Rochdale Town Center CompetitionSponsor: RIBA, Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council, Places Matter!
Location: Rochdale, UK
Languages: English
Type: Open, international, 2 stage
Eligiblity: Open to architects, landscape designers/architects, urban designers and heritage professionals worldwide. Entries from emerging designers are welcomed and encouraged and where appropriate this may require a collaborative approach.
Registration Deadline:
Submission Deadline: 10 September 2013
Awards: Stage 1 entries will be judged anonymously and five teams will shortlisted to proceed to the second stage with each receiving an honoraria payment of £3,000 +VAT Jury: - Charles Wilson, Architect & Town Planner. Also the Chair of the English Heritage Urban Panel and the Chair of the Bristol Urban Design Forum.
- Annie Coombs, Chartered Landscape Architect
- Mark Robinson, Chief Planning Officer, Planning and Regulation, RochdaleMBC
- Colin Lambert, Leader of the Council, Rochdale MBC
- Paul Clarke, Chair of the Rochdale Borough High Street Foundation.
Design Challenge: The competition challenges teams of urbanists worldwide to be inspired and inspire others in bringing life back to Rochdale’s streets.
The main focus of the competition is on the public realm and ginnels around the revealed River Roch as well as the historic bridge in the Butts. Entrants are invited to think about the wider influence and potential of their proposals in particular how the disjointed parts of the town centre may be reconnected. Rochdale MBC plan to reveal the Roch by opening sections of the river through The Butts and restoring the medieval bridge to transform the centre of Rochdale. The ‘discovery’ of the medieval bridge, unknowingly crossed by thousands of people every day is of the utmost significance and will instil a sense of pride, hope and identify for Rochdale. Design proposals are sought befitting of the historic backdrop to bring life and reconnect the streets of Rochdale.
For more information, go to: http://www.architecture.com/UseAnArchitect/FindAnArchitect/Competitions/LiveCompetitions/LiveCompetitions.aspx#.Ug1iRLxjHOf |
The Urban Confluence Silicon Valley Competition 
Image ©SMAR Architecture
After several stops and starts, a decision to name the winner of the Urban Confluence Design Competition appears to be nearing its conclusion. In 2017, three founders of a local non-profit established The San Jose Light Tower Corporation (SJLTC). The founders of the non-profit, Restauranteur Steve Borkenhagen, construction company executive, Jon Ball and filmmaker Thomas Wohlmut, saw its primary mission in designing and building a new tower as a San Jose and Silicon Valley landmark. This idea was based on the memory of the original San Jose Electric Light Tower (1881-1915), a 22-story structure, located in downtown San Jose and came down as the victim of a gale, never to be rebuilt. Read more… Young Architects in Competitions When Competitions and a New Generation of Ideas Elevate Architectural Quality
by Jean-Pierre Chupin and G. Stanley Collyer
published by Potential Architecture Books, Montreal, Canada 2020
271 illustrations in color and black & white
Available in PDF and eBook formats
ISBN 9781988962047
What do the Vietnam Memorial, the St. Louis Arch, and the Sydney Opera House have in common? These world renowned landmarks were all designed by architects under the age of 40, and in each case they were selected through open competitions. At their best, design competitions can provide a singular opportunity for young and unknown architects to make their mark on the built environment and launch productive, fruitful careers. But what happens when design competitions are engineered to favor the established and experienced practitioners from the very outset? This comprehensive new book written by Jean-Pierre Chupin (Canadian Competitions Catalogue) and Stanley Collyer (COMPETITIONS) highlights for the crucial role competitions have played in fostering the careers of young architects, and makes an argument against the trend of invited competitions and RFQs. The authors take an in-depth look at past competitions won by young architects and planners, and survey the state of competitions through the world on a region by region basis. The end result is a compelling argument for an inclusive approach to conducting international design competitions. Download Young Architects in Competitions for free at the following link: https://crc.umontreal.ca/en/publications-libre-acces/
Aerial view of site – Courtesy National Finnish Museum
When major cultural institutions in Finland plan a new building project, one can almost always assume that an open competition will be the vehicle by which the client settles on the building’s design. The only question is, will this be organized in a format open to local, Scandinavian, or international architects. In the case of the National Museum of Finland annex competition, it was open to architects throughout the world — resulting in 185 entries. Read more…
The Opening of Taichung’s Central Park by Catherine Mosbach/Philippe Rahm
View from the south with downtown Taichung in the distance image: ©Mosbach/Rahm
The abandonment and closing of airports, including decommissioning those that were used for military purposes, has presented design communities with several opportunities to convert them entirely to civilian purposes. Notable among those which have been the result of competitions are Orange County Great Park, Irvine, California (Ken Smith Landscape Architects), The Estonian National Museum (Dan Dorell, Lina Ghotmeh and Tsuyoshi Tane), and Toronto’s less successful Downsview Park competition, whereby the winning design by OMA, with trees as the primary feature, has been basically ignored. Instead, the area has become the site of numerous commercial and residential projects.
Read more…
SMAR’s Winning Entry Gets the Green Light
Image: ©SMAR Architecture
The winning competition entry in the 2016 Science Island competition in Kaunas, Lithuania by SMAR Architects may only take five years to realize—from the date of the competition to completion. This is encouraging news, as the duration of such projects resulting from a competition can often take much longer—sometimes up to 8-10 years. Read more…
Night view of the memorial tapestry from Independence Avenue, with Gehry’s sketch of the Normandy cliffs.
Explaining the contributions of a World War II hero and later President of the United States on a very modest site on Independence Avenue just off the Washington Mall is tantamount to asking an author to describe the life of this person in no more than one paragraph. But on September 17th, after a long and bumpy journey, lasting almost 20 years and navigating a warren of the DC approval processes and public scrutiny, the Eisenhower Memorial finally was dedicated and opened to the public. Designed by Frank Gehry, it has received mixed reviews, the majority being more positive. But most have pointed out that the memorial is more impressive at night than in full daylight. This is due primarily to the illumination of an almost block-long metallic tapestry—featuring a sketch by Gehry, which depicts his interpretation of the cliffs of the Normandy coastline where the Americans landed on D-Day. Read more… |
