Archinect - News

MVRDV begins Expo 2000 Pavilion adaptive reuse transformation

2023-05-16T13:19:00-04:00

MVRDV has shared details on their efforts to revitalize the firm’s former Dutch Expo 2000 Pavilion design into a new, mixed-use development in Hannover, Germany.

According to the firm, the project will transform the aging structure into a new anchor of a three-building development called iLive EXPO Campus after a successful 90 million Euro ($97.8 million USD) fundraising campaign led by iLive and Die Wohnkompanie Nord.

The structure had sat abandoned since its completion 23 years ago, often attracting illegal visits from architects eager for a peek at its three-level interior that has since become overgrown with the local flora while retaining its original structural integrity.

Image © MVRDV and © iLive Expo Campus

“The theme of the Dutch entry for Expo 2000 was ‘Holland Creates Space,’ and we did exactly that in 2000 by stacking typical Dutch landscapes up to 40 meters high, so that a large wild garden could be created around the pavilion,” MVRD...

MVRDV to convert structuralist icon in the Netherlands into a new residential district

2022-06-16T19:16:00-04:00

MVRDV is transforming the famed Herman Hertzberger-designed Centraal Beheer building in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn into a sustainable, green residential neighborhood. MVRDV will work alongside Hertzberger's office, AHH to revitalize the celebrated structure. Certitudo Capital commissioned the project in an effort to expand the three-hectare site near the city's train station. MVRDV's design introduces approximately 650 to 800 homes and prioritizes heritage preservation, greening, and innovation.

The Centraal Beheer building was originally designed for an insurance company, noted for its influential and revolutionary office design when it opened in 1972. The building consists of four quadrants, divided by two central "streets" that form the social heart of the building. A collection of 30-foot cubes come together at varying levels to give the structure its distinctive form.

In 2015, the building was purchased by Certitudo Capital and the surrounding site to convert it into a multif...

MAD Architects wins competition to design Chongqing Cuntan International Cruise Centre

2022-01-13T14:30:00-05:00

MAD Architects, in collaboration with the China Academy of Building Research (CASR), have won an international competition for the design of the Cuntan International Cruise Centre in Chongqing, China. The project will see the transformation of a cargo terminal into a cruise terminal and city complex.

The project site is currently a 66,000-square-meter cargo terminal located in Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area. With access to the Yangtze River, MAD Architects’ scheme will see the development of a 65,000-square-meter international cruise terminal and city complex, comprising a 15,000-square-meter cruise port and 50,000 square meters of commercial space.

According to MAD’s press release, the design team was inspired by the large orange gantry cranes that filled the freight terminal. ”These gantry cranes became living alien creatures that gave a sense of surrealism,” said MAD Architects Founder and Principal Partner Ma Yansong. “The new scheme is therefore not only about reflecting the ...

KPF to replace parking structure with gridded, metal-clad office tower in Vancouver

2020-06-25T14:45:00-04:00

Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) has announced that the firm's 601 West Pender Street project was unanimously approved by the Vancouver City Council at a public hearing earlier this month. The building replaces a six-story parking structure in the city's Central Business District with a new mixed-use tower consisting of a retail base, 29 floors of work spaces, and amenities that offer panoramic views of the city.

"We felt the best way to complete this block of heritage buildings was to create a building that was at once modern and timeless and accentuates its context with scale and color – while bringing nature into the urban fabric," said Marianne Kwok, KPF Design Director, in a statement.

The building uses two metal finishes, textured and flat, to add a more distinct aesthetic to the structure's color and reflectivity. The glass in the main tower is flat, but at the top and bottom the facade folds inwards to create pockets of green space, widen the public offering at the ground level, and ...

Today Sotheby's unveils its newly expanded and redesigned New York galleries by OMA

2019-05-03T19:15:00-04:00

Today Sotheby's unveils its redesigned and newly-expanded gallery located in their global headquarters in New York. In collaboration with Sotheby's by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA, the redesign features updated exhibition spaces that provide optimal spatial layouts for their vast art collections. Comprised of 40 public galleries and nine private sales salons, the new space has become the premier location for art exhibitions in terms of scale, quality, flexibility, and scope. Able to accommodate a wide range of art at varying scales, the new space increases Sotheby's exhibition size from 67,000 to more than 90,000 square feet, which is an expansion equivalent to two acres.

Sotheby's NY by OMA. Image © Brett Beyer Photography

CEO of Sotheby's Tad Smith shares, "Our ambition was to co...

Buildings lost, forgotten, reimagined and transformed

2019-04-24T10:27:00-04:00

Though buildings are often symbols of permanence, as it may lend itself to the status of an icon for a city or an heirloom for a family, they can be rendered obsolete at any moment. According to Ruin and Redemption in Architecture, Dan Barasch's newest book published by Phaidon Books, abandoned buildings can either be Lost, Forgotten, Reimagined or Transformed.

1. Lost

Robin Hood Gardens, by Alison and Peter Smithson. Completed 1972, Demolished 2017.

"The Brutalist Robin Hood Houses in London featured innovative design elements including "streets in the sky," internal elevated passageways and alcoves that were intended to encourage social interaction and give shared amenity to residents.

After a period of decline and despite considerable attempts at preservation, demolition of the 252 apartments began in 2017. A new 1,575-unit housing development is now partly complete on the site, and a museum is plann...

OMA reorganizes Sotheby’s New York City HQ as a four-story art department store with 40 galleries

2019-02-22T14:23:00-05:00

The art market is rapidly changing, and even the big players aren't immune to the need for adjustment: auction power house Sotheby's today revealed a few conceptual glimpses into a dramatic reorganization and expansion of its NYC headquarters at 1334 York Avenue.

The redesign, led by OMA Partner Shohei Shigematsu and Associate Christy Cheng, optimizes the currently inefficient, sprawling distribution of locations of employee, client-serving and back of house spaces throughout the massive building; increasing the available exhibition space from 67,000 to more than 90,000 square feet—the equivalent of two acres.

Aerial sketch. Credit: OMA New York.

"Our conceptual proposal clarifies the overall flow through the building by restacking and consolidating complementary programs while freeing up space for improved connectivity and openness—new retail, gallery and client spaces span the first four floors to better engage clients and visitors," explains the project description.

F1 Lobby. Cr...

A 1950's replica town in San Diego aids patients with memory therapy

2018-09-17T14:12:00-04:00

On August 13, a brand-new town in Southern California welcomed its first residents [...] on a light-industrial stretch of Main Street in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb. Then they emerged in Town Square®—a 9,000-square-foot working replica of a 1950s downtown, built and operated by the George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers. Unlike the businesses around it hawking restaurant supplies and tires, Town Square trades in an intangible good: memories.

The new 50's replica town in San Diego is the largest US investment in reminiscence therapy for dementia and age-related cognitive impaired patients. The industrial warehouse has been transformed into a fake town of 14 storefronts complete with a diner, a movie theater, a pet store, a park-like square, and a city hall. Patients are aided in therapy by props from the years between 1953 and 1961. Several other locations are forthcoming, the next planned for a former Rite Aid in Baltimore.

Tadao Ando to design a museum inside a former Paris stock exchange

2017-06-29T20:59:00-04:00

Mr. Ando plans to build a circular structure with three levels of galleries inside the round building, which is bound by strict historic preservation norms. It will have 32,000 square feet of exhibition space and an underground auditorium. The museum, which will only showcase contemporary art — including pieces from Mr. Pinault’s collection of more than 3,000 works — will be renovated and run by his family’s company...

Photo: © Artefactory Lab; Tadao Ando Architect & Associates; NeM / Niney & Marca Architects; Agency Pierre-Antoine Gatier / Courtesy of Collection Pinault

Is this the first time a former stock exchange has been transformed into a museum? Either way, the new design should be open to the public by 2019, as noted in this article:

Mr. Pinault, who is one of the world’s top collectors and also owns Christie’s, said the museum would open in early 2019 after a renovation of the Bourse de Commerce, a former grain exchange that was later used as a stock market, and more recently to house the Chamber of Commerce. The building is modeled on the Pantheon and situated between the Louvre and the Pompidou Center, France’s pre-eminent contemporary art museum.

Beyoncé filmed her NOLA-themed "Formation" video at this historic Pasadena mansion

2016-02-10T20:16:00-05:00

Despite the themes of the video, nothing was shot in New Orleans...The concept and quick turnaround required Tobman and the rest of the crew to convert [the Fenyes Mansion in Pasadena into a] fitting Southern Gothic set...A Beaux Arts mansion commissioned by and built for Dr. Adalbert Fenyes and his wife Eva Scott Muse Fenyes in 1905, there was nothing really Southern about architect Robert D. Farquhar's design

If you're still bumpin' the Queen Bey's latest hard-hitting single, get a glimpse of the history behind the Fenyes Mansion in Pasadena, where parts of the song's impressive music video were filmed.

More music-related goodness on Archinect:

Photographing the Extreme Transformation of the Meatpacking District

2014-09-29T13:12:00-04:00

Perhaps no part of Manhattan has changed as dramatically since the 1980s as the Meatpacking District. Located on the Lower West Side, the district has gone from a blue-collar warehouse district with a seedy side into a hyper-luxurious, bustling neighborhood. From the High Line to the expensive shops and restaurants along the old cobblestone streets, everything looks quite different from when Brian Rose first brought his camera to the Meatpacking District.

How Many Artists Does It Take to Make an Arts District?

2014-09-10T14:46:00-04:00

Just north of where the University of Pennsylvania transformed its surroundings, and amid Drexel University’s big expansion plans, one Drexel school is looking for ways to coalesce that West Philly arts community. Mantua, long challenged by poverty, population decline and crime, has had a higher profile in the past year due to its Promise Zone designation and the raved-about art project, Funeral for a Home.

Ghost town: searching for remnants of Russia in the Chinese city of Harbin

2014-08-25T15:07:00-04:00

It is not rare for a civilisation to abruptly falter, give way and fold into a new one. This insight seems obvious in the territories of the former Soviet Union — a universe transformed into a memory overnight. [...] that a city turned ruin continues to be inhabited, that the collapsing buildings and boulevards stained by a thousand footsteps, after the apocalypse, host new forms of human life, new memories. Harbin, in the far north-east of China, used to be a very Russian metropolis.

Two Projects Share First Place at 2012 Cleveland Design Competition - Transforming the Bridge

2012-11-12T19:34:00-05:00

The Cleveland Design Competition recently announced the winners of its 2012 edition, Transforming the Bridge. The brief called for design ideas that would transform the abandoned lower deck of Cleveland's Detroit-Superior Bridge into a dynamic public space, performance venue, and pedestrian experience high above the Cuyahoga River.