ar Awards For Emerging Architecture 2007
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12. 4.07
The annual ar Awards for emerging architecture have been announced. It is"the biggest and best award for young architects in the world. Intended to bring wider international recognition to a talented new generation of architects and designers, the Awards have attracted entries from more than 80 countries, representing every inhabited continent."
It had a great international jury including Shirley Blumberg (Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Toronto), Caroline Bos (UN Studio, Amsterdam), Peter Davey (Former Editor of The Architectural Review), Shuhei Endo (Shuhei Endo Architect Institute, Osaka), Jo Noero (Noero Wolff Architects, Cape Town) and Paul Finch (Editor of The Architectural Review and Chairman of the Jury).
The three winners this year were:
Ecoboulevard by ECOSISTEMA URBANO ARQUITECTOS
"An urban intervention as delightful as it is functional.
The architect has installed ‘air trees’ along a new road which represents the anonymity of edge-of-town extensions while offering a constructive proposition about their future.
The idea is simple: residents can make choices about how they would like to ‘grow’ some aspect of environmental control or modification within the created light structures, that are ‘easily dismantled and energetically self-sufficient’.
Vegetation installation for showroom TAKETO SHIMOHIGOSHI/AAE
"Mid-air nature is as unexpected as it is effective."
...The judges admired this winning design because it addressed both these conditions; by emphasising a cut between buildings with the introduction of vegetation beams (in this case covered in moss), the architect has neatly reversed the stereotype of that conventional Tokyo condition.
Wall House FAR: FROHN & ROJAS
"What happens if the plan, generally regarded as the key to good house design, is not the generator? Suppose you take various wall conditions and investigate what happens if their functions (inside and out) become the driver for the plan? The architect sees the walls of this low-budget domestic project as a series of delaminated layers (concrete cave, stacked shelving, milky shell and soft skin) into which the different spaces of the house slide.
see the Wall house in Treehugger here.
'ARK in BEREA' -- The historic 'ARK in Berea' is the first recognized structure in Ohio to incorporate sustainable building concepts from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Hand built in 1994 it is a design study for future buildings and for the global headquarters of the International Center for Environmental Arts (ICEA) and Cleveland’s Eco Village. A hybrid structure utilizing cob, straw bales, aluminum cans, used tires, and recycled construction materials, the ARK stands for -Architektur Recycled Kulturstall. It helps to address the environmental problems through ICEAlity of large urban areas and the trend of rebuilding rather than remodeling existing structures. The ARK is used as a museum, community center, and art studio of American Cultural Ambassadors David and Renate Jakupca. It is registered with the Berea Historical Society, Western Reserve Historical Society and the Ohio Historical Society. The 33rd Annual Jakupca Family Reunion was held at the 'ARK in Berea this Fall 2007.