A jury consisting of Daniel Libeskind and others recently has announced their decision for the competition for the Museum of the Second World War in Poland, Gdańsk.

Studio Architektoniczne Kwadrat received 1st Prize and will design the new museum in Gdańsk, the city where the war broke out. 2nd Prize was awarded to Polish architects Piotr Płaskowicki & partnerzy Architekci and 3rd Prize to Greece-based BETAPLAN S.A.

The Jury is of the opinion that the design selected in the Architectural Competition has every chance of becoming one of the most important features of the Gdańsk City Centre from the very beginning. In our belief it meets all conditions of joining in the sophisticated symbols in the future alongside the Armoury, St Mary’s Church, or the Crane.

The huge building tactfully merges in the neighbourhood sharing the chance of becoming an icon of Gdańsk with the major historic elements around. The minimalist means of architectural expression proposed by the authors gracefully blend the modern idea of the building with the historic background. In its Design, the innovative, huge-scale project makes use of the unique air of the city and transforms it in a modern manner. The colour and texture proposed in the design smoothly blend with the colours of Gdańsk giving the museum the power to pass the test of the 21.c century.

The huge building tactfully merges in the neighbourhood sharing the chance of becoming an icon of Gdańsk with the major historic elements around. The minimalist means of architectural expression proposed by the authors gracefully blend the modern idea of the building with the historic background. In its Design, the innovative, huge-scale project makes use of the unique air of the city and transforms it in a modern manner. The colour and texture proposed in the design smoothly blend with the colours of Gdańsk giving the museum the power to pass the test of the 21.c century.

The design embraces an immense building, which serves varied purposes. Dynamic, huge in scale, the building carries an air of a sculpture created by the visitors. It rises symbolically from the ground, led by light, bold, Simple, and naked, symbolically placed in the geometry of the shipyard. It links the ground – its gloom, chill, and imprint of the Past, with the skies – hope, freshness, and Future. In this ingenious design, a rational vision of a public facility meets the wealth of history. It rings full sound, telling a story hard to chew for any generation, the story we must never forget. The attractive body of the building cumulates emotions, portrays the terror of war without depriving us of hope. It does not leave its interpreters buried in the gloom of the difficult topic.

The elegant pavilion, together with the obelisk nearby, squeezes into the ground and strikes the viewer with light, creating a symbol of catastrophe and the surviving hope. Phoenix-like, the building rises from Mother Earth, its ashes, towards the sky. The building will easily imprint itself on the visitors minds, conveying and being an unforgettable experience, both due to its interior and exterior. It will become a major feature on the plan of Gdańsk, perfectly composed in space.

The well-organised and modern building combines an immense range of functions . It offers huge space for permanent exhibitions, while remaining open for any displays in the future. The visitors to and the residents of the Tri-City will love it as an attraction. The designed tower will play a major role in gaining an image of the entire city, offering a fresh perspective view of Gdańsk, which will enhance the Museum’s valuable function of a viewing point.

As a public space, the Museum Has the potential of a meeting place for families, tourists, and acquaintances, of taking in dozens of cars. It incorporates an ingenious concept with functionality.

This exceptionally designed Museum of the Second World War will become a major attraction, telling the story of paramount importance for the humanity. It will grow to become a timeless symbol inscribed in the hearts of the people of Gdańsk, Poland, and Europe.

Populous has been selected to design a new sports park in the historic city of Datong, in the northern Shanxi Province, near Beijing, China. This is the second major sports hub for Populous in China.

The sports park which includes a 30,000 seat stadium, an 8,000 seat arena, a 1500 seat natatorium and a multiuse training hall, is part of a larger plan by the Datong Mayor to regenerate the historic old city and create a new city centre with other development including a city hall, museum, convention centre.

Inspiration for the new Datong Sports Park has come from both its impressive cultural heritage and the stunning rugged beauty of the surrounding landscape outside the city. The rich valleys, escarpments and weathered mountain faces surrounding the Loess Plateau outside Datong City rival the brutally etched Judean desert as it stretches towards the Dead Sea. The colour and texture of the mountain ranges are comparable to the landscape of the Grand Canyon in America.

The win for Populous, which has its Asian base in Queensland, comes as its first sports park in Nanjing celebrates five years of successful operation. Populous won an IOC/IAKS Gold Award for the design of Nanjing, built for the 2005 China National Games, and the catalyst for a major city centre development.

The Sports Park in Datong will provide work for 10 professional staff in Populous’ Brisbane office. The firm’s senior principal Paul Henry said the win reflected Populous’ future strategy in Asia.

“Our strategy in China as elsewhere in Asia hinges on producing world class design in the Queensland office, and investing in the development of long term Client relationships.

China recognizes the value sporting venues have as gathering places for modern communities yet, which also reflect the unique qualities of each particular city.”

Populous Principal Andrew Colling says the inspiration for the unique design in Datong has come from the surrounding Yungang Grottoes or Cloud Ridge Caves, “These shallow caves just out of Datong are symbolic of the rich cultural heritage of the region, which has evolved over several thousand years. The visitor approach and entry to the stadium is like entering the nearby caves, with the sandstone bases clad in a series of irregular titanium shells.

The Datong Sports Park provided the opportunity to celebrate a number of strong, unique features in the city’s history and cultural character combined with the more humanistic ideals and ambitions embodied in the design of modern sports parks.”

Bernard Tschumi Architects has won an international invited competition to design a new center for the performing arts at Institut Le Rosey, the renowned boarding school in Switzerland. The new building will be named Carnal Hall after the school’s founder, Paul Carnal.

Le Rosey is located on the shores of Lake Geneva, near Rolle. Among the most prestigious educational institutions in Europe, the school is alma mater to diplomats, business leaders, and royalty.

The existing campus has a cohesive, traditional architecture marked by mansard roofs and a wedge-shaped campus plan that opens onto the site, defining an open-ended court.

The design began with the question of how to expand the campus with a contemporary building, fostering a dialogue between tradition and modernity, while updating the arts and performance facilities for a new generation of students.

The winning scheme proposes a low, stainless-steel dome that defines the site and spatially organizes the disparate parts of the program: an 800-seat concert hall, a black box theater, conference rooms, a learning center joined to a library, a teaching center, practice rooms for music and the arts, and several relaxation spaces featuring a restaurant, a cafe, a student lounge, and other amenities.

A series of side openings articulates the periphery of the dome, and a terrace is cut into the center near the apex, offering views of Lake Geneva. The main interior space is the concert hall, with programmatic zones around its periphery that are articulated into an architectural promenade.

From the campus, the keystone-shaped terminus of the quadrangle forms a ceremonial entrance to the project and the slope of the dome echoes the undulating landscape near Rolle. The reflective steel will provide a distinctive identity and a landmark for the school and the region.

The building’s compact shape minimizes its external surface area, acting as a thermal shield. This provision reduces energy consumption and shelters the large interior spaces under the dome with a minimum of material. The reflective polished steel offers additional energy savings over traditional cladding materials and shelters the glazed areas from sun and inclement weather.

TED is a public building in Taiwan that uses a form and highly mixed program to encourage a large cross section of users.

Designed by BIG Architects (Bjarke Ingels Group), the 57 meter cubed building has an open section, or ‘street’ to allow full public access through the building.

The access rises and dilates near the top of the building and opens onto a rooftop garden. The roof is to be a public park and informal performance area.

Radiating from the street will be hotel, retail, office, restaurants, etc, with no particular formal arrangement. The building is an expression of a city bock packed into a more vertical system.

The ribs, evocative of the underside of a mushroom form stairs through the structure and is repeated on the walls and ceiling thus creating a visually continuous facade.

The access through the building allows for ventilation, shade, and increased fenestration for the occupants. The building site is not yet disclosed.

Residents are hopeful that Foreign Office Architects (FOA)’s first museum design (and the firm’s first major US building) will help Cleveland’s urban-revitalization project move forward. Farshid Moussavi of the FOA London has designed a geometric volume that dominates the Uptown area’s site, creating a bold icon for the new Museum of Contemporary Art. Prior to this, the MOCA rented a 23,000 square feet of space on the second floor of the Cleveland Play House complex, but with this 34,000 sqf new home, the museum will be able to showcase a bigger selection and accommodate more visitors.

The site’s triangular geometry at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road inspired Moussavi to respond with a geometry of triangles and trapezoids sloping at various angles, all morphing to create a powerful abstracted form.

Some of the sloping faces tilt toward the street creating reflections of the streetlife and sidewalks while other faces reflect the cloudy skies off their black Rimex stainless steel finish. The materiality of the façade allow the museum to reflect its urban surroundings, changing in appearance with differences in light and weather.

The building is designed to showcase a program of internationally emerging art in flexible gallery spaces. The first level will be constantly activated as its urban living room design allows visitors to relax, grab a bite to eat or shop. Visitors head to the second level to view the galleries and exhibition workshops, and pass the third floor filled with MOCA administrative offices, classrooms and lecture spaces before reaching the main exhibition gallery on the museum’s last level.

Three of the building’s six facets, one of them clad in transparent glass, will flank a public plaza. This will provide a public gathering place and also serve as MOCA’s “front yard,” and will be the site of seasonal programming. From here, visitors and passersby may look through the transparent facet, site of the Museum entrance, into the ground floor, a space intended for socializing and for civic and cultural events.

In addition to Foreign Office Architects, the design team for the new Museum includes executive architects Westlake Reed Leskosky, headquartered in Cleveland.

More information about the project here.

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”.

Winners were picked by the competition’s four judges: Alexander von Vegesack (Vitra Design Museum), Dr. Sami Angawi (Amar Centre for Architectural Heritage), Renny Ramakers (Droog), Rami Farook (traffic)

Alexander von Vegesack said, “Within four sections to apply for, Dubai’s design competition “Design as Reform” (by traffic) this year shows up with some refreshing ideas. The indeed “new” projects in the section of architecture impressed me most. The mosque and related to it, a very much traditional anchoring successfully was implied in simple and modern concepts. The applicants for interior and experimental design were not able to continue the high level of surprise effect of the first three sections mentioned. However each group could convince with one outstanding idea: especially the experimental design section appears with a very humorous and at the same time smart concept of public architecture: modern and clearly in the context of the Arab environment – that is Design as Reform 2010!”

Some further information about the project by RUX:

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.

Qibla (orientation to Mecca): The city grid around the mosque is disrupted by a powerful gravitational force, warping the ground plane, skewing facades, and forging a forced perspective view in the direction of Mecca.

Infinity: “The Vanishing Mosque” gestures to infinity with optical illusion. Diminishing column sizes and the subtle scaling of marble tiles extend the view to infinity within a finite space.

Light: White marble saw-tooth facades and floor contrast with deep arcades to create rich gradients of shadow in natural and artificial light.

Community: The inside of “The Vanishing Mosque” is its outside. Its community extends to the limits of the city at large, creating a sense of shared ownership, collective identity, and deep roots that connect spiritual life to modern urban living.

Material: Alabaster marble, Glass
Size: 5000 square meters
Designers: Russell Greenberg, Tim Kirkby, Chris Beardsley, Joyce Chang
Location: UAE

Austin-Smith: Lord has recently taken the public choice prize for the Stoke-on-Trent Bus Station Competition.

Austin-Smith: Lord was one of six architectural practices chosen from over 43 international entrants to participate in a limited invitation design competition for the new £15m Stoke bus station. Other shortlisted practices included Wilkinson Eyre, John McAslan + Partners, Grimshaw, BDP and Zaha Hadid.

Following the formal submission the team were delighted to see that the practice had topped both the Council’s own public vote and The Architects’ Journal’s peer vote when the schemes were anonymously placed on websites for an ‘X-Factor’ style vote on the preferred solution.

“It was good to get the recognition of the public and our peers, however we do take this kind of thing in the spirit in which it was intended. It was a welcome diversion to come in and see how we were doing whilst we waited for the interview and it gave us a lift knowing we were obviously doing something right,” explains Transport and Infrastructure Cornerstone, Richard Cronin.

Unfortunately the practice was unsuccessful in the final selection with Grimshaw Architects being appointed by the Council and the Developer for the adjacent East West Centre who are partially funding the scheme.

An upbeat Richard Cronin had this to say, “It was a pleasure to take part in such a challenging and interesting exercise and to see how the other teams approached the problems posed by the site both in terms of its operational layout and its historical mining use. We knew that looking at a drive-through solution was a riskier option but genuinely felt it was the right solution for that site, utilising the ring road, and ensuring separation of the passengers from the buses was key to our approach. We pride ourselves on our ability to take another look at the problem to try and see if there is a better way of doing it. That’s what we as Austin-Smith:Lord bring to clients in the sector, it’s about a full understanding of the operational issues and an ability to analyse the patterns of use to deliver the safest and best architecture at the right price.”

The Austin-Smith:Lord team consisted of JMP Transport Engineers, Curtins Structural Engineers, Hilson Moran, Gleeds and RLB. Following the 40 day period to prepare detailed submissions, which included proposed layouts and external designs, residents were consulted about the designs and their views formed part of the selection process with the final decision being made by a panel of judges.

Selection criteria included a number of factors including each design’s philosophy in relation to the context of the site, delivery within budgetary constraints, response to the management of pedestrian flow and potential pedestrian/vehicle conflict and maximizing the capacity of the site.

Austin-Smith:Lord were the only team to suggest an alternative to the Drive In-Reverse Out layouts specified within the brief by proposing an innovative drive-through solution which was felt would provide a significantly lower accident risk, given the nature of the site. Building on the successful layout at Wolverhampton Interchange, which was designed by Austin-Smith:Lord in 2009, the team developed a strategy for a 14-bay drive-through facility which met and exceeded the operational capacity requirements of the brief, together with an additional strategy to expand by a further 30% capacity in future, if required.

The project location was entirely appropriate for designing a ‘stand-out’ building and the City’s history of pottery and chinaware (with manufacturers such as Spode and Wedgewood) was echoed in the design of a flowing carapace of lightweight ferroconcrete to suggest the qualities and delicacy of fine bone china, whilst providing a shelter from rain and snow to the pedestrian concourse. Natural ventilation, rainwater harvesting and air-source heat pumps were incorporated into the design to meet sustainability requirements.

Although function and safety were critical, the regenerative effects that the new bus station could bring were immediately clear. An orientation was developed to place the main entrance to the bus station on the link between the civic buildings and the proposed precinct to the east. An advantage of the revised bus routing was that this link could be kept truly pedestrian, free of all traffic, with the exception of the occasional service vehicle. This also enabled a free flow of pedestrians from the bus station into the proposed market square to the north, which in turn, connects to the city centre.

A robust cost plan, developed closely with Gleeds, incorporating tender returns from another similar local scheme, ensured the £15m budget was not exceeded.

The new, 7,300m2 public transport interchange will act as a catalyst for future regeneration which will unlock delivery of the new £250m East West precinct development by Realis Estates. Construction is planned to start on site in 2011 with completion in 2012.

Winner of the competition for the new cultural center of Meudon-la-Forêt, France, is architectural firm Serero Architects. They designed a building wrapped by an organic concrete shell.

The project will be presented at the mediatheque of Meudon from June 22nd until July 10th, 2010.

The following is a detailed project description from Serero Architects:

Windows derived from tree canopy

The project is inspired by nature and more specifically by the tree, not in its simple symbolic shape, but in its deep link with architecture: in the relationship between structure and envelope, between redundancy and optimization, strength and fragility.

The interaction between the surrounding natural space and the minimalist volumes of the existing buildings conceived by the architect F. Pouillon influenced the main trajectory of our approach. The building follows the orthogonal grid of the district while developing a close connection with the ground space. The project is organized around a central nucleus created by a theater of 300 seats. Its peripheral envelope is lifted above the hall to reveal the inside spaces and circulation.

Trapezoidal windows are placed on the whole surrounding of the building avoiding the traditional “black box” effect of a theater located in the middle of an urban environment. In opposition with the unique window used by F. Pouillon for all the housing of the district, we conceived a system of free formed windows, the geometry of which is derived from the canopy of trees.

Separating spaces without closing them

Our purpose is to create a place of a remarkable quality; on the one hand it opens on the surrounding urban context and on the other hand has a strong identity. The periphery of the building is composed of two levels with reception and meeting spaces, the ground floor, offices, and art studios upstairs.

This project is conceived from the inside out, resulting in the manipulation of the ground and the roof which delimit spaces. The building is cantilevers above the reception hall, the square allowing to protect a large glazed surface from the sun and rain.

Studio spaces flooded with natural light

All the spaces of circulation and reception are widely bathed in natural light, either by the curtain wall of the reception hall, or by the sheds on the roof of the studios, which play an important role in the definition of the spaces inside the building. The variation in the size of wall aperture and windows gives a quality of foliage to the bright atmosphere. Illumination inside the main hall changes throughout the day.

At the end of the day, lamps installed in these sheds, which are connected to photosensitive cells, will compensate gradually for the lack of natural light. Offices and working spaces are lit by multiple window apertures of free forms which allow every work space to have one or two views of the outdoor and landscaped spaces.

An intelligent skin

The building is clad in an architectonic skin of white concrete which will integrate bits of gravel and limestone of Meudon in its composition. Conceived as a performative skin, the roof is an important element of this project and integrates devices for controlling the internal light and thermal atmosphere of the building. On the south side of the slopped roof, photovoltaic panels will be installed to harvest part of the electrical energy consumed by the building.

Project Details:

Team: SERERO architectes / David Serero, Bastien Casasoprana, Noriko Harada, Yoichi Osawa, Fabrice Zaini
Site: Meudon, France
Client: City of Meudon
Landscape designer: OLM, BET Structure et Fluides: Scoping; Stage Equipment : SCENE; BET HQE : RFR Elements;
Acoustic engineer: ABB Acoustique; Graphic Design : Atelier 59
Area: 1,850m² + 6,350 m² outiside
Budget: 5,970,000 €

Danish architectural firm Henning Larsen Architects has won first prize in the invited competition for a new aquarium in the Georgian seaport of Batumi.

The 2,000 m2 aquarium will replace the previous aquarium of the port and will be situated on the beach side of Rustaveli Str. adjacent to Batumi 6 May Park featuring a Dolphinarium and Zoo.

Inspired by the characteristic pebbles of the Batumi beach, continually shaped by the wash of the waves through millennia, the building stands out as an iconic rock formation visible from both land and sea. The formation constitutes four self-supporting exhibition areas where each of the four stones represents a unique marine biotype.

”The building will become a landmark and an organic reference to all elements of the sea”, explains Design Director and Partner at Henning Larsen Architects, Louis Becker. “It captures the special atmosphere by the sea and thus becomes a tribute to the power of the sea!”

Batumi Aquarium will become a modern, cultural aquarium offering visitors an educational, entertaining and visually stimulating journey through the different seas. The central, multipurpose space in connection with the aquarium features a café and retail functions and its flexible layout makes it well-suited for presentations and workshops.

Its significant expression inspired by nature will not only make Batumi Aquarium a spectacular new landmark in Georgia but also a state-of-the-art contribution to exploring life underneath the sea surface.

‘The Cornerstone’ is the name of the winning proposal for a combined shopping and office complex in Vanløse, Copenhagen.

It is located in a fragmented area that consists of small houses, housing blocks, future shopping mall and highrises.

Instead of imitating or blending itself into its surrounding, it detaches itself into a building object that creates public space in front, below and behind it. Doing so, it becomes a public landmark that invites people into the developing center of Vanløse.

The project is expected to be completed in 2011-12.

Young Danish practice JAJA Architects is closer than ever before to build their first project on Apollovej, Vanløse in Denmark. Despite the company being very young, they have already done very well in large competitions and received high placements.

In the fall of 2009, a competition on a mixed-used building in Vanløse, Denmark, was announced. Some of the requirements asked to create a building with an iconic value consisting of parking and shop on the lower level and office facilities on the upper level.

JAJA Architects entered the contest with their proposal, ‘The Cornerstone’. The architects want to interact with the area’s diversity and create a public landmark that invites people into the developing center of Vanløse. The proposal envisions ‘The Cornerstone’ to contribute to this diversity as a building object that creates public space in front, below and behind it – Public spaces all around it.

‘The Cornerstone’ is currently in the process of being approved by the municipality of Copenhagen.