A Cultural Cluster as Community Asset in Detroit
DIA Plaza: Detroit’s Midtown Cultural Connection Competition
Aerial view – winning entry by DSQ (image © DSQ)
The Space Between Buildings
Detroit’s Dia Plaza competition is hardly unique in initiating a search for urbanistic solutions to a cultural cluster. Vienna, Berlin, Mesa, Fort Worth, Chicago’s Millennium Park and Paris’ Parc de la Villette are just a few examples of ...
Read more...A New City University Takes Shape
MK:U’s Forward Looking Model Explored in Detail
Winning entry by Hopkins Architects (© Malcolm Reading Consultants / Hopkins Architects)
Milton Keynes, known simply as MK, represented one of the more significant results of the UK’s “new town” programs from the 1950s and 60s. Situated almost equidistant between Oxford and Cambridge, and within easy access from London, the ...
Read more...Chicago Disruptive Housing
Winning entry by Greg Tamborino
If cities in the U.S. are anticipating funding from government entities to solve a dire need for affordable housing, they should be prepared for a long wait. The national government, a traditional source of funds for such projects, has shown little if no interest in the issue, and state and local ...
Read more...A New “Smart City” as Education Hub
Winning entry by Hopkins Architects with Prior + Partners (© Malcolm Reading Consultants / Hopkins Architects)
In an ambitious plan to facilitate hi-tech research and development, the MK:U competition was launched in January 2019 to seek a masterplan for a new university. The site of the new university at MK is located at the heart of the ...
Read more...Transforming Buffalo’s DL & W Rail Corridor
Reconstituting an Abandoned Rail Line
Aerial view: courtesy WNYC
The Rails to Trails program, which gained momentum after the1984 Federal Land Banking Law—supported by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy—has seen over 24,000 miles of trails established where rail lines once existed. Some sites were strictly urban, while others, sometimes over 100 miles in length, were primarily rural, while others combined ...
Read more...Spreebogen Takes a Final Lap
Plans for the Final Expansion of Schultes’ Federal Chancellery Building
Aerial view with new addition at bottom of site (Image © Schultes Frank Architekten)
The reunification of Germany in 1989 not only had a great impact on the lives of many Germans, especially those living in the former DDR,
but together with the decision to move the nation’s ...
Read more...Miremont-le-Cret, Geneva
The Renovation of a City Landmark
The renovation of Miremont-le-Cret in 2012 was unusual in that the project was the subject of a competition. Designed in 1953 by a local architect, Marc-Joseph Saugey, this building had long been landmarked as one of Geneva’s most significant modern accomplishments. The building’s design is remarkable in how it fits ...
Read more...A Paean to its Founders in Weimar
New Bauhaus Museum Commemorates an Anniversary
2012 COMPETITIONS Annual with Weimar Bauhaus Competition WInner Design Image: ©Heike Hanada
As projected, the Weimar Bauhaus Museum, one of two new Bauhaus museums scheduled to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Germany, has opened its doors in Weimar. The new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, ...
Read more...2018/2019 Steedman Fellowship: Infrastructure
Winner: “Collective Clutter,” installation view, Princeton University. (Photo: Courtesy of Lily Zhang)
When one thinks of infrastructure, it’s usually about roads, rails, bridges, airports, canals, pipelines, and any- and everything about getting from one place to another. But leave it to the Steedman competition to stimulate designers to view things from a different point of view.
In the 2016/17 Steedman competition, won by Pedro Pitarch of Spain, the winner explored the theme, “Adaptation,” and convinced the jury with his proposal, Disguised Metropolitanisms: Unveiling the Masquerade of Urban Domesticity. Pitarch’s point of departure? “There has been a migration from the right of property to the right of access and use,” argued Pedro Pitarch. “Spaces are no longer used according to their architectural program, but according to their protocols, their accessibility, and their possibilities of empowerment.”
Rise in the City: An Affordable Housing Competition in Lesotho
Wining entry “Creating Spaces” by Tanmoy Dey (all images courtesy RISE)
The Rise in the City Housing Competition in the African country of Lesotho presented many similarities with student competitions that have occurred over the past decades, the main link being the presence of mentors as advisers to the team(s) who were designing the entries. One ...
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