The easy-to-assemble structures will quickly shelter those left homeless after the earthquake in Nepal. Shigeru Ban has released plans for his “Nepal Project”—modular, wood-framed structures that can be assembled quickly and easily, to house victims of this April’s devastating earthquakes in Nepal that left hundreds of thousands homeless.
Photo courtesy Passive House Institute A 16-unit apartment building (foreground) in Innsbruck, Austria, is the first of its kind to be certified under Passive House Plus—a new certification program that combines stringent efficiency standards with a renewable energy requirement. When the first Passive House building was built in Germany 25 years ago, the certification system raised the bar for energy efficient buildings by introducing a rigorous performance-based standard. This summer, the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt, Germany, has raised the bar higher with its certification of a multi-unit residential complex in Innsbruck, Austria, and a single-family home in Ötigheim, Germany,
A symposium and exhibition in China explore ways of rethinking the countryside. Nan Xiao, Qingyun Ma, and Gary Paige at the symposium. Every year about a million people in China move from rural villages and towns to big cities. Lots of planning efforts—both good and bad—have focused on fast-growing cities, but very little work has looked at the countryside where depopulation and the changing economics of farming threaten the very existence of many villages. With that as a backdrop, the University of Southern California’s American Academy in China (AAC) and its School of Architecture addressed the urban-rural divide in
Every summer for the last 29 years, Bogotá’s University of Los Andes has programed its International Workshop in Architecture, which it holds in the Caribbean coastal city of Cartagena de Indias. For four weeks this past July, about 80 undergraduate architecture students—from countries ranging from Spain to Argentina—convened in the 16th-century walled city to absorb the culture and the rich architecture within its confines, while considering new visions for this historic center. With so many years behind its belt, the seminar, directed for over a decade now by Carlos Campuzano Castelló, has become a well-oiled program. After a week of
A design proposal called Remembrance and Reflection. The rules of an architecture competition can affect which design wins and even how it is received. That’s why opponents of the controversial Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial fault not just Frank Gehry’s design but the format of the competition that led to its selection.
"Our warning was not heeded" the firm says. Japanese officials are finding out that breaking up is hard to do, especially with Zaha Hadid. Today the starchitect's London-based firm Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) issued a 1,440 word statement to "set the record straight" regarding its ouster from the National Stadium design in Tokyo. The rebuttal comes after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced July 17 that the stadium design would "start over from zero" after contending with costs soaring upwards of $2 billion, which many attributed to ZHA's bombastic plan.ZHA begs to differ.In the statement, the firm asserts that its
For the first time in almost forty years, visitors may soon be able to reach the Virgolo mountain in Bolzano, Italy, by cable car. On Wednesday, Norwegian firm Snøhetta won an international competition hosted by the SIGNA Group for their design of a new mountaintop transit system for the Alpine city. The trip between the conceptual design’s two ring-like stations—one toward the top of the mountain and the other at its base—will take 71 seconds, according to Snøhetta, making the total travel time from Bolzano’s historic city center, the Piazza Walther, about five minutes.“This conceptual idea of continuous travel, a
Image courtesy Studio Museum/Adjaye Associates The Studio Museum in Harlem will replace its current facilities with a proposed building by David Adjaye. To ring in its 50th anniversary, the Studio Museum in Harlem has unveiled the design for a new home by architect David Adjaye. Image courtesy Studio Museum The existing museum is located in a 19th-century building renovated by J. Max Bond Jr. “[This project] is about a powerful urban resonance, drawing on the architectural tropes of Harlem and celebrating the history and culture of this extraordinary neighborhood,” Adjaye said.
RSS
