Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Two housing projects won big today in the 2017 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award competition. Out of five finalists, DeFlatKleiburg in Amsterdam by NL Architects and XVW architectuur won the main Mies van der Rohe Award. The 2017 Emerging Architect... View full entry
How can architects transform the driving economy of a preexisting city? The team of de Architekten Cie. + Felixx Landscape Architects & Planners won The City Administration of Chelyabinsk's competition to redesign the historical center of their formerly industrial town based on a scheme... View full entry
BIG has another terraced building in the works. This time around, the practice led a team with Rotterdam-based BARCODE Architects to design the competition-winning scheme for “Sluishuis”, a new 46,000 m2 mixed-use development proposed for IJburg Lake at the edge of Amsterdam. The residential... View full entry
On the artificial IJburg island east of Amsterdam, the local Tennisclub IJburg now has an ultra modern clubhouse known as The Couch, designed by MVRDV and Studio Bouwkunde. Construction began later than originally announced last April and the building recently opened its doors to the public... View full entry
David Waggonner is an urban and environmental architect. Since Hurricane Katrina decimated his city, he’s been focusing on urban stormwater management, mapping out designs for New Orleans that would mimic the way Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam deal with water. In the Netherlands, people “invite water into the city,” meaning water is visible everywhere. [...] “In New Orleans, we’ve hidden and squandered the asset.” — theatlantic.com
Related on Archinect and our sister site Bustler: Louisiana is Disappearing into the SeaPost-Katrina: Will New Orleans still be New Orleans?Changing Course teams present final 100-year plans to restore Lower Mississippi River Delta (Bustler) View full entry
If you happen to find yourself wandering IJburg's Centrumeiland artificial island in Amsterdam this summer, you might encounter a peculiar group of art installations randomly camped out in what feels like the middle of nowhere. Although the installations alone are enough to draw in passers-by... View full entry
MX3D, a research and development startup company, will use robots to 3D print a pedestrian bridge across one of Amsterdam’s canals. The versatile six-axis robotic arms will ‘draw’ steel structures in 3D, starting from one side of the canal and building across until it reaches the other end. The robot will also print its own support, which allows it to work autonomously. The location of the bridge will be announced soon and construction is set to commence in 2017. — iflscience.com
More on Archinect:New Googleplex will be built by robotsLiquid metal discovery paves way for shape-shifting robotsRobot gives a helping hand as Taubman College breaks ground on new school additionSelf-Folding Robot Based on OrigamiGensler LA wants to use drones to alleviate the scale limits of 3D... View full entry
Right now, Amsterdam’s Center Island (Centrumeiland in Dutch) doesn’t look like much [...] The island, in use for the first time this summer as a campsite-cum-art installation, is in fact an entirely artificial creation, lying at the heart of what could currently be Europe’s boldest engineering and housing program. [...]
The archipelago will eventually be home to up to 45,000 people in 18,000 homes, 30 percent of which will be earmarked for affordable rent.
— citylab.com
The bicycle makes sense in cities. With rising urbanization, our cities need modern mobility solutions, and moving around on two wheels proves time and again that it can offer results [...]
With each edition, the Copenhagenize Design Company’s Index of the most bike-friendly cities in the world evolves...This year, we considered cities with a regional population over 600,000 (with a few exceptions because of their political and regional importance, and to keep things interesting).
— Wired Magazine
Copenhagenize is a design consultancy based in Copenhagen, Zurich, Brussels and Amsterdam that advises cities on how to become more bike-friendly, often through implementing strategies developed in the Danish capital (which consistently tops the list). These strategies are both infrastructural... View full entry
After years of delays, Amsterdam RAI is getting its own hotel and with its 650 rooms, Nhow RAI will win the title of largest hotel in the Netherlands. The design of the building was chosen from eleven candidates and is designed by Rem Koolhaas from well-known Rotterdam architecture firm OMA. [...]
Among the features will be a virtual 3D holographic meeting space for having “in person” meetings with the holographs of people in another location.
— nltimes.nl
In times when the rest of the city is rapidly becoming extremely expensive, Amsterdam’s ugly light gray and pink-yellow housing blocks are staying affordable, with rents contingent on income. Their continued presence in the city is becoming a memorial for a once-existing Amsterdam, in which almost all space in the city was equally distributed. — failedarchitecture.com
Until now the Amsterdam museum has usually presented its Van Goghs in a simple chronological sequence, set against white walls. This display originally seemed appropriate for the building’s architecture, a series of stark white galleries designed by Gerrit Rietveld, the leading Modernist architect of the De Stijl movement. The white-cube spaces have now been transformed by coloured walls, varying according to the artist's different periods [...]. — theartnewspaper.com
Dubbed “Dementia Village” by CNN, Hogewey is a cutting-edge elderly-care facility—roughly the size of 10 football fields—where residents are given the chance to live seemingly normal lives. With only 152 inhabitants, it’s run like a more benevolent version of The Truman Show [...]
Last year, CNN reported that residents at Hogewey require fewer medications, eat better, live longer, and appear more joyful than those in standard elderly-care facilities.
— citylab.com
Adapting to an unprecedented aging population means adjusting elder-care expectations and forms. So-called "Silver" architecture aims to address this growing population, but what about an urbanism of the elderly? Knowing that active social bonds can actually have long-term health benefits, why... View full entry
Zero waste, lower transport costs and recyclable materials – is 3D-printing the future of housebuilding? Dutch architects are putting the process to the test for the first time in Amsterdam — theguardian.com
“We've never been this vulgar,” says the practice's founding partner Rem Koolhaas, sitting in the building's boardroom, flanked either side by neat men in military denim jackets, like officers from some future fashion police. [...] brazenly conflating G-Star's brand values with their own, aligning their manifestos, house styles, ways of working and even presenting a shared aesthetic of raw industrial chic – with concrete and steel fragments of OMA buildings overlaid on to G-Star models. — theguardian.com
