The Rotterdam Design Award started its 2009 application period, deadline is 8 of May.

Since the devastating fire that consumed the notorious architecture faculty at the TU Delft in 2008, the architectural community in the Netherlands has been holding their breadth to find out what their new faculty would look like. The open international ideas competition has recently closed, and the TU Delft is planning to launch the project winners at the NAi in the coming weeks.

On March 14th at the NAi, the award winners and mentions will be announced and a debate held to discuss the work. The museum will simultaneous open an exhibition documenting the work that will run until the 7th June 2009. In total 466 entries came from 50 countries, and the competition organizers will publish a monograph of the work this May.

OMA announced on Tuesday that 50 of their 300 employees have to leave. Business Director van de Chijs comments that he expects OMA to survive the economical crisis as business is going well. But as they intend to be “terribly careful” the diceded on the lay-offs.

In related news OMA announces the same day that they won the competition to build the Taipei Performing Arts Centre (as widely reported). Have also a look at the very interesting runner-up by Abalos+Sentkiewicz.

Read on for more pictures and the press release of the OMA design.

OMA to build Taipei Performing Arts Centre

Rotterdam/Beijing, 27 January 2009 – The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has been awarded the first prize in the design competition to build the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. The design, led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, was selected from over 135 entries from 24 countries by an international jury.

The scheme includes a 1,500 seat theatre and two 800 seat theatres which plug into a central cube, clad in corrugated glass, that combines the stage accommodations of the three theatres in a single whole. Each theatre can be used independently or in combination with the other theatres. Connecting the different theatres offers new and experimental theatrical possibilities. A public trajectory inside the cube exposes parts of the backstage areas otherwise hidden in typical theatres. The cube is placed on a socle preserving the existing lively local food market.

OMA will collaborate with local architect Artech Inc. to build the 40,000m2 theater complex. The stage design is being developed with Ducks Sceno and the engineering is being provided by Arup. The centre is scheduled to be completed in 2013 with a budget of 3.8 billion Taiwan dollars (90 million Euro). The Taipei city council expects the centre to further facilitate the development of local performing groups and add to Taipei’s image as an international cultural hub.

The project is led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. The competition team included associate André Schmidt and architects Adam Frampton and Mariano Sagasta, amongst many others. Koolhaas’s and Scheeren’s previous collaborations include the CCTV Headquarters and TVCC Cultural Centre in Beijing, as well as Prada Epicentre Stores in New York and Los Angeles.

Indeed, the ultimate aim of the European vision of the city is to make society, in other words to bring together people of all conditions and origins. However, the dominant trend towards individualisation, the quest for autonomy, cannot be ignored. This is precisely the contradiction that Europan addresses: on the one hand wanting the city – i.e animation, communal life, people – and on the other side wanting intimacy, privacy, home and the immediate circle.

Europan launched the tenth session of their young architects’ competition series yesterday. This year’s topic is inventing urbanity : regeneration, revitalization, colonization.

Whereas the subtopics make sense, the title appears to be far-fetched. Do we need to ‘invent’ urbanity? The principles of urban life are well understood since the first criticism of modern planning had been advanced.

On the other hand I welcome that the recent Europan sessions (‘European Urbanity: Sustainable City and New Public Space’) are much more concerned with density and the urban condition than earlier issues (‘New Housing Landscape’, ‘In-between Cities’). This year’s brief emphasizes equally social and ecological issues.

Participation is limited to the young (i. e. under 40) architect who has 62 competition sites to choose from – 12.000€ for the winner, 6.000€ for the runner-up. The sites are grouped into 3 subtopics –
those that must undergo a strong transformation (regeneration), those that must both keep their identity and redynamise their programme (revitalization) and those that must undergo a development (colonization).

UPDATE: I have put together an overview table of all the competition sites for easy comparison (pdf):

UPDATE II: Check out the hard-to-find page with the registration statistics. Typical diploma projects come out on top, as of 8th of march 101 registrations for Dunkerque, a harbour pier transformation.

From the Europan Site:

Schedule
Launching : 19 01 2009
End of registrations: 29 05 2009
Entries: 29 06 2009
Results: 18 01 2009
[...]

Questions on the sites via the internet forum
Closing date for submitting questions about the sites
Friday, May 1, 2009
Closing date for grouped answers about the sites
Friday, May 15, 2009

Questions on the rules via the internet forum
Closing date for submitting questions on the rules
Friday, May 29, 2009
Closing date for grouped answers on the rules
Friday, June 12, 2009

Submission of entries
Closing date for submitting or sending entries
Monday, June 29, 2009
Closing date for receipt of entries sent on June 29, 2009 by express delivery or by post
Monday, July 20, 2009

Selection
Shortlisting of entries by the national juries
September-October 2009
Comparative European analysis by the committee of the shortlisted project ideas, followed by the Cities and Juries Forum based on this analysis
November 2009
Final selection of entries by the national juries
December 2009 – January 2010

Results
Announcement of results
Monday, January 18, 2010
International presentation of results
May/June 2010

MVRDV and co-architect ADEPT have just released images of their winning entry for the Rødovre Skyscraper Competition in Denmark. The tower reaches to 116m and is a mixed-use programme of appartments, hotel, retail and offices. We are aiming for more images very soon.

(Rødovre – Copenhagen, November 3rd, 2008) The municipality of Rødovre, an independent municipality of Copenhagen, Denmark, announced today MVRDV and co-architect ADEPT winner of the design competition of the Rødovre Skyscraper. The 116 meter tall tower accommodates apartments, a hotel, retail and offices. A public park and a plaza are also part of the privately funded scheme.

The new skyscraper with a total surface of 21,688 m2 will be located at Roskildevej, a major artery East of the centre of Copenhagen. It is after the Frøsilos MVRDV’s second project in Copenhagen. The skyscraper’s shape reflects Copenhagen’s historical spire and present day high-rise blending in the skyline of the city, it further combines the two distinctive typologies of Rødovre, the single family home and the skyscraper in a vertical village. Consideration of these local characteristics leads to Copenhagen’s first contemporary high-rise.

Responding to unstable markets the design is based on a flexible grid, allowing alteration of the program by re-designating units. These ‘pixels’ are each 60m2 square and arranged around the central core of the building, which for flexibility consists of three bundled cores allowing separate access to the different program segments.

On the lower floors the volume is slim to create space for the surrounding public plaza with retail and restaurants; the lower part of the high rise consists of offices, the middle part leans north in order to create a variety of sky gardens that are terraced along the south side. This creates a stacked neighbourhood, a Sky Village. From this south orientation the apartments are benefitting. The top of the building will be occupied by a hotel enjoying the view towards Copenhagen city centre. The constellation of the pixels allows flexibility in function; the building can be transformed by market forces, however at this moment it is foreseen to include 970m2 retail, 15,800m2 offices, 3,650m2 housing and 2,000m2 hotel and a basement of 13,600m2 containing parking and storage.

Flexibility for adaptation is one of the best sustainable characteristics of a building. Besides this the Sky Village will also integrate the latest technologies according to the progressive Danish environmental standards. Furthermore the plans include a greywater circuit, the use of 40% recycled concrete in the foundation and a variety of energy producing devices on the façade.

A public park adjacent to the Sky Village is part of the project and will be refurbished with additional vegetation and the construction of a ‘superbench’, a meandering public path and bench. A playground, picnic area and exercise areas for elderly citizens are also part of the plan.

Lead architect MVRDV and co-architect ADEPT Architects won the competition from BIG, Behnisch and MAD. Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs present the plan today in Copenhagen together with Anders Lonka and Martin Krogh from local office Adept Architects, Dutch engineering firm ABT and Søren Jenssen act as consultants for the project. Earlier MVRDV realised the Frøsilos / Gemini Residence in the port of Copenhagen: a residential project marking a new way in refurbishment of old silo’s which was highly acclaimed and received international awards.

I am wrapping things up here at maxwan architects & urbanists, as tomorrow is going to be my last day. I will be teaching urbanism at a private university in Aleppo (google maps) in a week.

We have achieved quite a bit recently – not only did we launch our new maxwan website, but we also won the competition for the design of 2009′s Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (IABR). The motto of next year’s Biennale is ‘Open City’, a term Kees Christiaanse (the Biennale’s Curator) has been working with for a while. Maxwan translates this idea spatially by turning the NAi inside out.

A more direct access to the main large exhibition hall turns it into a multi-functional lobby/conference-hall/exhibition space, directly exposed to the public space instead of being tucked away in the belly of the building.

Maxwan’s new website stays true to maxwan’s excel-driven soul, providing quite complete data on the projects including high-resolution images. Check out what I have been working on recently – supervising the Barking Riverside masterplan and previously developing a new vision for Rotterdam’s Harbour.

This friday at 16:30 an interesting exhibition opens @ the Casla in Almere. It will feature the winning projects of the Eenvoud Competition, the third edition for an experimetal neighbourhood in Almere. Its predecessors, “De Fantasie” and “De Realiteit”, ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Reality’ were held back in the eighties and their results are still worth an excursion. More information on that below.

“De Éénvoud” or ‘Simplicity ‘is the result of a competition held in 2006. The brief was to design a freestanding and simple low-cost house, expressing their own wishes and ideas for dwelling. The winners got the possibility to build their design on a beautiful open spot in the woodland of Noorderplassen-West.

The twelve winning projects, amongst which an ornithologist’s house, a rubber house, a convertible house and a scaled version of the Unité d’Habitation were submitted from The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Sweden. The houses will have a permanent character, with a minimum of building regulations. Some of the projects will be built by the designers themselves; nine projects are still open for clients to join in.

The Exhibition “De Éénvoud” opens the 28th of march and will run until 10th of may 2008 @ Architectuurcentrum CASLa, Weerwaterplein 3, 1324 EE Almere Stad
Open Tuesday to Saturday between 12.00-17.00

The Predecessors
“De Fantasie” and “De Realiteit” were meant to stay only for five years, but as always with experimental projects, they usually last longer than permanent houses. The houses are used either for permanent living, as holiday homes or studios.
They are part of a number of special residential neighbourhoods in Almere, amongst which such ridiculosities as The Regenboogwijk (Rainbow Quarter), Stedenwijk (City Quarter), Muziekwijk (Music Quarter), Filmwijk (Movie Quarter), Parkwijk (Park Quarter). De Realiteit and De Fantasie have arguably yielded the most striking architecture. De Realiteit comprises seventeen projects on the Noorderplassen lakes, while nine houses make up De Fantasie on Weerwater.

De Fantasie
De Fantasie has developed into a beautiful and tranquil neighborhood on the southwest shore of the Weerwater. Because of the involvement of the people in this area it has the feel of a holiday resort. The intention was to build homes which were to be demolished after five years. However, due to the project’s success, the houses are still standing. A striking design in this quarter is ‘Hard Glass’, by architect Jan Benthem of famous dutch office Benthem Crouwel. It was one of their first projects, now they are building every major train station, airport etc. This project, ‘Hard Glass’ is a glass, cubic villa which has been lifted off the ground by a construction of steel tubes. The living quarters inside the cube resemble an aquarium. The type of doors also used on ships divide the villa’s rooms.
The VVV (the local tourist information office) in Almere has a CASla route description through De Fantasie which you can enjoy without a guide.

De Realiteit
The ‘temporary character’ is also reflected in the much talked-about quarter De Realiteit. Here too the houses are still standing, as they are a resounding success. De Realiteit lies in a fairly remote area, which has resulted in a surprising ambience. The seventeen houses differ in the materials used and the construction, but mainly in shape. The house created by Dick Bruijne and Gerard Koppelman is a striking design which stands out. ‘A bird is flying underneath our house’ is suspended five meters above the ground in a steel frame. The house itself is a small, two-storied wooden cube. The surface area of the house is small in proportion to the steel frame.
You probably also come across ‘Markies’ a house which unfold from a trailer. I guess you won’t see it there though since its constantly on the road.
De Realiteit is situated on the Noorderplassen and the VVV also has a route description on this one.
Check out the website for more details on the houses.
More photos also here

Supersudaca, a befriended south-american think-tank has launched Sudapan – Endless(s)trips, an international competition about the urban potentials of mass-tourism in the Caribbean. The competition focuses on the 140km resorts-strip of Riviera Maya, on the Mexican coast.

The competition tries to put forward of the key territorial issues of Latin America and the Caribbean for their inclusion in the contemporary global agenda. Endless(s)trips is a competition of ideas about the urbanism potential of the massive beach tourism in the Caribbean.

Endless(s)trips is a space of reflection an proposals for rethinking the relation between the local elements, the tourists, the environment, tourism managers, the State, the infrastructure and the landscape. It is an opportunity to imagine other cities, other territories and other ways of tourism management.

Due to its size, dynamism and complexity, the Mayan Riviera is an intense and urgent case of great potential, an urbanism laboratory in the Caribbean coast.

Endless(s)trips is supported of the IAAC (Advanced Architecture Institute of Catalunya) and sponsored by Prins Claus Fonds.

* Tourist strips are the mono functional strips of tourism activity developed along the coast line.

Jury

Vicente Guallart (Valencia, Spain, 1963)
Winy Maas (Schijndel, The Netherlands, 1959)
Prof. Carel Weeber (Nijmegen,The Netherlands, 1937)
José Castillo (Mexico)
Bruno Stagno (Santiago, Chile)

Full explanation is available at www.sudapan.org. Feel free to contact info@supersudaca.org for more information. Anyway, make sure you check out their slideshow on the type of ‘urbanism’, created by all-inclusive tourism.

UN Studio and MVRDV (in collaboration with the spanish office GRAS) have recently sent us their competiton entries for the Ciudad del Motor in Spain, which has been won by the widely published, but less interesting fish-shaped design by Foster.

UN Studio’s design is a continuous dynamic form, a structure ducking to the ground with a motor-sport aesthetic, reminding of the visual language of an BMW ad. MVRDV’s proposal is a group of buildings – blocks breaking from the ground in a sandy desert, creating an ensemble of squares. Where UN Studio’s design is a new object in the landscape, MVRDV’s design forms part of it. More of a place, less of an object. You can download MVRDV’s project PDF, complete with sections and plans (Thank you, Oana!) here:

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UN Studio’s project description:

The building is organized as a continuous loop with two crossing points, offering multiple visitor experiences all related to thetopic of speed and movement. Like a real city, the design for the Ciudad del Motor contains and facilitates multiple programmatic elements, such as a shopping mall, experience centre, museum of movement, a multifunctional hall, a hotel and housing towers. The design of the building is based on the generation of a maximum interaction with the surroundings, especially the tracks, with the Grand Stand accessed via a programmed bridge.

From MVRDV’s project description:

The combination of the racing activities and the dry, arid landscape gives the new Alcaniz race track area a distinct character. Its development can be easily compared with Las Vegas. But can we learn from Vegas again? More ecology? Less gambling? More leisure based on the powers of the landscape?
Maybe instead of an artificial new icon, that specific contradiction, this specific situation itself can lead to an outstandingly remarkable development and approach. Each of the different programs have there own timing, size and character. By positioning them close to each other, they can share their parking, they can create a climatic pocket and they can share a collective plaza. And the rest of the grounds can be used in the future… It gives a compact settlement that enlarges the possibility for remarkability in the vast landscape.
By covering the undeniably huge roofs of the program with the found material (red sand, stones, small plants, vegetation), the buildings can obtain a heavy roof that can act as temperature buffer for the program. The buildings gain a more ecological and natural character. They “blend” in with the landscape.

In related news, Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos have been awarded the Charles Jencks Award, which is presented annually to the individual who has recently made a major contribution both to the theory and practice of architecture. As the winner of this international award, Ben van Berkel will be giving a lecture at RIBA, in Jarvis Hall at 18:30 pm on 16th October. Other recent projects of UN Studio include the Waldschlösschen bridge in Dresden, which features the typical fluidity of the UN Studio’s project, but surprises with minimal fragility in the elevation.

UN Studio about the bridge:

The design for the Waldschlösschen bridge in Dresden creates an infrastructural connection that spans a length of 800 meters accross the widest parts of the unique and beautiful Elb flood plain, forming an integral part of this landscape. From the banks of the surrounding area, wide transitions taper to establish an interconnecting network for the continuous flows of the diverse users. The asymmetric and topographic shape of the bridge evolves from its inherent conditions, whilst simultaneously integrating the bridge into the outlines of the undulating landscape.

Convergence towards movie architecture and science fiction stage sets. Read more about it at dezeen, see all hi-res images at spaceportamerica.

Stichting Spangmaker announced a small open competition to link the Rotterdam neighbourhood of Spangen better to the van Nelle ‘Design Factory’ (a gem of modernism, worth a closer look anyhow!). 1st prize: 10.000€, deadline 18th october.