After an international design competition and nearly two years of design, the high-profile, 2.5-million-square-foot Chinatrust Bank headquarters has broken ground in Taiwan. Designed by the Los Angeles office of NBBJ, in cooperation with the local firm Fei & Cheng Associates, the project is slated to reach completion in 2012. The Chinatrust Bank development will consist of a 30-story headquarter..
French architects Beckmann-N’Thépé and landscape designers TN+ have won a competition to remodel Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki, Finland. The proposal involves creating a large glass-domed entrance and animal viewing building on the island zoo, and bringing back polar bears after a 30-year absence. Here’s some info from the architects: – BECKMANN-N’THEPE sarl d’Architecture KORKEASAARI ZOO (Helsink..
Proposals by architects MAD, BIG, INABA, and Mass Studies for an urban plan for the city of Ansan in South Korea are on show at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in Ansan. Each of the four projects is meant to be viewed at two scales - asproposals for monumental buildings in the city and as furniture in thegallery where they are displayed. Top image: Rendered site view of newAnsan city plan. “Th..
Dutch atchitects MVRDV have won a competition to design a city centre for Gwanggyo, a new town south of Seoul, Korea. The design will be one of two centres envisioned for the future new town, a self sufficient city of 77,000 inhabitants located 35 km south of Seoul. The Gwanggyo Power Centre will comprise housing, office, culture, retail, leisure and education spaces. “This diverse program has d..
In 2004, DSDHA won first prize to develop a new urban landscape and public space at Tickle Cock Bridge in Castleford, West Yorkshire. The commission was part of the Castleford Project; an initiative to support the regeneration of the former mining town as part of a major new Channel 4 Television series. The underpass acts as the main pedestrian gateway into the town for over 10,000 people a day...
Parkour is a sport on which you have to go from one point of the city to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, overcoming any obstacles in your way: walls, fences, trees, etc. This has made Parkour THE urban sport, included in recent pop culture music videos. Danish film maker Kaspar Astrup Schröder is currently finishing MY PLAYGROUND, a documentary on movement, tricking, freerunning ..
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has been named as one of three winning architectural practices in the competition to design the International Criminal Court’s new headquarters in The Hague. Location: The Hague, Netherlands Competition type: Restricted anonymous project competition Client: The International Criminal Court Subconsultants: Royal Haskoning, Bosch & Fjord Project Year: 2008 Construc..
This photo snapped by Aomori-based blogger Pochiko shows remnants of the JAL logo still visible in this year’s Inakadate rice paddy art, several days after organizers attempted to “erase” it. Has Japan Airlines’ crop-based advertising gone too far? For some residents of Inakadate — a small town with a big reputation for cultivating fantastic works of multi-colored rice paddy art — the answer is ..
Rice-growing season has only just begun, but this year’s first crop of rice paddy art, which is created by planting various colors of rice in the field, has already started to emerge. In the Yamagata prefecture town of Yonezawa, an image of 16th-17th century samurai Naoe Kanetsugu has appeared in a field near the Onogawa hot spring. The samurai, whose image is based on a portrait housed at the n..
In reaction to US President-elect Barack Obama’s Sunday’s declaration on CBS ‘60 minutes’ on 16.11.2008 (his first sit-down interview since winning the November 4 presidential election) where he has confirmed his intention to close Guantanamo’s Detention Center, zerOgroup made this proposal, called ‘I LOVE GITMO’ to upgrade the American enclave in Cuba into a mass tourism destination. The ‘I LOV..
