Judging from recent events, one can get the impression that Berlin is on the way back to the past, steering further and further away from contemporary architecture. 10 years after the opening of Potsdamer Platz and 20 years after the fall of the wall, Berlin seems to have become a playground for reconstruction.

The upcoming reconstruction of the Berlin castle, which was demolished in 1950, the rebuilding plan for Schinkel’s Building Academy, demolished in 1960, and the replica of the historic Stadtkommandatur and Hotel Adlon at Brandenburg Gate apparently symbolize a deep desire to recover a beautiful past.

Nevertheless, there is a growing contemporary architectural scene in Berlin, but its building sites are hidden and far less mediatized than the castle replica. Read the rest of this entry »

Façade of department store Bijenkorf (”Beehive”) in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, designed by Gio Ponti in 1969.

Posted by: architour

After 45 months of construction, the Burj has finally earned its title as Tallest Building of the World. On January 17th the last parts of the spire were assembled and the tower reached its final height of 818 metres.

Burj Dubai is a culmination of superlatives. The building now holds the record in all four categories listed by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat: highest roof, highest occupied floor, biggest height to top of antenna and biggest architectural height. It’s the first time that all criteria are united in a single structure since the inauguration of the Empire State Building in 1931.

Conceived by Chicago-based SOM, the tower will be inaugurated in September 2009, simultaneously with the new public transport Metro system. State-owned developing company EMAAR will open its first hotel in cooperation with Giorgio Armani inside the tower by the end of the year. Official website: http://www.burjdubai.com

Posted by: Ticket DXB

As we’re already talking architectural documentaries (see the previous post): the one not to miss this year is Koolhaas HouseLife.

In this film, we see Guadalupe Acedo, housekeeper in Rem Koolhaas’ famous villa in Bordeaux, stoically struggling with the tricky sides of modern architecture. Dragging her vacuum cleaner up a spikey steel staircase, dusting the book shelves while passing by on the lift platform, trying in vain to make the fully automatic door-opener open the door. And what’s more, in the interview with Koolhaas which is included in the DVD, something previously unseen happens: Koolhaas, who isn’t exactly known as a prime exponent of jollity, smiles! “You see here two systems colliding: the platonic conception of cleaning and the platonic conception of architecture”, he says. Well, he’s certainly got a point there. Check out the trailers on the website.

Posted by: architour

People jumping around recklessly on avantgarde architecture – what could be more fun? Have a look at the teaser for the upcoming documentary My Playground by Kaspar Astrup Schröder,  a film about movement, tricking and parkour in Copenhagen urban spaces, featuring the VM houses by ex-office PLOT and Mountain Dwellings by Bjarke Ingels Group as well as interviews with urban planners, local politicians, architects and philosophers.

More clips will be released during the winter. The film is scheduled to premiere in summer 2009.
Posted by: Scaledenmark

On January 14th, Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn was awarded the Honorary Prize in the international DETAIL Prize competition, a joint effort of the German Architects Association, the Bavarian Chamber of Architecture, and the German magazine DETAIL. This is the first time the DETAIL Prize competition includes an Honorary Prize.

Amounting to Euro 5000, the prize was awarded at a Gala event in the Münchener Künstlerhaus, as a part of the BAU 2009 trade fair. Sverre Fehn, born 1924, is Norway’s only Pritzker Prize winning architect. His two latest projects, the head office of Gyldendal publishing company and the Museum of Architecture in Oslo, both completed in 2008,  created fresh focus on Fehn, who for half a century has been an outstanding architect as well as inspiring several generations of students.

The opening exhibition of the Museum of Architecture was, appropriately, a comprehensive survey of his works. The museum project featured both the renovation of a bank building from the 1820’s as well as a new exhibition pavillion.

Here’s an article about the architecture museum in German, published by GA-member Anneke Bokern in Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Photo: Museum of Architecture in Oslo
Posted by: Guide-A

On January 17th 2009, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) hosted the grand opening of a new concert centre - ‘Koncerthuset’. The new concert centre makes up the fourth and last segment of DR’s corporate domicile, DR Byen (literally ‘the DR city’).

The opening of Koncerthuset means a new national and international concert venue for Denmark and a new architectural landmark for the capital – and perhaps even for Northern Europe. Designed by Jean Nouvel, the building puts Copenhagen on par with other cities around the world which provide the best modern acoustics and visual settings for concert-goers.

In the long term, events at Koncerthuset will range widely in terms of size and genre: small-scale jazz concerts in the foyer, chamber music, choral, rock and pop concerts in the three smaller concert halls and symphony concerts, guest appearances and large-scale rhythmic concerts in the big concert hall. During the first season after the grand opening, it is expected that three major rhythmic concert events will be presented. After the first year or two following the opening, notable international and local artists within rock or pop music will find their way to the programme of Koncerthuset, as will a number of slightly more alternative or ‘street-related’ artists and/or DJs within the genres of e.g. elec­tronica, trip hop etc.

Posted by: Scaledenmark

A German legend will celebrate its 90th birthday this year: the Bauhaus in Dessau. Recently, Berlin-based architect and critic Philip Oswalt was appointed as new director of the school. He will assume his post in March.

To celebrate this, Ticket B from Berlin will organize a special tour to Dessau, including visits to the Bauhaus building and villas by Walter Gropius, rowhouse settlement Siedlung Törten and, to introduce some contemporary eco-architecture, the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) by sauerbruch hutton architects.

For dates and prices, please contact Ticket B: info@ticket-b.de

Posted by: Ticket B

One of the Guiding Architects Network’s most faithful regular clients is German company Sto AG. Our members have been organizing guided tours for the StoDesign Forum for many years. The tours are aimed at professionals from the architectural field, and the guides are mostly German-speaking.

Here’s the list of Sto excursions on offer in 2009:

Barcelona: 25 - 28/03/2009
Bilbao - San Sebastian: 22 - 26/04/2009
Vienna - Brno: 20 - 23/05/2009
Copenhagen - Malmö: 03 - 06/06/2009
Cracow - Gdansk: 24 - 27/06/2009
Berlin: 01 - 03/07/2009
Basel - Zurich: 16 - 19/09/2009

For more information or reservations, please go to the website of StoDesign.

Posted by: guiding architects

200 wind turbine rotor blades go to the scrapheap in the Netherlands every year, just because they have tiny fissures. When Rotterdam-based 2012 Architects, specialized in re-use projects, found out about this, they thought that there must be some way to give the unwanted polyester blades a second life.

In October their first rotor-blade project was finished: a playground in the north of Rotterdam. It consists of five old rotor blades, neatly sawn into pieces by a ship builder, decorated with colourful stripes and finished off with two F16-bomber cockpits. The blades create a graphic pattern and also form borders between different areas of the playground. Around an existing football pitch, the architects placed four little towers made from the fat ends of the blades: there’s a slide tower, a look-out tower (with the cockpits as lantern room) and a tower incorporating a little windmill, which generates energy for a water pump.

Before the turbine-playground, 2012 Architects designed e.g. a rooftop extension in Amsterdam made from old sinks, a shoe-shop in The Hague, furnished with scrap wood benches and a shelving system made from car windshields, and a coffee-bar for TU Delft made from the front panels of washing machines.

Photos: Allard van der Hoek

Posted by: architour