Albania’s controversial Tirana Pyramid – a former monument to the country’s communist leader – will finally be repurposed after years of decay. MVRDV has officially unveiled designs to transform the pyramidal structure into a large green technology education center. The pyramid will be opened up to the surroundings and filled with natural light and greenery, ultimately making the interior more welcoming to the public.
Tikku (“The Stick”) is a micro-apartment building with a foot-print of one car parking place 2,5 x 5 meters. It is assembled out of CLT cross-laminated timber spatial modules and can be erected on site overnight at any car-city of the world. Where ever a car can go, Tikku can grow. Tikku is a safe-house for neo-archaic biourbanism, a contemporary cave for a modern urban nomad. It will offer privacy, safety and comfort. All the rest of the functions can be found in the surrounding city.
Dutch firm Molenaar&Bol&van Dillen Architecten breathed new life into a 19th-century Church of Saint Peter in Vught by turning the space into a vibrant library and community center “De Petrus”. The renovation focused on retaining the original layout of the church, which dates back to 1884. The result is a beautiful, wide-open interior converted into a breathtaking library with sliding bookshelves. The multi-functional space also includes exhibition halls, meeting spaces, and a restaurant.
The famous international flower show in Genoa, Italy, hosts, in its new location at the Parks of Nervi, the installation “Locus Amoenus” by ENTER Studio and OBR: composed of more than a thousand pinwheels surrounding a circular patio, the installation of 100 sqm interacts with the landscape and with visitors who considered the intervention a great success.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Pritzker Prize, and the first time that the international award was presented in Canada this March. The Pritzker Prize purpose is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.
At the International Real Estate Exhibition MIPIM in Cannes, the multi-functional Marina One complex in Singapore, designed by ingenhoven architects, was named the “Best Innovative Green Building”.
Photographers Hufton+Crow have presented photo report about project 520 West 28th, also known as the Zaha Hadid Building, her first project in New York City and one of the last projects before her death. There is a powerful urban dynamic between the streets of New York and the High Line, a layered civic realm that has developed over generations and in much iteration. 520 West 28th conveys this contextual relationship, applying new ideas and concepts to create the latest evolution of the site’s rich history.
Sovereign by Tony Owen Partners consists of 23 town houses in Sylvania. The site has direct water frontage and panoramic views on the Georges River, Sothern Sydney. Half off the site has not been developed and remains bushland. This area contains dramatic native sandstone escarpments.
The project Riviera Cabin consists in the renovation of a studio apartment in a Ligurian coastal town La Spezia. The client’s request was to reorganize the 35 square meters in order to divide the environment into living and sleeping areas. The nautical culture that characterizes this region in Italy was fundamental to the development of this project. The optimization of storage spaces inside sailboats and the minimum dimensions within these spaces were the inspiration for the development of the project.
The Board of Directors and the Strategic Council of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted today to award the 2018 AIA Gold Medal to James Stewart Polshek, FAIA. The Gold Medal honors an individual or pair of architects whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.
The project “Living the Till”, designed by Environmental consulting firm EoA Inc, was honored as this year’s Radical Innovation Award Grand Prize winner. Founder of Radical Innovation John Hardy commended the project as “the perfect antidote to city dwelling.” A unique treetop hotel resort concept, Living the Till, involves a temporary nomadic structure, which allows for seasonal inhabitation in remote areas. Hovering 30 feet above the forest floor, the structure features a mesh platform supported by a series of cables installed by a team of climbers
Mork-Ulnes Architects have just completed Mylla, a compact yet expansive cabin north of Oslo in the Norwegian forest. A retreat for a geologist and his family, the 84-square meter building sits firmly on a hilltop and is formed by the forces of the landscape around it. It creatively reinterprets Norwegian Cabin typology. Mylla breaks apart the traditional rectangular cabin building plan into a pinwheel which radiates into the landscape to both frame four distinct views – Mylla Lake, the rolling hillside, the sky, and a towering forest.
Diébédo Francis Kéré, the award-winning architect from Gando, Burkina Faso, designed the Serpentine Pavilion 2017, responding to the brief with a bold, innovative structure that brought his characteristic sense of light and life to the lawns of Kensington Gardens. Since its launch in 2000, this annual commission of an international architect to build his or her first structure in London at the time of invitation has become one of the most anticipated events in the global cultural calendar and a leading visitor attraction during London’s summer season.