Archinect - News

35-story Raffles Boston becomes Hancock Tower's newest neighbor

2024-01-10T13:32:00-05:00

The Architectural Team (TAT) has completed a mixed-use tower in Boston featuring the city’s first sky lobby. The Raffles Boston Hotel & Residences features a 400-foot curved glass form and is described by the team as a “sophisticated new skyline statement within a challenging and historic context.”

Image credit: Ed Wonsek

The 35-story high-rise comprises 146 homes, 147 hotel guestrooms, and 16 amenity spaces. To compensate for the site’s narrow plot, the tower’s design sees a cantilever at the fourth-floor extent over the adjacent historic University Club to support the upper 29 stories, with a further cantilever occurring at the 17th floor.

Image credit: Ed Wonsek

In addition to increasing the internal area of the tower, the cantilevering approach forms a distinctive design element of the scheme’s exterior, “granting the tower a contextually scaled street presence while also allowing the building to express itself as a sculptural form on the upper levels,” according to the team. To d...

Snøhetta's green, mixed-use AIRSIDE development opens in Hong Kong

2023-11-11T11:21:00-05:00

Snøhetta’s AIRSIDE, a LEED Platinum-certified, mixed-use development in Hong Kong, has officially opened.

Located at the site of the former Kai Tak Airport district, the approximately 1,912,424-square-foot project merges into the surrounding urban landscape by creating direct access between pedestrian transit areas, retail spaces, and elevated landscapes. The development comprises an approximately 699-foot-tall tower with a second tower and its base in a continuous form.

The building mass comprises five interconnected volumes that gradually step up from the Kai Tak River, which lends the 699-foot-tall tower an inviting presence at ground level. The building’s sculpted forms create a series of human-scale urban spaces at this level, in addition to rooftop gardens. Landscaped plazas contribute to further integrating the development into the surroundings and creating an engaging pedestrian realm.

An expansive elevated garden sits atop the podium containing the building’s central atr...

LOLA Landscape Architects tapped as designers for mixed-use Hartree development in Cambridge

2023-07-19T16:57:00-04:00

Rotterdam-based LOLA Landscape Architects has been selected by developers Landsec U+I and TOWN to design the new 48-hectare Hartree development, a mixed-use neighborhood in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The Hartree site in Cambridge.

The masterplan for the urban quarter development was designed by Swedish practice Kjellander Sjöberg Architects. The design team includes various disciplines including, urban planners, architects, engineers, and sustainability experts. The collaboration is supported by renowned architecture practices, such as Bell Phillips, Haworth Tompkins, 5th Studio Architects, Feilden Fowles, Nooma Studio, Alison Brooks Architects, Useful Projects, and Pell Frischmann.

One of the numerous basins at the current facility plant.

Hartree is owned by water company Anglian Water and the Cambridge City Council. The site is currently home to the Cambridge Waste Water Treatment Plant, a gold driving range, and commercial buildings. The development places a strong emphasis on the...

New construction video highlights AECOM's nearly complete Intuit Dome in Inglewood

2023-07-19T13:35:00-04:00

Following reports of its topping out in March, the AECOM-designed Intuit Dome, the future home of the Los Angeles Clippers, is taking shape ahead of its expected completion in 2024.

A new video depicts the status of the project as of June 2023, where its standout steel frame with diagrid geometry can be seen wrapping the structure. This building skin is formed from a series of diamond-shaped, interwoven metal panels with multiple uses. According to the architects, the frame was inspired by the form of a basketball net as a ball passes through it.

A vast array of solar panels can also be spotted on the structure’s roof. Intuit Dome is set to operate 100% carbon-free, powered fully by batteries and solar power. The design team, alongside the Clippers organization, worked towards initiatives that will earn the stadium a LEED Platinum certification.

The $1.2 billion, 18,000-seat arena will be the centerpiece of a larger mixed-use project, including an 85,000-square-foot training faci...