A Significant Addition to a Public Place: The Cadogan Café Competition, London

A Significant Addition to a Public Place

The Cadogan Café Competition, London

by Stanley Collyer

nex 3 view of duke of york square from the east

Winning entry by NEX (Illustration: NEX)

This place is missing something—probably a subliminal thought of many Londoners who frequented the Duke of York Square area in London, near the entrance to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea. The locals also decided the site needed a visual lift—but what kind? Settling on a café as the answer would always seems to meet at least one requirement: You can pick up a coffee on the way to work, or it can serve as a casual meeting place. In any case, it is not to be ignored.

Urban Design in a Remote Village: The Klaksvik Town Center Competition

Urban Design in a Remote Village:

The Klaksvik Town Center Competition

by Stanley Collyer

Winning entry by Henning Larsen Architects (Illustration: Henning Larsen Architects)

The Klaksvik Town Center competition revealed that even a fishing village in a remote north Atlantic island group can attract the notice of the global architectural community. Located on one of the Faroe group islands in the north Atlantic between Iceland and Norway, Klaksvik was a relatively isolated fishing village until the recent construction of a road linked it to the rest of the island. Before that, all commercial communication with the rest of the archipelago had to take place by boat.

Klaksvik has been dependent on fishing for centuries; but as recent economic uncertainties in the fishing industry have battered the local economy, the municipality is looking elsewhere for economic stability—such as technology. However, in order to stem the brain drain to the European mainland of their younger citizens, the city decided that an upgrade of the town center could be part of the answer. In this way, they could at least visually keep in step with their European neighbors. To increase its public visibility and lend the town a more urban character, the city fathers decided to stage an international competition on the Scandinavian model—the islands are linked politically to Denmark—for modernization of the town’s center.

Interview: Frederic Schwartz (Spring 2006)

“World Cultural Center” – World Trade Center Innovative Masterplan – Runnerup, Ground Zero, NY, 2003

By THINK Team: Shigeru Ban, Frederic Schwartz, Ken Smith, Rafael Vinoly

COMPETITIONS: When did you know that you wanted to become an architect?

Frederic Schwartz: I grew up just a couple of towns over from Levittown. When anybody got a washing machine or refrigerator, I would scour the neighborhood for the boxes and bring them home with the help of my dad. I would make things out of them, like tunnels or big buildings. Where I grew up, they were always building houses in the neighborhood, and I was always watching this construction.
When I went to Berkeley, I had my first course with Joe Escherick as my professor, who was such a great teacher. He was the only architect I knew who won both the gold Medal for Firm of the Year and the teaching award. We remained very close through the rest of my career. In fact his wife gave me his shirt when he passed away. So when I was a freshman in college, I was already sure I wanted to become an architect. It wasn’t just Escherick, there were all these other great teachers, i.e., Roger Montgomery, J. B. Jackson, Richard Bender, Russ Ellis, and Marc Treib at Berkeley, and Jerzy Soltan at Harvard.
This was already called the College of Environmental Design in the 60s; so you automatically approached architecture and urbanism recognizing those parameters. I agreed with their philosophy: the school was very much about the relationship of landscape to building.

COMPETITIONS: You have participated in many competitions, some entirely on your own—here I am thinking about the memorial competitions you have won more recently—and others where you were a team member. Santa Fe is an example of the latter. But early on you collaborated with Robert Venturi on two competitions here in New York City. From those, the Whitehall Ferry Terminal has been built. How do you decide with whom you may wish to collaborate?

Central Mosque of Prishtina

Client: Islamic Community of Kosovo

Type: open, one-stage, international

Location: Prishtina, Kosovo

Language: English

Fee: 100 EUROS

Eligibility: Architects licensed in their country of origin

Timetable:

28 December 2012 – Registration deadline

4 January 2013 – Q&A period ends

8 March 2013 – Submission deadline

Awards:

1st prize – EUR 25,000

2nd prize – EUR

2nd Street Design Challenge

Sponsor: 2nd Street Community Partners

Type: Open, student, one-stage

Eligibility: Graduate and undergraduate students majoring in architecture, engineering, interior design, or other design-related disciplines

Entry fee: none

Awards:

1st Place: $500 Cash Prize and Certificate

2nd Place: $250 Cash Prize and Certificate

3rd Place: $100 Cash Prize and Certificate

Timetable:

11 January 2013

Call for Design Proposals: CURTAINS

Sponsor: Center for American Architecture and Design, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin

Type: Call for Proposals: open, international Location: Austin, Texas Eligibility: open to professionals and students Fees: Early Registration-US$35 Regular Registration-US$50 Timetable: 14 February 2013 – Registration deadline 14 March 2013 – Submission deadline Jury:

M+ Museum Competition (Hong Kong)

A shortlist of six design teams have been invited to submit proposals for the architectural design of M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for 20th and 21st century visual culture within the District, scheduled for completion in 2017. M+ is an ambitious project, the scale of the museum building alone, at around 62,000 square metres, will

VISIONARY (re)generation: University of Manitoba Fort Garry Campus Plan

Client: University of Manitoba

Type: open, two-stage, international

Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba

Language: English

Fee: none

Timetable:

11 March 2013 – Phase I entry submissions 29 July 2013 – Phase II entry submissions

Awards:

The promoter will provide the net amount of approx. 270,000 Canadian Dollars (CAD) for fees and prizes for services rendered. The total

German Federal Labor Ministry Building, Berlin

Sponsor: German Federal Government

Location: Berlin, Germany

Type: Open, one-stage, anonymous

Language: German

Fee: none

Eligibility: Architects licensed in their countries of origin: GPA/GATT Timetable: 13 December 2012 – Documents available 28 February 2013 – Submission deadline

Awards: 45,000 EUR total

To enter, go to:http://www.bbr.bund.de/cln_032/nn_22808/DE/WettbewerbeAusschreibungen/PlanungsWettbewerbe/Ablage__LaufWettbewerbe/Ablage__2012/bmas.html

Gold Coast Cultural Precinct Competition

Sponsor: City of Gold Coast, Australia

Type: open, international, two-stage, RfQ

Fee: none

Process:

Phase 1: Concept design competition (March-September 2013). This starts with an open invitation to participate and leads to the shortlisting of up to three teams, each of which will be asked to submit a detailed concept design. A winner will be

Designing Aljada’s Central Hub

Zaha Hadid Architects Wins UAE Masterplan Competition

Following the international competition, ARADA has appointed Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) to design the Central Hub, the centerpiece of Aljada, the developer’s masterplan in Sharjah, UAE. The other competitors in the invited competition were HOK (U.S.) and RMJM (London).

Developed with environmental considerations integrated throughout the masterplan to minimize the consumption of resources, the proposal conceptualizes the moment a water droplet strikes the earth’s surface, captured in an array of elliptical buildings designed to channel prevailing winds into civic spaces and courtyards to facilitate cooling during the summer months. The central observation tower is surrounded by vibrant public squares with water features irrigated by recovered and recycled water. Tensile canopies sustain a microclimate at ground level for verdant gardens of species native to the region.

Review: A Rift in the Earth

Art, Memory, and the fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

by James Reston, Jr.
Arcade Publishing
New York (2017)
Hardcover, 267 pages
ISBN 9781628728569

View from the memorial to the Washington Monument
Photo: Paul Spreiregen

Having an idea is one thing. Realization of that idea is another. Maybe this should have been the main thrust of a new book on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Instead, the author of this book, whose interest in this topic dates back to his military service during the Vietnam conflict, chose to sensationalize the the cultural and political themes familiar to the project, rather than treat its progress in contrast to the evolution of other recent memorial competitions located on or near the Mall, the political and emotional components of the various memorials notwithstanding. The World War II Memorial and Eisenhower Memorial also were fraught with controversy by the public and in the press, whereby one hardly resembled the original design, and the other has not yet made it beyond the drawing board. Projects on or near the Mall run into similar obstacles in navigating their way through the DC approval process unscathed, regardless of the subject matter.\

World Heritage Bernau Bauhaus Visitors Center

When we first included an article in COMPETITIONS about the restoration of Hannes Meyer’s Berlin Trade Union School in 2007, little did we anticipate that this subject would resurface on several occasions over the years. With the initial publication of the article,* copies went out to a number of interested parties outside of our subscriber base. What we next heard was that the project by the Bauhaus team led by Meyer had received the first World Monuments Prize—sponsored by Knoll. As it happened, one of the award jurors just happened to be a recipient of the issue with that article. A coincidence? In any case, German members of the restoration committee thought that the COMPETITIONS article played a role in that award and have kept us up to date about subsequent news concerning the Trade Union School.

K2K Planning Competition (Kensington / Kingsford)

Finetuning a Sydney Suburb’s Future

Competitions in Australia have become more commonplace than could have become anticipated two decades ago. It was in the early 1990s that Sydney’s mayor, Frank Sartore, decided that competitions could improve on the rather mediocre architecture so prevalent in the city at that time. As a result, major government projects became the subject of design competitions, and a number of notable projects ensued, especially in higher education.

Taichung Tower 2 Competition

Everyone is well aware of the measures one encounters when entering almost any tower, residential or office, in this era of high security. We are not just talking about protecting the occupants of a residential highrise, but rather the separation of workers from the street and the community at large. The Taichung Tower is intended as the antithesis to this concept of isolation, encouraging interaction at different levels, within the workplace, as well as access, though limited, to the community at large.

Taichung, certainly one of Taiwan’s most forward-looking cities, has just completed a final competition to complete the ambitious Taichung Cultural Center complex—a tower to replaced Sou Fujimoto’s abandoned winner of the initial Taichung Tower Competition (below). The Fujimoto scheme was shelved based on the high construction estimates for his revolutionary scheme—by some accounts doubling the anticipated budget.

Ph: (502) 451-3623; Fax: (502) 451-3623

Website: https://competitions.org

E: scollyer@competitions.org

IMPORTANT NOTICE : Unless otherwise indicated, photographs of buildings and projects are from professional or institutional archives. All reproduction is prohibited unless authorized by the architects, designers, office managers, consortia or archives centers concerned. The Competition Project, Inc. is not held responsible for any omissions or inaccuracies, but appreciate all comments and pertinent information that will permit necessary modifications during future updates.

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A Significant Addition to a Public Place: The Cadogan Café Competition, London

Urban Design in a Remote Village: The Klaksvik Town Center Competition

Interview: Frederic Schwartz (Spring 2006)

Central Mosque of Prishtina

2nd Street Design Challenge

Call for Design Proposals: CURTAINS

M+ Museum Competition (Hong Kong)

VISIONARY (re)generation: University of Manitoba Fort Garry Campus Plan

German Federal Labor Ministry Building, Berlin

Gold Coast Cultural Precinct Competition

Annuals Sale!

• Half price on 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 Annuals.
• 2016 Annual now available in PDF format.

Recent Competitions

Designing Aljada’s Central Hub

Zaha Hadid Architects Wins UAE Masterplan Competition

Review: A Rift in the Earth

World Heritage Bernau Bauhaus Visitors Center

K2K Planning Competition (Kensington / Kingsford)

Taichung Tower 2 Competition

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Annuals Sale!

• Half price on 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 Annuals. • 2016 Annual now available in PDF format.

Recent Competitions

Zaha Hadid Architects Wins UAE Masterplan Competition

• Half price on 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 Annuals.
• 2016 Annual now available in PDF format.