West 8   United States   This plan is the first to be carried out in the 104-year history of these well-known public gardens of more than 436 hectares. These grounds were originally occupied by a dairy farm. The scheme wishes to offer a solution to the compound’s current pro

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, West 8, Rogers Marvel, Matthews Nielsen   United States   The project sculpts the island by way of an undulating topography that ends in four green tops that offer new panoramic views of the famous skylines of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The island will become a natural park of 35 hectares with a program that i

West 8, IROJE   South Korea   A vast project of 243 hectares resorts to the concept of healing as a strategy in nature (creating a lake), to history (caring for the existing), and to culture (removing the military area). The park is directly related with the city through a series

West 8   Germany   The scheme proposes a multigenerational city in an area of 40 hectares that gives priority to the green spaces, which are structured by a hierarchy of boulevards and public spaces...

West 8   Lebanon   The 8.6 hectares of park are conceived as a green lung with a Mediterranean and Lebanese identity for the rough city of Beirut, built mainly out of stone, concrete and asphalt. A circulation ring unifies and structures the proposal generating in its

West 8   Albania   The 585-hectare plan earned a special award for innovation in urban development within an international competition in which Nicholas Grimshaw (see AV Proyectos 051) was the chosen winner. The main avenue is like the backbone of the project and conne

West 8   Taiwan   The project, third prize in an international competition, covers 70 hectares and aims to represent different stories about daily life in Taiwan, about its past and about its rich environment...

AV62 Arquitectos, Pedro Azara, Pedro García del Barrio   Irak   After the devastation the district suffered in the fall of 2007, the current efforts of the administration now focus on reestablishing life in this neighborhood located on the shores of the Tigris in the center of Baghdad. The complete refurbishment

3XN   Denmark   The project for the new stadium – winner in an international competition in which teams like C.F. Møller with Grimshaw or Foster and Partners with Arkitekfirmaet 78 competed – will be located south of the city of Copenhagen, covering an area of 35,00

EM2N Architekten   Switzerland   The almost 70,000 square meters of the Heuried Sports Center include programs of a broad variety of sizes. This makes it difficult to grasp the compound as a whole. The new winter sports hall wishes to rearrange that group of scattered elements. The

Claus en Kaan   Netherlands   This scheme, a public commission of the Dutch Ministry of Defense, will be entirely developed by the Heijmans consortium, a collaborative venture between Claus en Kaan Architecten (in charge of the architecture), H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten (in charg

Carlana Mezzalira Pentimalli   Italy   Kulturbaum is the name given to the headquarters of the Nuova Biblioteca Civica (new library) in the center of the city of Bressanone, in northern Italy. The project, winner in an international competition, wishes to address its context respectfully

COBE Architects   Denmark   Five ‘flower pots’ distributed on the site and placed amidst the existing trees. This is the starting point of the project for a day-care institution for 160 children of ages between 0 and 6 years. The height of the volumes varies to provide good day

Julio Jiménez Corral   Zootropo, the first prize in the competition organized by the Fundación Konecta, is a self-sufficient container formed by four modules measuring three meters wide and three long. Though initially it was conceived as a basic dwelling unit, its capacit

Alberto Odériz, David Ortega   Mexico   Texcoco lake was drained since colonial times up to the 20th century, generating a plain with a high degree of humidity that has absorbed the fast-paced and uneven growth of Mexico City. The project is set forth as a user’s manual, containing instruc

Álvaro Cuéllar, Anna Gutiérrez, Jordi Safont-Tria   Mexico   The project strategy takes as point of departure a basic unit of infrastructures that is inserted in the urban fabric to guarantee minimum services for each neighborhood of some 2,500 inhabitants...

Amaya Barrera, Helena Cermeño   Colombia   The Colombian municipality of San Cristóbal is affected by the meteorological phenomenon La Niña, which brings strong rains and causes the Canal del Dique to overflow. The construction of housing is set forth as a participative process with ecologica

Elena Gómez, Juana Canet Rosello, Rut Cuenca   Colombia   The harvesting of Guadua cane is the starting point of a sustainable productive chain in which neighbors create participative cooperatives to build housing and services...

Ochoa + Stella Richter   Colombia   On an urban scale the scheme proposes making the most of the water resources, recovering the Canal del Dique as navigable course and promoting agriculture as local economic engine...

Jaime G. Méndez, Yesenia I. Teles de Aguiler   Peru   The site assigned by the River Rímac in Lima, known as El Montón, was previously a waste site and nothing can be built there, so it has been transformed into a public space. The treatment of the waste generated by inhabitants allows to produce the co

Álvaro Cuéllar, Anna Gutiérrez, Jordi Safont-Tria   Chile   The city is laid out around water, defining an urban structure that permits a controlled flow in case of flooding and proposing an elevated front to mitigate the strength of tsunamis...

Laboratorio de emergencias urbanas | LEMUR   Chile   The 1960 earthquake and tsunami destroyed most of the urban fabric of Port Saavedra and closed its access to the sea, creating the Imperial Lagoon and eliminating the motor of its economy. The project stems from the study of the resilient elements (t

José María Sánchez García, Jorge Nieto, Mariló Sánchez, Tadea Ipiña   Chile   By means of an elevated platform, which spans the area at greater risk of flooding, it is possible to equip Saavedra with safe tourist facilities and an exit route in case of emergency...

Edgar Ignacio Mazo Zapata, Gonzalo Castro Fernández-Palacios, José Ramón Guerra del Moral   Brazil   67 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro, Petrópolis has experienced a fast-paced process of informal growth that has respected neither the areas of environmental protection nor those prone to flooding. The new morpheme (smallest residential unit) is based

Gonzalo Muñoz, Lucía Martín   Brazil   The urban fabric takes shape via three actions: relocating the houses at risk of flooding, improving the existing constructions and pointing out the areas where new structures can go up...

Matías Nieto Tolosa   Brazil   The proposal defines the educational program of a vocational training course in hydrological risks, and which includes traineeships that are repaid in the form of social benefits...

Benthem Crouwel Architects, West 8, Meyer & Van Schooten   Netherlands   The development of the high-speed railway line turned Rotterdam into one of the most important cities within the European transport network. This fact prompted the launch, in 2003, of the project to remodel the city’s Central Station, which had to ma

Her drawings from the 1980s already show that Zaha Hadid (Baghdad, 1950) was determined to produce a new architecture. Starting from the recovery of the suprematist forms, the Anglo-Iraqi architect developed a visual language of her own which has evo

In Barcelona, the exhibition ‘Cartografías contemporáneas’ (Contemporary Cartographies) offers a view of how current artists question representation systems and provide new formu-las to classify reality. The 140 works by 77 authors – which include dr

Paul Ott was born in Kremsmünster (Austria) in 1965, and did not use a camera until he was eighteen years old. After graduating and completing the compulsory military service, he started working for an industrial and advertising photographer who did