Archinect - News

Dirk Lohan proposes domed Soldier Field renovation as Bears new stadium talks take off

2024-05-06T13:01:00-04:00

A proposed redesign of Chicago’s soon-to-close Soldier Field stadium from architect Dirk Lohan gained some press recently after the Bears NFL franchise debuted Manica Architecture’s $4.7 billion design for its new lakefront home. Lohan is the architect of its modern 2003 renovation (in association with Wood & Zapata), a project that ultimately cost Soldier Field its landmark status. He says the design alternative is at once cheaper and more sustainable than the current proposal that’s been targeted by critics but still backed by team owners and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Image: Lohan Architecture via LinkedIn

The proposed plan calls for a lightweight domed roof to be constructed over the structure, with 20,000 new seats added underneath and upheld by cables connecting to four exterior columns. Lohan, who also designed the master plan for the surrounding Museum Campus, says it "remains] true to the values reflected in the Burnham and Bennett Plans and the Chicago Lakefront Ordinan...

Robots assemble a domed timber pavilion designed by the universities of Stuttgart and Freiburg

2023-08-15T11:16:00-04:00

The University of Stuttgart and the University of Freiburg have partnered on the construction of a domed timber pavilion on the University of Freiburg campus which seeks to showcase an “integrative approach to design and construction for sustainable architecture.” The livMatS Biomimetic Shell at the FIT Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies will serve as a research space for the development of innovative, cross-disciplinary research ideas.

Image credit: Conné van d'Grachten

The design of the building envelope is based on the morphological principles of the plate skeleton of sea urchins, which have been researched at the University of Stuttgart for over a decade. For the pavilion, the segmental shell construction was further developed as a highly insulating structure for year-round and permanent use, with the combination of two partial shells of different shapes and sizes creating an opening skylight.

Image credit: Con...

Ennead completes dome rehabilitation for NYC's historic Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

2022-12-28T12:03:00-05:00

But now, after a painstaking three-year, $17 million rehabilitation — and just in time for Christmas festivities — the dome’s 113-year-old aches and pains have been tended to. Its striking terra-cotta tile has been repaired, and a new copper exterior has been added. “The new roofing could easily last 50 to a hundred years and there’s no reason it couldn’t last for centuries with good maintenance,” said Kevin Seymour, associate principal of Ennead

The project follows a 2019 addition and related work to finish the entryway and roof of the unfinished north transept, which was left incomplete after construction was halted in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The new copper dome covers the also incomplete south transept and was originally designed in 1909 by Rafael Guastavino. Costs for the three-year project are estimated to be about $17 million.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by St. John the Divine (@stjohndivinenyc)

The Chicago Bears unveil plans for an enclosed new suburban stadium

2022-09-09T12:09:00-04:00

The Chicago Bears generated keen interest from fans and non-fans alike Thursday for a presentation of plans for a new domed stadium and entertainment district in Arlington Heights. Team officials drew applause when they said the stadium would be enclosed, and that the team would not negotiate renovations at Soldier Field while pursuing the Arlington deal.

The Bears President Ted Phillips said the team would not seek any public funding except for critical infrastructure and that the new stadium would result in greater seating capacity than Soldier Field. He also shared that the team was uncertain as to whether the enclosure will be retractable or not but alluded to mechanical problems and costs as a potential deterrent.

Previously on Archinect: Chicago proposes three alternatives to the Bears' planned Soldier Field exodus

The retractable roof feature and multi-sport entertainment focus had previously been a part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's recent last-ditch counteroffer, though the team’s “singular focus” on the 326-acre site in Arlington Heights means more or less the Manica-led project is a done deal as soon as approval and the additional outside funding can be secured. As of now, the entire project (excluding the stadium portion) is expected to take around 10 years to complete.

Chicago proposes three alternatives to the Bears' planned Soldier Field exodus

2022-07-27T12:32:00-04:00

Chicago’s last-ditch effort to dissuade its Bears football team from decamping to a new home in the northwest suburbs has yielded a trio of design alternatives after Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office released renderings for three proposed Soldier Field redesigns on Monday.

Two of the three options include either installing a dome or creating the capacity to do so in a fan experience-oriented renovation that could cost between $900 million and $2.2 billion to complete, according to figures quoted in the city’s plan.

Rendering of the 'Dome' proposal. Courtesy Landmark Chicago Interests.

The third proposes the creation of a flexible multi-sport layout oriented more towards concerts and other tourist draws. Further components of the proposal include major transportation improvements and the creation of a new public plaza to be located in place of the existing Solidarity Drive.

Rendering of the 'Dome' proposal. Courtesy Landmark Chicago Interests.

Rendering of a proposed transformation. Cour...

Woods Bagot will lead a new adaptive reuse project in Hobart for the University of Tasmania

2022-01-26T15:20:00-05:00

An underused piece of award-winning architecture in Australia is getting a makeover thanks to one of the country’s leading firms.

ArchitectureAU is reporting that the iconic one-time Forestry Tasmania headquarters in Hobart is set for an adaptive reuse scheme from Woods Bagot that will convert the dome and former warehouse space into an academic facility for the University of Tasmania.

The dome was designed around two existing 1930s structures by UTAS professor Robert Morris-Nunn in 1997. It received the RAIA’s Recycled Buildings award the next year and has been listed on Tasmania’s state heritage register for over three decades. The architect is now working closely with Woods Bagot on restoring his design, which he described as being a “wonderful” development for the community.

“Seeing the building fall into disuse over the last few years has been really sad, so to know that the University is planning to restore it, and even reinstate the forest under the dome, is amazing news,” ...

LA's Cinerama Dome finally has a (far off) future

2021-12-20T20:05:00-05:00

The Cinerama Dome and the attached theater complex formerly known as ArcLight Hollywood plans to reopen, two people familiar with the matter told The Times on Friday. There was no timetable for a potential reopening date, although one source who was not authorized to comment publicly said it could be as early as next year.

The iconic movie theater was previously thought to be in peril following its operator Pacific Theaters April announcement in which they declared that the 58-year-old venue would not be reopening due to financial pressures caused by the pandemic.

A permit filed on November 22nd included provisions for a bar and “general eating place”, according to public records which were then spread across social media. Deadline is reporting that the Welton Becket-designed midcentury landmark, which is one of several such buildings around Los Angeles currently the focus of restoration efforts, won’t come into shape until at least 2024.

Kanye West unveils renewed construction photos of dome shelters

2020-07-07T11:33:00-04:00

Kanye West, who almost a year ago, was forced to demolish his housing project in Calabasas for lack of permitting and failure to comply with building codes, unveiled July 5th on Twitter what appears to be a new stab at the endeavor. "YZY SHLTRS in process #2020VISION" the post reads. The accompanying photo appears to contain three structures, each at a different stage of development. One can see some shoring happening on the structure closest to the camera, and off at the top right of the frame looks to be a structure whose structural form has already taken on a dome like aesthetic.

This news follows the musician's recent announcement on Twitter that he will be running for president of the United States. This was the first time we were introduced to the #2020VISION hashtag from the artist, something that many are attributing as a title for West's campaign for president. However, many are doubtful that West will actually run for office. In any case, we will all be waiting to see mo...

Princeton University researchers crack secret to Italian renaissance dome construction

2020-05-22T17:44:00-04:00

As part of a recent study, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Bergamo have uncovered the engineering techniques behind the self-supporting masonry of the Italian renaissance, reports the Princeton Engineering website. "Researchers analyzed how cupolas like the famous duomo, part of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, were built as self-supporting, without the use of shoring or forms typically required," the school writes.

"The double loxodrome is comprised of rows of vertical bricks that crisscross around the dome and are filled in by horizontal bricks. Effectively, each course of bricks creates a structural element known as a plate-bande that wedges interior bricks between the vertical end caps." Image: courtesy of the researchers. via engineering.princeton.edu

Looking at structures such as the famous Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, which is the largest masonry dome standing today, the team was able to discover an intricate geometric pattern...

The world's largest greenhouse due to take shape for a 2020 Venice Biennale collateral event

2020-05-16T13:02:00-04:00

Zuecca Projects and architecture firm Coldefy have presented the exhibition entitled DOMUS - Architecture, Materials, Innovative Systems as a "Collateral Event" of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale due to be held in Venice from August 29th to November 29th.

Lower level plan

The exhibition is curated by Alessandro Possati, director of Zuecca Projects, and Arch. Thomas Coldefy, founder at Coldefy. The theme of DOMUS is dilineated with research and documentation of Tropicalia, which is expected to be the largest single-dome greenhouse on the planet.

Upper level plan

While the exhibition presents the vision for Tropicalia in the form of drawings, models, renderings, and diagrams, the structure is due to become a reality by 2023. The greenhouse proposes 20,000 square meters of tropical landscape covered by a massive dome rising 35 meters high.

London's Millennium Dome is turning 20

2019-12-06T15:15:00-05:00

It was supposed to be the ultimate symbol of Cool Britannia. Instead it became a nightmare that exposed the spin and hubris of the New Labour project [...]

The Observer's architecture critic, Rowan Moore, revisits the events leading up to the opening night debacle of the Richard Rogers-designed and much hyped, but ultimately failed, London Millennium Dome on January 1st, 2000.

"The Millennium Experience that it contained then is dimly remembered, like a TV soap opera that didn’t catch on," Moore writes. "It was eclipsed, as Blairite catastrophes go, by the invasion of Iraq three years later."

Aerial view of the Dome in 2005. Photo: Messer Woland/Wikimedia Commons

University of Virginia's Rotunda transformed into a planetarium, sharing Thomas Jefferson's original vision for the building

2019-11-08T18:22:00-05:00

Neal Curtis, Samuel Lemley and Madeline Zehnder conducted some keen literary sleuthing to discover Thomas Jefferson’s original intentions for the Dome Room, and then harnessed modern digital technology to bring the planetarium to life in a way that the University’s founder could not have imagined. “The concave ceiling of the Rotunda,” Jefferson wrote in 1819, “is proposed to be painted sky-blue and spangled with gilt stars in their position and magnitude copied exactly.”

While planning the early stages of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a fantastical planetarium for the school's historic Rotunda. In 2019, that vision has been achieved as the Rotunda Planetarium, thanks to three Ph.D students from the school's English department, and a grant from the Jefferson Trust.

In addition to the temporary digital-projection installation, there is a related exhibition — which features books, specimens, and artifacts from the Rotunda’s early history — that is on view through February 18.

Kanye West's futuristic domes have been demolished

2019-09-10T10:49:00-04:00

Kanye West's "housing project" has been destroyed. Although the music mogul and controversial media star has made headlines with his plans to design and build a "new" type of home, TMZ's sources have confirmed the project has been shut down. The futuristic housing structures previously built in Calabasas, California faced destruction on Monday afternoon due to a failure to comply with building codes.

TMZ provides more details of the project's status: "All but one of the housing prototypes were torn down with about a week to spare before the September 15 deadline ... imposed by the L.A. County Dept. of Public Works for violating the building code."

Many Yeezy fans may be devastated by the news. However with one of the housing prototypes still standing, status of the project being moved elsewhere is still unknown.

An immersive 35,000 square foot art park opens in Los Angeles' Arts District

2019-01-14T15:32:00-05:00

The Arts District in downtown Los Angeles is filled with several must-see locations. Now home to one of the world's first fully immersive entertainment art park, Wisdome LA allows for visitors to enter into unforgettable audio and visual experience. The park features five fully immersive domes that are outfitted for 360-degree visual and audio entertainment. Each dome is fitted with 10.1 surround sound to enhance the shared VR experience that showcases the future of art, entertainment, and technology.

Image © Wisdome LA

Image @ Wisdome LA

Image © Tanya Nesta

Image © WisdomeLA

The park can hold up to 1,000 people inside and around the domes. Through the use of 360-degree projection mapping technology, the domes display beautifully mesmerizing images. The centerpiece of the exhibition will feature renowned digital artist Android Jones and his project, Samskara. "This city is one of the creative capitals of the worlds and is filled with people looking to learn, try something different, a...

How private citizens helped to save the Astrodome

2018-04-11T14:23:00-04:00

Though Harris County Judge Ed Emmett is the public official most closely tied to the salvation of the Astrodome, many private citizens have played important roles, too. Without their many letters, petitions, documents and road trips – the tools of architectural preservation – Houston might have lost its most iconic building.

Houston Chronicle editor Allyn West retells the long and twisting tale of how the Astrodome went from designated wrecking-ball fodder to National Historic Landmark and the activism behind it.

World's largest single-domed tropical greenhouse, designed by Coldefy & Associates, coming soon to Northern France

2018-03-28T17:40:00-04:00

French architects Coldefy & Associates Architects Urban Planners have revealed plans for the world's largest single-domed tropical greenhouse. Called Tropicalia, this vast indoor landscape will soon pop up in the Pas-de-Calais area in Northern France and house all sorts of tropical flora and fauna under an enormous pillar-less firmament of EFTE pressurized air cushions held up by an aluminum frame.

Image: Coldefy & Associates Architects Urban Planners.

Here's a project description from the architects: "Tropicalia is a 15,000m2 tropical biodome that creates a harmonious world connecting man to an exotic natural, providing a constant temperature of 28°C in a region with notoriously poor weather. Whether it is an invitation into a dream, a grand voyage or an educational trip, Tropicalia is a place of discovery, amazement and ecological awareness."

Image: Coldefy & Associates Architects Urban Planners.

"This unique place will contain a diverse range of fauna and flora, butterflies, exotic...

Dror envisions second geodesic dome in Montreal's Expo 67 site

2016-04-26T14:24:00-04:00

Originally built as the U.S. Pavilion in the memorable World Expo of 1967, the steel structural frame of Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere remains standing to this day as a sole landmark in Montreal's Parc Jean-Drapeau. In planning for the 50th anniversary of Expo 67 as well as Montreal's 375th anniversary next April, designer Dror Benshetrit of the New York-based practice Dror came up with the idea for adding, what do you know, a second geodesic dome near the Biosphere.

After touring Montreal's Île Sainte-Hélène with the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Benshetrit thought of a second dome as a way to help reinvigorate the seasonally used Expo 67 site grounds and evidently pay tribute to Fuller's landmark. Compared to the Biosphere, which is 76 meters in diameter and 62 meters high, Dror's proposed dome is a 150-meter-wide aluminum latticed sphere with a planted canopy.

The studio describes that its vegetated cover would act as a natural sound buffer and provide an enchanting public enviro...

The Astrodome: The World's Largest Indoor Garden?

2014-08-28T14:28:00-04:00

It's been a long time since the Houston Oilers or any other team called the Astrodome home, and voters rejected a bond measure to adapt and reuse this domed cathedral last year. But Emmett's not giving it up. Yesterday, he led the press on a tour of the Astrodome to introduce his own plan to restore it: By creating the world's largest indoor park. This isn't the first scheme mounted by preservationists who see a future for the dome.

Previously:

The Giant Chinese Odor Dome, and Other Sad Ideas for Surviving Our Future Cities

2014-06-02T14:15:00-04:00

In an effort to remediate a large patch of heavily contaminated soil in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, engineers managed to unleash a smell so pungent that, last week, owners of the site took a new tactic: a giant tent to contain it all. [...] Though the 20,000-square-meter polyester tent contains an area roughly the size of three football fields and rises 36 meters near downtown, it only covers less than half of the contaminated area.

Previously: Giant bubbles could be 'built over Beijing parks to save residents from smog danger'

World's first geodesic dome home, built by Buckminster Fuller, to become museum

2014-03-20T12:30:00-04:00

On April 19 there will be a groundbreaking near Southern Illinois University to celebrate the restoration and preservation of the world’s first geodesic dome home, originally built by Buckminster Fuller and his wife, Lady Anne, in 1960. The ceremony at the Fuller Dome Home in Carbondale will be open to the public, free of charge, and will include a tour and the opportunity to view rare artifacts.

Editor's Picks #326

2013-07-30T10:54:00-04:00

In her recently published Op-Ed Ann Lui, reflected on the experience of receiving a jury citation, for her and her partner’s entry in the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition: NEXT STOP-Designing Chicago BRT Stations.

She concluded "So submit the competition that doesn’t have a properly sized curb — and in fact doesn’t have a curb at all. This is a defense for the projects that have balloons, trees on skyscrapers, and blimp docking stations. It is also a defense for every detail a designer developed and then translated into reality".

Donna Sink was moved "Beautiful. I love this so much. It's ultimately an optimistic profession, even with knowing how little we know (and I say this after 28 years in the discipline - still learning)".

News
New York-based Turkish architect Selim Vural, founder of architecture and interior design firm Studio Vural, shared his design for a Gezi Park Monument, with Archinect. The memorial commemorates the recent protests on Istanbul's Taksim Square.

...

World’s Biggest Ski Dome, Anyone? Design by CEBRA

2012-11-15T17:41:00-05:00

Danish firm CEBRA has shared with us its adventurous project Skidome Denmark, a vision for the 'world’s biggest ski dome' in the city of Randers, Denmark.

Bucky's Fly's Eye Dome Now Fully Restorated

2011-05-26T14:41:13-04:00

Restoration work on one of Buckminster Fuller’s most iconic structures, the 24 foot Fly’s Eye Dome, was completed yesterday, and the restored dome was unveiled to the public at Goetz Composites in Bristol, RI.

Patented in 1965, Fuller created two prototypes of this structure – a 24 foot and 50 foot dome. Fuller writes in his seminal book, Critical Path that “the Fly’s Eye domes are designed as part of a ‘livingry’ service. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming light and wind energies.”

The 24 foot dome has undergone extensive restorations in an effort to return the dome to its original condition by the renowned Bristol, RI-based Goetz Composites, fabricators of some of the most successful race boats in the world including three of today’s m...