Archinect - News

Fernanda Canales talks to the New York Times about designing better social opportunities in a challenged Mexico

2024-03-04T13:22:00-05:00

“Without opportunities for social interaction, places are more insecure, divided and isolated [...] How can you provide value to a landscape that is neglected? How do you provide an opportunity to see your town in a new way?”

Against a national backdrop poisoned by femicides, border politics, and the equally toxic influence of cartels, Fernanda Canales is making democratic life in underserved Mexican communities more feasible through her highly user-sensitive and socializing designs.

The Mexico City-based architect tells the New York Times' Sam Lubell of her contributions to the government’s $2 billion Programa de Mejoramiento Urbano (or P.M.U.) program, "They will survive local circumstances — issues of budgets, politics and vandalism," adding that "Over time, the public starts to make decisions and inject life. Things change and adapt. Time teaches us what prevails. Often it’s what we can’t imagine now."

Canales was also one of a century profiled in RIBA’s new 100 Women: Architects in Practice, which came out in January and has been reviewed favorably as an essential guide to future equality in the profession. She has been teaching at the UT Austin School of Architecture since the Fall after seeing ...

Zaha Hadid Architects proposal for London's Vauxhall Cross Island

2018-01-22T13:27:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects designed a proposal for the Vauxhall Cross Island site in London. Located adjacent to Vauxhall Station, the proposal focuses on creating a Vauxhall district center by providing a mixed-use space to generate employment opportunities and a new public square to accommodate Transport for London's (TfL) emerging bus station plans.

Vauxhall Cross Island proposal by Zaha Hadid Architects. Render by Slashcube.

The London borough is undergoing a transformation with several other significant developments under construction or planned in the area. ZHA's design works with the height of the other proposed buildings in the area through its rectilinear form, grid-based façade, and materials.

Vauxhall Cross Island proposal by Zaha Hadid Architects. Render by Slashcube.

The new proposal includes two tall buildings with a low-level podium building to create a defined public square. The arrangement p...

Korea's High Line, the MVRDV-designed Skygarden, opens in Seoul

2017-05-23T14:38:00-04:00

Ever since the High Line appeared above the streets of Chelsea in New York, cities across the globe have been working on creating their own variations of the civic project. In London, this iteration was to be the Thomas Heatherwick designed Garden Bridge. However, the project was marred by controversy due to suspicious funding and motives and was finally nixed by the Mayor back in April. Well, as the Guardian points out, London could've stood to take a few pointers from the South Korean capital of Seoul, whose MVRDV designed Skygarden opened over the weekend to much excitement.

The firm won the bidding process back in May 2015 and have since been working to transform an existing overpass in the heart of Seoul into a 983-meter long public garden, overlaying a matrix of Korean flora onto the 16m elevated steel and concrete structure. The Rotterdam-based architecture and urban design practice has gathered 50 families of plants, collecting around 228 species and sub-species and arrange...