Image © Tod Williams and Billie Tsien According to the Chicago Tribune, there will be a model presentation of the Obama Library on Wednesday, May 4th. The nonprofit Obama Foundation released a few details about Wednesday’s event, including that Mayor Rahm Emanuel , the president’s first White House chief of staff, will Read more…
Stewart Hollenstein’s winning design for the Green Square Library is under construction and is scheduled for completion early next year. The competition winner is the result of an open international competition which took place in two stages. Stewart Hollenstein, a young Sydney firm, won with their imaginative solution in the second stage Read more…
Winning Entry by FCB (Image © RIBA) Award winning architecture practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCB) has won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) competition to design the new Faculty of Arts Building at the University of Warwick, Coventry, in England’s West Midlands region. The University of Warwick sought Read more…
Sponsor: International Music and Performing Arts Charitable Trust Scotland (IMPACT) Expressions of Interest: 69 This is a shortlist of teams who will compete to design the planned arts centre behind the RBS building at 36 St Andrew Square. The plans are for a 1,000-seat auditorium with rehearsal studios and recording space. The six shortlisted teams Read more…
 ©Markus Bonauer/Michael Bölling, Berlin with capattistaubach Landschaftsarchitekten  ©Markus Schietsch Architekten GmbH mit Lorenz Engster Landschaftsarchitektur & Städtebau GmbH After two rounds of judging, beginning with 187 entries from around the world, the jury reduced the number of competitors to 28 in the first round, then finally settled on two first-place finalists in the second stage, one of which will be commissioned to design the Center. (One may assume that the limited number of entries in such an important competition was limited by the fact that the competition language was held in German.) The building itself is not the only project element, as a tunnel linking the Visitors Center in the Tiergarten to the Reichstag also is an essential part of the plan. The total cost of the project to the government is to be limited to 150€M. Winners (2) • Markus Bonauer/Michael Bölling, Berlin with capattistaubach Landschaftsarchitekten • Markus Schietsch, Zürich with Lorenz Eugster Landschaftsarchitektur & Städtebau GmbH  Site plan ©Markus Bonauer/Michael Bölling, Berlin with capattistaubach Landschaftsarchitekten  Site Plan ©Markus Schietsch Architekten GmbH mit Lorenz Engster Landschaftsarchitektur & Städtebau GmbH Honorable Mentions (5) • BGAA + FRPO Burgos & Garrido Arquitectos Asociados + FRPO Rodriguez & Oriol Arquitectos, Madrid (Spain) with VWA + UBERLAND, Vevey (Switzerland) • bob-architektur BDA, Köln with FSWLA GmbH, Düsseldorf • Henn GmbH, Berlin with Ingenieurgesellschaft BBP Bauconsulting mbH, Berlin • Allmann Sattler Wappner Architekten GmbH, Munich with Schüller Landschaftsarchitekten, Munich • ARGE KIM NALLEWEG Architekten und César Trujillo Moya, Berlin with TDB Landschaftsarchitektur Thomanek Duquesnoy Boemans Partnerschaft, Berlin Read more…
 © Stanton Williams / Asif Kahn (courtesy MRC) The challenge to design a new Museum of London in a very traditional context did not deter some of Europe’s premier modernists from entering this competition. The prize was the conversion of a building in the West Smithfield area, intended to anchor an important cultural district in the city. The new museum, which has a £130-150m construction budget, will secure the future of a series of much-loved heritage buildings at West Smithfield, help regenerate this historic part of the City of London and re-launch the museum, which has seen its audiences soar in recent years. Whereas other major capitals may only have one museum of history, the Museum of London already exists in other locations in the city, most notably in the Square Mile and the Docklands. But establishing a new museum in another location only serves to illustrate the wealth of historical materials accessible to the museum in its archives. Read more…
 The location for the site for the future Obama Library will be in one of two parks on Chicago’s South Side—Jackson Park (the most probable choice at the time) or Washington Park. Both parks were designed by the American landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted’s reputation as a landscape architect really began with his winning entry in New York’s Central Park design competition. There was nothing secretive about the process leading up to Olmsted’s choice as the winner. And millions have been the beneficiaries of that successful competition ever since. Read more…
It’s never too early to start! That might be the slogan of the Michael G. Myers Student Competition in Houston, which took place earlier this spring and was participated in by students from several of the city’s high schools. The topic of this year’s competition was “Animal House,” the challenge being to design an animal Read more…
With regret and sorrow, we report the passing in April of two of our founding members of The Competition Project, Armand Ostroff and Robert Kissinger. Armand was our Board President since our founding in 1986, and Bob was our Secretary/Treasurer during the same period. Their service was essential to the success and growth of our Read more…
The Obama Library Foundation announced today that Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects / Partners together with local Chicago firm, Interactive Design Architects has been chosen from a shortlist of six finalists as architect for the Obama Library. Although a site on Chicago’s South Side has not yet been finalized, this certainly represents one of the 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.
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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…  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 of layers, with a large platform for pedestrians on top of a lower level for cars and the metro system. Traversing this connection for the first time between Manhattan and Brooklyn is not just about getting from one place to another, but experiencing a great scenic view of both boroughs and occasionally interacting with other bridge crossers. As for the latter, they provide a flavor of the city’s demographics, as opposed to similar experiences one might have of the city’s inhabitants when riding the city’s subway system. Read more… |