INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION FOR SUSTAINABLE HOUSING Living Steel is a five year worldwide programme created to stimulate innovation in the design and construction of housing. Living Steel is managed by the International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) on behalf of the programme members. Current members of Living Steel include Arcelor, Baosteel, BlueScope Steel, CELSA Group, Corus, Erdemir, IMIDRO, Mittal Steel, Posco, Ruukki, and Tata Steel, The European Convention for Constructional Steelwork, The Steel Construction Institute, and The International Zinc Association. In the framework of this programme, Living Steel launched an international competition on 6 July 2005, during the 22nd UIA congress in Istanbul. It is approved by the International Union of Architects. OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAMME TYPE OF COMPETITION INTERNATIONAL JURY PRIZES TIMETABLE APPLICATIONS FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST information |
REVITALIZATION OF GWANGBOK STREET & PIFF PLAZA
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This competition is organized by the Gwangbok Street Revitalization Committee , hosted by Jung-gu District Office and promoted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Korea and Busan Metropolitan City with the objective of revitalizing Gwangbok Street and the PIFF Plaza in Jung-gu, Busan. IDEAS ON ARCHITECTURE AND GEOPOLITICS FOR THE RYUGYONG HOTEL IN PYONGYANG
1. call for ideas Domus magazine, in collaboration with the Department of Architecture and Society at the Milan Polytechnic, is promoting a consultation of ideas for the completion and functional redefinition of the Ryugyong Hotel building in Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. 2. a concrete pyramid Begun in 1987 to mark the occasion of the world youth games, and to this day unfinished (apparently for financial reasons), the Ryugyong Hotel is a pyramid 330 metres high. It has a Y-shaped base and stands on a hill at the centre of Pyongyang . When operative, the building was to house the 105 floors of an international hotel, a rounded slab of services on the ground floor, and three sloping elevators along the pyramid's oblique lateral walls, plus a series of rings to contain revolving restaurants at the apex. 3. constructional utopia The pyramidal hotel building, in prestressed reinforced concrete (a test was carried out in 1992 in Skopje, Macedonia)1, was interrupted at the roughcasting stage. Today, though not completed, it is the city's principal landmark, visible from all points of its territory. (2) 4. retroactive globalisation No other pyramidal constructions on a similar scale exist in Korean and Asian architecture. The architects' memory seems to have turned not only to the Egyptian pyramids, but more especially towards the imaginary architecture produced by western movies and comic strips throughout the 20th century. 5. city-set An offspring of the cinema, the Ryugyong Hotel is in its turn the fulcrum of a city re-founded on cinematographic principles. It is a city designed in one blow, after it had been razed to the ground in 1952. An urban plan based on stage wings, very high monuments and wide empty spaces. A set brought back to life daily when the axes of the capital city's symmetrical frame and spectacular perspectives are viewed by its citizen-extras as they parade along its broad avenues. 6. Wireless Directly linked to the imaginary world of western science fiction and fantastic literature (also and perhaps primarily because it is not finished), the pyramid is thus truly an antenna of the world's imaginary urban future. A concrete and symbolic counterpoint to the policy of political, economic and cultural isolation that has characterised North Korea over the past decade. 7. ruin of the future Despite its explicit symbolic debt to western imagination (in its turn the advocate of a caricatured version of ancient European and African sacred architecture), the pyramid is today looked upon as one of the principal symbols of North Korea's nuclear arms policy. The genuine ruin of an unrealised future, the pyramid has today become a potential military target. 8. catalyst of visions Domus believes that the Ryugyong Hotel concrete pyramid – a constructional utopia, symbolic breach and urban landmark rolled into one – can today become a catalyst of ideas and visions for the future of Pyongyang. But it could also be the hub of new exchanges between contemporary imagination in the visual arts and architecture. Aside from all geopolitical, ideological or military obstacles. 9. the future of a ruin Domus and the Department of Architecture and Society at the Milan Polytechnic invite architects, designers, students, researchers and artists from all parts of the world to develop ideas on architecture and geopolitics for the concrete pyramid in Pyongyang . The aim is to decide whether to envisage it as an immense sculpture or as an infrastructure onto which to graft new services. Or whether, instead, to propose a different role for it – as a museum of fantastic imaginary scenarios, a new Tower of Babel , or a great culture palace… Domus and the Department of Architecture and Society at the Milan Polytechnic invite readers to reflect on the prospects of a ruin with an unfulfilled future. 10. a bombardment of ideas Your ideas, in the form of verbal or graphic entries (drawings, photomontages, videos, diagram etc) must be sent to Domus's website (see http://www.domusweb.it/domus/ryugyong for more information) no later than 30 August 2005. Material received will be published on the site, sent to the North Korean Embassy in Rome and to the Korean Architects Union in Pyongyang . A selection of ideas received will be published in Domus and exhibited in a touring exhibition. The consultation may also constitute the basic material for an international architectural design competition to relaunch the Ryugyong Hotel. Note 1. Lj. Tashkov, M. Petkovski, L. Krstevska, D. Mamucevski, Research Study for Evaluation of Seismic Resistance of the 105-Storey Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, DPR Korea , Vol. 4: Shaking Table Test of 1/40 Scale Model of the Building, IZIIS Report 92-06 More information on Ryugyong Hotel is available on these websites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ryugyong_hHotel http://www.skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=177 |
A selection of images and other information, with the call for ideas, regarding Hotel Ryugyong will be soon available on Domus 's website.