15 June 2015

Two new Maggie's Centres, designed by Steven Holl and Thomas Heatherwick, move forward with a groundbreaking and design unveiling, respectively.

The Maggie's Centres, which provide free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends in the UK, were founded in 1995 by Maggie Keswick Jencks, the late wife of architect and architectural writer Charles Jencks. To date eighteen of the facilities designed by well known architects have been built on the grounds of National Health Service cancer hospitals.

On 10 June the Maggie's designed by Steven Holl Architects broke ground on a site adjacent to the large courtyard of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Holl's design is envisioned as "a vessel within a vessel within a vessel." Vertical where other Maggie's are horizontal, the three-story design is made of a branching concrete frame with an inner layer of perforated bamboo and an outer layer of matte white glass with colored glass fragments.

9 June 2015

Bjark Ingels' design of Two World Trade Center for developer Larry Silverstein and tenants 21st Century Fox Inc. and News Corp has been made public via a Wired magazine article and a flashy three-minute video.

The news that BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group would be taking the reins on the 88-story tower originally designed by Norman Foster first broke in April, but at that time a deal between Silverstein and the Rupert Murdoch-owned media companies was not official. It was also unclear what the BIG-designed tower would look like, how much it would depart from Foster's diamond-topped tower. Now we know.

One week after a tentative lease deal was signed, renderings were released today at Wired, which describes the tower as "slender and serious" from the World Trade Center Memorial Plaza, "but from other perspectives, like the one looking south from the fashionable neighborhood of Tribeca ... the stepped tower will present a more madcap personality: Ingels’ 21st-century reinterpretation of one of Manhattan’s Jazz Age ziggurats."

Ingels explains as much in the video, showing us how the tower will combine the massing of historic Tribeca buildings with the glass towers of Lower Manhattan. From the low-scale Tribeca neighborhood, the tower appears to be a series of boxes that are stepped to create elevated gardens on the east side and ticker-tape soffits on the north side. From the WTC plaza, "the individual blocks unite, completing the spirtal of towers framing the memorial," as Ingels says in the video.

Per the Wired article, "If all goes as planned, the fourth and final skyscraper at the rebuilt World Trade Center will be open for business by the 20th anniversary of September 11."

June 1, 2015

t's a totally crazy expensive green roof; originally the building was supposed to have one, which they cancelled during the dreaded value management exercise to reduce costs. They also took out the extra structural capacity needed to support the green roof, so now they are forced to build 130,000 square feet of new steel structure to support it, Massive trusses and decking seen in the screenshot here. As I noted in the earlier post, questioning the environmental benefits of this particular green roof.

The world's Top 100 Airports for 2015, voted for by airline customers around the world during the 9-month survey period. The World Airport Awards are the most prestigious accolades for the airport industry, and a global benchmark of airport excellence widely known as the Passengers Choice Awards.

http://www.worldairportawards.com/Awards/world_airport_rating.html

Location: Penang, Malaysia

Date: 2006 - 2008

Size: 100,000 sqm

Architect: Asymptote Architecture

Asymptote’s design for the new PGCC complex incorporates two iconic, sixty-story luxury residential towers onto a plynth that houses  a five-star hotel, the new Penang Performing Arts Center (PenPAC), a high-end retail and entertainment complex, a new convention center and a vast new public space that serves as a public forecourt to the PGCC.

01 May 2015

Michelle Obama speaking on Thursday at a ribbon-cutting for the new home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, designed by Renzo Piano

For the last week, thousands of New York art followers have been paying their first visits to the Whitney Museum of American Art’s hospitable new home and its history-stretching inaugural exhibition, the largest ever of works from its permanent collection.

Location : Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Designer : Dewan Architects

Status :  Built

Year  : 2012

With a pointed apex that seems to reach for the sky, the Prism Tower gracefully adorns the undulating skyline of Dubai's Business Bay district. Its stylish design appears at first sight as two distinct masses, which upon closer inspection seamlessly meld into one charismatic form.

Vilnius, Lithuania

Designer :  PAO Architects

This residence was built for a private client based in Vilnius, Lithuania. When we started this project the architects were surprised by the beauty of the site and its sensitive relationship with nature. It is like an oasis of peace and quiet in the city, away from the city noise.

We felt a big challenge to design an architecture and maintain this delicate balance between nature. We decide to provide subtle volume of the building, by designing single story house. We used only natural finishes, bricks and wood to keep a contemporary and sustainable design of this building. 

Firm AART Architects

STATUS   Built

YEAR   2014

SIZE   10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

Designed as one of the largest wooden residential developments in Europe, the Waterfront positions Stavanger as a pioneer city in the field of modern wooden architecture. Stavanger has the highest concentration of wooden architecture in Northern Europe, and the vision behind the Waterfront is thus to create an iconic and vibrant development, expressing a local identity and a global vision.