The Architecture of the City

Foamspace is the winning project of the 2015 Street Architecture Prize Competition hosted by Storefront for Art and Architecture and the New Museum as part of the biennial IDEAS CITY festival. The brainchild of SecondMedia, this mobile work of architecture and digital platform of financial tools will allow members to propose and vote on the next iterations.

We had a chance to speak to Ryan King, who cofounded SecondMedia with Ekaterina Zavyalova, Nikolay Martynov and Betty Fan.

Ryan King: Foamspace begins as a work of temporary architecture on the streets of New York for the Ideas City Festival. The installation is made of geofoam blocks and is designed to mobilize and store the value generated during the festival while organizing a community of architects.

This is done through Foamspace Coin, a token of membership for the community, that runs on the Bitcoin blockchain. Proposals and Funding for Future Projects occur amongst the community on the decentralized blockchain. The Installation materials are resold after the festival to create a community fund for the next projects that will be managed on the blockchain.

• Architects: Christian de Portzamparc
• Location: Cheval Blanc, 33330 Saint-Émilion, France
• Architect in Charge: Christian de Portzamparc
• Area: 5250.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2011
• Photographs: Erik Saillet, Max Botton

Berlin architect Volker Staab has won a competition to extend the Bauhaus archive and museum in the German capital, designed by founder Walter Gropius in the 1960s.

The new 6,700-square-metre extension will create new exhibition galleries for the Bauhaus-Archiv and Museum für Gestaltung, which holds the world's largest collection of materials on the history of the Bauhaus art school.

It will comprise a series of underground galleries, a one-storey block along Von-der-Heydt-Strasse, and a five-storey glazed tower described by the competition judges as "delicate" and "almost frail".

Architect Renzo Piano has unveiled designs for another London skyscraper – a 224-metre cylindrical tower expected to do for Paddington "what The Shard did for London Bridge".

Three years after completing the 300-metre-high Shard tower at London Bridge station, the Italian architect has once again teamed up with developer Sellar Property Group to redevelop the former Royal Mail sorting office site at Paddington Station.

The 65-storey mixed-use tower at 31 London Street will accommodate 200 new homes, as well as offices, shops, restaurants and cafes, all set within 4,000 square metres of new public space.

While planning a long awaited tour of concrete council housing in the outskirts of Paris (anyone in?), here we feature a powerful ensemble built between 1969 and 1975 by Jean Renaudie and his wife Renée Gailhoustet at Ivry-sur-Seine.


These 8 buildings see the architects joyfully play with the plasticity of concrete, fade the limits between public and private spaces, dialogue between natural and artificial materials, and provide a variety of functions that is more usual in an urban scale environment than in a building ensemble.

All this without falling in the contemporary modernist clichés of 1950’s and 60’s, so typical in Paris’ banlieu.

I guess you cannot really explain Renaudie and Renée Gailhoustet’s legacy better than these lines by Léopold Lambert:

“In my opinion, Jean Renaudie is one of the very best French architects of the last fifty years. His two housing complexes in Ivry sur Seine near Paris (…) and in Givors near Lyon are two very successful examples of architecture becoming urban in an era (50’s-60’s) that created what is now famous as the French suburbs catastrophe. In fact, those two housing complexes are extremely interesting in the fact that they embody a real urban density, mix several social levels, organize urban life on a multitude of storeys, blur the limits between private and public areas and supply a little piece of garden to every apartment. This architecture is full of episodes, surprizing moments of beauty in an urban artefact/landscape full of hideaways.”

All Clear Ahead   Designs for Krause Gateway Center by Renzo Piano Building Workshop have been circulating for a while, but pretty soon it should turn from drawing to reality. The building's groundbreaking is scheduled to happen this fall. Demolition of the existing buildings on the site has already begun. Follow the link to see more renderings and drawings. [ARCHITECT]

Anne Holtrop is an interesting figure in the contemporary architectural scene. His works, ranging from models or installations to temporary pavilions and buildings, start from small insights, open questions or simple yet rigorous explorations of unexpected paths. The Program is always the last parameter called into question: it basically adapts to the given limits while spaces develop from within following an idea of continuity. Always present is a close relationship with natural processes: never mimic nor parametrical this is rather an instrumental understanding of growth processes or a simple inspiration for formal creation. All works manage to balance a consistent compositional strength with a light, almost playful touch.

I want to look freely – more or less without a plan – at material gestures and found forms and let them perform as architecture. Anne Holtrop

The “Trail house”, is developed following existing paths created by the circulation of pedestrians over a territory. Overturning the antinomy between house and street, the trail house merges with the walking trajectories, opening its views freely on the surrounding site and naturally becoming part of it.

Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015: New York firm SO-IL has used off-the-shelf steel studs to produce a canopy structure for a ramp within a historic building in downtown Chicago (+ slideshow).

Titled Passage, the installation was created for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which opened 3 October and runs to 3 January 2016.

The metal structure covers a gently sloping ramp inside the Chicago Cultural Center, a late 19th-century Neoclassical building that serves as the main venue for the Biennial. The ramp stretches between an auditorium and the building's main banquet hall.

El ingeniero y arquitecto valenciano Santiago Calatrava ha sido reconocido con el Premio Europeo de Arquitectura 2015, galardón que otorga el Centro Europeo de Arquitectura, Artes, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos junto con el Ateneo de Chicago: Museo de Arquitectura y Diseño.

   Se trata "del más prestigioso reconocimiento de los que se conceden en el continente a aquellos arquitectos que han abanderado a lo largo de su trayectoria una arquitectura profundamente humana y han dirigido su obra hacia el compromiso con los principios del humanismo europeo", informa el estudio del autor en un comunicado.

   En declaraciones del presidente del Ateneo de Chicago, Narkiewicz-Laine, citadas por el estudio de l arquitecto español, Calatrava es "un teórico visionario, un filósofo y un utópico, además de un verdadero artista en ingeniería y en el expresionismo arquitectónico", cuyos edificios "son obras de arte de gran alcance que han sido inspiradas por una mano dotada de maestría y esculpidas por el mejor ojo crítico". "Son obras inmensamente evocadoras y ferozmente intelectuales", añade.

   En el fallo del premio, ambas instituciones han tenido en cuenta toda la carrera del arquitecto, destacando algunas de sus obras como la Estación de Ferrocarril de Stadelholfen, en Zúrich; el puente Bac de Roda, en Barcelona, que supuso el inicio de su reconocimiento internacional; el Puente de la Paz de Calgary, en Canadá; el Museo de Arte de Milwaukee; la Facultad de Innovación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la Universidad de Florida; o la Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias de Valencia.

Your stomach will flip-flop as you peruse these historic photos of the Empire State Building's construction process.

Arcaid has shortlisted 20 of the year's best architectural images for their 2015 awards - the annual Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards. The images will be presented in four categories - Exteriors, Interiors, Sense of Place, and Building in Use - and judged by an esteemed panel on their atmospheric quality, composition, use of scale and more. The winners will be considered for the Photographer of the Year Award, won last year by Hufton + Crow who now serves as a judge. 

Architects: Christian de Portzamparc
Location: 464 Apgujeong-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Local Architect / Project Manager: DPJ & Partners, Architecture
Area: 4408.0 sqm
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Nicolas Borel, Courtesy of Christian de Portzamparc

Pretty much as the title says.
By Laurent Chehere, a photographer living and working in Paris.

Au sud-est de Paris, la ville d’Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne) est marquée par l’empreinte d’un duo d’architectes précurseurs : Renée Gailhoustet et Jean Renaudie. Laboratoire expérimental des années 1970 aux années 1980, le centre-ville abrite d’importantes productions architecturales dont la réflexion et la créativité restent peu égalées en France.

Des années 1970 aux années 1980, Ivry-sur-Seine change radicalement de visage. Renée Gailhoustet et Jean Renaudie, encouragés par une tradition communale de logement social audacieuse, expérimentent une vision nouvelle de l’habitat en rupture avec la production de l’époque. Un exemple unique de ville nouvelle s’élabore alors à quatre mains : les tours en béton brut de logements post-corbuséennes de Gailhoustet jouxtent les collines de béton végétalisées imaginées par Renaudie, reprises et développées par Gailhoustet. Aujourd’hui encore, ces constructions aux formes singulières surprennent et choquent même parfois ceux qui les découvrent.

Construire à partir de déchets de fibres et d’herbe signifie utiliser moins d’arbres et plus de plantes. Le bambou est une herbe géante qui est plus dure que le bois de chêne, pourquoi ne pas exploiter cette ressource naturelle capable de se renouveler en seulement cinq ans pour construire des projets entier ?

Tel est la proposition de l’agence d’architecture américaine « CRG Architects » qui, tout en se basant sur les diverses qualités du bambou, a imaginé un quartier entier utilisant ce matériau. Pour développer leur concept, les architectes ont longtemps étudié d’une part le comportement des hommes vis-à-vis de la nature et d’autre part le temps que met le bambou pour sa prolifération, sans parler de ses caractéristiques utiles pour l’acte de bâtir.

Le bambou la solution pour demain ?
La ville chinoise d’Anji appelée également « La ville du bambou » dont les principales ressources sont les bambouseraies est connue par sa politique anti-polluante où l’industrie à base de bambou gagne du terrain que ce soit pour l’artisanat local ou comme matériau de construction.

Selon les architectes, une maison construite à partir de bois nécessite environ un demi-hectare de forêt et son équivalent en bambou requiert seulement sa surface en bambou, l’économie serait formidable et les ressources naturelles seraient préservées. Et si la prochaine évolution dans le bâtiment était la révolution du bambou ?

« Un quartier entier construit en bambou où les constructions suivent la forme de la parcelle et la hauteur des édifices guide leur orientation, où les bâtiments disposent du rayonnement du soleil et profitent des meilleures vues. Cette distribution nous donne un sentiment d’enrichissement. Le projet cherche à concevoir un village entier de gratte-ciel où le bambou serait la source d’inspiration, que ce soit pour la hauteur ou pour sa qualité durable. C’est un exemple de faisabilité urbaine pour la ville de Singapour. » Nous raconte l’architecte.

Casa Mora is an unbuilt project by Iñaki Ábalos y Juan Herreros, two Spanish architects who worked together from 1985 until 2008. (Cf another post we wrote about them on Socks). The very essential drawings describing the project underline the basic characteristic of the domestic space: its fluidity and the absence of hierarchy in the distribution of the rooms. The plan is a 30×18 m rectangle subdivided in five horizontal sectors which are later crossed by thin walls hosting the house functions, punctuated by small patios.

The house embodies a research into the idea of the domestic focusing on a solution which is neither a free plan nor a “conventional” distributional model with served and servant spaces. A historical example which might relate to this distribution method is Geoffrey Bawa’s House in Colombo.

In Casa Mora, the rooms all share a similar surface, they are juxtaposed and related directly by way of doors. The genericity of the spaces they identify is opposed only by the furniture, mobile elements which might be arranged differently over time, as shown in the images accompanying the text.

The elevation corresponds to the simple proportions of the plan and only show two higher elements corresponding to two of the rooms. The clear division in five sectors is visible from the outside and furtherly emphasized by the rhythm of the cladding elements.

Built in Lyon's docklands, Jakob + MacFarlane's new headquarters for international news channel Euronews features an acid-green facade punctured by two huge egg-shaped holes (+ slideshow).

This tunnel made up of wooden profiles was designed by NAS Architecture to arch over the fortifications surrounding a historic commune in the south of France (+ slideshow).

Described by NAS Architecture as a vortex, the Haven installation was commissioned by the heritage organisation National Monuments Center of France. It wraps over the medieval ramparts surrounding Aigues-Mortes.

Efficiency is the name of the game in the business world. And as any working architect knows, working at an architecture firm is as much about business as it is design - even if in architecture, efficiency can be hard to come by. By using applications that span platforms, though, you can remain efficient no matter where you go.

Following the success of our list of 22 Websites You Didn't Know Were Useful to Architects, we’ve assembled a list of 20 productivity apps to keep you on track. Whether you’re trying to keep your schedule in check, remember your passwords, or simply get the most out of your shrinking sleep time, there’s an app that can maximize your ability to do what you’re doing.

beijing design week 2015 makes history with the reveal of VULCAN, the world's largest 3D printed architectural pavilion.

beijing design week 2015 makes history with the reveal of VULCAN, the world’s largest 3D-printed architectural pavilion. within the central atrium of the high-tech commercial/office complex of parkview green, the guinness world record award winning design spans overhead visitors in an arched configuration. laboratory for creative design (LCD) has developed a radical way of using the technology with the support of novel design techniques and construction methods applied on an architectural scale.

On le dit souvent laid et sans âme. Aujourd’hui, on trouve pourtant du béton dans deux tiers des habitations. Musées, maisons, constructions... ces édifices vous feront (peut-être !) changer d’avis.

Il y en a plusieurs sortes, dont chacune possède sa spécificité. Béton de terre, béton de chaux, béton armé, béton de ciment... Ce dernier est à l’heure actuelle l’un des matériaux de construction les plus utilisés au monde: c’est un composant essentiel de deux tiers des habitations! C’est aussi le deuxième matériau le plus utilisé par l’homme après l’eau potable: un mètre cube par an et par habitant. Pourtant, son utilisation énergivore est source de multiples dégradations de l’environnement.

Côté esthétique, on le dit souvent affreux. Sans charme et sans âme. Le béton est bien souvent associé aux parkings grisâtres, aux barres d’immeubles communistes, aux blockhaus... Et puis? C’est tout. Dans l’imaginaire commun, le matériau n’a pas une place très reluisante. Pourtant, c’est bien le béton qui est mis à l’honneur au musée Tony-Garnier, à Lyon, à l’occasion d’une exposition intitulée «Sacré béton. De la haine à l’amour», qui retrace 2000 années d’histoire de ce matériau décrié dans l’opinion publique mais omniprésent dans le quotidien urbain. Une occasion de «réfléchir sur le béton» et de «faire tomber les clichés», selon la directrice Catherine Chambon.

1001 merveilles de béton

Et pour faire tomber ces clichés, les exemples ne manquent pas! Un très bon livre publié par les éditions Taschen il y a quelques semaines a entrepris de nous le prouver. Intitulé 100 contemporary Concrete Buildings*, ce livre en deux volumes met en lumière les meilleures (et les plus belles!) réalisations à base de béton de ces dernières années. À l’intérieur, des grands noms comme Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron et Steven Holl ou Rudy Ricciotti en France, qui a dessiné le MuCEM de Marseille et qui vient d’être chargé de transformer la gare de Nantes. Objectif: faire une alliance de verre et de béton, conçue comme «une rue, une grande fenêtre sur la ville».

The single-occupancy units are designed to move at the touch of a button.

There are plenty of apps designed to make moving easier, but a new kind ofapartment takes tech-driven efficiency to a new level. 

Merging the concepts of micro-housing and on-demand services (as well as downsizing for more affordable living in expensive urban neighborhoods), a college professor designed Kasita, high-tech, compact living cubes that, modular style, can slide into and out of steel frames tucked into undeveloped spaces in urban cores.

Before coming up with Kasita, Jeff Wilson, an environmental science professor at the University of Texas at Austin, spent 10 months living in a converted Dumpster in an experiment with cutting down on possessions and tiny housing. He then worked with industrial design firmFrog to create a template for a 208-square-foot, single-occupancy city apartment.