Archinect - News

Ellen van Loon departs OMA after 26 years

2024-07-26T19:10:00-04:00

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) announced the retirement of Partner Ellen van Loon from the firm after 26 years.

The announcement says: “Ellen has indicated that she wishes to enter a new phase in her life in which she will have more time to herself. It goes without saying that we deeply regret her decision. Ellen has been a trusted colleague and powerful force within our firm for decades. She also is, and will remain, a dear friend to all of us.”

Van Loon, who was born in the Netherlands and educated at TU Delft, joined the firm in 1998 after working at Foster + Partners. OMA is approaching its 50th year in 2025. Partners Shohei Shigematsu, Jason Long, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, David Gianotten, and Reinier de Graaf remain in charge along with founder Rem Koolhaas, who turns 80 in November.

AMO reveals unique retail spaces for Jacquemus' Paris and London expansions

2022-10-05T12:57:00-04:00

A splashy collaboration between AMO (the research arm of OMA) and the French fashion house Jacquemus is making the scene in Paris and London this season thanks to the dynamic duo of OMA partner Ellen van Loon and Giulio Margheri.

Located inside the iconic Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette Haussmann and the equally posh London’s Selfridges and Harvey Nichols outfitters, the stores first premiered in July and were inspired by a deep dive into the brand’s origins, according to the design team.

Photograph by Benoit Florençon, Courtesy of AMO

“We wanted to capture the atmosphere of Provence through the materiality of the spaces,” van Loon says. “[That] led us to approach the design in a different way altogether. Instead of working with form and deciding on the materials afterwards, we chose the materials at the outset and let them guide the shape of each space.”

Photograph by Benoit Florençon, Courtesy of AMO

Photograph by Benoit F...

OMA reveals first quadrant of redesigned KaDeWe department store in Berlin

2021-10-09T09:00:00-04:00

The important first section of OMA’s redesigned master plan for the famed Berlin department store Kaufhaus des Westens (or KaDeWe) has officially opened to the public this week after a five-year renovation effort.

Organized into quadrants, the reorganized mass introduces a smaller area plan with improved accessibility and more wayfinding. OMA is hoping to address the changes in consumer spending as well as the rise of online retail known as a threat to traditional brick-and-mortar establishments.

Photograph by Marco Cappelletti, Courtesy of OMA.

“The renovation of the KaDeWe aims to redefine the dynamics between retail space, its patrons, and the urban environment, in a time when e-commerce is reshaping our relation with in-person shopping,” OMA partner Ellen van Loon offered. “The project reinterprets the fundamental elements of a typology that has remained virtually unchanged for more than 100 years.”

Photograph by Marco Cappelletti, Courtesy of OMA.

Consisting of a concentric void...

AMO-designed new flagship for Virgil Abloh's Off-White has opened in Paris

2021-07-06T20:57:00-04:00

A new collaboration between OMA/AMO and design icon Virgil Abloh has opened in Paris this past weekend, giving the 9-year-old Off-White brand a flagship location in the couture capital’s 1st arrondissement.

The store is the second project from AMO and the famed designer after opening a Miami location at the end of last summer. The two had previously paired on a retrospective exhibition of Abloh’s work held at the MCA Chicago in 2019.

Off-White founder and creative director Abloh told Hypebeast he views the new flagship as “an incubator for new talent, a cultural connector within the community, and an experimental laboratory of creativity and innovation.”

The three-floor retrofitted 19th-century space features a ground floor with a dedicated wing for Nike products, gallery space, and two contrasting retail areas meant to “amplify the voices of the community” and evoke bygone Parisian flea markets respectively.

The remaining two f...

OMA / Ellen van Loon fuses science and sports in new Brighton College school building

2020-01-16T09:29:00-05:00

When OMA won the 2013 competition to design Brighton College's new School of Science and Sport in England, the Dutch firm had to create a scheme where two contrasting academic disciplines were interwoven into the same building, and in a way that encourages interaction among students. The building was officially inaugurated on January 9.

Photograph by Laurian Ghinitoiu, Courtesy of OMA.

Photograph by Killian O’Sullivan, © OMA

“We wanted to give Brighton College a building that continues to deliver more than strictly required, expanding the traditional definition of educational architecture,” OMA Partner Ellen van Loon said.

Reflective of the fact that learning takes place outside as much as it does inside a classroom, the new building merges the department of Science and the department of Sports into one linear volume. Athletic spaces are level with the adjacent outdoor playing field, while Science classrooms, labs, and a greenhouse span over the athletic spaces.

Photograph by Laurian...

Interview Magazine talks with architectural heavyweights Ellen van Loon and Elizabeth Diller

2019-03-11T13:26:00-04:00

Q: How would you describe our particular time, architecturally speaking? Elizabeth Diller: It’s more a time of collaboration, and a deeper contemplation about what buildings can mean and how they can have more social value. I think it’s a time where you have to make a case for architecture to still be relevant.

Interview Magazine sits down to talk with OMA partner Ellen van Loon and Elizabeth Diller of DSRNY. Both are currently working on projects for long-awaited cultural spaces—van Loon on the Factory Manchester, a £110 million theater and arts venue, and Diller with the Shed, a major new arts center opening at Hudson Yards in New York. Through the discussion, the two address an array of topics: New York and Berlin in the 1970s, club design, anti-glass sentiments, the privatization of public space, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the role of a client, and fighting to keep your voice as an architect.

OMA Partner Ellen van Loon on openess in architecture and women in the profession

2018-10-01T15:09:00-04:00

Yet it is Ms. van Loon’s innate sense of openness that allows her to think freely, particularly as a woman in a male-dominated profession. She said she had seen an improvement in the number of women in the profession, along with the increasingly important roles they play, and their influence on the design of buildings. [...] “Now at OMA, we’re 50/50 men and women, though let’s hope there are a few more female partners in the future."

The New York Times introduces OMA's only female partner, Dutch architect Ellen van Loon, who recounts her first fascination for Rem Koolhaas and looks at some of her recent high-profile projects, such as the new Qatar National Library, Rijnstraat 8 in The Hague, and the recently completed 'Blox' museum/office/gym/restaurant/residential complex in Copenhagen.

Oliver Wainwright on OMA's new Copenhagen Blox building: "missed opportunity for Denmark"

2018-05-02T14:25:00-04:00

OMA’s Blox project stacks a museum, offices, gym, restaurant and housing in a provocative attempt to condense the thrilling energy of a city into a single structure – but the result is a gloomy glass monolith [...] It is OMA’s first ever playground, and it doesn’t look as if having fun comes naturally.

Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj – COAST

The Guardian architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, reviews OMA's new 'Blox' building in Copenhagen, and it's easy to see that he isn't a fan. Like at all.

"From the outside, it doesn’t look promising. Far from suggesting unpredictable intrigue, the building exudes the off-putting sense of a generic corporate office block," Wainwright writes and concludes his critique of this "missed opportunity for Denmark" with a nod to a similarly sized—but bright and joyous—stacked-big-blocks building by Danish OMA offspring, Bjarke Ingels' Billund Lego House.