Houston Endowment’s New Headquarters on the Bayou
Southwest view Houston Endowment Headquarters – Photo Ivan Baan, courtesy Kevin Daly
Following in the footsteps of other major non-profits—The Ford Foundation and LA’s California Endowment Center in particular—the Houston Endowment’s new headquarters, located on a grassy knoll just above the Buffalo
Read more…
The Makasiiniranta South Harbor Competition Helsinki South Harbour and Tori Quarter Suomen Ilmakuva Helsinki. Image credit/ Tietoa Finland, Janne Hirvonen
As a prelude to a competition for the design of a new Architecture and Design Museum to be located in Helsinki’s South Harbor, the City of Finland staged an open competition to establish a
Read more…
Image courtesy Budapest Development Agency ©Grimshaw
Budapest’s Nygati Rail Station Competition
Completed in 1877, Budapest’s Nygati Railway Station has witnessed many of the twists and turns of Hungarian history: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, revolutions of post-World War I and 1956, and various shades of expansion and shrinkage in their territory. Its important
Read more…
Vltava Philharmonic Hall Design Competition
View to Concert Hall from bridge ©BIG
Classical music is still part of a vibrant musical scene in Prague, with at least four principal venues hosting concerts, ballet and opera. As a modern European city, the only missing venue from these choices is a state of
Read more…
The Cold War Veterans Memorial Competition
Rendering: Oyler Wu Collaborative/Courtesy Pritzker Military Museum & Library
The Pritzker family is no stranger to good architecture; so it should come as no surprise that a project launched by the Pritzker Military Archives, including a competition for a Cold War Veterans Memorial in Wisconsin,
Read more…
Edward A. Feiner, FAIA (1947-2022)
Nothing is a boon to architecture more than a knowledgeable patron. And one of the foremost “patrons” of architecture in modern societies is government—at its various levels. Our federal government’s role in this is carried out mainly by the General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees the
Read more…
A Quest for that Elusive Connective Formula
First Place: Pedestrian perspective from Parliament – Zeidler Architecture in association with David Chipperfield Architects
How do you find a common thread that can connect an eclectic collection of buildings, visually as well as physically, all located within a one-block site, located just across
Read more…
Vilnius Railway Station and Public Square Competition
Vilnius Station competition Image: ©Zaha Hadid Architects
Aerial view of Vilnius railway station (2021)
In European cities, recent history has seen their central railway stations become the subject of upgrades, or totally new projects, many of them springing up
Read more…
AL_A Prevails over a Star-studded Cast
After over a year of planning, the choice of a site, and the establishment of criteria for the staging an international competition for a new concert hall, the process recently culminated in the choice of an architect for the design of the new Philharmonic in
Read more…
Gyo Obata Photo: courtesy HOK
If there are milestones in the world of architecture, the passing of Gyo Obata certainly marked one. Obata, along with Cesar Pelli, Richard Rogers and Helmut Jahn, belonged to a group of designers that had strong international connections, sometimes based on family histories. A second generation American
Read more…
|
San Jose’s Urban Confluence Winner Cancelled
This week we received the news that the winning design for San Jose’s Urban Confluence competition by SMAR Architecture Studio has been cancelled. This comes after the original competition site was abandoned in favor of one more centrally located in downtown San Jose, Plaza de César Chávez. We can only assume that even this wasn’t enough to generate enough interest from major donors. From the very beginning of the competition, it appeared that the enthusiasm of those sponsoring the competition might be lacking links to potential donors with deep pockets—the hi-tech firms in Silicon Valley. After the competition resulted in a design that certainly entailed a major budget, the project had to be in trouble. The competition did produce a remarkable design; but this turned out to be another case where a competition, intended to generate enough public interest to fund a major project, came up short. -Ed
“A Museum for All”
Winning entry by Weiss/Manfredi Landscape Architecture and Urbanism
Background
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s slogan “Creating a Museum for All” certainly reflects the efforts of many art museums to counter the notion that art museums exist primarily to cater to an elitist few. But one should note that this competition for an expansion of the museum’s capacity to serve a wider audience saw an initial step in this direction with the 1999 competition resulting in the Steven Holl addition, a series of pavilions stretching down one side of the large lawn area..
Read more…
Preparation and Organization of Design Competitions
[phase 1] Benjamin Hossbach / Christian Lehmhaus / Christine Eichelmann
210 × 230 mm, 192 pp.
over 600 images
softcover
ISBN 978-3-86922-316-2 (English)
ISBN 978-3-86922-240-0 (German)
Dom Publishers
€48 in EU (For price abroad, see below)
Founded in 1998 in Berlin, Phase 1 has been a principal player in the organization and facilitation of design competitions, not only in Germany, but abroad as well. The accomplishments of the firm have been well documented in three volumes—The Architecture of Competitions—beginning in 2i006. Whereas these books mainly focused on the results of the competitions they have administered, the present work, Fundamentals of Competition Management, takes one from the very beginnings of the competition process to its conclusion. The authors envisioned the publication as “three three books in one: one „blue book“ with example projects, one „yellow book“ with statements and the „white book“ with the actual guideline to competition management.”
Although there have been a number of handbooks covering the administration of designcompetitions a study covering the entire process in such detail is a welcome addition to the the literature in this field. As a contribution to this important democratic process that has yielded exceptional design for decades, this volume is not only valid for Europe, but a current overview of the process for those globally who wish to raise the level of design by virtue of a design competition. -Ed
Foreign institutions wishing to obtain a copy of the book will recieve a discount to cover the cost of foreign shipping.
To obtain a copy for that offer, go to: accounting@phase1.de
Since the recent realization of SMAR Architecture’s winning design we have now received images from a professional photo shoot. As an open competition for one of the more important projects in Europe at the time, we feel that full documentation of the process from start to finish was an important page in the history of architecture in the early 21st century. Documentation by us during the 2017 competition, with images from all finalists from the 144 entries is available at:
/competitions-static/2020/11/science-island-design-competition-finalists/
See more images…
Completed IMEX by Tuck Hinton Architects. Photo courtesy Anecdote
It is not often that we look back to a competition that occurred three decades ago that was also covered in detail by COMPETITIONS (Vol. 4, #4; pp. 14-27). What made the Chattanooga IMAX different back in 1994 was that the article covering that competition was authored by Prof. Marleen Davis, then Dean of the University of Tennessee’s School of Architecture and a member of the jury panel. This was not just a short article, covering the high points of the competition with a few talking points about the winning design. This 4,000+ word document also described in detail the jury’s observations about all the finalists, including the honorable mentions—one of the few times we have gained such a detailed glimpse in this country from the inside of the competition process.
Read more…
Winning entry by Luca Poian Forms Image ©Filippo Bolognese images
Good design seldom happens in a vacuum. And so it was with an international competition for a new mosque in Preston, U.K. A mid-sized city of 95,000, and located in Lancashire near the west coast and almost equally distant from London and Glasgow, Preston has a storied past, going all the way back to the Romans and the late Middle Ages, where it was the site of significant battles. During the Industrial Revolution, the city prospered, and it was not until after World War II that Preston experienced the British version of the U.S. Rust Belt. In the meantime, the city has experienced an upswing in economic activity, with an unemployment rate of only 3%. Aside from the appearance of new industries, the city has benefitted from the establishment of Central Lancashire University (CLU), which employs over 3,000 faculty and staff, and, as such, is one of the regions major employers. Any new university requires new facilities, and one of the most outstanding examples of this at CLU was the new Student Centre and Plaza, a result of a 2016 RIBA-sponsored competition won by Hawkins/Brown
Read More
Changdong Station winner – image ©D & B Partners Architects
Whereas international competitions for real projects have become a rarity lately, Korea is a welcome exception. Among the plethora of competition announcements we receive almost weekly, several have ended with foreign firms as winners. But the history of welcoming international participants does go back several years. One notable early example was the Incheon Airport competition, won by Fentress Bradburn Architects (1962-70).
Among the more recent successes of foreign firms was the Busan Opera House competition, won by Snøhetta (2013-) and the Sejong Museum Gardens competition, won by Office OU, Toronto (2016-2023).
Read more…
1st Place: Zaha Hadid Architects – night view from river – Render by Negativ
Arriving to board a ferry boat or cruise ship used to be a rather mundane experience. If you had luggage, you might be able to drop it off upon boarding, assuming that the boarding operation was sophisticated enough. In any case, the arrival experience was nothing to look forward to. I recall boarding the SS United States for a trip to Europe in the late 1950s. Arriving at the pier in New York, the only thought any traveler had was to board that ocean liner as soon as possible, find one’s cabin, and start exploring. If you were in New York City and arriving early, a nearby restaurant or cafe would be your best bet while passing time before boarding.
Read more…
|
