Both Rem Koolhaas' firm and rivals BIG are presenting their proposals to the Miami Beach City Commission today.

OMA is working alongside property developers Tishman and UIA, architects TVSdesign and landscape architects MVVA and Raymond Jungles, who together form a team called South Beach ACE.

"The convention centre site is a total aberration in the urban fabric of the city," says Dan Tishman, chairman of Tishman, in the movie (above). "It just doesn't live up to the standards of Miami."

The team's vision includes building an 800-room hotel on top of the existing convention centre, which is the location for the annual Art Basel - Miami Beach and Design Miami trade fairs.

The convention centre would also be expanded and reorganised, rotating it 90 degrees and placing its main entrance to the south, where it would face a row of new and old buildings, including the renovated Jackie Gleason Theater.

To the north would be a network of shaded green spaces and a large grassy hill covering a loading area for trucks and a parking garage.

Other OMA projects we've reported on lately include the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, which is due to complete next month in the Chinese city, and a masterplan for a new urban development south of Bordeaux, France – see all architecture by OMA.

Rival shortlisted firm BIG has also unveiled plans for two twisted apartment blocks in Coconut Grove, Miami, while architect John Pawson recently designed 26 luxury apartments for Miami Beach – see all projects in Miami.

Here's some more information from South Beach ACE:

Sitting on 52 acres within the vibrant and unique community that is Miami Beach, an outdated convention centre acts as an urban blockade – inactive when conventions are not in town, disruptive to adjoining neighborhoods and inhibiting connections to Lincoln Road and surrounding communities. Our masterplan resolves each of these issues through a series of ingenious yet simple moves:

» We conceptually rotate the convention center, reorienting the site to allow for east-west neighbourhood connectivity and a southerly orientation for both convention centre and hotel guests

» We concentrate the density at the centre of the site and make the revamped convention centre and its meeting and ballroom space contiguous with the hotel – a feature that meeting planners love

» We reimagine the area's existing assets: the Jackie Gleason Theater, the Carl Fisher Clubhouse, City Hall, the 17th Street Garage and 17th Street itself are all maintained and transformed to better engage their surroundings while keeping the character of Miami Beach

» We fill the rest of the site with public amenities and programmed uses appropriate to activate the space 7 days a week, 365 days a year

In short, our plan upgrades the convention centre into a best-in-class facility and weaves the entire convention centre site into the fabric of Miami Beach. It will feel both new and like it was always there.

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Bjarke Ingels' firm will present its proposal to the Miami Beach City Commission today, where it will go head-to-head with a rival design by Dutch firm OMA.

BIG produced its proposal in a team called Portman CMC, which includes property developers Portman Holdings and CMC Group, architects John Portman & Associates, West8 and Fentress Architects, and circus entertainers Cirque du Soleil, who would provide an event space on the site.

Miami Beach Convention Center is currently "a dead black hole of asphalt in the heart of one the most beautiful and lively cities in America," the team explain. "Our mission is to bring Miami Beach back to the Convention Center."

The proposal is centred around the creation of a public square, with paths, plazas, gardens and parks connecting the convention centre with the surrounding buildings.

The convention centre itself would be given a green roof, which would function as an event space and a location for annually commissioned artwork.

The Jackie Gleason Theater would be renovated and its street level lobbies, restaurants and cafe made publicly accessible, while a new museum for Latin American culture would be built alongside it. The proposal also includes a hotel and several blocks of apartments.

Both BIG and rival team OMA are also on the shortlist to design a centre for the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Sweden, while earlier this year BIG unveiled plans for two twisted apartment blocks in Coconut Grove, Miami – see all architecture by BIG.

Other Miami projects we've featured lately include architect John Pawson's 26 luxury apartments for Miami Beach and a multi-storey car park by Herzog & de Meuron that hosts parties, yoga classes and weddings – see all projects in Miami.

Here's some more information from BIG:

BIG together with West 8, Fentress, JPA and developers Portman CMC proposes Miami Beach Square as the centerpiece of their 52 acre Convention Center.

Miami Beach is a unique city in so many ways. It is one of the youngest cities in America – and perhaps right now one of the most vibrant and dynamic. Its streetscape is characterised by a lively walkable urban fabric with a friendly human scaled environment under the cool shade of tropical trees and art deco canopies - except at the convention center. It is a dead black hole of asphalt in the heart of one the most beautiful and lively cities in America.

Our mission is to bring Miami Beach back to the Convention Center – and to imagine an architecture and an urban space unique to the climate and culture of Miami Beach.

We propose to roll out an urban fabric of paths and plazas, parks and gardens that forms an archipelago of urban oases throughout the site. At the heart of it we introduce a central square to become the pivoting point of the entire neighbourhood, becoming the front door to the convention centre and the convention hotel, a front lawn to the revitalised Jackie Gleason Theater, a town square for the city hall, an outdoor arena for the Latin American Cultural Museum, and the red carpet for the big botanical ball room.

"We have devised a strategy that combines urban planning and landscape design to create a neighborhood characterised by human scale, pedestrian connections, shaded spaces with public oriented programmes lining the streets and squares. A neighbourhood that, depending on the season, the weekday, or even the time of day can be perceived as a lively downtown neighbourhood or an inviting public park." Bjarke Ingels, creative director, BIG

The square creates a series of intuitive connections across the site – a diagonal that connects the Soundscape to the Botanical Gardens and Holocaust Memorial. A north-south connection joins the Collins Canal to Lincoln Road and naturally channels the flow of convention visitors to the liveliness of Lincoln Road. A green network of public spaces that stitches together all of the adjacent neighbourhoods – formerly separated by the convention centre – into a complete and coherent community for both visitors and residents. All public programmes old and new come together on the square. All great cities have a great square – this will be Miami Beach Square.

"Rather than scattering all the programme across the 52 acre site we have decided to concentrate it around the center piece of our public realm - Miami Beach Square bringing focus to the renovated Jackie Gleason Theater, the entrance of the convention center and for the first time ever creating a worthy civic presence to Miami Beach City Hall." Jamie Maslyn Larsen, West 8, Creator of Soundscape Park

By popular demand we have found a way to preserve and enhance the architecture and programming of the Jackie Gleason Theater. By making it all public at the street level – opening up lobbies, restaurants and cafes on all sides – we make the Gleason a lively centerpiece in this new neighborhood. Towards the Square we propose to extend the fly tower with a performing arts centre with various spaces for rehearsal and offering a visual connection to the public. Adjacent to the Jackie Gleason Theater sits the new Latin American Cultural Museum consisting of a base of public programmes opening up on the square. The building form creates a covered shaded event space on the square blurring the transition between inside and outside.

Today the Miami Beach City Hall is almost like a leftover wedged between random neighbours surrounded by traffic. Our proposal places it right in the middle of the town square with ample space for public expression and at the heart of communal life. The Miami Beach City Hall and Botanical Ballroom bookend the Square making it a natural extension of the civic activities of city hall. To the north the botanical ballroom opens up allowing for beautiful views of the botanical gardens and the memorial. The Ballroom has an entrance to the south and to the north allowing for seamless connectivity to the convention centre – under the shade and shelter of the canopies.

Rather than being the hermetic monoprogrammatic box that the Miami Beach Convention Center is today – a single programme at the size of an urban block - we propose to consider the Convention Center an actual urban block complete with different programmes, grown together to form a continuous architecture. A gradual transition from public to private, cultural to civic, conference to residential turns a stroll around the block into an experience of continuous variation. Along the entire west adjacent to the various gardens and the new square - the main entrances to the Convention Center and Conference Center occupy the ground. The hotel lobby spans the entire south elevation in continuation of the Convention Center lobby. The hotel façade as pulled back, forming a cascade of terraces for the south facing hotel rooms – decreasing the perceived height seen from the Gleason.

The roof of the Convention Center is framed by a green roof drawing the outline of the urban block – framing the hotel gardens and the roof parking interspersed with shade giving landscapes. As a reoccurring annual event we propose to sponsor an art foundation that will deliver a roof art piece to cover the remaining roof surface turning it into a giant ever-changing canvas seen from the air as well as the roof terrace of the hotel. An ever changing giant canvas that will annually challenge contemporary artists with an architectural scale canvas – seen from the roofs and penthouses of adjacent buildings, from aeroplanes and Google Earth.

"Realising that a challenge that seemed to be driven by two incompatible agendas was actually the opportunity to create a convention centre district that is not only for convention-goers but, more importantly, for residents." Jack Portman, Portman Holdings and JPA

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by BIG appeared first on Dezeen.

Architect David Hotson and interior designer Ghislaine Viñas collaborated on the renovation, which involved restructuring the uppermost storeys of a late nineteenth century tower in lower Manhattan to accommodate a family residence.

The movie shows how the rooms of the apartment are connected to one another with indoor balconies and a faceted stairwell, but that residents can also climb up one of the existing steel columns or glide down using the two-stage slide.

The apartment was completed earlier this year - see more images of Skyhouse in our earlier story or see more buildings with indoor slides.

The movie was produced by Build Pictures. Still photography is by David Hotson.

Architect: David Hotson
Interior design: Ghislaine Viñas
Construction: SilverLining Interiors

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and Ghislaine Viñas appeared first on Dezeen.

Adjaye was born in east Africa, to Ghanaian parents, before moving to London at 14. He explains that, after graduating from the Royal College of Art, he felt the need to return to the continent where he grew up.

Above: Nairobi, one of the photographs taken by Adjaye for his research

"I wanted to revisit the continent of Africa" he explains, "but I wanted to revisit it, not through the lens of my parents or through any kind of formal experience, tourism or anything. I wanted to claim it for my own."

He spent 11 years, from 1999 to 2010, visiting the capital city of each country on the continent "to try to understand the nature of the cities in Africa, to understand their past and their present, to understand their history and their geography."

Through this research, which was published as a seven-volume book, Adjaye realised the importance of Africa's unique geography. "It became clear to me that the political map of Africa that we have is a very difficult way to understand the continent," he says. "Fundamentally, the way we should be looking at it is through geography."

Adjaye created his own map of the continent (below), divided into six distinct geographic zones, which, he believes, have shaped African culture. "In these [zones], all the civilisations of Africa have manifested themselves," he says. "Their unique identities come from that, the artefacts of the continent reflect that geography."

This realisation was important to Adjaye's own approach to architecture. "I wanted to create a blueprint for how I wanted to work on the continent," he explains. "I didn't just want to make contemporary architecture with the usual references of anonymous abstracts and global things, I wanted to find a way of making architecture that could take onboard issues that are big, but also specific enough to make unique objects."

Adjaye believes that, despite the continent's considerable problems, Africa presents a great opportunity for architects. "GDP growth over the last decade is anything between 10 and 15 percent, which is extraordinary. It's greater than what China was doing," he explains. "This economic drive is changing the political paradigm because as people are becoming more wealthy they are starting to question politically their structure.

"What's amazing is that, unlike working in Europe or America at the moment, [as an architect] in Africa you can try to ascribe a new paradigm. If you get the right political agency and the right construction environment, you can make extraordinary moments in architecture. That for me is very exciting."

This movie features a MINI Cooper S Countryman.

The music featured is by South African artist Floyd Lavine, who performed as part of the Design Indaba Music Circuit. You can listen to Lavine's music on Dezeen Music Project.

Political map of Africa above is courtesy of Shutterstock.

See all our Dezeen and Mini World Tour reports from Cape Town.

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opportunity" - David Adjaye appeared first on Dezeen.

Raised up by one storey, the new elevated sports court sits at the entrance to Lasalle Franciscanas School. It is held in place by concrete pilotis, creating a sheltered entranceway underneath that can also be used as a general playground.

Yarza Blache, a director at J1 Arquitectos, was asked to complete installation of the structure during the six week summer holiday period, so he specified a prefabricated concrete structure that could be built in just a few days.

Two layers of steel fencing were added to create see-through walls, which are curved over at the top to prevent balls from escaping. The outer layer sits within a Corten steel planting box, so that ivy can grow up and eventually surround the court.

Ramps extend down from both sides of the structure, leading to an infants' play area on one side and an entrance to the building on the other.

Since its opening, children at the school have nicknamed the structure "The Whale" in reference to its bulbous shape.

Other playground structures completed in recent years include a pavilion featuring funhouse mirrors and a building with fairytales engraved into its facade. See more stories about schools.

Photography is by Miguel de Guzmán.

Here's a translated project description from the architect:

Elevated Sports Court at Lasalle Franciscanas School

The commission is originated by the need from the school to augment the total surface of the courtyard that due to the great amount of students and parents that usually gather during the day, can sometimes obstruct the correct developing of the sports and leisure activities that should take place in it.

The courtyard is 33 metres wide by 35 metres long and has a south-east orientation. It is formed by the existing school that has a U form with two wings, one from the 50's and another one from the 70's.

The fact of being a school meant that we had to accomplish the building works exclusively during the summer months. That fact made immediately think about a prefabricated concrete structure that could be built in a couple of days, and that could also solve the 13 meters distance that we wanted to cover in the ground level.

The necessary elimination of the two existing trees in the courtyard gave another of the key drivers of the project; the inclusion of vegetation in the new structure. To do so we have designed a 70 metres long corten steel flower pot from which almost three hundreds of ivy plants grow, that in a few years will have covered the whole metallic bubble.

That metallic bubble is formed with a double layer of galvanized steel, so one of the layers can help the ivy grow while the other one can resist the practice of teenager ball-related sports.

The ground level hosts a garden-bench with an organic shape that includes different species of plants and allows the parents and the students to sit down and observe. The relation of the new volume with the rest of the school also had to be solved, for which a soft 45-meter ramp was designed to connect the ground level with an intermediate level and the elevated court.

Another organic ramp was also included to let the children from the infantile area get out to their courtyard´s zone, also in the ground level and partly under the court.

The later visits to the school have revealed the success of the project and its fast iconic assimilation by the students, who have kindly called it "The Whale".

Architect: Guzmán de Yarza Blache
Finishing Date: September 2012
Location: Calle Andrés Piquer 5, Zaragoza.Spain
Client: Lasalle Franciscanas School
Built Surface: 350 sqm
Budget: 290.000 Euros

Contractor: GM Empresa Constructora
Collaborators: Ana Guzmán Malpica, Julien Luengo-Gómez
Quantity Surveyor: Jose Manuel Arguedas
Structure: Josep Agustí de Ciurana, PRAINSA

Above: ground level plan - click for larger image

Above: court level plan - click for larger image

Above: roof plan - click for larger image

Above: long section - click for larger image

Above: cross section - click for larger image

Above: long elevation - click for larger image

Above: side elevation - click for larger image

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