Museo del Prado. Image © milosk50 / Shutterstock.com

According to Spanish media outlet El País, Foster + Partners and Rubio Arquitectura have won an international ideas competition to design the new addition of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The team beat 47 other participants, including firms such as Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos, OMA, and Souto Moura Arquitectos, and will be in charge of the renovation and transformation of the Salón de Reinos. 

El País reports that the project will cost €30 million and will “provide a large atrium to access the building’s south façade.” This “will lead to an exhibition space on the first story,” while also making the park and surrounding site more pedestrian friendly.

During a press conference, the Spanish Minister of Culture, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, announced that construction will begin in 2019 to coincide with the bicentennial of the museum’s founding. The Museo del Prado is not only one of Spain’s most important museums but also enjoys international recognition and acclaim.

News via El País

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© Julien Lanoo

• Architects: TANK Architectes
• Location: 59200 Tourcoing, France
• Architects In Charge: Tiphaine Vasseur, Franck Landrot
• Area: 17470.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Julien Lanoo, Courtesy of TANK Architectes

• Assistants : Jean-Vianney Deleersnyder, Clément Berton, Thibaut Buisset, Évaïne Agré , Thomas Harbonnier
• Clients : Conseil général du Nord & Sem ville renouvelée

Courtesy of TANK Architectes

From the architect. The hive of small enterprises is located in the heart of the site La Tossée in Tourcoing (North of France). The program brings toge­ther a hive of innovative textile companies and a 450-spaces-silo parking. The two programs are combined within a single entity.

© Julien Lanoo

The medium-term mutability of the parking in a tertiary program is made possible by a peripheral-honeycomb-structure releasing trays of all bearing points. The project builds on both flagships of the industrial revolution and textile industry to federate a context carried by a blend of history and innovation.

© Julien Lanoo

Plan 1

Courtesy of TANK Architectes

Product Description. – The filling of the cast-in-place concrete cells is achieved by a two-level curtain wall façade consisting of a frame of the WICONA – MECANO 2 range, with WICLINE 65 hinged windows.

Detail

The filling of the non-glazed parts is made with insulating sandwich panels composed of an exterior face of ALUCOBOND – Natural Line 401 and an inside face made of rough galvanized sheet, separated by a rock wool of 30mm.

© Julien Lanoo

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As the birthplace of our most recent Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Aravena, Santiago, Chile is full of iconic architecture. Because many of these buildings are situated in busy urban areas, their superior design is easy to miss. In an effort to encourage viewers to slow down and appreciate the volume, facades, context, and function of these urban landmarks, Benjamin Oportot and Alexandra Gray of San Sebastian University guided their 4th-year students in producing axonometric drawings of 11 buildings. The project centered on medium-sized office buildings built between 1989 and 2015, particularly focusing on their use of reinforced concrete.

1. Transoceánica Building / +arquitectos
Students: Patricia Ramirez + Daniela Pavez

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

The design of this building, made to be the headquarters for Transoceánica companies, is based as a part of the implementation of an energy efficiency system aimed at reducing consumption, improving the quality of workspaces and adopting a respectful attitude towards the environment. (Extract from project report)

Transoceánica Building / +arquitectos
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2. Ministry of Social Development Headquarters / Undurraga Devés Arquitectos
Students: Jonathan García + Carlos Acuña

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

The new building for the Ministry of Social Development is placed in a complex site. On the one side, the church of Santa Ana, one of the most beautiful expressions of religious architecture of the twentieth century in Chile, and on the other, the North-South freeway, one of the largest urban interventions of the 70s that divides Santiago’s city center in two. (Extract of Project Report)

Ministry of Social Development Headquarters / Undurraga Devés Arquitectos
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3. CCU Building / +arquitectos-Tuca Arqs-Flaño-Tuca-ADN 
Students: Cristina Arévalo + Tamara Bravo

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

In addition to taking advantage the building’s capacity for diverse uses and services as well as its design and structural advantages, we found that a parallelepiped element, similar to many great examples of quality architecture that we reviewed (SAS Building, United Nations in NY, Mies buildings Van der Rohe, and many others), would keep the building from wearing out or boring easily, thanks to its austerity and repetition. (Extract of Project Report)

Edificio Corporativo CCU – +arquitectos / +arquitectos + Tuca Arqs + ADN + Flaño + Nuñez
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4. Cruz del Sur Building / Izquierdo-Lehmann 
Students: Alejandra Hernández + Camila Salinas

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

The towers are seen from below. The triumph of structure over gravity becomes all the more perceptible and manifest the closer we get to the raised mass, until completely vanishing from our visual range; And the estimation of the dimensions changes with a sensation of danger, as in vertigo. (Extract of Project Report)

Cruz del Sur Building / Izquierdo Lehmann
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5. Resiter Office Building / Raimundo Lira Arquitectos
Students: Valentina Medina + Daniela Peñaloza

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

The building was designed so that both volumes are harmonic and are understood asbeing part of a set, with the same cubic volume language from the existing building, a treatment of controlled openings, interior gaps and a new coating material on the facade that respects the color of the existing building’s tone and weight. (Extract of Project Report)

Resiter Office Building / Raimundo Lira Arquitectos
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6. Innovation Center UC – Anacleto Angelini / Alejandro Aravena | ELEMENTAL 
Student: Biffret Díaz

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

Our proposal consisted of designing a building where we could demonstrate at least 4 forms of work: a double entry matrix in which one part contained formal and informal work, and the other, individual and collective work. On top of that, it has always seemed to us that face-to-face contact is unparalleled when it comes to creating knowledge. That is why we made plenty of places where people can come together throughout the building (Extract of Project Report)

Innovation Center UC – Anacleto Angelini / Alejandro Aravena | ELEMENTAL
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7. Manantiales Building / Izquierdo-Lehmann-Lira-Peñafiel 
Students: Marcelo Riffo + Fernando Ahumada

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

We wanted to project the building as a simple and clear volume, mainly consisting of a regular parallelepiped shaped, 17 story tower that falls directly to the ground on an open corner facing a plaza, and partially encompassed by a shorter and closed 10 story volume on the opposite two sides facing the existing buildings on the interior the block. (Extract of Project Report)

Manantiales Building / Izquierdo Lehmann Arquitectos
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8. AryS Building / Peñafiel Arquitectos
Student: Elberth Cea

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

The clients made a special request. They asked us for a building that would not look like an office tower and that it would be more “like a house”. Trying to figure out what this might mean, we started off with the office tower. What they didn’t want was the typical glass building with all its side being the same and that could be anywhere in the world. A building where the interior was connected to the outside only by the sense of sight. (Extract of Project Report)

ARyS House / Peñafiel Arquitectos
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9. Costanera Lyon Building / Simonetti-Stewart 
Student: Rubén Salinas

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

We were looking for a single mass that was easy to heat or cool without the need to add layers or use up a lot of energy. For our first mold, like a prototype, we started with the archetypal image of a solid cube and with systematically organized openings. Then we stretched the openings vertically, breaking any relationship between the location of the spans and the number of floors of the building. (Extract of Project Report)

Costanera Lyon / Eugenio Simonetti + Renato Stewart
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10. Nueva Vitacura Building / Klotz-Alvano-Riquelme 
Student: Rubén Calderon + Franco Mora

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

Managing this project linked real estate developers and the architects, working together on the questions that would let both parties get what they wanted. It contains four levels of parking, two levels of commercial spaces and another 12 floors of offices. (Extract of Project Report)

Edificio de Vitacura / Renzo Alvano, Pablo Riquelme, Mathias Klotz
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11. El Golf Building / Izquiero-Lehmann-Lira-Peñafiel
Students: Jesús Burgos + Felipe Hernández

Courtesy of Universidad San Sebastián

We were entering into in the urban context of formal and volumetric chaos, so we wanted to define the body of the building as a regular parallelepiped with a symmetrical structure, determined by a reasonable optimization of the constructibility of the ground within the parameters established by current ordinances. (Extract of Project Report)

Edificio EL Golf
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© Ariana Zilliacus

18 June 2015: Denmark has a new right wing government. A couple of months later, despite student protests in front of city hall, the new government declares a decision to cut 8.7 billion Danish kroner (over $1.2 billion US) from education in Denmark, effectively cutting nearly 30 million kroner (around $4 million US) from the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation (KADK).

The result? 31 employees have been laid off this month; the student body is to be reduced by 30% over the coming years; 4 masters courses in architecture are being discontinued within the next 4 years; and 6 bachelor programs, 7 special programs and one entire institute in the Design School are being terminated. Teaching is being refocused towards technology and the professional sphere, but will this really improve the prospects of fresh architecture graduates, as they claim? Is it more important to challenge, or to adapt?

© Ariana Zilliacus

These changes in architectural education are being titled “A New Focused KADK; A plan of action to secure more graduates jobs, faster.” This is the brief, the challenge, being set by the Danish government in a country where education, including the 5 years necessary to become an architect, is free for all. However, the unemployment rate of designers and architects in Denmark was double the average of all other graduates of higher education between 2008 and 2012.[1] Is there a consensus in the government that Denmark is not getting value for money when it comes to architecture graduates? Does this skepticism extend beyond this small Scandinavian nation? Are we simply doing it wrong? 

© Ariana Zilliacus

One of the major changes awaiting the architecture school is a mandatory internship over one semester, cutting out the option of an exchange during one’s Bachelor period. Anne Romme, Head of the Bachelor Program at the Institute of Culture at KADK, says that this decision “is probably a good one.” She continues to explain: “One could also discuss the question, because it directly cuts away a very fruitful and valuable semester out of a ten semester education; but if we do it in the right way, I think it can become a good thing that opens up our minds and sends students out to all corners of the profession and the world, and brings back new impressions. I think it’s probably going to be a very positive thing, we just have to do it in the right way.”

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The vocational direction that the school is taking is an attempt to answer to the demands placed by the government. The possible advantages that await are obvious: higher employment rates, and architects that are better prepared for a life in the profession. On the other hand, the architectural discipline could begin to go down a less desired path.

“It’s very important to remember this balance between educating people directly for the profession, as if it was a kind of conveyor belt where we spit out people who hopefully fit into the ‘sharper,’ ‘better,’ front running part of the profession, but also our role in pushing the profession to new places,” says Romme. “It’s a balance. Architecture is a profession, but it’s certainly also a discipline, which is much more grounded in long-term questions and proposals. It’s not so concerned with which computer program is the ‘hottest’ right now… or what the big architecture firms in Denmark need right now; we need to tell them what they need.”

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It’s undeniable that this change in Denmark’s most well known architecture school, the starting point for many well-known architects such as Bjarke Ingels and Henning Larsen, will affect the evolution of the entire architecture discipline in Denmark; and who knows what it could do to the profession beyond Danish borders? Will it dampen exploration, in favor of safety?

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Young architecture students have responded to the Administration’s decisions with critical retaliation, albeit with minimal success. Yet Romme is positive: “There’s a lot of disagreement in the school whether this is the right decision, but luckily enough that’s good for schools: disagreement.” Hopefully this process will give birth to greater architects than ever. We’ll have to wait and see.

References:

1. Ledelessekretariatet. “Indstilling til bestyrelsesmøde d. 26. september 2016.” 16 Sept. 2016: n. pag. Print.

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