King’s Vineyard London by Soonil Kim
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Off and on for the last year, we followed the progress of a vertical studio at the Architectural Association tasked with this central question: Can extremes of programmatic effectiveness blend with the fragility of human habitat?

Most of the students approached the problem via industrial food production, which when blended into the city can create urban Edens in one extreme or situations reminiscent of the stockyards in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in another. Intrigued by their investigations, we asked the tutors, Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos, the duo behind the spectacular Hanging Cemetery of Baghdad and the newest pamphlet, Untold Stories, for images and any explanatory text. We like four projects in particular, so much so that we’ve decided to post them individually.

The first of these is a proposal for an airborne vineyard by Soonil Kim.

King’s Vineyard London by Soonil Kim
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Writes Kim:
Inspired by the urban grains especially the railway network from both St. Pancras and King’s Cross Station around the site, the design is a formal continuation of the topography while reinforcing the colonisation of air space by winery branches. The audacious structure, the winery and the vineyard for red wine grapes are connected by a suspended transport network enabling the use of ground space for a public park. With a capacity to produce 10,000 bottles of red wine annually the project re-articulates private and public space blending productive infrastructure with quality areas to Londoners and tourists.

One can certainly imagine such a network built to grow others things, such as vegetables, herbs, fruits, cash crops, commercial flowers and plants, with the winery turned into a farmer’s market.
Need more space to grow? Simply extend it. Cities may have a lot of rooftop space for farming, but the negative space above people’s heads is exponentially greater.


King’s Vineyard London by Soonil Kim
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A tentacled superorganism creeping out rhizomatically to the suburbs and towards sunlight.” Pruned
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Connecting its “semi-independent levels” of leisure and production are walkways and bridges for vehicles and pedestrians.

Taebeom Kim’s Gastronomic Garden.
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Of the four projects, this is the least site-specific and therefore hardest to determine how well it fits into the city or if its contextual engagement is, per the studio brief, primarily urban. Is it in London or could we even be in the countryside? One has to give it a generous benefit of a doubt to accept that it wasn’t arbitrarily plopped into place.
In any case, to our own delight, this vagueness allowed us to easily recast the project as a proposal to adaptively reuse some of the complexly braided highway intersections in the U.S., many of which twist and turn in the middle of the city. By some implausible circumstances, perhaps now made at least imaginable with the financial crisis and, despite the current respite, the still looming post-oil era, patterns of habitation and mobility have rendered them obsolete. Empty of cars, they can now be colonized by eager gardeners who have been on waiting lists for allotments for years. In the middle of each cloverleaf would be waste recycling towers and “meditation” domes. Instead of ribbons of concrete, you have ribbons of vegetables.

Or: let the cars stay. But envelop the elevated roads in sound-dampening tube, as seen in the image above or at OMA’s McCormick Tribune Campus Center at IIT. Inside, motorists will be bathed in extraterrestrial neon, deprived of photogenic skylines and waterfront vistas. Outside, you have horticultural Möbius strips and knotted access ramps coiling around this smog-filled airborne tunnel, tight like a noose, then extending out to colonize adjacent negative spaces…” Pruned
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” Slovenian architects Ofis Arhitekti have completed the facade of a shopping mall in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Due to budget constraints, the architects were commissioned to decorate three walls of the building using only enough material to cover one wall.
Their solution, called Dot Envelope, uses bronze-painted steel panels on parts of the facade, with discs cut from the panels arranged over the rest of the concrete surface. Plants will be grown over chains linking the disks.
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The shopping centre is situated in a listed industrial area that includes an old butchery and water tower.
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Photography by Tomaz Gregoric.
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” Derelict quarter given £200 million makeover

Tiger Developments in conjunction with Richard Murphy Architects have begun work on a £200 million plan to build two new hotels, a continental-style boulevard including retail and office space at a derelict site in Edinburgh city centre. Richard Murphy, CDA and Sutherland Hussey have drawn up designs for the project, to be known as ‘The Haymarket.” With construction beginning on site before the year is out, completion is hoped for 2012.

The most significant component of the entire enterprise is the construction of a monument-like 192 bed, five star hotel, The 17 storey, leaf-shaped building has been designed to stand near Haymarket Station, orientated to create a gateway of blade-like sharpness in the form of a tower, with an attached lower rise building and shared atrium running between it.

The hotel will take its place as Edinburgh’s third railway hotel alongside the established landmarks of the Balmoral and the Caledonian hotels. As with these hotels, this new fabrication will, deliberately, be markedly higher than its surroundings and will contribute to the evolving skyline of the city, but without blocking any significant views of either the Castle or nearby St Mary’s Cathedral.

Richard Murphy said, “The five-star hotel will re-define Haymarket in the same way The Balmoral transformed the Waverley Valley and the Caledonian Hotel enhanced the West End of Edinburgh.”

Most of the social functions of the hotel are placed at the top of the building, acting as a beacon at night and functioning as a gateway building marking entry into the World Heritage Site when approaching from the west.

This enhancement is expected to breathe new life into an area that is in much need of rejuvenation, enabling it to play a major role in the future economic and social life of the city.” David G Schiavone- Reporter
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Project Description released by Richard Murphy Architects


Historic View of Haymarket
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This is the largest project the practice has ever contemplated and our role has been three-fold: to master-plan the entire site, to design the exterior of three office buildings working alongside CDA Architects, and to be completely responsible for the design of a new 192 bed five star hotel. A second three star hotel, designed by our colleagues, Sutherland Hussey Architects, is also part of our master-plan. Tiger Developments approached the practice when the site was for sale and we were delighted when their bid was successful in the summer of 2006.
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Aerial Photo of Site
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Unusually, the site has never been developed, having been converted from pasture into goods yards in the mid 19th century. The tracks were removed in the 1960s and the site is currently a car park, although it has been subject to at least two planning consents since then, the most recent by EDI, proposed a mostly office and retail development and received consent in 2006.

We have adopted a radically different approach from the EDI scheme. We have expanded the concept of what constitutes the Haymarket to make substantial amounts of new public space which coincide with the location of the railway tunnels and therefore avoiding the requirement to construct above them. In the centre of the site is placed a major triangular office building and this defines the edge of the new Haymarket space. Along the Morrison Link is a second office building and forming the final side of a triangular public space to the rear is the third. The sensitive boundary with the existing “Colony” housing at Dalry is where the three star hotel is located, the rear of which has been deliberately modelled to respond to both the intimate spaces of the Colony streets and also to give courtyards onto which gable end windows look.
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View East from Haymarket
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The most notable feature of the entire project is the construction of a stand alone monument-like five star hotel, which given its proximity to the increasingly busy Haymarket station, will take its place as Edinburgh’s third railway hotel alongside the familiar landmarks of the Balmoral and the Caledonian hotels. Like these hotels, this new building will also deliberately be substantially higher than its surroundings and will contribute to the evolving skyline of the city, but without blocking any significant views of either the Castle or the nearby St Mary’s Cathedral. Most of the social functions of the hotel are placed at the top of the building, acting as a beacon at night with the location functioning as a gateway building marking the entry into the World Heritage Site when approaching from the west.
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Night View East from Haymarket
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The public open space designed by our colleagues at Gross Max, landscape architects, is predominately pedestrian, but with a one-way vehicle traffic for access and service vehicles only. A 450 space underground carpark replaces the existing parking.

The Planning application for these proposals were approved by Edinburgh City Council at the end of June 2008.”

Architects: Richard Murphy, Matt Bremner and Core Team
Construction Cost: £100m
Client: Tiger Developments Ltd
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View West along Boulevard
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Night View From Grosvenor Street
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” David Chipperfield has been announced as the winner of the international competition to design an extension to the Kunsthaus (art museum) of Zurich, Switzerland. 214 architecture offices from 22 countries were taking part in this competition. As usually in Zurich only the architect has been announced yet, images and more information is yet to be published at a press conference in December. According to the press briefing, a large majority of the jury voted for Chipperfield’s project, which is supposed a “classic Chipperfield”.

update
Further information, along with images and plans have been scheduled to be published in December, but according to the Kunsthaus Zurich some unauthorised images were published which only show an early design stage.
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kunsthaus_1.1242465, originally uploaded by scisar.
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The NZZ describes it as an “unfussy and straightforward art-palazzo without ’starchitect’-allures, an almost Protestant sobriety, austerity and modesty suiting a Zwinglian Zurich” (sort of similar to the Calvinistic Geneva, for the uninitiated).
However the first of the two images shows indeed a very subtle addition that creates somewhat of an ensemble with the existing Kunsthaus building, with similar materialization and color, yet maintaining a certain autonomy. It clearly shows the architects sensibility by the treatment of the situation. Rethinking the Heldplatz as a “Platz” rather than a mere agglomeration transit ways and an infrastructural node, would allow it to become a counterpart to the Bellevue, further towards the Opera house, and a central location for the Hochschul- and Museumsquarter - although this hasn’t been part of the competition I do think the city will have to give it some serious thought.

kunsthaus 2_1.1242558-1, originally uploaded by scisar.
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Contrary to perhaps future projects in Basel or existing ones in Lucerne, pushing larger and important buildings in Zurich has become increasingly difficult in the last twenty years, resulting in a number of projects but most of which ultimately disappear. Like the congress center at the lake by Rafael Moneo which didn’t survice a public vote on the project. This results in a complete lack of so-called ‘icons’, e.g. the KKL in Lucerne by Jean Nouvel and similar projects elswhere in Switzerland (of course except perhaps some “older” ones representing a newly found conscious of the city when the federal state was established some 150 years ago; but those buildings, for instance the ETH by Gottfired Semper, had a different relevance and reception at the time)
I guess it is too early to judge solely on two images, but besides that the NZZ got all excited about the Chipperfield’s understatement, I am rather hopeful that perhaps this austere appearance will be a good choice for Zurich, at least one that will be accepted by the public.
The building will cost an estimated 150Mio sFr. and should be finished by 2015.”
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Source: dialog
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” At beautiful Gudbrandsjuvet is Juvet Landscape Hotel designed by Jensen & Skodvin Architect Office. Hotel rooms will, more or less, be their own small houses, with at least one of its walls of glass. Glass walls allow guests will have an incredible view over the beautiful and dramatic landscape.

I find it difficult to determine whether the building is beautiful in itself, or whether it is the environment that makes it all becomes so incredibly beautiful. But the house is the big picture that counts and it has JSA very successful in this. Would be fun to see how the landscape outside the hotel to change for a whole year. Think autumn with their orange and red colors can be very impressive.
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Location: Gudbrandsjuvet, Norway
Design: Hotels
Client: Knut Slinning
Cost: 1 million
Size: 800 m²
Built: 2007-08
Architects: Jensen & Skodvin Architect’s Office (Jan Olav Jensen, Børre Skodvin, Torunn Golberg Helge Lund, Torstein Koch, Thomas Knigge)
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The winning projects of the second Holcim Awards competition for Sustainable Construction in Latin America were announced at a ceremony in Mexico City. Total prize money of USD 270,000 was presented to twelve projects from across the region that deliver innovative solutions to social housing, energy efficiency, and the revitalization of communities and water resources.

The Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction conducts the competition in parallel across five regions of the world. Almost 5,000 projects from 90 countries entered the competition which aims to promote sustainable responses from the building and construction industry to technological, environmental, socioeconomic and cultural issues.

Gold Award to an urban integration project in Colombia
An urban planning project for a commune in Medellín, Colombia developed by Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano received the top prize of USD 100,000 and the Holcim Awards Gold 2008 trophy for delivering a ground-breaking and comprehensive approach to address slum formation in cities. The overall scope of the project led by Gustavo Adolfo Restrepo includes the refurbishment and extension of the road network and public utilities, construction of numerous health, education, and sports facilities and implementation of social development programs.

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Head of Jury and Dean of Architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) in Mexico City, José Luis Cortés, commented that the pre-existing MetroCable connecting the informal settlement with the formal city was the catalyst for the approach. “This project complements the effort of available social investment by developing along the MetroCable a range of programs for the regeneration of the area through self-responsibility, community participation and inter-institutional coordination. It is, in short, exemplary in its contribution to reaching the Millennium Development Goals,” he said.
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Energy-efficient media library in Brazil wins Silver Award
The Holcim Awards Silver 2008 was presented to the PUC Rio Mediatheque in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil created by Angelo Bucci of SPBR architects. The building is an attractive landmark that achieves a substantial reduction in energy consumption despite the climate control required for book and media preservation through passive design elements including appropriate orientation, heat insulation, shaded windows, natural ventilation and natural lighting.

Silver: Low-energy university mediatheque, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Illustrating the positioning of the Mediatheque on the PUC-Rio campus.
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Bronze Award for solar water heating and rainwater tower in Brazil
The design by Maria Andrea Triana, Roberto Lamberts and Marcio Antonio Andrade of LabEEE-UFSC, Florianópolis, Brazil, for a solar water heating and rainwater tower was applauded for developing an innovative and economical solution to the widespread lack of public infrastructure in poor urban areas. The “sustainable tower” provides rainwater harvesting, potable water storage and solar water heating in an integrated unit that can be installed within new or existing dwellings, and thus delivers a substantial improvement in the daily living conditions of residents.

Bronze: Solar water heating and rainwater tower, Florianópolis, Brazil: The sustainable tower combines the use of solar energy, rainwater collection and potable water storage.
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Bronze: Solar water heating and rainwater tower, Florianópolis, Brazil: Components of the tower.
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Acknowledgement prizes for projects in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico
Six submissions received equal Acknowledgement prizes for their leading-edge approaches to sustainable construction. An energy-efficient medical and social center in São Paulo and a multi-modal transport hub upgrade in Rio de Janeiro were both prize-winners from Brazil. Two projects to revitalize water systems from Mexico: an ecological river remediation park in Morelia and a sanitation and river remediation project in Tuxtla Gutiérrez were also recognized. A post-earthquake reconstruction at San Lorenzo of Tarapacá, Chile, and a mountain trail for land preservation and urban demarcation in Bogotá, Colombia completed the series of Acknowledgement prize winners.

Acknowledgement: Ecological river remediation park, Morelia, Mexico
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Acknowledgement: Energy-efficient medical and social center, São Paulo, Brazil
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Acknowledgement: Mountain trail for land preservation and urban demarcation, Bogotá, Colombia
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Acknowledgement: Multi-modal transport hub upgrade, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Acknowledgement: Post-earthquake reconstruction, San Lorenzo of Tarapacá, Chile
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Acknowledgement: Sanitation and river remediation, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico
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“Next Generation” prizes for project visions
For the first time, the Holcim Awards competition included a category for the visions of young architects and designers. First prize was presented to architect Alberto Ferandez Gonzalez who was applauded for his coastal fog-harvesting tower concept for Huasco, Chile, which proposes to extract water for agriculture from the “Camanchaca” coastal fog. The Eutropia integrated approach to low cost housing in urban areas by Mexican architects Ricardo Julian Vásquez Ochoa and Emilio José García Bidegorry was awarded the 2nd prize and a project to utilize urban voids in Campinas, Brazil for agricultural production by architect Thiago Cintra Pilegi was recipient of the 3rd prize in the “Next Generation” category.

“Next Generation” 1st prize: Coastal fog-harvesting tower, Huasco, Chile: The tower is 200m high, catching each water particle in the air that comes from the coast to the valley of Huasco River.

“Next Generation” 1st prize: Coastal fog-harvesting tower, Huasco, Chile: Geometric optimization of the water capture.

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“Next Generation” 2nd prize: Eutropia low-cost and space-efficient social housing, Mexico City, Mexico
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“Next Generation” 3rd prize: Agriculture facility for inner-city voids, Campinas, Brazil
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Independent jury of international experts in architecture and sustainability
Competition submissions for projects in region Latin America were evaluated by an independent jury hosted by UIA: José Luis Cortés (Head of Jury, Mexico), Marc Angélil (USA), Daniel Bermúdez, (Colombia), Fernando Diez (Argentina), Vanderley M. John (Brazil), Yolanda Kakabadse (Ecuador), Hans-Rudolf Schalcher (Switzerland), Bruno Stagno (Costa Rica) and Sara Topelson (Mexico) used the “target issues” for sustainable construction developed by the Holcim Foundation to evaluate submissions. The “target issues” address the triple bottom line of economic, environmental, and social factors together with architectural quality and the potential to apply the innovation in other locations.

International series of five ceremonies
The prizes for region Latin America were conferred at the awards ceremony held at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City, attended by more than 360 representatives of government, business, architecture and related disciplines from 14 countries. Internationally-renowned Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, and Holcim CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Holcim Foundation Markus Akermann welcomed guests. Secretary of the Economy of the Republic of Mexico, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, delivered a keynote address that emphasized the broad potential for sustainable construction to generate tangible change in both social and environmental issues.

The Mexico City event was the third of five ceremonies. The results for Europe and North America have also been announced, and the results for Africa Middle East and Asia Pacific will be celebrated in the forthcoming weeks. Gold, silver and bronze prize winners from each region automatically qualify for the global Holcim Awards competition. The projects will be further evaluated by a global jury and the winners proclaimed in Switzerland in May 2009.

The Holcim Awards is an international competition of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. The competition seeks innovative, future-oriented and tangible sustainable construction projects; offers prize money of USD 2 million per three-year competition cycle, and is run in cooperation with renowned partner universities: Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico; Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA; Tongji University, China; and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

The Holcim Foundation is supported by Holcim Ltd and its Group companies in more than 70 countries, but is independent of its commercial interests. Holcim is one of the world’s leading producers of cement and aggregates, and was recently named “Leader of the Industry” in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the fourth year in succession.

Images: Holcim Foundation

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The SIA-Getz Architecture Prize aims to promote increased public involvement and appreciation of Asian architecture, to encourage future generations of Asian architects, and to honor a living architect’s remarkable career that is in progress. Over time, their hope is that this Prize will make a significant impact on innovative practices in architecture in Asia, and preserve its diverse cultural and ethnic identities. The Prize was established in 2006 and is comprised of a cash prize of US $30,000 and a medallion.

The Singapore Institute of Architects in partnership with Getz Bros Ltd. directed the award process. The award was presented to Hitoshi Abe at a ceremony in Singapore on Friday, October 24. Mr. Tai Lee Siang, SIA President and Mr. Ray Simkins, President Getz Bros & Co Inc. presided over the presentation. The Guest-of-Honor was Mr. Robert Tomlin, Chairman DesignSingapore Council.
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The jury panel for the SIA-GETZ Architecture Prize, comprised of Will Alsop, Edmund Cheng, Philip Cox, Dr. Balkrishna V Doshi, Tai Lee Siang, and Alfred H. K. Wong, distinguished individuals and architects, published a statement regarding Hitoshi Abe: “With just about 20 years since graduation, Hitoshi Abe’s contribution and achievements…have been significant. It is Abe’s approach, his sensitivity to the environment and community, that he is selected as the laureate for the 2nd SIA-Getz Architecture Prize.”

Atelier Hitoshi Abe: FRP Ftown Building, Tokyo, Japan, 2007
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Known for architecture that is spatially complex and structurally innovative, Hitoshi Abe has received numerous awards in Japan and internationally, including the 2007 World Architecture Award for M/Kanno Museum, the 2005 Good Design Award for Sasaki Office Factory for Prosthetics, the 2003 Architectural Institute of Japan Award for Reihoku Community Hall, and the 2001 Building Contractors Society Award for Miyagi Stadium.

Principal of his own firm, Dr. Abe worked with Coop Himmelb(l)au in Los Angeles from 1988 –1992 before founding Atelier Hitoshi Abe in 1993 in Sendai, Japan. He recently opened a second office in Los Angeles, to work on a series of projects outside of Japan. Some of his key projects include the Aoba-tei restaurant, the Sasaki Office Factory for Prosthetics, F-town, which is an eat-and-drink building filled with bars and restaurants in Sendai, the Miyagi Stadium in Rifu, SSM/Kanno Museum in Shiogama, and the 9-tsubo House “Tall” in Kanagawa. A monograph “Hitoshi Abe Flicker” (TOTO) accompanied an exhibition of his work at the Gallery MA in Tokyo in 2005. He is the subject of Phaidon Press’s new monograph “Hitoshi Abe” to be released in winter 2009.

Atelier Hitoshi Abe: Shiki Community Hall, Kumamoto, Japan, 2002
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Dr. Abe has a decade-long distinguished career as a leader in education, which began at the Tohoku Institute of Technology (Sendai, Japan) where he taught from 1994 to 2007. He was the Friedman Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. At Tohoku University, Dr. Abe served as professor in charge of the Architecture and Urban Design Laboratory and director of the Architectural Design Education Committee, where he established an international network of architectural training. Dr. Abe earned his Masters of Architecture from SCI-ARC in Los Angeles in 1988 and his Ph.D. from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan in 1993. In 2007, he was appointed professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design.”
Images: Atelier Hitoshi Abe
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Warsaw-based architects Are have designed a new terminal building for Lublin International Airport in Poland. The airport extension and renovation was designed in collaboration with Sener Ingenieria y Sistemas in Poland and Spain, and Polconsult.

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” “The latest plan is to set up a third branch in addition to OMA and AMO. That third branch shall distribute plans without copyright or ego. Anonymous projects by the world-famous architect Rem Koolhaas, it seems like a contradiction in terminus”
The remark is put occasionally at the end of a lengthy article celebrating the career of Rem Koolhaas. The setting: the new glossy for boys called ‘JFK’. With a heavy spillage of words like ‘world-famous’ it is hard to take the statement seriously. Did the author made this up, or is it real?…” Read the rest of the article