Top 10 architecture projects of 2019

Unexpected shapes in the Arctic Circle, sinuous sports centers in Jordan, pedestrian bridges in Europe. Don’t miss our selection of the best architecture stories of the year.

Dorte Mandrup

A slithering footbridge in the new Køge Nord Station

COBE and DISSING+WEITLING completed the traffic hub Køge Nord Station, in Denmark, a project including a 225 meters long-footbridge that offers views over the landscape.

Danish Architectural studios COBE and DISSING+WEITLING completed this summer the traffic hub Køge Nord Station, in Denmark, a gateway to Copenhagen that provides a sustainable transport. The project includes a footbridge, a train station and a parking. The foot-bridge represents a landmark of 225 meters long and it’s part of the future and the development of Køge area. “A development“ says Dan Stubbergaard, architect of COBE, “driven by innovation, pioneering spirit and a bold outlook that is embodied by the station bridge and the related facilities”.

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Dorte Mandrup: a whale-shaped observatory in the Arctic Circle

The Danish architecture studio is the winner of the competition for New Arctic whale watching attraction. The Whale is a cultural building that aims to increase the understanding of these animals and preserve the marine life.

The winners of the international competition promoted by The Whale AS for New Arctic attraction have been announced: the Danish architecture studio Dorte Mandrup A/S – together with Marianne Levinsen LAndskab and the consultants JAC Studios, Thornton Tomasetti, Nils Øien and Anders Kold – will build The Whale, actually looking like the gigantic mammal’s tail. The cultural building will be located in Northern Norway, 300 km north of the Arctic Circle, one of the best places for whale watching.

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Kistefos Museet: the inhabitable bridge by BIG

‘Twist’ is the new bridge-museum designed by BIG studio in Norway. An unusual – and winning – model of fruition of contemporary art, in a close dialogue with the naturalistic site.

“This museum is an inhabitable bridge”. This is how architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of the international studio BIG, began presenting his latest visionary project: the Kistefos Museet, which opened its doors on September 18 in Norway, in Jevnaker, a small town about 80 km from Oslo.

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A golf club in Jordan mimics the desert dunes

The Ayla Golf Academy and Clubhouse by Oppenheim Architecture is a pavilion covered by a single concrete sheet, shaped in accordance with the surrounding landscape.

The deserts of Jordan come to touch on the sea in Aqaba, and alongside the limited national coastline in the vicinities of the city. Here, inside a larger development of approximately 17 square miles, also comprising residential apartments, hotels and commercial spaces, Oppenheim Architecture builds the Ayla Golf Academy and Clubhouse.

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Snøhetta's underwater restaurant

A concrete “periscope” that's slipped off Norway's rugged coastline and into the sea, Under is half-submerged restaurant that offers diners a window into life below the waves.

Under is contained within a 34-metre-block that leans one end on the shoreline and the other 5 metres below the water's surface on the seabed. It claims the title of Europe's first underwater restaurant and Snøhetta′s latest “experimentation with boundaries“.

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Azulik is a shrine dedicated to architecture, art and artisanry nestled in the forest

One enters Azulik Uh May barefoot. Taking pictures is prohibited here, and preference is given to the memory of the body and the senses rather than sight. In Mexico, art becomes a shrine to ecology, spirituality and wellbeing through building, exchange and intermingling of cultures.

On the Yucatán peninsula, one of the most spectacular resorts on our planet has opened a space inside, as if it were a Russian nesting doll. It is a transdisciplinary production and creation centre that joins art, design, fashion in a holistic universe entirely devoted to physical and mental wellbeing.

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Downhill biking in the heart of Copenhagen

COBE’s bicycle parking in Copenhagen creates a new public square with hollow hills and low bicyclebeds that can host up to 2,000 bikes.

“It promotes green transportation, climate change adaptation and biodiversity”, this is how COBE describes its new grand public project, a concrete, undulating carpet that serves as a public square and a bicycle parking.

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A renovated school in Turin enveloped by suspended terraces