Articles by Andreea Cutieru

The City Council of San Jose recently approved Google’s “Downtown West” mixed-use corporate campus, an 80-acre net-zero environment, also set to feature the largest multimodal transit hub on the west coast. A departure from the tech campuses of Silicon Valley, the masterplan designed by San Francisco-based SITELAB urban studio is envisioned as an integrated part of the urban environment, an extension of Downtown San Jose open to the local community.

Within an increasingly specialized environment, architecture is becoming a collective endeavour at every stage of the design process, and social sciences have acquired an important role. As architecture has become more aware of its social outcome, decisions formerly resulted from the speculative thinking of the architect are now backed up by professional expertise. The following discusses the increasing role of humanist professions such as anthropology, psychology, or futurology within architecture.

The 17th Venice Architecture Biennale debuted last week, showcasing a diverse and inspiring array of possible answers to the question “How will we live together”. Despite the many hurdles inflicted by the pandemic, this year’s edition of the event broadens the scope and reach of the Biennale, restating its role as a platform for inquiry, exploration, and disruptive thinking in architecture. Archdaily had the opportunity to meet in Venice with one of the co-curators of the US Pavilion, architect, author, and University of Illinois professor Paul Andersen, to discuss the idea behind the Pavilion and how it reflects the overarching theme of the Biennale.

Earlier this month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the launch of the Open Boulevards program, an initiative that would temporarily close off car traffic on boulevard segments across several blocks, expanding the public space for dining, cultural activities and artistic performances. The project builds on the successful initiatives Open streets and Open Restaurants, which transformed the city’s streetscape to better serve diners, cyclists and pedestrians amidst the pandemic.

Designed by Heatherwick Studio, together with landscape architecture firm MNLA, the long-awaited Little Island project is New York’s newest major public space, showcasing a richly-planted piece of topography above the Hudson River. The design featuring a public park and performance venues reinvents the pier typology into an undulating artificial landscape. After surpassing many hurdles, the eight years in the making project is now open to the public, and the bold design is set to become an icon in New York.

Bjarke Ingels Group has unveiled the final design for Västerås Travel Center, a transport infrastructure hub bringing together multiple travel modes within one cohesive architectural object. The project’s defining feature is a light, undulating roofscape unfolding across the various complex elements of the program that make up the urban node, creating a new landmark for one of Sweden’s largest cities.

For the first time in the Venice Architecture Biennale, the island nation of Grenada presents the exhibition COethos, featuring its newest architectural landmark, Grenada’s House of Parliament, together with a number of ideas for regenerating the city of St. George’s. Curated by the Babau Bureau collective, the pavilion showcases the design and building process of the Parliament building, as well as explorations of the various possibilities of re-activating public spaces along the town’s harbour.

Reflecting on the future of shopping centres and addressing their decline in visitors, MVRDV’s Heuvelkwartier design proposes converting Eindhoven’s Heuvel shopping venue into a green cultural quarter. The project brings together retail, culture and recreation, expanding the existing buildings while transforming the roofs into a park. The proposal also expands the Muziekgebouw with a stacked cultural building encased in a “glass mountain”, creating a new landmark for Heuvel.

Recent years have seen an increased acknowledgement of the collective endeavour that is architecture and a better valuing of the different professions that participate in the design process. Within every extraordinary building, structural engineering plays an essential role in delivering the architectural vision. The article highlights the past and present contributions of engineering to the built environment, personalities that have stood in the shadow of architects delivering their design intent, and the collaboration between engineers and architects today.

The Luxembourg Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale reflects on how the pandemic has brought a series of dualities to the spotlight, challenging the understanding of the relationships established between architecture and land, interior and exterior, home and work or the built environment and nature. In light of these issues, the exhibition titled Homes for Luxembourg, designed by Sara Noel Costa de Araujo (Studio SNCDA) and featuring contributions to the architecture publication Accattone explores ideas of modular, reversible living while also illustrating a model of repurposing land to build new forms of togetherness.