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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 Prague’s LOŠBATES School Competition
First prize entry © Pelletier de Fontenay / Valerio Sartori (image courtesy CCEA MOBA)
Sponsored by LOŠBATES, an administrative entity established by four adjacent municipalities on the outskirts of Prague, this competition for a primary and secondary school, won by the Canadian firm, Pelletier de Fontenay with Valerio
Winning project by Office Ou (image © Office Ou)
The features of a truly international competition were quite in evidence in Prague’s SMÍCHOV School search for an ideal elementary school design: the event attracted 66 entries from around the world, and the winners were a team from Canada and Poland. The sponsors
City and Developer as Infrastructure Catalyst
SalesForce Tower and Terminal, San Francisco Photo: Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli
Not since the Golden Gate Bridge and BART has San Francisco experienced an infrastructure project of the magnitude and importance as the recently completed Transbay Transit Terminal. The subject of a 2007 competition
Competing for an Arrival Experience and Plan at UCD
Winning design: Image:©Steven Holl Architects and Malcolm Reading Consultants
A designer of hospitals once remarked that a full vacant floor should be added to every new hospital facility to accommodate the rapid changes in the technical demands of the industry. Although on Entry by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (© Diller Scofidio + Renfro) Six design teams have been selected as finalists in the Future Campus – University College Dublin International Design Competition. The teams’ urban design visions for an Entrance Precinct Masterplan and concept designs for a new circa €48m Centre for Creative Design are now
From Storied Restoration to Prime Time Destination
Winning entry ©Steimle Architekten
When we first included an article in COMPETITIONS about the restoration of Hannes Meyer’s Berlin Trade Union School in 2007, little did we anticipate that this subject would resurface on several occasions over the years. With the initial publication of
Young Architects win a Restricted Competition over High-Profile Competitors
“Today the majority of design competitions are exclusively based on prequalification, which means that only established companies that have participated in numerous building projects qualify. The competition format that was chosen for this project challenged this, and the result shows that it
In the early 1990s, Weiss Manfredi emerged as one of the most interesting young architecture firms in the U.S. How did this happen? Winning two important competitions in 1990/91—the Women’s Military Memorial in Washington, DC, and the Olympia Fields Mitchell Park competition in a Chicago suburb—served to propel this relatively unknown pair into the national limelight. From then on, the firm began to receive invitations to participate in invited competitions, winning several high-profile competitions, which included the highly acclaimed Seattle Art Museum Olympia Sculpture Park and the more recent Kent State Center for Architecture and Environmental Design competitions.
What marked their rise was not simply their expertise in developing landscape plans to fit a specific site, or detail in retrofitting or realizing significant buildings, but recognizing that architecture does not cease to exist at the front door. As a result of their success in those early competitions, the firm has received a number of commissions, such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Nanotechnology Institute and Cornell Tech’s recently completed “Bridge,” at their Roosevelt Island Campus. Not known for their high-rises, the firm seemed to strike just the right chord on this project. As a major piece of the Roosevelt Island campus ensemble, this building can hold its own with any of its neighbors—a tribute to the firm’s versatility.
Would all of this have been possible without those winning competition efforts? It’s clear that those experiences smoothed the path to career advancement…as both a learning experience and raising the firm’s profile.
See Weiss Manfredi interview:
Bauhaus Director, Hannes Meyer, Rehabilitated with
After the Nazi government ascended to power in 1933, one of their first acts was to take possession of a trade union school in the Berlin suburb of Bernau and turn it into a training facility for the SS and Gestapo. This action represented an antithesis of the school’s original purpose when it was built in 1930—to serve as a training facility for the members of the All-German Federal Trade Unions. Since the union movement was an anathema to the Nazis, it is understandable that this institution was a high-profile target on their agenda so soon after they took power. The fact that the architect of record was a Communist may also have played a role.
Initially, the Federal School of the All-German Trade Unions (ADGB in German), had been the subject of a competition in 1928, won by the new Director of the Bauhaus School in Dessau, Hannes Meyer, with his partner, Hans Wittwer. The team also included a supporting cast consisting of the architecture design department of the school and the Israeli architect, Arieh Sharon. Although this competition was hardly as high-profile as one which took place a couple of years earlier for the League of Nations Headquarters in Geneva—also entered by Meyer—it could hardly be characterized as one which slipped completely under the radar.
Why this competition was limited, rather than open to all architects was made clear by the program. Although it could have been limited for political and budgeting considerations, the list of shortlisted participants was an indication that the goal was to produce something modern, rather than traditional, and more in tune with the forward-looking philosophy and pedagogical Zeitgeist of the left.
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