Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge: The Reinvention of a 19th Century Icon

Professional winner: Brooklyn Bridge Forest (image © Pilot Projects Design Collective)   While looking for new adventures on a visit to New York City, friends suggested that I take time to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge—certainly a New York icon. For those intending to undertake this trek across the bridge for the first time, the bridge consists ...
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Another Competition for Moscow’s Expanding Subway Network

  Image © Zaha Hadid Architects   Even under Stalin, Moscow subway stations represented the crown jewels of the city’s projects when it came to design. In more recent years, the emphasis placed on modern design in the city’s expanding metro rail network has resulted in some major new projects, and this year’s competitions for two stations was ...
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A Modern Upgrade for an Industrial Urban Sector: “The Transformation and Revival of Industrial Heritages” – Hangang District Urban Design International Master Competition

1st place entry by Dominique Perrault Architecture (image © ©Dominique Perrault Architect/Adagp     China’s planning priorities for their urban areas experienced a sharp turn after the post-Mao reforms took place. During the early post-WWII period, when Soviet influence in the early urbanization of China dominated, industrial development took precedence over all other issues, with heritage, conservation, residential ...
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Powerhouse Precinct at Parramatta

        Although one might normally assume that local firms participating in a competition might have a clear advantage over foreign competitors, this has seldom been the case: just see Sydney’s Opera House, won by a Danish architect, and Toronto’s City Hall, won by a Finn—as evidence that well devised competition briefs as adequate documentation can create ...
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Architecture at Zero

  Jensen Architects – Winning entry (Honor Award)   Beginning in 2011, Architecture at Zero, a collaboration between the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and the California chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIACA), was established to investigate the role architecture might play in reducing energy consumption in the built environment. Since then, every year has ...
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Zumthor on the Chopping Block?

An Ideas Competition in Opposition to a Concrete Design   Entry by TheeAe (Image © TheeAe)     In early 2020, a group advocating a new approach to the design of the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA)—The Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA—organized a competition to counter an existing design by the Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor. Already commissioned by the ...
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Connector as Solution

 National Railway Museum Central Hall (U.K.)   Winning entry by Feilden Fowles (image © Fielden Fowles)   If one were to search for a railway museum in the U.K., London would seem to be an obvious choice. But, as it happens, its location is in the northeastern city of York, far from the major cultural and economic centers of ...
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Houston Endowment Competition

  View to winning entry ©KDA   Foundation non-profits are no strangers to good architecture. Ford Foundation’s forward-looking headquarters in New York City by Roche Dinkeloo was an early example of a non-profit using architecture as a vehicle for serving to brand it as a progressive institution. In 2001 the California Endowment went one step further, staging an ...
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Prince Charles in the White House?

Expressway toll booth of the future ©Paul Spreiregen   Recent news about a new U.S. government policy concerning the design of public buildings under President Trump bears a striking resemblance to the controversy surrounding that very issue in the U.K. in the second half of the 20thcentury. It was then that Prince Charles appeared on the scene ...
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Xingdong New Area Urban Design Competition: City of the Future

Winning entry by Cui Kai (© Cui Kai)   Master plans have been around for ages; but master plans for very large cities with all their support systems are relatively new. Milton Keynes (MK), located in Buckinghamshire in southern England, and begun in the late 1960s, is one of the most successful of the new cities, now ...
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