Archinect - News

Notre Dame's restoration architect on the five-year path to reopening

2024-12-09T16:30:00-05:00

"That’s success,” Villeneuve said. "If I can make (cathedral visitors) doubt there was ever a fire, then I’ve erased the horror.”

The landmark reopened over the weekend to cap a headline-grabbing year for the French capital. Archinect has followed the process of recovery and restoration since the first reports of the fire broke on April 15th, 2019. Villeneuve told reporters: "This wasn’t about me, but I’ve left my mark in my own way." The $800 million restoration is not expected to be fully completed until late 2025 or 2026 to allow for the return of all prior public and liturgical activities.

Here's some highlights from the past few years:

New AIANY exhibition details how architecture has become a vital weapon in Ukraine’s fight to survive

2024-06-20T14:57:00-04:00

In the third year of this epochal war — which has destroyed some 210,000 buildings, according to a recent New York Times investigation — Russian forces continue to target civilian habitations in contravention of international law. When the city is a battleground, architecture becomes an act of defense and defiance.

Writing for the New York Times, critic Jason Farago deconstructs ‘Constructing Hope: Ukraine’ for its opening at the Center for Architecture. War always produces a kind of necessary architecture, but, he argues, the difference in this conflict is an all-hands (including busy techno djs) approach that has restored its reputation as well as a “common good” previously left behind in the country’s two-decade drive towards a “turbo capitalist” economy.

Curated by Ashley Bigham, Betty Roytburd, and Sasha Topolnytska, ‘Constructing Hope: Ukraine’ is open to the public now and will remain on view at the Center for Architecture’s 536 LaGuardia Place gallery in Manhattan until September 3rd.

Ukraine's rebuilding will be plagued by a lack of manpower, French architect warns

2024-06-15T08:37:00-04:00

In a new interview with France 24, France/Singapore-based architect Martin Duplantier explained the concerning lack of manpower that may imperil rebuilding efforts in Ukraine if and when the more than two-year-old conflict there comes to an end. Duplantier is involved in the preparatory reconstruction of Izium, where he says 80% of all buildings have been ‘damaged.’

As per the most recent World Economic Forum reports, the estimated cost of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and built environment is $486 billion. Between three and five million residents have reportedly vacated their homes as a result of the destruction as of January, according to Le Monde.

New U.N. report warns of potential decades-long rebuild for Gaza

2024-05-09T12:02:00-04:00

A new report on the socio-economic situation in Gaza from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has established a baseline for rebuilding as a cease-fire deal that would end the seven-month Israel-Hamas war continues to be up in the air. The findings lay out the most realistic timeline for recovery, which first requires an estimated 37 million tons of debris removal and the construction of temporary shelters for Palestinians who have lost more than 80,000 of their homes since the fighting began in October.

Israel will have to allow five times the volume of construction materials as it had after its two most recent incursions in order for Gazans to regain "normalcy" by 2040. The UNDP stated it would likely take another four decades to rebuild entirely, given the number of damaged residential structures. Around 25,000 buildings have been reported destroyed in Gaza, with 32 hospitals now knocked offline and another 100 schools or universities being completely destroyed, accordi...

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa architecture students use AI and 3D modeling to preserve Lahaina heritage structures lost in August wildfires

2024-03-29T12:51:00-04:00

A new course being taught to undergraduate students this semester at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture is helping preservationists on Maui document lost heritage structures using the same AI-augmented 3D modeling technology that was previously incorporated into the rebuilding of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Co-taught by Dean William Chapman, Associate Professor Hyoung-June Park, and visiting Assistant Professor Kyung Hoon Hyun of South Korea’s Hanyang University, ARCH 490: Rebuilding Lahaina in Mixed Reality offers students the chance to aid in the recovery efforts by creating digital versions of lost buildings such as the Baldwin House, Wo Hing Society Hall, and Old Lahaina Courthouse.

"We want students to expand their creativity to think of more than simply rebuilding what was destroyed, but also what they can do with this new 3D model that they created," Hyun explained to Hawaii Public Radio recently. "They can add values or communal experiences within ...

A Palestinian architect looks for a future in Gaza’s rubble

2024-02-05T11:47:00-05:00

Over 60% of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. But it's also the heritage, the culture, the collective memory. So it's important for us to rethink how to rebuild, how to accommodate one of the highest densely populated spots on Earth. Do we go vertical? Do we go horizontal? You've got an urban fabric. You've got a coastal fabric. You've got a rural fabric. Each one requires a different way of looking at it.

Yara Sharif is the London-based co-founder of the group Architects for Gaza. The Palestinian architect tells NPR the task now is to assemble a society literally of the rubble using the remnants of some 200,000 buildings that have been destroyed and in the most environmentally sensitive ways possible. A top-down solution that keeps Palestinians out of any post-war rebuilding process has been a growing concern for activists, who brought the issue to the International Court of Justice as part of South Africa's attempt to use it to stop the violence in December.

To date, the IDF’s military strategy has razed more than 70% of all residential structures, plus another 20 or so hospitals and approximately 350 schools. Its plan to establish a 23-square-mile "buffer zone" within the Gaza Strip's borders has become another recent point of contention (h/t LA Times).

UVA architecture students present ideas for rebuilding a war-torn Ukrainian city to the U.S. Department of State

2024-01-08T14:25:00-05:00

The culmination of the 2023 Fall semester at the University of Virginia saw a contingent of students from UVA’s School of Architecture travel to Washington, D.C., to discuss ideas for rebuilding the war-torn eastern Ukrainian city of Izium upon a special invite from the U.S. Department of State.

Together with Professor Suzanne Moomaw, the cohort of 23 students who participated in the school’s Ukraine Green Recovery Lab were delegated to the National Museum of American Diplomacy in order to present their research to State Department officials, other government representatives, and the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova.

Highlighting topography and other similarities between Izium and Charlottesville, the students presented six phases of a proposed redevelopment to those assembled. What they took away from it was a rewarding experience delivering findings that will, in turn, be presented to the people of Izium for feedback. All in attendance report to have en...

Foster + Partners, BIG attached to master plan rebuilding effort in Antakya, Turkey

2023-10-31T19:13:00-04:00

The master plan for a new rebuilding project in Turkey’s southeastern Hatay province has been revealed by Foster + Partners in association with the Türkiye Design Council (TDC) in response to the devastating 7.8 magnitude Turkey-Syria Earthquake which displaced thousands and destroyed a majority of structures in the region in early February.

The plan draws in BIG and twelve other local and international practices into a consortium that will together design a revitalization of the city of Antakya with sensitivity to preserving the “cultural heritage and identity” of the 2,300-year-old provincial capital known to antiquity as Antioch.

"Hatay has been destroyed by a major earthquake at least seven times in history — some experts suggest as many as 33. In February, 80% of the city was devastated, putting Hatay in a unique position. Its archaeological and religious mosaic features require special urban planning, which needs to be combined with the creation of self-sufficient, resilient s...

AECOM, Bechtel officially join reconstruction effort in Ukraine

2023-07-05T17:33:00-04:00

AECOM and Bechtel have both announced their involvement in the international effort to rebuild Ukraine following 15 months of a devastating war which had, by mid-spring, enacted more than $147.5 billion worth of damage to infrastructure across the country, according to estimates from the Kyiv School of Economics.

The moves were announced late last month in conjunction with the country’s Ministry for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development (AECOM) and the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure of Ukraine (AECOM and Bechtel), and will include the delivery of a “wide range” of reconstruction projects along with supportive technical expertise to the government and other private contractors.

Important cost estimation and other kinds of engineering consultations will also be provided as part of the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure memorandum as the country transitions to an international model for procurements.

Related ...

Ukraine's optimistic vision at the 2023 Venice Biennale

2023-05-29T15:32:00-04:00

A pair of time-sensitive installations from the Ukrainian contingent at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale is rallying two contraposed notions of future rebuilding and present-day trauma together for the outside world to experience optimistically under one prescient exhibition aptly titled Before the Future.

The country’s first Biennale entry since 2014 is being presented in two locations by curators Iryna Miroshnykova, Oleksii Petrov, and Borys Filonenko, who say their contribution presents Ukraine as a “powerful participant in transforming the image of the future in Europe and the whole civilized world.”

Beginning first inside the Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi, the exhibition remakes an otherwise cavernous host space into a windowless, claustrophobic chasm within which visitors can experience the state of abandonment and eerie comfort that Ukrainians are daily inhabiting as they fight for a more vital and sustainably built peace-filled world to come.

Image: © Matteo de Mayda, court...

The Ukrainian architect who showed Norman Foster his Kharkiv

2023-04-10T14:05:00-04:00

Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, announced that Foster and his nonprofit, the Norman Foster Foundation, had agreed to work on such a plan in collaboration with the city. Max, who had never imagined he’d hear the words “Kharkiv” and “Foster” in the same sentence, was asked to join Foster’s working group. He was one of only two architects selected who were still physically in Kharkiv—the only people in a position to “show” Kharkiv to Foster.

The New Yorker contributing writer Masha Gessen tells the story of Maxim Rozenfeld, a Kharkiv-native, Ukrainian architect and historian with special expertise in the high-tech-style oeuvre of Norman Foster, who ended up briefing a Foster-led team when the city's mayor Ihor Terekhov announced an ambitious rebuilding plan for the heavily-damaged Kharkiv one year ago in April (new details emerged in December).

New details emerge for Norman Foster's Kharkiv rebuilding plan

2022-12-29T12:27:00-05:00

New details are emerging on Norman Foster’s proposed master plan for the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Popular German outlet DW has some information on the plan, which Foster and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov have yet to make publicly available following an initial announcement in April.

For now, the plan reportedly entails at least five “pilot projects” and an interior overhaul of the city’s destroyed House of Regional Administration building that is similar to the firm’s reconstruction of the Reichstag by leaving only its existing facade remaining over a modernized interior.

Among the pilot projects, a new science and technology center will be enacted in addition to an unspecified “architectural landmark” at the city’s center and new 6-kilometer (3.72-mile) pedestrian park at the confluence of the city’s Kharkiv and Nemyshlya rivers. Further “Industry” and “Housing” pilots will involve the adaptive reuse of surviving residential buildings and a coal-fired power plant, provid...

Norman Foster releases manifesto outlining his vision for Kharkiv, Ukraine as a 'city of the future'

2022-04-20T14:07:00-04:00

As the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine grind on, the leadership of one of the country’s most affected cities is already planning future rebuilding efforts after taking a special meeting with Norman Foster.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov met with the architect Monday to discuss his vision for rehabilitating a city that is now almost completely unrecognizable after two months of brutal shelling.

In the meeting, Terekhov laid out his vision for a reborn city defined by a new “high-tech architecture” and master-planned by Foster to “provide a framework for the creation of Kharkiv as a city of the future.”

The pair were joined by senior Ukrainian economic officials Igor Abramovych and by Olga Demyanenko, academics Ian Goldin of Oxford University and Harvard professor Ed Glaeser, and the Norman Foster Foundation’s Co-Heads of the Design, Architecture and Technology Unit Diego Lopez and Alberto Cendoya. Foster prepared a short manifesto for the meeting, which in part addresses th...

The challenges of urban planning in Kabul: formalizing the informal

2019-05-13T14:37:00-04:00

Barely built for a million people, Kabul, now has close to five million residents with the majority – 80% – still living in informal, unplanned areas [...]. More than one million properties still need to be officially registered, according to City for All, a government urban planning initiative. [...] But while decades of war have destroyed much of the capital, an urban revolution is growing, creating small pockets of peace.

The Guardian's Stefanie Glinski writes about the efforts residents and the local government in the rapidly growing Afghan capital are taking to cope with the overwhelming urbanization, turn informal settlements into formal ones, set urban planning goals, and rediscover architectural heritage and craftsmanship that has defined the region for centuries.

"I don’t want our children to forget about our historical background," the article quotes an Afghan master carpenter. "Both regime changes and war destroyed our country. As Kabul is growing, many modern buildings are put up carelessly. We can’t forget about our architectural history and its beauty."

Will there be enough construction workers to rebuild post-flood Houston?

2017-08-29T12:44:00-04:00

Rain continues to fall in Houston, Texas, a city which may see up to 50 inches of precipitation over a span of five days thanks to the aftereffects of Hurricane Harvey. Unfortunately, the continued flooding has been exacerbated due to some decades-long, head-in-the-sand urban planning, the history of which is detailed in this comprehensive ProPublica piece. (Spoiler: it turns out paving over natural flood zones with asphalt and concrete, as well as replacing the comprehensive root systems of switchgrass with the comparatively shallow root systems of suburban lawns, gives water few places to go.)

Houston, 2017. Image: @ohcami_ via Twitter

As devastating as current conditions must be to homeowners who built in the surprisingly quick to deliver "500-Year Flood Plain," Houston's drier future isn't looking great, either. Thanks to the Trump Administration's widespread anti-immigration policy, there's likely to be a significant shortage of construction workers to rebuild the U.S.' fourth ...

Checking in on Nepal, one year later

2016-04-26T21:39:00-04:00

As the Nepalese government continues to face criticism for the slow pace of the country’s reconstruction, Nepal’s prime minister Khadga Prasad Oli announced today that the reconstruction of key heritage sites in Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur is to finally begin, the Associated Press reports.

A year after the devastating quake, there is some good news in Nepal. As this article notes,

The World Monuments Fund (WMF) also announced today that it, in collaboration with American Express, was financing the rebuilding of the 16th-century Char Narayan Temple, which was reduced to rubble by the quake. The project is to receive a share of $1m in grants earmarked for five major preservation projects across the globe.

For more on Nepal:

Bad news for good taste - burnt Da Vinci apartments expected to be rebuilt in 10 months

2015-04-20T17:17:00-04:00

A rise from the ashes had always been in [developer Geoff] Palmer's mind for this charred housing project; he'd said in a statement back in December that the devastation at the building on the south side of Temple Street was just a 'temporary loss.' Now that all the wreckage from the fire has been cleared off the site, construction can begin.

The kind of "renaissance" (sorry) that many locals are probably not very thrilled about...

Previously:

UNESCO accepting entries for Bamiyan Cultural Centre in Afghanistan

2014-11-17T17:55:00-05:00

Afghanistan continues to build toward reconciliation, restoring peace, and economic redevelopment after decades of political conflict and turmoil. To contribute to this process, UNESCO recently launched a single-stage open competition seeking the winning design of the Bamiyan Cultural Centre in the Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan. The Centre will serve as a space to promote cross-cultural understanding and heritage safe-guarding.

UNESCO and the Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan (with the financial support of the Republic of Korea) will collaborate to implement the project. The Centre will be located near the boundary of the World Heritage property, the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley.

Submissions are being accepted now until January 22, 2015, 11:59 P.M. GMT.

Learn more about the competition on Bustler.

Anything goes as Christchurch rebuilds

2014-01-08T15:36:00-05:00

The disaster that reduced Christchurch to rubble has given rise to a spirit of art and enterprise, writes Tijana Jaksic. [...] Nearly three years on from the devastating earthquake that shook the city, it's clear that Christchurch will never be the same. But the city is embracing the chance to not only rebuild, but completely reinvent itself.

Nuremberg to spend €70 million on re-building Nazi rally grounds

2013-09-05T18:50:00-04:00

Nuremberg plans to spend up to 70 million euro restoring the sprawling complex used by Adolf Hitler for his mass rallies, as debate continues in Germany over what to do with Nazi-era architecture. “This is a job of national importance, we cannot take it on alone,” said Ulrich Maly, the Social Democrat mayor of the Bavarian city, who added he would ask for federal funds to complete the project.

Donate to Architecture for Humanity to help rebuild Moore, Oklahoma

2013-05-22T13:52:00-04:00

Architecture for Humanity is working with local and regional construction professionals to begin assessments and support rebuilding work after an F-4 tornado ripped through the heart of Moore, OK and surrounding communities.

Architecture for Humanity focuses on helping communities beyond the relief phase of disaster. The agency is currently working on rebuilding efforts post Superstorm Sandy and rebuilt in communities affected by Hurricane Katrina. Architecture for Humanity is mobilizing to assist in long term-reconstruction to help rebuild Moore and the surrounding communities. The agency works to incorporate resiliency and disaster mitigation strategies, leaving communities safer and stronger than before.

“After the Haiti earthquake students from Moore West Junior High raised funds for the organization to help rebuild schools for displaced students. Our thoughts are with the entire community of Moore, OK and those affected,” said Cameron Sinclair, Co-founder, Architecture for Humanity.