Magazine

NOWNESS presents Energy of the Land, a short film with Kengo Kuma speaking about his geologically inspired design of the Kadokawa Culture Museum in Tokorozawa, not far from Tokyo.  John Hill

The tech giant has bought the Central Saint Giles development, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) more than a decade ago for a site near Covent Garden in central London, for £730 million, or $1 billion. John Hill

The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the 40 shortlisted works selected by the jury for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. John Hill

Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill Levi, the founder of the eponymous Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura in Barcelona and the prolific designer of hundreds of buildings in dozens of countries, died on January 14, 2022, at the age of 82. John Hill

A new McDonald's restaurant in Moscow is covered in mirrored glass panels that reflect its Pushkin Square locale. Designed by Landini Associates, the project sits on the site of the first ever Russian McDonald's, which opened on Pushkin Square on January 31, 1990. John Hill

The City of London Corporation has announced the shortlist of "five world-class, international design teams" competing for a major renewal of the Barbican Centre, an icon of brutalist architecture. John Hill

A short film by 9sekunden presents the Kunsthaus Zürich extension that was designed by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin and opened in October 2021. Filmed during the preview last spring, the film highlights the contemplative nature of the building, which borders on the monastic as the... John Hill

Long used for textiles, food, and medicine, hemp — when mixed with lime and formed into panels and bricks — is increasingly being seen as a viable renewable building material for achieving carbon-neutral and healthy-building goals. John Hill, Martina Metzner

Parallect Design's LIM Café at Suzhou Bay Sports Park in Suzhou, China, has traditional gabled forms that recall the wooden structure originally in its location and modern mirrored glass facades that reflect its setting on the edge of Taihu Lake. John Hill

The Tate Gallery has posted a tender looking for an architect and lead designer for "Reimagining Tate Liverpool," the museum housed in a warehouse in Liverpool's former Albert Docks which was previously reimagined by James Stirling in the 1980s. John Hill

The answer, from director Altor Bigas in a short but dense film about the building at 43 Paseo de Gracia in Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudí nearly 120 years ago: "CASA BATLLÓ - This Is Not A House." John Hill

The Ponte della Costituzione in Venice, designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 2008, will have its glass steps replaced in favor of stone, after years of tourists and residents falling on the slippery surfaces. John Hill

MARABAR, Elyn Zimmerman's site-specific installation in Washington, DC, that was saved from demolition last year, has found a new home: the campus of American University, just four miles northwest of the monumental artwork's original location. John Hill

Interventions and Adaptive Reuse is a recently published that looks back at ten years of academic journalism focused on the “responsible practice” of adaptive reuse. Looking to the past, by virtue of an approach that has preservation at its heart, the book also provides perspectives... John Hill

In 2021 we presented 44 Buildings of the Week, featuring short Q&As with architects about recently completed buildings in the United States, most of them renovations and adaptive reuse projects. It's your turn to help us crown a US Building of the Year by voting for your favorite — the... John Hill

As 2021 segues into 2022, World-Architects looks ahead to a dozen notable buildings opening in the new year, including OMA's long-awaited Taipei Performing Arts Center, Herzog & de Meuron's flagship building for the Royal College of Art, and SANAA's Sydney Modern Project. John Hill

The buildings of Richard Rogers, especially those of his early creative period, were often hardly accepted at first — before eventually becoming landmarks of modern architecture. Rogers died at his home in London over the weekend at the age of 88. John Hill, Falk Jaeger

A development plan preserving the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, a postmodern icon designed by Helmut Jahn, has been accepted in the State of Illinois's bid to sell the building. John Hill

The Board of La Biennale di Venezia has announced that Ghanaian–Scottish architectural academic, educator, and novelist Lesley Lokko will curate the next Venice Architecture Biennale, which will take place from May to November, 2023. John Hill

As 2021 — year two of the coronavirus pandemic — draws to a close, World-Architects takes a month-by-month look back at some of the stories that transpired over the last twelve months: awards, competitions, buildings, exhibitions, and passings.  John Hill

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced that Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpa of California's Brooks + Scarpa Architects are winners of the 2022 Gold Medal, while Boston's MASS Design Group wins the 2022 Architecture Firm Award. John Hill

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced that India's Balkrishna Doshi is the 2022 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal, which recognizes architects "who have had a significant influence on the advancement of architecture." John Hill

Hiroshi Sugimoto's redesign of the Hirshhorn Museum's Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, has been approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, allowing the Hirshhorn to move forward with site development plans that have been years in the making. John Hill

The same week that Barbados removed Queen Elizabeth as head of state and became a republic, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced the creation of the Barbados Heritage District, featuring a slavery memorial designed by Adjaye Associates, which released a short film visualizing the... John Hill

Copenhill, also known as Amager Bakke, the waste-to-energy plant topped with a ski slope in Copenhagen, was judged the top prize at the annual World Architecture Festival that was held virtually this year. Here we present some images of the design by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and other winners... John Hill

The recipients of the 32nd annual Piranesi Awards have been announced, following the jury's deliberations on November 26 at Monfort Exhibition Hall in Portorose, Slovenia. John Hill

The Lightcatcher, designed by architects Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel of Venice's MAP studio, has opened in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens. It is the seventh MPavilion commissioned by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. John Hill

The project designed by architects Fernando Porras-Isla, Lorenzo Fernández-Ordoñez, and Aránzazu La Casta (Porras Guadiana Arquitectos), a major landscape reconfiguration in a key location in the Spanish capital, reopened to the public at the end of November. John Hill, Antonio La Gioia

OPEN Architecture's Chapel of Sound is a semi-outdoor concert hall this sits on the floor of a valley north of Beijing famous for hosting remnants of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. A short film captures the spatial and acoustical qualities of the recently completed building. John Hill

Curators Ilka and Andreas Ruby have transformed the Barcelona Pavilion into a domestic space — a temporary version of the EU Mies Prize-winning "Transformation of 530 Dwellings in the Grand Parc Bordeaux" by Lacaton & Vassal architectes, Frédéric Druot Architecture, and Christophe Hutin... John Hill

Influential artist and designer Virgil Abloh has died of cancer at just 41. Head of his own Off-White label and artistic director for Louis Vuitton’s menswear, Abloh graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a Master of Architecture in 2006. John Hill

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has unveiled their design for Sarofim Hall, which reinterprets Butler Buildings to create a "new hub for cross-disciplinary practice" at Rice University in Houston, Texas. John Hill

Six long years after it was approved by the Parisian city council, Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle proposed for the 15th arrondissement is moving forward following a recent financing deal. John Hill

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow has unveiled SANAA's design that will revive The Hexagon, a building with six pavilions originally designed by Ivan Zholtovsky. Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa explain their design in a short film. John Hill

The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced that John Puttick Associates has been awarded the 2021 WMF/Knoll Modernism Prize for their preservation of the Preston Bus Station in Preston, UK. John Hill

OMA NY: Search Term is the first monograph produced by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) since Content came out in 2004. Focused, as the title indicates, on OMA's New York studio, Search Term uses thousands of images — 5,565 of them, to be precise — to tell... John Hill