THE BILLION OYSTER PAVILION, NEW YORK

March 25, 2015

The Billion Oyster Pavilion An installation on Governor’s Island for Summer 2015, that will become a Permanent Contribution to NY Harbour as Oyster Reef.

FIGMENT’s City of Dreams and The New York Harbour School’s Billion Oyster Project to create an immersive art space that will ultimately help restore New York City’s waterways. The City of Dreams Competition is organized by the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA), the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) and FIGMENT NY, a non-profit arts organization. The competition brief asked architects and designers to propose a pavilion with the theme “the city of dreams” that would employ recycled or recyclable materials. Out of hundreds of entries, BanGs Billion Oyster Pavilion was chosen as a winner.

ANTWERP CITY: FIELD TRIP

September 14, 2014

/ nicksocrates

Antwerp trip with Hyung Kang In-Tune Architects and Raghu Ramesh from Studio Context.

SITE VISIT: SLUM REGENERATION, AGRA, INDIA

September 12, 2014

/ nicksocrates

North Kachpura and Yumuna Bridge, Agra, India

Short clip montage of some footage filmed whilst working in Agra as part of a slum upgrading scheme.

Inside the Cheesegrater London's latest skyscraper

August 13, 2014

/ Robert Booth

Workers will be whisked skywards at a stomach-dropping 18mph in the Richard Rogers-designed Leadenhall building

London’s escalating love affair with giddying views will reach a new height this autumn. Starting in November, up to 6,000 City workers will move their swivel chairs and espresso machines into the highest offices in Britain, in the Leadenhall building.

China town: meet the architecture giant with Asian designs on London

July 15, 2014

/ Oliver Wainwright

Aedas’s mixed-use malls and elevated walkways might work in China, but will these mammoth towers blot Britain’s capital?

Their buildings dot the globe, but you probably couldn’t name one, nor would you ever guess they had come from the same practice. They have built a gargantuan conference centre in China that looks like a teetering stack of mirror-clad Jenga blocks, an enormous concert hall in Singapore in the shape of a crumpled beetle, and over 9.3m sq metres (100m sq ft) of shops, offices and hotels in variously sculpted towers across Asia and the Middle East. Now Aedas, one of the largest architecture practices in the world, plans to bring its flashy brand of mixed-use huge projects to London. And there is very little to stand in their way.

Our Chinese clients have their sights set on London, and they know what they want, says Keith Griffiths, the Welsh-born chairman of Aedas, who presides over the 1,400-strong practice from its Hong Kong headquarters. They are used to high rise, high density, truly mixed-use developments having everything on one site, so you can live, work and play without ever leaving the building. We think that’s the way London needs to densify.

Architecture in 2014: singing bins, talking pavements and skygardens

January 7, 2014

/ Oliver Wainwright

From crime-fighting lampposts to Zaha Hadid’s Olympic pool opening for business and a rise in social housing (finally), Oliver Wainwright charts the trends that will dominate 2014

It may sound like a prediction made while still high on brandy butter, drunk with New Year optimism, but 2014 will see an increase in the volume and quality of social housing built by local authorities for the first time in decades. After a rule change that allows councils to spend housing rental income on building new homes, and a relaxation of local authority borrowing caps, up to 25,000 council homes could be built over the next five years. East London borough Newham is leading the way, with a pilot project of modular homes designed by Richard Rogers, along with opportunities for younger architects to get involved. Let’s hope we see more initiatives like Peabody’s recent competition, allowing smaller practices to bypass cumbersome EU procurement rules.