3 Big Ideas from a Visionary Architect

By Kyle VanHemert 
WIRED, October 1, 2014

Bjarke Ingels is an architect who isn’t afraid to think weird. When a competition solicited ideas for what to do with a huge trash-munching power plant soon to be built in his native Copenhagen, Ingels’ studio, BIG, submitted the sort of idea you’d expect from a precocious first-grader: They suggested turning it into an massive artificial ski slope. To the firm’s surprise, the proposal won, and by 2017 or so when the project’s complete, it will no longer seem odd to spend a day skiing on a mountain of trash.

To Ingels, this is architecture at its most exciting—when it brings the world we live in a little bit closer to the world of our dreams. Yesterday, at the morning session of the WIRED by Design conference, the architect broke down some of the big ideas that inform these sort of radical designs. Read more…

World Architecture Festival Announces Day 1 Winners

By Katie Watkins
October 1, 2014, Arch Daily

The 2014 World Architecture Festival (WAF) officially kicked off in Singapore today, and the first group of award winners were unveiled, with Vo Trong Nghia Architects and AECOM among the 16 announced winners.

The winners of the remaining 11 categories will be announced tomorrow, and the festival will culminate on Friday with the World Building of the Year and Future Project of the Year awards, which will be selected by the festival’s ‘super-jury’: Richard Rogers, Rocco Yim, Julie Eizenberg, Enric Ruiz Geli and Peter Rich.

The winners of day 1 were selected from a shortlist that included practices from over 50 countries, and among the judges was ArchDaily’s very own David Basulto.

This year’s festival is taking place from October 1-3, featuring three days of talks, key-note speakers and networking opportunities.  With “Architects and the City” as the overarching theme for this year’s main conference sessions, the festival will focus on the contributions architects can make to cities and how they affect – and are affected by – politics, infrastructure, planning communities and technology. Read more…

Architecture Matters: Project success driven by team

By Pierre Gallant 
Oct 2, 2014, Daily Commercial News

Every profession sees itself as a leader. Architecture is no exception.

The realization of a building requires a formidable team, and each member of the team is in a position of leadership during some of the phases of the project.

For example: at the programming stage, the owner is in the lead; during the development permit stage, it can be argued that the municipality’s planning personnel is in the lead; during the design stage, the architect leads; during construction, the builder leads. Equally important are the contributions of the specialist consultants (usually our engineering colleagues), the trades, the suppliers, and many more.

Building projects start with an owner who works with the architect to translate the dream or need into an eventual reality.

To turn dreams into realities requires the architect typically to consider sociological, cultural, environmental, economic and regulatory factors. Society now expects that the architect will also consider sustainability. Read more…