End of Year Round Up.

End of year round up.

This blog is EPIC and probably been posted about 2 weeks ago but it’s a start at least. 

Email me if you make it to the end without wanting to cry and I’ll send you a prize!

With no start point I was struggling to think off the top of my head of anything that happened this year in architecture other than ANOTHER worlds tallest building being announced, the Glasgow transport museum opening, a new maggies center in Glasgow and the proposed Apple campus being unveiled. Obviously loads of stuff all over the world has happened but it’s been dead here and it appears to have just passed me by without any note.

So I went on the internet as asked ‘what were the top stories of last year?’ Not top green or tallest or the BCI Asia Awards, but what where people talking about? Personally I didn’t speak about anything, as I am currently living in the creatively sterile environment known as Hong Kong. So I asked my friends on the internet; architizer, archdaily, urukia, designboom, etc and here’s what I came up with.

Kicking the year off in January was an anticipated look forward to sunnier times with the Metropol Parasol by J. Mayer. H. This covered urban space is to act as a beacon and icon in the center of the historical mediaeval city of Sevilla, Spain. 

It looks like many strange things, a smack of geometric mushrooms in an undulating fungal blanket or a pixilated ink blot from the sky but I like to think it is much like a bioshield from Star Trek both in its grid like form and in its function climate controlling function.

I totally love urban projects like this. This buildings location with in the existing infrastructure of the city gives it the best possible potential to becoming an amazing focus for the community. Good times.

Also gearing up for the summer, Peter Zumthor unveiled his proposal for 2011’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in February. In every true sense of the word it is a pavilion; low building, sheltered courtyard, a play on shadow and light with a natural flow and unobtrusive form. This pavilion is an awesome contemplative place in a perfect form that any architect from history would recognize. Pretty sweet.

In March Eduardo Souto De Moura won the Pritzker prize. Probably most famous for the iconic Casa da Historias I really dig his work because it draws from architectural process and tradition to create timeless buildings. Well done old chap!

April is awash with colour as the most viewed office building on pretty much all the design feeds came to the fore. Emmanuelle Moureaux Architecture + Design completed the Sugamo Shinkin Bank in Shimura, Japan. The 3^rd by the Architects for the local Credit Union, the building shows off its effortless passive solar strategy in an over lapping of many layers. The stacked slabs seem to float up and disappear in to the sky due to the defusing colours and soft illumination at night.

Inside the abundance of natural light is thanks to the light wells that penetrate the building, both connecting floors and flooring them with ubiquitous light. The kindergarten like furniture, patterns and finishes are disarming and charming, seamlessly reflecting the exterior. Is it enough to make you feel at ease in a bank though?

BNKR spent a lot of time in May explaining the concept of an earthscraper, you know, like a skyscraper, only in the ground?

Mexico City’s paramount priority is to preserve the existing built environment, because for hundreds of years every new settler just built top of the conquered. With this in mind the inverted pyramid in the existing ‘Zocalo’ square intends to expose the cities roots by cutting through the layers of this historical cake and creating a new kind of public space. I kinda want this to happen just so some new mad tech appears.

In June the Riverside Transport Museum finally opened in Glasgow to grumbles of ‘there’s not much parking’. A Zaha Hadid creation, it looks like a twisty, pointy tunnel shed. I’m pretty skeptical of her work, I’m sure there’s a lot of scripty nonsense going on in her offices. While the exterior is unassuming the interior if actually pretty rad. The exhibits are treated well and there’s a lot of interesting engaging interactive things to do. The only down side is the public can’t get right up to the old cars any more, they’re mounted on the wall and it’s tough to make out what’s going on. Almost like, they’re now bits of unapproachable art that I can’t smoosh my face up against anymore. I’m not even that in to cars…

July saw the next tallest building proposal in the world was unveiled by heavy weight architects Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill. Kingdom Tower is to be erected in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The 1000 + tower will soar 178meters taller than the existing Burj Khalifa which currently holds the world’s existing tallest building title.

There’s a lot of talk about the symbolism of the graceful needle with its slender asymmetry being the marker of the gateway to Mecca. One of the Kingdom Holding Company’s Executives even went as far as to say ‘It is quite simply one of the most beautiful buildings of any height’. Puke. You know I’m not interested in that, what is it other than a massive building? What good is it to the people? Won’t someone please think of the children?

The truth is it’s not much use to the pleb, except from creating loads of jobs which is always something I like to hear. What actually softened me to this monster is the awesome tech that’s going in to it. Reading up I found out that it’s not that we don’t have the resources to make mammoth structures, it’s the physicality of making something so huge stand up without sinking or being blown over by the wind and this is where the innovation is taking place. Pretty interesting.

By August the buzz about the iphone 5 was all getting too much so Apple decided to announce the plans for the new Apple Campus by Fosters and Partners in California. Iconic to the last, the round building encases an internal court yard, like a giant click wheel counting up the dollars. Firms like this chirp on about the ‘life work balance’, as if it’s someone else’s responsibility for personal happiness. I am actually super interested to see what the interiors will end up like. Included in the campus will be gym, research library, gardens, auditorium as well as the usual offices to spray rooms and I wonder what with all the emphasis on the balancing whether the employed are actually as happy as they should be with all their play things.  

September and it’s Hadid again opening another building. This time it’s the London Aquatic Center now complete after what seems like, well the 6 years it took to create. Based on the concept of flowing water (yawn) the monolithic concrete structure is encased in shiny external steel, both skins strategically punctured to allow in the optimum level of natural light. The insitue concrete is looks lovely in the pictures but the proof will be in the aftermath of the Olympics when the pool is open to public when the kids are peeing off the high diving boards and staining the lovely light grey concrete.

Daniel Libeskind has a museum open in October. The new Military History Museum in Dresden is like a sword cutting through the fabric of the existing historical building, no really that’s exactly what it looks like. Let’s just say it caused a lot of debate. I would imagine Libeskind’s patented genius of allowing the building to shape the environment and emotions around the wandering visitor works well here as I think it does in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. I just expect the subject matter here to be a bit more varied and only slightly less harrowing.

November and my favorite long running public project is still plodding on with a new part being open to the public The High Line in New York is an all singing all dancing project that is incrementally reclaiming the abandoned high level railway lines through out New York. This month saw youth dance groups, ice skating and crafts fair and generally all sorts of fun things that you'd expect from a community hub, I'm always really excited to read their blog and see that the project has really taking off and has lasted as long as it has. It give me faith in people, community and architecture when all I see is faceless construction.

At the end of the year in December, MVRDV set out to reinvent the solitary typology of the skyscraper by proposing a new luxury residential complex in Seoul, Korea. The Cloud is based on the imagery of a tall buildings encapsulated by a pixilated cloud on which people can use the open space. Unfortunately it more than slightly resembles the twin towers blowing up.

So there it is, the top 12 of 2011.

Next year’s tile will be much snappier – top 12 of 2012...