: Renovation of the Old Port, Marseille, France - 2013
AUTHORS: Michel Desvigne Paysagiste MDP, Foster + Partners, TANGRAM, INGEROP, AIK AIK

SPECIAL MENTION: Opening of Rainham Marshes, London, United Kingdom - 2014
AUTHORS: Peter Beard_LANDROOM | Peter Beard, Alexander Gore, Sabba Khan, Dingle Price, Gregory Ross, Mark Smith, Keita Tajima

SPECIAL MENTION: Islamic Cemetery, Altach, Austria - 2012
AUTHORS: Bernardo Bader Architects

SPECIAL MENTION: Baana: pedestrian and bicycle corridor, Helsinki, Finland 2012
AUTHORS: Helsinki City Planning Department, Helsinki Public Works Department, Loci Landscape Architects Ltd

SPECIAL MENTION: La Lira Theatre, Ripoll, Spain - 2012
AUTHORS: RCR Aranda Pigem Vilalta Arquitectes SLP, Joan Puigcorbé

More details on Bustler.

Check out videos of the jurors' comments on each project below.

...

Quadratic super-plaza Foundry Square near completion

2013-09-03T15:32:00-04:00

The Foundry Square, a four-part mixed-use complex in San Francisco's South of Market (SoMa) district, is currently in its final phase with the construction of Foundry III, which developer Tishman Speyer purchased in 2012. The target LEED Gold building will have 265,000 square feet of office space and 10,000 square feet for retail. Foundry III will be San Francisco's first new ground-up office building since pre-recession in 2007.

STUDIOS Architecture and SWA Group began designing the quadratic complex for the City of San Francisco/Wilson Equity Office over a decade ago--with the buildings numbered out of sequence as they were constructed one by one. The client's goal for the complex was to create an "active people-place" while providing ample office and retail space. Current tenants in the square include Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, BlackRock Inc., and Gymboree headquarters.

As its name states, each 10-story low-rise structure of the 1.25 million sq.foot complex o...

In cramped Hong Kong, a home under the bridge

2013-02-28T16:12:00-05:00

It is in empty spaces like [under Hong Kong's overpasses] that a group is campaigning for the government to build youth hostels, arts performance venues, offices for small- to mid-sized businesses and, most intriguingly, temporary housing. The group sees this unused land as an opportunity to alleviate Hong Kong’s problem of young people not being able to afford to rent in the world’s most expensive property market.

Endeavour's voyage into Los Angeles' public space

2012-10-16T12:46:00-04:00

In a city whose residents are accused of disdaining public space, the orbiter's tour led Angelenos to crowd sidewalks 10 or 12 deep as well as drawing thousands of people who live north of the 10 Freeway to boulevards south of it. It packed gas stations and strip-mall parking lots with crowds.