The Düsseldorf International Airport recently completed construction on one of the largest solar arrays in Germany. The 8,400 panel, 2 megawatt photovoltaic array spans the space of six soccer fields, and it was finished in time to start feeding power to the grid before the clock strikes 2012. — Inhabitat
But Madrid Río is a project whose audacity and scale, following the urban renewal successes of Barcelona, Spain’s civic trendsetter, can bring to a New Yorker’s mind the legacy of the street-grid plan, which this year celebrates its 200th anniversary. That’s because the park belongs to a larger transformation that includes the construction of dozens of new metro and light-rail stations that link far-flung, disconnected and often poor districts on Madrid’s outskirts to downtown. — NYT
The NYT features two interesting (when compared side by side) reviews of architectural/urban design projects this week. First, Michael Kimmelman visits Madrid Río, the almost completed freeway to park conversion, designed by a group of local architects, led by Ginés... View full entry
Perched high above the town of Moos in the Italian Alps is a glowing pair of garnet-shaped structures that serve as a stop along the Timmelsjoch High Alpine Road. Modeled on the geological rock formations found in the Passeiertal valley and designed by Werner Tscholl, the pavilions are the first structures to be built along the road as part of the Timmelsjoch Experience. — Inhabitat
Tim Maly reviewed Google Engineering's new London offices designed by PENSON., which he finds to be a "giddy exercise in science fiction set decoration". Eric Chavkin, commented "The Kubrick set design allusion is to his long time collaborator Ken Adams (Dr. Strangelove, etc)...Adams declined to work on 2001but his influence here is clear. The interior design references watered down NASA enlivened with 60's disco sci-fi camp. This has all the warmth of a sperm-donor clinic."
For Archinect’s latest In Focus feature we talked to Australian photo artist Ward Roberts. He noted that a lot of his own work "is photographed in Hong Kong as the colors and repletion in architecture has always fascinated me." Also, Sherin Wing dissected the reasons why there are... View full entry
Working with the actual drawings for the project’s underground and infrastructure work, done by the architecture firm HOK, the students said they were consistently struck by the complexity of the site’s context and underpinnings. “It just seemed like a big mess,” Mr. Cencer said. “You couldn’t just place what you thought was going to be beautiful. It made so much more sense why it was taking forever. — NYT
This past semester students from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning were tasked with designing a performing arts center for the Joyce Theater, to be located near One World Trade Center. Although architect Frank Gehry had... View full entry
Richard Rogers's 1986 headquarters for the insurers Lloyd's of London has just been listed Grade I. This makes it, along with the Royal Festival Hall, one of the few 20th-century structures to be placed at the same level as, say, St Paul's. But, like the gothic cathedrals it so closely resembles, Lloyd's was not meant to be an entirely finished product. Look up to the top of its facade, and you'll find cranes are still there... — guardian.co.uk
We were able to meet the Grimms’ strict design requirements by employing a slender tower design of vertical cylindrical stems that are joined by intermittent outrigger beams with a reinforced space at the very top for Rapunzel’s long captivity. — Places Journal
This week, Places has a holiday series on fairy tale architecture. Participating firms — Bernheimer Architecture, Leven Betts, and Guy Nordenson and Associates — have selected favorite tales and produced works exploring the intimate relationship between the domestic structures of... View full entry
Have you visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater? Not all of us have, but there's a new app available that gives you the next best thing. planet architecture, a production company that has been publishing videos and interactive tours for many years, has just added Fallingwater to their... View full entry
Koolhaas, who once proposed his own unrealized plans for the Secretariat building decades ago, will be joining 3-D designer Hella Jongerius, graphic designer Irma Boom, and artist Gabriel Lester on a team selected by the Dutch government to redesign the North Delegates' Lounge, an informal meeting space where major policymakers and representatives go for a drink at the end of the day. — artinfo.com
Czech firm mjölk architekti has shared with us their fascinating proposal "POLAR HEN" which was - under the title "ICE PILLOWS" - just recently named one of the five winners in the internationally acclaimed Warming Huts v.2011, An Art +Architecture Competition on Ice (...with one of the other four winners being Frank Gehry!).
For only one winter, the five winning huts will be created and placed on the frozen Assiniboine River in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
— bustler.net
The international competition for the concept design of the new Eni Exploration & Production Business Center in San Donato Milanese, Italy, was won by Morphosis Architects with Nemesi Partners (architectural design partner), Setec TPI (structures designer), Setec Batiment (plants designer) and Pasodoble (landscape architect). — bustler.net
Chinese practice LYCS Architecture has won an invited competition for a 32,000 sqm testing and assessment research center in the city of Shenzhen, China. The brief called for a mixed-use building including offices, residential and commercial. — bustler.net
The Mayor of Montreal, Gérald Tremblay, recently unveiled the winning project in the architecture competition for the new indoor soccer center at the Saint-Michel Environmental Complex (SMEC). The jury has chosen the concept developed by Saucier + Perrotte / Hughes Condon Marler Architects from among the four submitted by the finalist firms. — bustler.net
Last quarter a group of Cal Poly Pomona architecture and structural engineering students with professors Axel Schimitzberger and Dr. Mikhail Gershfeld conducted a multi disciplinary studio to design prototype tsunami evacuation facilities. The purpose of the studio was to design a temporary... View full entry
For most of the first decade of the 2000s, architecture was about the statement building. Whether it was a controversial memorial or an impossibly luxurious condo tower, architecture’s raison d’être was to make a lasting impression. Architecture has always been synonymous with permanence, but should it be? — opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com