Silicon Alley Design Competition: Upgrade of the Nanjing Tobacco FactorySponsor: Nanjing Zhongshan Asset Management Group Co., Ltd.
Organizer(s): Southeast University; People’s Government of Xuanwu District, Nanjing; Nanjing Science and Technology Bureau Type: open, international
Languages: English, Chinese
Fee: None
Timetable:
15 December 2019 – Submissions deadline
20 January 2020 – Final review
Awards:
1st prize – $50,000
2nd prize – $20,000
3rd prize – $10,000
10 Honorable mentions Design Challenge: In 2019, Nanjing put forward an important goal of developing city “silicon alley” and building a new famous city. Derived from Manhattan, New York, “Silicon Alley” is a borderless science and technology park gathering Internet-based and mobile information technology enterprises. Unlike the Silicon Alley which is an innovative technology park built on the edge of city with complete supporting high-end service, the Silicon Alley is a street block of innovative technology industry which mainly focuses on upgrading stock space. Nanjing’s envision to build up a city “Silicon Alley” will promote Xuanwu district as a core area to renovate old factories and campuses, inject new vitality to the scientific and teaching resources of high-learning institutions in the downtown, and build a city “Silicon Alley” with compactness, supplementary functions, improved structure, college-enterprise convergence, integration of industry and the city, and promote active innovation and start-ups. The city “Silicon Alley” represents the development pattern and industry layout of a city from upgrading to innovation. In particular, the design industry represents the important development momentum of “Toward Future, Leading Innovation”. Adhering to this philosophy and based on the historical experience and unique advantages of the forte of architectural design of Southeast University, Nanjing Xuanwu District is committed to gathering quality design resources at home and abroad to Xuanwu’s city “Silicon Alley” with the design industry as its core component. Centering on this goal, five plots around Sipailou Campus of Southeast University (former site of Central University), including old Nanjing Tobacco Factory, Court Plot of Xuanwu District, and Technology Park of Southeast University, are committing to form an innovation industry belt around Southeast University gathering design industry. With the long history of Sipailou Campus of Southeast University and its surrounding area, significant sites of China’s modern architectures and representative cultural relics, and manifestation of the convergence of Chinese and western culture, it carries the important missions of inheriting essence from the history and facing future and aligning with the international practice so as to improve space quality, upgrade industry functions, consolidate and gather resources, and build up an innovative downtown from within the great environment of urban development. Based on that, Xuanwu District selected old Nanjing Tobacco Factory as the start-up project of the innovation and design industry belt around Southeast University and host the global design competition of upgrading old Nanjing Tobacco Factory. The competition is themed on “City Silicon Alley, Design towards Future”. Domestic and international architects and designers are invited to create their works on the former site of Nanjing Tobacco Factory. The park is positioned as a design & start-up park which mainly focuses on architecture design. At the same time, it will also serve Nanjing citizens to build a new business card as a design industry cluster, an urban emerging cultural street, and Nanjing Xuanwu silicon alley. The theme of the design works should be integrated into the urban environment space where they are located, and embody the perfect unity of originality and individuation, so as to achieve a harmonious symbiosis of artistry and design, express the design foresight and highlight the cultural connotation at the same time, so as to improve the quality of living environment and create a better life with design. For more information:
http://www.aki.com.cn/zscssj/?from=&d=&l=en |
An Ideas Competition in Berlin Seeks Answers 
Winning entry perspective Image: ©AllesWirdGut Architekten
Berlin developer HOWOGE recently staged what was regarded as a “planning Laboratory” competition for a model satellite in northwest Berlin. The brief for this invited competition noted that the urban sprawl, which had accompanied the reunification of Germany(and Berlin) in 1989, was low density in character, occupying wide swaths of suburban areas around the city. With previous high density, and now controversial Berlin projects in mind—the problems with Berlin’s high-density Gropius-Stadt as a warning signal—the sponsor here suggested that lessons learned from past mistakes could be avoided with a high-quality design strategy… Read more… Winner Announced for New Preston Mosque Competition
LUCA POIAN FORMS Image courtesy RIBA
Facilitator: RIBA
Location: Preston, U.K.
Type: International, open
The competition attracted over 200 entries from 40 different countries.
Five finalists were chosen to participate in a second phase:
Winner
• LUCA POIAN FORMS, London, UK
Finalists - BLANKPAGE Architects, Lebanon
- Borough Architects + buchhandler-nelli + elca, Cambridge, UK
- Mcheileh Studio, New York (Highly Commended by the Evaluation Panel)
- TABE SHOURI, New York
RIBA competition website:
www.architecture.com/competitions 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/ Astrakhan Looks to Raise Its Quality of Life Index
Aerial view of downtown Astrakhan
Planning competitions with a strong landscape component take many forms, including some for plazas and gateways to major town centers, city neighborhood sites with multi-story housing units, university campus plans and finally, comprehensive city plans—the latter either being for new towns, as in China, or strategies for the improvement of existing cities—as was here the case with Astrakhan, a major city on the Volga delta, and the Caspian Sea. Read more…
Image: ©wHY Architecture
Earlier this year, an article in the Architects’ Journal described what almost sounded like a death knell for wHY Architecture’s winning competition design for Edinburgh’s Ross Pavilion site. When the competition took place, some observers may have regarded wHY as a wild card, in the company of such high-profile firms as BIG and David Adjaye,* There can be no question that they understood the site and program better than their rivals, and it would have appeared that innovation had won the day. Their design could have served to rethink the way in which this site, with its replacement of an outdated bandstand by a contemporary structure, would serve as a destination for Scotland’s public—much as has been the case for Frank Gehry’s pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Read more… SWA/Balsley Wins Paveletskaya Plaza Landscape Competition
Aerial view at night – courtesy SWA/Balsley 5+ Design
Of the nine railway stations in Moscow, Paveletskaya is the largest and one of the last of those that opened around the turn of the century. Compared to other Moscow stations, Paveletskaya, designed by Alexander Krasovsky and opened in 1900, represented a lower-key presence in its sprawling configuration, similar to palaces such as a Sans Souci without the ornamentation. The original site for the recent competition included a small park facing the station, bordered on one side by the Ring Road. Post WWII, the site was bifurcated by a road, thus separating the front entrance of the station from the grassy area facing it. Read more… |
