Architectural Design Competition | Global Financial Centre On The Bund | Shanghai | China | OMA

Shanghai is a fragmented collage of different scales and styles. The identity of the city lies in the diversity of traditional, colonial, communist, and "post-modern" architecture united only through the city’s history. The Global Financial Centre on the Bund – yet another mixed-use project among all these opposing elements – has the natural task of addressing and emphasizing all the contradicting qualities of Shanghai without compromising their benefits.......more

Architectural Design Competition | First Prize | House of Water | Mimosa Architects

The House of water is a museum of water and water use situated nearby Želivka reservoir. Želivka is currently main source of water for city of Prague covering approximately 75% of water consumption. Because of protective zones around the reservoir, it became to be an important ecological system with wide range of animal and plant species.
This uncommon ecological diversity is to be displayed in open-air exhibition area occupying all the plot. This natural space is divided into several zones representing different biotopes from close surroundings of the reservoir. These micro – zones are connected by the system of paths where visitors have the opportunity to learn and understand the value of Želivka region and the key role of water........more

International Architectural Competition | Statsbygg Museum Of Art | Oslo | Norway | Schiavello Architects Office

Our primary purpose is to respond the request to design a building for Oslo of extraordinary architectural and Historical significance and to create a public resource for Oslo that would benefit the community in which it is located, creating a world class cultural facility in Norway. The project proposal is to generate a new synthetic landscape through the understanding and integration ofits systems. It will be a landmark, a new recognizable structure; a sign of the national museum history able to attract at the same time both international artists and private collectors to support the institution, increasing international interest in Norwegian culture in a way to create a new economic and tourist resource for Oslo........more

Architectural Design Competition | Visitor Center Design | Giants Causeway | Ireland | OFF Architecture

The legend attributes the formation of the Giants Causeway the giant Finn McCool. He built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart called Benandonner. If the geological formation of the site is not enough to satisfy the imagination, that rationality is difficult to popularize a local phenomenon with no other link with the surrounding territory. At first glance the building does not seek to blend into the landscape, it would appear more like the UFO that was used to transport the giant. But the center is far from returning to conflict with the site, its emergence on the one hand generates a strong signal to locate mineral deliberately event below, but above all allows to hide the huge parking area. Its material and its geometry plays a key role in its integration, and it takes the color and consistency of basalt, form which emerged from one side breaks to completely disintegrate in contact with the site. Contamination of the envelope by grasses and mosses completes its assimilation......more

Visitor Center Design | Architectural Competition | The Water House By mjolk

"The idea for the Water House came out of a public architectural competition to design a visitor center for the water reservoir Zeliv. We decided to give the building legs so that it might look down upon the wild watery landscape. The airborne mass of the house is an observatory offering visitors views of the various biotopes formed by the ponds below."....mjolk

Architectural Competition | The Global Financial Centre on the Bund | Shanghai | China | OMA

Shanghai is a fragmented collage of different scales and styles. The identity of the city lies in the diversity of traditional, colonial, communist, and "post-modern" architecture united only through the city’s history. The Global Financial Centre on the Bund – yet another mixed-use project among all these opposing elements – has the natural task of addressing and emphasizing all the contradicting qualities of Shanghai without compromising their benefits......more

Architectural Design Competition | New National Concert Hall | Dublin | 3XN

We would like to thank 3XN for sending us these:

3XN is one of two finalists in the prestigious competition to design Dublin’s new National Concert Hall. The competition was initiated in 2008 and the shortlist of renowned architects was soon narrowed down to two competing teams lead by Danish Architects; 3XN and Henning Larsen Architects. It is quite unique that two Danish studios come head to head in the final round of an international competition of this scope. Both teams have delivered spectacular designs for a world class concert hall to meet the client’s high ambitions for the project. Unfortunately the competition has now been cancelled due to lack of financing as a result of Ireland’s fragile economic situation and the client will not appoint a final winner. 
For more information on the proposal and 3XN's works, please visit 3XN

INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN COMPETITION | UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS, NICOSIA | Betaplan

Betaplan and Solon Xenopoulos / Eleni Hatzinikolaou was awarded with 1st honorable mention innthis competition with more than 200 international entries.

The competition included full architectural design at preliminary stage for the new faculty of polytechnic school.The site for the project is situated some 5 km southeast of the historic center of Nicosia, at the existing Athalassa Campus where the major part of the University of Cyprus will be located.
The new faculty will have a total floor area of 21.800m2 and will be comprised out of 4 departments:
1. DEANERY DEPARTMENT
2. THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
3. THE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL AND MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING
4. THE DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

The total project cost is estimated at45.000.000,00 €......more

Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art | MoCCA | Architecture W

" Our proposal for the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art was informed by the abstract nature of this medium. Through the juxtaposition of words and images these artist make the obscure clear and the absurd funny. In the spirit of this art form we looked to find new meaning and understanding in everyday objects and nature. The design is structured around three "service" cores. Wrapped around these is an organic "served" envelope that is shaped by the sun as much as the surrounding neighborhood. The skin of our museum is made up of 3,082 copies of a single "light cone" (part skin, part glass), rotated on a single axis to create the illusion of a pattern. The building requires that you engage with it. It allows for an interpretation of reality which puts our understanding of it into a new focus. In this way, the museum speaks to the very essence of cartoons, interpreted through the lanquage of architecture."......more

International Architectural Competition | JA Joubert Architecture | Master Plan in Tirana, Albania

JA Joubert Architecture, a Rotterdam-based architectural office, has won first prize in an international competition for a new neighborhood in Tirana, Albania.
Invited by a private developer, JA Joubert Architecture decided to break with standard sub-urban development by proposing an integral solution for building and parking, directly linking them to the terrain conditions, thus creating a new community for different (age) groups, with sports and health facilities, set within a continuous green park with beautiful views to the city and Tirana lake....more at bustler

Architectural Competition | Sukkah City 2010 Winners

A panel of judges, including Pritzker prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, The New Yorker’s architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, NYU Environmental Health Clinic Director Natalie Jeremijenko, and designer Ron Arad selected the winning entries during a recent session at the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The winners (full list below) were selected in a blind review, and include the Brooklyn-based firms Matter Architecture Practice; Bittertang, winners of the 2010 Architectural League Prize; and Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu, winner of the 2010 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program. One structure will be voted on by New Yorkers to stand and delight throughout the week-long festival of Sukkot as the “People’s Choice Sukkah.” The “People’s Choice” will be announced at a September 20 ceremony. Selected entries will also be displayed in an exhibit at the Center for Architecture in New York City during the month of September.....more at Bustler

The City + The Arch + The River 2010 International Design Competition Finalist

Constructed in the early 1960s, the Gateway Arch rises as a shimmering beacon across the St. Louis skyline as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
Concocted by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel in 1947, the tallest habitable structure in Missouri was built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States and has become a figure of sentimental value with both domestic and international visitors.
Now, the CityArchRiver 2015 Foundation and the National Park Service have organised The City + The Arch + The River 2010 International Design Competition to invigorate the park and areas surrounding the Gateway Arch, including the Missouri and Illinois banks of the Mississippi River.
Five shortlisted finalists are currently displaying their work in the Arch Lobby, open free of charge to the public until 24th September.
On 26th August, each team will present their concept to the competition jury in the Tucker Theater at the Arch, from 8am-6pm, with the announcement of the winner scheduled for 24th September.
The chosen project is slated for completion on 28th October 2015 in order to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Arch... summaries of the concept designs can be viewed here .

Architectural Competition | Design As Reform | The Vanishing Mosque By RUX

The traffic design competition announced winners of its multi-discipline design competition. The winner of the Mosque category is Manhattan-based design studio RUX with their entry “The Vanishing Mosque”.
What if a mosque was not a building? What if it vanished into the fabric of a city? Seamless with the streets, connected directly to the pulse of daily life, and open to anyone and everyone at anytime, “The Vanishing Mosque” becomes more visible, more iconic, and more integral to the spiritual and cultural workings of a community than any building with doors and walls ever could.
This design strategy was created as a “developer’s tool” for integrating spiritual space within new urban developments in the Middle East. Superimposing the function of a mosque within an urban plaza maximizes the value of public spaces, increases the value of adjacent properties, and fosters a powerful sense of community for residents.
While the image of “The Vanishing Mosque” is new and seemingly unfamiliar, its driving design principles are inspired by those that have ruled mosque-building for centuries.....more

Architectural Competition | Transforming Industrial LA

AN and SCI-Arc present the Los Angeles Clean Tech Corridor and Green District Competition
The Architect’s Newspaper and SCI-Arc launched their second annual competition today, the Los Angeles Clean Tech Corridor and Green District Competition. It asks architects, landscape architects, designers, engineers, urban planners, and environmental professionals to create a new urban vision for Los Angeles' CleanTech Corridor, a several-mile-long development zone on the eastern edge of downtown LA. A brief and additional information on the competition can be found here.
When it was first envisioned by the city, the corridor focused on green-related manufacturing, but the competition encourages entrants to create an integrated economic, residential, and cultural engine for the city. They are also encouraged to imagine new sustainable energy sources for the area and completely rethink the relationship between industry, living, and public space in LA. Prizes total over $11,000, and entries are due on September 30.
The competition is presented with the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles, which established the Clean Tech Corridor. The jury includes Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan; SCI-Arc graduate director and Hodgetts+Fung principal Ming Fung; Deputy Mayor for Energy and Environment Romel Pascual; CRA/LA Chief Operating Officer Calvin Hollis; and Nikolas Patsaouras, past president of the Board of the Los Angeles Water and Power Commissioners.

320fok Contemporary Cultural Centre of Siófok, Hungary Winner Announced | Tarnóczky Tamás Attila

According to the competition tender, the 320fok Art Gallery, operating since 2007 in the industrial buildings of the former Bread Factory, is being rebuilt to become a worldclass contemporary cultural, educational and technical centre with notable architectural values.
Earlier this year, the City of Siófok had announced an international architectural tender aiming the complex re-building of 320fok and its utilization as a cultural centre.

The institution established the presence of the region within the fields of contemporary art since 2007. It has been offering exhibition space to the representation of highly qualified, and professionaly acclaimed artworks as well as professional events, which successfully linked Siófok to the progressive national institutions that promote and represent contemporary art.

The award winning architectural plan is going to transform the industrial space to a multifunctional, transformable exhibition teritory, with a high class gallery and gastronomic units.

The primary aim behind the environmental reconstruction is to build an iconic cultural establishment that could be the key feature element of the image of Siófok. It should as well provide space to 3 basic functions (artistic, educational, technical) and to additional functions such as gastronomical and commercial functions on the highest possible level, according to the key features of contemporary architecture and design.
The first sheduled plan of the reconstruction - cca 6500 sqm building and parking space – is being built until 2012, while the second schedule plan is due to be finished by the end of the decade.....Bustler

Salt Lake City Design Contest

AIA Utah announces the 2010 design/build competition--Ballet West: Fluid Adagio Installation (BWFAI), a first-time-ever joint competition initiated by AIA Utah’s Young Architects Forum.

We are calling on all young designers to step up to the challenge!

Local, national and international architects and designers are invited to participate in this blind competition to create a temporary installation (estimated to be 1 to 2 years) that will occupy the future building site for Utah’s premiere ballet company, Ballet West.
The project’s site is adjacent to the historic Capitol Theater in downtown Salt Lake City and is currently vacant, thus providing a unique contextual setting in Salt Lake City’s ever-changing urban fabric.

The winner of this two-stage competition will enter into a contract with Salt Lake Coun­ty and receive $46,000.00 for fabrication and installation.

Please take time to explore the project brief and sign up today! Entries may be submit­ted from individuals, teams, design firms or other collaborations.
More infos here...

Invited competition for an open art storage and museum in Cologne Brauweiler | Urban Environments Architects & Stufe4

More images here

The Schaumagazin Brauweiler by Mark Mückenheim and Frank Zeising is an art storage building that is open to the public.
Besides the open depots it also incorporates a large museum type exhibition space. The program was the guiding force for the concept of this fairly new building type: “Mies van der Rohe vs. Sir John Soane” - a Miesian hall, a “universal space”, that is surrounded by open cabinet spaces that refer to the famous exhibition layout in the Sir John Soane Museum in London.

This organization, much like a reading room surrounded by book stacks in a classic library layout, renders itself perfect fort he purposes of this museum.
Eighty percent of the building mass is organized underground therefore, the volumetric impact of the museum in the protected cloister garden in Brauweiler near Cologne, Germany is minimized.
The skin of the building is a high tech shell consisting of solar panels and tinted windows providing natural lighting inside the museum. This roof also generates enough energy to render the building as self-sufficient and CO2 neutral. The consequential black skin of the facetted geometry reflects its surrounding in ever changing ways, this refers poetically to the constant changes of the exhibitions inside the very flexible structure of the museum.

urban environments architects & Stufe4
Principals: Mark Mückenheim, Frank Zeising
Landscape: ClubL94 - Burkhard Wegener
Structure: Fuehrer, Kosch, Juerges Engineers - Prof. Winfried F. Führer, Dipl.-Ing. Ulrich Kosch
HVAC: Ingenieurgemeinschaft TEN Trümper-Erpenbach-Nordhausen GmbH - Dipl.-Ing. Werner Hegemann
Building Physics: knp.bauphysik - Christoph Hämmerling
Artistical consultant: Mareike Foecking
Team: Rafael Drzymalla, Denise Stella
Model: Anikó Krén