Winners Announced in Surrey’s Town Centres Design Competition

1st Prize & Overall prize for Guildford: Return of Ritual;Team: Renante Go-Soco Solivar

“TownShift: Suburb Into City” sponsored by the City of Surrey was a sustainable design competition to provide vision for Surrey’s five growing town centres – Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton and Semiahmoo.

The competition attracted 138 submissions from 20 countries, and 27 finalists were selected by the five-member TownShift jury.

Renate Solivar of Vancouver took the overall top prize of $15,000 for his entry “Return of Ritual” which proposes structuring a new bold, brightly coloured construction along 152nd Street in front of Guildford Mall. In addition to the $15,000 first prize, his entry also won $10,000 for first prize in the Guildford category, for total winnings of $25,000.

All 27 have been on public display at Simon Fraser University (SFU) Surrey Central City for the past three weeks, and will remain on display until Feb 28th, the closing day of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

The next steps in taking new ideas and making them into reality will be explored at a special panel discussion entitled “Where Do We Go From Here?” at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s main Surrey Campus on Monday, March 29, 2010 at 7:00PM.

Cloverdale Winning Design: Surrey Crossing — Crossing Surrey; Team: Fang Liu; Tracey Mactavish; Henning Knoetzele; Peeroj Thakr

SOURCE: Townshift
IMAGES SOURCE: Townshift

For the full list of winners

Continue reading Winners Announced in Surrey’s Town Centres Design Competition

New look for Federal Plaza, gone are the green benches

The award winning Federal Plaza designed by Martha Schwartz is going to get a new design as the plaza is reconstructed over a 12-18 month period to fix the plaza deck that is settling and leaking affecting the building and carpark below the plaza.

The current design of swirling green benches designed by Martha Schwartz will be removed and replaced by magnolia trees, low evergreen plantings, marble benches and  a fountain designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA).

The Tribeca Trib recently reported  about  Matthew Urbanski’s (a principal with MVVA) presentation of the new design to Community Board 1’s Seaport/Civic Center Committee.

Much of the design, Urbanski said,  was influenced by the “microclimate” of the plaza, which receives too much sun in the summer and too little in the winter, plus a wind tunnel effect along Worth Street. The magnolia trees are positioned at the northern end of the plaza where they can provide shade and some shielding from winter winds.

To read and see more about the new plaza design go to the [SOURCE: Tribeca Trib - Yet Another Look in Store for Federal Plaza]

Over 200 interventions to be displayed at Guggenheim exhibit

West 8 submission for 'Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum'

For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum (NY, USA) invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.

Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by artists Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Mike Nelson, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, Joris Laarman Studio, and Studio Job; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, junya.ishigami+associates, MVRDV, N55, Philippe Rahm, Snøhetta, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8. In addition to the exhibition in the Thannhauser and Annex Level 4 galleries, Contemplating the Void will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition Web site, which will document each submission and feature introductory essays texts by Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.

Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum will be on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from February 12 to April 28, 2010.

[SOURCE: Guggenheim Museum - Contemplating the Void: Interventions] via West 8

[IMAGE SOURCE: West 8]

Eli Cohen’s sustainability and phytoremediation lecture

Eli Cohen recently gave a lecture as one of the Freshkills Park lecture series and the Freshkills Blog posted this on Wednesday

Eli Cohen gave a terrific talk Monday night on his work, as director of Ayala Water and Ecology, using plants to remove pollutants and contaminants from water, soil and air. We’re grateful to the huge crowd that poured into the Arsenal gallery for the event, to Laura Starr and Yamit Perez for putting us in touch with Eli and, of course, to Eli himself for sharing his work and his thoughts.

The Freshkills Park Blog post also includes the MP3 and PDF of the presentation for listening and viewing.

[SOURCE: Freshkills Park Blog]

European Green City Index – how green is your city?

Siemens recently published on their website the European Green City Index showing the results of a study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Copenhagen was ranked #1 with Stockholm (2) and Oslo (3). Dense city centres such as Berlin (8), Paris (10) and London (11) scored high on the test. Cities that scored low where Sofia (29) and Kiev(30). These cities scored low as populations have increased and the economies have grown underinvestment in infrastructure has caused crowding on public transport and roads along with other factors such as climate which increase requirements for heating and cooling.

For more information about the study go to the [SOURCE: Siemens - Green City Index]

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