Arch Tracker

Archiprix International 2009 recently announced the winners of the world’s best architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture graduation projects.

The international jury convened in Montevideo, Uruguay and reviewed 218 submissions from 66 countries, nominated 24 finalists, and selected 8 winners. The jury comprised Salvador Schelotto (Dean farq, UdelaR, Uruguay), Mario Schjetnan (Mexico), Anne Lacaton (France), Juan Herreros (Spain), Sou Fujimoto (Japan).

The winners are:

Markerpark
The final plan for the Markermeer
by Sander Lap
Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design, – Rotterdam, Netherlands

MArchitecture
Stacking pencil buildings by using MA
by Ryo Kitazawa
Tokai University, Department of Architecture and Building Engineering – Kanagawa, Japan

09_deeply rooted tree
Architecture School in Velluters Old Town, project in 3 scales: urban, project, process
by Pasqual Herrero Vicent
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura – Valencia, Spain

Tokyo Littoral Art Center
A proposal for floating art facilities
by Kazuaki Hattori
University of Tokyo, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering – Tokyo, Japan

Regional Museum of Mine Site: North of Chile
Abandoned mines and their imprint on the territory
by Tomás García de la Huerta
Universidad del Desarollo, Arquitectura – Santiago, Chile

Deviational Space
Relying on the architect to reinvent dynamism
by Espen Folgerø
Bergen School of Architecture – BAS, – Bergen, Norway

MAJA TURG: a market for Tallinn
Preserving the market hall structure in a new formula
by Max Rink
Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture – Delft, Netherlands

Metropolitan Markets
The Shanghai MetroMarket Network
by Matthew Murphy
University of Edinburgh, Dept of Architecture – Edinburgh, Scotland

All winning projects will be featured in Arch Tracker in the following days

The field chapel dedicated to Swiss Saint Nicholas von der Flüe (1417–1487), known as Brother Klaus, was commissioned by farmer Hermann- Josef Scheidtweiler and his wife Trudel and largely constructed by them, with the help of friends, acquaintances and craftsmen on one of their fields above the village. The interior of the chapel room was formed out of 112 tree trunks, which were configured like a tent. In twentyfour working days, layer after layer of concrete, each layer 50 cm thick, was poured and rammed around the tentlike structure.

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The exhibition In Situ: Architecture and Landscape draws from the rich collection of The Museum of Modern Art to examine the diverse attitudes towards landscape over the last 100 years. Featuring approximately 60 drawings, models, and videos, projects include single houses that frame the landscape, designs for buildings based on the surrounding landscape, urban gardens that compose “nature” within the city, and parks that transform former industrial areas into new attractions. The exhibition closes with three cemeteries whose designs demonstrate that our relationship to landscape often transcends our quotidian needs. The exhibition is on view in The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, third floor, from April 8 to September 14, 2009. It is organized by Andres Lepik, Curator, and Margot Weller, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

In recent decades, landscape has taken on an expanded definition in architecture. In the first half of the twentieth century, the architectural avant-garde celebrated autonomy from nature, and architects devised utopian schemes for creating urban realms ex novo. More recently, however, the challenges of a threatened environment and rapidly expanding cities have fostered a revised understanding of landscape. Harmony between the spatial, social, and environmental aspects of human life has become a priority in political thought, and this has had profound reverberations in both architecture and landscape design. Landscape—no longer understood merely as nature untouched—now encompasses complex interventions by architects and landscape architects in urban and rural surroundings.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater, Edgar J Kaufmann House (1934-1937) in which architecture becomes part of a dramatic setting in the nature, and Mies van der Rohe’s Wolf House (1925-27), built atop a prominent ridge of Gubin overlooking the Neisse River Valley, are among the earliest examples in the exhibition. Other examples that demonstrate a similar profiting relationship between architecture and landscape are Edward Larrabee Barnes’ Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (1958-61), Emilio Ambasz’s Casa de Retiro Espiritual in Spain (1976-1979), and Diller + Scofidio’s Slow House project (1988-90). Hans Hollein’s Vulcania (1994-2001), Tadao Ando’s Chikatsu-Asuka Historical Museum in Osaka (1989-1994) or Toyo Ito’s Relaxation Park in Torrevieja, Spain (2001-2006) all seem to merge with their surroundings. Roberto Burle Marx’s lively landscape design for Saenz Pena Square (1948) and Duque de Caxias Square (1948) in Rio des Janeiro bring nature back into the densely populated city. These examples show his painterly style, mixing biomorphic abstraction with tropical planting into a new geometric language for urban gardens.

A contemporary approach for urban parks is the Southeast Coastal Park in Barcelona (2000-2004) by Foreign Office Architects. Inspired by seaside dunes, the parks gentle peaks swell to accommodate two open air-auditoriums. One of the famous competitions for the transformation of former industrial areas into “an urban parc for the twenty-first century” with new attractions is the Parc de la Vilette of 1982-83. Bernard Tschumi and Zaha Hadid had both developed highly complex concepts to create a new space for recreation, sports, and culture in which nature is included as one layer among many others. Cemeteries have also been a traditional exercise to combine architecture and landscape. This is represented in examples from Erik Gunnar Asplund’s Woodland Crematorium (1935-1940), Aldo Rossi’s San Cataldo Cemetery (1971-1984), and Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos’s Igualada Cemetery (1985-1996).

In Situ: Architecture and Landscape
April 8, 2009 – September 14, 2009
MoMA New York
The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, third floor

Project: Arena Zagreb
Client: Lanište d.o.o.
Area: 90,340m2
Year: 2008

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Project: Skyline Residence
Architect: Belzberg Architects
Hagy Belzberg
Design Team: Erik Sollom, Manish Desai
Project Team: Barry Gartin, Brock DeSmit, Carina Bien-WIllner, Dan Rentsch, David Cheung, Eric Stimmel, Erin McCook, Ryan Thomas
Location: Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Photography: Benny Chan of Fotoworks

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Located West of Midtown Manhattan, the Clinton Park Mixed use development consist of 900,000 sf of apartment and retail program, occupying nearly a full city block along 11th Avenue. The Ground floor will provide a 50,000 auto showroom fronting the Avenue with additional 180,000 SF of belos ground service area for the dealership. Additional programs will include a 30,000 sf horse stable and 10,000 sf neighborhood market. Apartment lobbies will be accessed along both side streets.

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Project: Chalkidos Street Residence
Location: Larnaca, Cyprus.
Architect: Eleftheria Serghidou, Vasilis Pashiourtides
Structural Engineering: Nicos Kalathas, George Demetriades
Mech. Engineering: Giannos Zempylas
Photographer: Chistos Papantoniou
Design: 2000
Completion: 2007
Construction cost: € 500,000

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Project: House in minami Boso
Architect: Kiyonobu Nakagame & Associates
Location: Location: Minami-Boso, Chiba
General Contractor: Yashiro-Komuten
Photographs: K.Torimura

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Architects: LOHA Architects
Location: West Hollywood, California, USA
Principal in Charge: Lorcan O’Herlihy
Project Team: Katherine Williams (PM), Kevin Tsai, Evan Brinkman, Kevin Southerland
Client: Habitat Group Los Angeles, LLC
Project year: 2008
Constructed Area: 1,486 sqm
Area per unit: 140 sqm aprox.
Photographs: Lawrence Anderson

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Architect: Fox Johnston Architects
Location: Sydney, Australia
Project Year: 2005
Construction Year: 2008
Photographs: Brett Boardman
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