Articles by Collin Abdallah

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) has announced the winning design for the inaugural Hong Kong Young Architects and Designers Competition. The competition asked local architects and designers emerging in their careers to design a “temporary pavilion that promotes sustainability and addresses economic and natural resources.” The winning design, titled Growing Up, by New Office Works is a timber pavilion that sits on the waterfront in Nursery Park at West Kowloon. Paul Tse Yi-pong and Evelyn Ting Huei-chung from New Office Works will serve as Design Advisors with the project set to open in fall 2018.

In a recent interview with Metropolis Magazine, Kenneth Frampton answered questions about his existing architectural influence and his opinion as it relates to the direction of architectural theory and criticism. Frampton has long been a prominent voice in the world of architectural theory and writing. He has taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) since 1972, all the while publishing a large collection of critical essays and books on the topic of 20th-century architecture—the most notable of those being his 1983 essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.”

What if the one thing that makes BIG “BIG” was suddenly stripped away right at the apex of its potential? That’s the question posed by the trailer for Kaspar Astrup Schrøder’s documentary BIG TIME, which ominously illustrated a possible problem with Bjarke Ingels’ health.

We all know a little about the world’s tallest buildings—those engineering feats which define their cities and become symbols of human achievement—but what of the buildings that never took their planned place in their respective skylines? In 2014, The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) released a report listing the 20 tallest buildings that were never completed (an up-to-date list is also maintained on their website here). In order to be considered “never completed,” all of the buildings in the report had begun site work, but construction was completely halted with no reports indicating it will continue. Read on to find out the top 10 tallest uncompleted buildings in 2018 after the break.

Johann David Steingruber was a German architect and designer with over 100 buildings to his name, including many churches, town halls, school buildings and even breweries. However, perhaps what he is best known for today are the intricate illustrations of his 1773 Architectural Alphabet, in which he converted the alphabet into plans for a series of eccentric baroque palaces.

The history of Slovakia is riddled with political unrest and unwanted occupation, with the Slovak people having repeatedly been denied a voice throughout history. In the years following World War I, Slovakia was forced into the common state of Czechoslovakia; the territory was dismembered by the Nazi regime in 1938 and occupied by the Nazis for most of the Second World War, before being eventually liberated by Soviet and Romanian forces in 1945. Over the next four decades of communist rule—first by communists within Czechoslovakia itself and then later by the Soviet Union—the architecture of Slovakia came to develop into a unique form of sci-fi postmodernism that celebrated the shift in industrial influence at the time.

We live in a world that spends more time online than outside. And as architects and designers, we invest in creating a more engaging world by means of enhancing life through our buildings. However, through a perhaps unique form of tunnel vision, we are missing an incredible opportunity to leverage alternative mediums to impact more people through our design businesses.

We live in a world that spends more time online than outside. And as architects and designers, we invest in creating a more engaging world by means of enhancing life through our buildings. However, through a perhaps unique form of tunnel vision, we are missing an incredible opportunity to leverage alternative mediums to impact more people through our design businesses.

When looking back on the rich history of Japanese architecture, some of the things that immediately come to mind are complex wood joinery, hipped roofs and intimate experiences with water. Today, Japan is on the cutting edge of architectural innovation in many different building types—skyscrapers, office buildings and micro-housing to name a few. However, this Instagram account chooses to highlight an extremely unappreciated building type: public restrooms.

Bee Breeders have announced the winners of the SKYHIVE Skyscraper Challenge. The purpose of the competition was to allow architects, design students, engineers, and artists from all over the world to “generate design ideas for iconic high rise buildings in cities around the globe.”