Hasta La Ideas

The world’s only real-time architecture competition improves urban life

Swinging through NYC’s Center for Architecture this evening, the 72 Hour Urban Action USA roadshow will hold a presentation going over last year’s competition held in the city of Bat-Yam, just south of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

The 72 Hour Urban Action event is an international rapid architecture and design festival held every two years. Defined by a lack of time, space and funds, the efforts are directed to address the needs of the local community.

Now gearing up for its second edition, the competition brings 120 architects, students, designers, artists, and craftsman together from all over the world to form 10 teams. Each team has three days and three nights to design and build a project to address their randomly assigned, individual mission. As part of the festival, the goal is that finished projects remain a part of their surrounding urban community long after the competition ends.

The USA roadshow is ongoing throughout April 2011 with stops at Harvard University in Massachusetts and four more in California. For more information on the world’s first real-time architecture competition click here.

Following now three full months of press about angry emails fired off to the whole company by disgruntled employees, staff layoffs and exits by principals, and lawsuit threats by their own subsidiaries, mega-architecture firm RMJM seems to still be having trouble. This despite a financial bailout issued last month to the tune of £8 million. The Scotsman reports that it still hasn’t been able to pay anyone at its office in Hong Kong and not for the whole of March either:

Gordon Hood, managing principal of the Hong Kong office, told staff: “I had hoped that my first e-mail to the studio would contain more positive news, and that, after the month of change and disruption that we have just experienced, management would be able to ensure that March salaries would be paid to all staff on time.

“However, despite a full-time effort, we’ve not been able to secure sufficient funds from our clients to allow us to do so.”

This office, you might recall, was the site of one of those aforementioned mass e-mails, and was also where the local government has threatened to pursue legal action, both in fines and jail time, against CEO Peter Morrison should the company’s employees there not be paid. RMJM told the Scotsman that they hope to be able to hand out paychecks again soon. Elsewhere, ground has just recently been broken in the construction of RMJM’s project to build the Caribbean’s largest resort.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Well that’s about the fastest turnaround from shortlist to winner set of announcements we’ve ever seen. Just a few days back, we told you that the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, or the Mies van der Rohe Award, had just released its set of six finalists for the biennial award. Now here we are with the winner: David Chipperfield for his Neues Museum Berlin. Back in those far off days when we were discussing the shortlist, we were pulling for Bernard Tschumi’s Acropolis Museum, despite the inclusion of a handful of regularly-winning starchitects But don’t get us wrong: we love Chipperfield’s museum all the same. Here’s some from the official announcement:

Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, said: “My congratulations to our winners who have created two exceptional buildings. The Neues Museum brings the past and present together in a stunning mix of contemporary architecture, restoration and art. The Collage House in Girona is another remarkable renovation which fuses old and new materials in a harmonious whole.”

The original Neues Museum, designed by Friedrich August Stuler, was built in the mid-19th century. The building was severely damaged in the Second World War and reconstruction began in 2003, with the aim of restoring the site to its former glory. David Chipperfield, who worked on the project with fellow British architect Julian Harrap, adopted a dynamic approach in his restoration. Rather than attempting to conceal the difference between the old and new elements, the past and present are beautifully combined to create an unforgettable building with multiple layers.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Spanish firm Grupo Aranea have designed this apartment to sit on the roof of a house belonging to the client’s mother.

Called Casa Lude, the project in Cehegin, southern Spain, has windows angled to look along the narrow streets to the mountains beyond and unfolds to a roof terrace at the top.

More houses on Dezeen »

More Spanish projects on Dezeen »

The text that follows is from the architects:

CASA LUDE

Lude wanted a house in a traditional neighbourhood in the city of Cehegin, using the roof of his mother and sister’s house as a plot.

Making the most of its privileged situation, Casa Lude is related to its environment in a particular way.

Due to the density of the area it doesn’t open directly to the nearby facades but looks along the narrow streets to see the landscape, the Burete mountains and the San Agustin Hill.

In spite of looking different to the other buildings of the neighbourhood, Casa Lude is as compact and introverted as them.

Instead of a conventional layout of the rooms Casa Lude creates a unique, continuous and rich space on different levels with various heights and directions; a space that Lude fills with music.

This space extends to the roof as a natural continuation of the interior life. It is a complex space full of light where a lot of secrets are hidden…

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Apartment in El Born by Arquitectura-G	Alemanys 5 by Anna Noguera	Lolita by Langarita-Navarro Arquitectos

Family members can see into all rooms across the central courtyard of this Japanese house by Sapporo studio Archi LAB. t+m.

Located in Chitose City, Hokkaido Prefecture, the CTYN Internal Garden House is located in a field where neighbouring houses are to be built on three sides.

The outer walls have no windows in order to block out views of the buildings to come and focus inhabitants’ attention on the garden within.

More Japanese houses on Dezeen »

The following details are from the architects:

As part of a new residential area in development in Chitose City, Hokkaido, a former farming field has just been marked off into divisions, each of which has 40 percent legal building coverage ratio. Under the law, minimum space of 1m inward from the boundary has to be kept for snow piles in winter season.

On top of this, the site would be bounded on three sides in east, west and south by neighbouring houses in prospect of future development in the area.

Minimum of 2m gap between the houses combined with the 1m allowance on the neighbour’s side as well as the non-building area on the site, all of this seems to be enough empty space, however, considering that the entire area is surrounded by a vast open landscape, this marginal space is not actually much.

As we cannot speculate the future neighbour housing to come, the task was to design these 3 facades in a way that it would still create a comfortable space inside regardless of the surrounding situation. We also decided to create an internal enclosed garden in middle of the house, a void that serves as daily multi-purpose space to make most out of the 60 percent non-coverage area of the site.

The 7.1m x 5.3m garden is positioned to south from the centre of the site, the living spaces are laid on a spiral on different levels: from the laundry room on half basement, living room, tatami floored stairs, and bedroom, which surround and lead to the internal garden. By having a structure where family members could see others in the rooms over the internal garden, it retains as an open and comfortable house overall.

By enclosing the entire house from the outside and making the internal garden a centripetal force, controlling the opening of the space corresponding to the spiral layout of the rooms, we managed to design a structure where the residents can enjoy the physical positioning in the house with other family members depending on where they are and how they move around.

Considering that it is a space that lies in the vast horizontal landscape, we managed to keep the height down to one storey, hence in winter half the house would be covered in snow.

As the house is enclosed within itself, even when surrounded by the prospect neighbouring houses, the house would serve as a valley in the residential area, and we hope that this house would remain as a void that merges into the lives of neighbourhood.

‘The Internal Garden in Chitose’

Location: Chitose City, Hokkaido
Type of Building: single resident

Site Area: 213.3 sq metres
Building Area:　85.2 sq metres
Total Floor Area: 103.8 sq metres

Structure of the Building: wooden structure
Scale of the Building: 2 storey building
Construction: Marushige Akasaka Construction

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Inside Out by Takeshi Hosaka Architects	Edge by Apollo Architects ＆ Associates	House in Ise by Takashi Yamaguchi & Assoc.