Archinect - News

Pavilion made from repurposed IKEA mattresses wins CHART's first prize

2019-09-04T14:10:00-04:00

This year's first prize for the CHART Art Fair, a 72-hour competition inviting young designers working in the Nordic region to explore the crossovers between art, design, and architecture by creating temporary pavilions, went to Sultan, a project that utilizes discarded IKEA mattresses as its base materials. Everything from the wood, internal components, foam, metal, and fabric is used to construct the innovative pavilion.

"The SULTAN project was a clear winner both because it is conceptually very strong and because its fabrication is very precise," said David Zahle from BIG, the chairperson of the competition jury. "Sultan raises a very important concern about how hard it is to recycle things in a modern society, because of the complexity of the society we’ve come to live in," he continued.

Sultan pavilion. Photo: Joakim Züger

The project was developed by Anne Bea Høgh Mikkelsen, Katrine Kretzschmar Nielsen, Klara Lyshøj, and Josefine Østergaard Kallehave. An international jury was ...

The artful repurposing of industrial wastelands

2019-05-22T14:31:00-04:00

What should we do with industrial sites after they have fulfilled their original purpose? Considering the fact that so many of the now disused sites are so close to city centers, the answer to this question can determine the quality of city life for many places around the world.

Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. Photographer unknown.

In Germany, the answer has frequently been to artfully transform these sites into places of public use. Take Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, a former coal and steel production plant that ceased operations in 1985 and was reopened in 2002 as a public park. According to its designers, Latz+Partner, the intention of Duisburg Nord was "to integrate, shape, develop and interlink the existing patterns that were formed by its previous industrial use, and to find a new interpretation with a new syntax. The existing fragments were to be interlaced into a new “landscape”.

Stairway to Heaven, by sculptor Herman Prigann. Photographer unknown.

In Gelsenkirchen, the Herman...

Rejecting modernist master planning notions, MAD's Milan master plan repurposes dilapidated rail yards by symbiosis

2017-04-27T14:02:00-04:00

Repurposing and renovation have gained greater appeal in the years since the overwhelming success of The High Line, extending to a variety of applications and structures. At the recent Milan Design Week, MAD took this to a new level by showcasing their proposal for a new masterplan of Milan, which transforms dilapidated rail yards into a series of thriving new city districts, or micro-systems.

According to MAD, these spatial districts, termed “City of Connections,” “City of Green,” “City of Living,” “City of Culture,” and “City of Resources" each address "a vernacular development typical of Italian cities, where various typological elements and scales are overlapped into dense systems of relations. Designing first at the human scale within recognizable landmarks, the broader urban scale is connected to smaller ones through the interjection of topographic landscapes, serving to unify the continually changing relations of the pedestrian, city, and nature. Each of the yards, following t...

The resounding success of Allied Works Architecture's "National Music Center"

2017-02-16T20:39:00-05:00

Incorporating both physical and intangible elements of Canada's musical history, the National Music Center by Allied Works is a nine-towered, terra-cotta tile clad complex that not only ropes a 112-year old hotel/blues club into the mix, but creates the kind of spaces suited for gazing dreamily into one's future.

According to Brad Cloepfil, Principal at Allied Works Architecture, the structure was "inspired by the light, landscape and geography of the northern prairie."

He goes on to note that "Studio Bell was created to amplify the rich history and future possibilities of Canadian music. The building aspires to create a sense of wonder and mystery, inspiring the visitor to explore. Nine separate towers rise five floors above the street, each resonating with music and activity. The building is alive with the life of music throughout its exhibition, recording, editing, performance and education spaces. The distinct vessels of music are bound together by the space between them, moments ...

Indoor malls are out as LA's brick-and-mortar shopping centers get renovated

2016-12-13T20:25:00-05:00

Sometime in the not too distant future we will look back at traditional malls as an anachronism – something that started with the post World War II move to the suburbs, peaked in 1990, and faded away, according to the billionaire Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, whose properties include the Grove and the Americana at Brand.

Millions of dollars are being spent on refurbishing and renovating malls in Los Angeles in an attempt to offer online shoppers an incentive to go outdoors. According to this report by KPCC, the big-league mall masterminds, including Grove guru Rick Caruso, are purposefully trying to redesign malls to center around activities like eating and socializing, experiences which are arguably better in person (and which indoor malls frequently sequester to dimly lit food courts). Although many are predicting the outright death of indoor malls, others are simply repurposing them into religious centers, hospitals, and occasionally dwellings in housing-crisis plagued cities.

For more on malls:

Amazon Reportedly Eyeing Up London Underground Ticket Offices As Delivery Drop-Off Points

2013-11-22T14:05:00-05:00

[...] London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, who yesterday announced that almost all ticket offices on the London Underground transport network would close by 2015 [...]. There are 268 ticket offices on the network in total, and around 260 are set to close [...] Ecommerce giant Amazon is reportedly in talks with Transport for London to use the closed ticket offices as “drop off” points for deliveries.

It makes plenty of sense for Amazon to be eyeing up prime Tube real-estate — which could enable it to build out a whole conveniently-sited network of its delivery Lockers in the U.K. Capital — giving London’s commuters a handy stop-off point to get their goods.

Submit your proposal to the AIANY ENYA “Queensway Connection” competition by January 2014

2013-11-14T12:36:00-05:00

"Queensway Connection: Elevating the Public Realm," the sixth biennial competition from the AIANY's Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) committee is open for submissions until January 6th, 2014.

The competition will support the feasibility study — currently being conducted by WXY Architecture + Urban Design and dlandstudio — as part of the process to transform the abandoned railway into a recreational area for the surrounding communities in central and southern Queens.

"Queensway Connection" welcomes all design student and young professionals — not limited to architects, artists, engineers, landscape architects, urban designers and planners — to submit their ideas.

After the submissions deadline, the Jury will deliberate in February. Winners will be announced in March 2014.

The Jury:

Susan Chin, FAIA, Executive Director of the Design Trust for Public Space.
Margaret Newman, FAIA, LEED AP, Chief of Staff to Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at New York City Department ...

Mapo Oil Reserve Base competition - First place entry by Sunggi Park and Hyemin Jang

2013-10-03T15:22:00-04:00

The Public Development Center of the Seoul Metropolitan Government recently announced the winners for "The first step to changing the Mapo Oil Reserve Base" international competition. The ideas competition challenged student and professional participants to repurpose the Mapo Oil Reserve Base in Sangam, Seoul, South Korea, which has been out of use for the past 10 years.

Sunggi Park, a graduate student at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Hyemin Jang, an undergraduate architecture student at Cornell University, won the first prize of $10,000 for their project "Resonance of Light."

54Jeff ideas competition winners

2013-10-02T13:50:00-04:00

Competition winners for the redesign of 54 Jefferson were announced at SiTE:LAB in Grand Rapids, MI on Sept. 24. The open one-stage ideas competition challenged participants to create compelling proposals for the redesign of the 54 Jefferson, a former natural museum building that opened in 1940. However, deterioriation and changing museum standards caused the museum to close to the public in 1994.