Archinect - News

UNESCO urges UK not to proceed with Stonehenge tunnels project

2023-09-26T11:34:00-04:00

The A303 redevelopment proposal had originally garnered the attention of preservation advocates beginning in 2017 and eventually yielded a favorable ruling from the UK High Court in 2021, the same year UNESCO first threatened to add the site to its list of World Heritage in Danger.

Adding to the narrative, UNESCO has now openly criticized the UK government's recent decision to proceed with the contentious project. The UK's transport secretary, Mark Harper, sanctioned the scheme earlier this year, setting its initial cost at a staggering £1.7bn. This tunnel, which is proposed to be two miles in length, is alarmingly close to the ancient and revered site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

National Highways insists its plan will "conserve and enhance" the area while addressing a notorious traffic bottleneck. UNESCO’s requests center on placing the tunnel entrances at longer intervals so as to not disturb the site’s existing landscape. In a statement, the project manager for the overhaul said...

SWA and HKS construct park over Dallas highway to reconnect historically divided neighborhood

2023-05-24T11:04:00-04:00

SWA has unveiled the design, undertaken with HKS, for a major urban infrastructure project which seeks to reconnect a historically Black neighborhood in South Dallas. The Southern Gateway Public Green comprises a five-acre park in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, built to reconnect a community that was divided by highway construction in the 1950s.

Image credit: HKS

The park will be delivered in two phases, with infrastructure currently under construction to ‘cap’ the highway to allow the landscape to be built overhead. The finished scheme will feature event spaces, a market-style dining and retail area, and lawns.

Image credit: HKS

“SWA’s design was based on public feedback and reflects the neighboring communities that will benefit from it on a daily basis—communities that historically haven’t gotten a lot of say in what happens to them,” the firm said about the scheme. “It will also be home to a variety of native plants and trees, as well as educational exhibits about the histor...

Meow Wolf opens new 95,000-square-foot installation space in small plot surrounded by three highways in Denver

2022-04-01T19:35:00-04:00

Let’s start with a little exercise. I would like you to input “Meow Wolf Denver” on Google Maps (here, I did it for you) and look at where the red pin falls on the map. Do you see it yet, the small, somewhat tear-shaped building tucked inside an interwoven web of highways? That, my friends, is Denver’s newest arts destination—and it sits on a tiny, triangular plot of land at the intersection of three highways.

Meow Wolf, the Sante Fe-based arts and entertainment company that specializes in hosting large-scale immersive experiences, has set up shop in Denver, with a new, uniquely-positioned space that opened to the public in September 2021.

The building, spanning 5 stories and 95,000 square feet, was designed to fill the void between a stretch of I-25 and two off-ramps. Its façade is clad with specialty matte panels to ensure the building doesn’t create a glare for drivers.

Before settling on this location, Meow Wolf had two other potential locations in mind, both located in Denver’s River North Art District. The team decided against these locations because building would have required the displacement of existing organizations in an area that was already experiencing gentrification. Meow Wolf, thus, called upon Denver-based architecture firm Shears Adkins Rockmore (SAR +) and boutique real estate firm Revesco Properties.

The key to utilizing such a constrained space was building the st...

Plan to cover Interstate-5 with a park and high-rise towers receives support in Seattle

2019-10-08T15:22:00-04:00

Data collected by engineering firm WSP indicates that it is structurally possible construct a freeway lid over Interstate 5 (I-5) in Downtown Seattle within all four of the sub-areas studied, which extend from Madison Street to Denny Way. The study also found that integrating midrise and highrise buildings with the lid structure would be compatible and in some cases preferable from an engineering standpoint to deal with grade changes.

Seattle's The Urbanist reports that a plan to add a park and buildings over a depressed portion of Interstate-5 in downtown Seattle is, at the very least, technically feasible. The finding could add momentum to the proposal. Lawrence Halprin's Freeway Park, built in 1976, represents a similar, though smaller-scale version of the idea.

How New Orleans dodged Robert Moses's "Riverfront Expressway"

2019-08-13T19:45:00-04:00

Fifty years ago this summer, word reached New Orleans that John Volpe, secretary of the Department of Transportation under President Richard Nixon, had canceled the Riverfront Expressway—the high-speed, elevated interstate highway slated for the edge of the French Quarter.

Tulane University urban geographer Richard Campanella pens a lengthy remembrance for the failed Riverfront Expressway, a Robert Moses-designed highway that would have cut New Orleans off from its historic waterfront and the Mississippi River.

The epic struggle to turn back the highway was dubbed “the Second Battle of New Orleans,” and brought together preservationists, community members, and business interests against the infamous Power Broker.

Paris to reformat its Boulevard Périphérique

2019-05-28T21:06:00-04:00

Cars and trucks on one of Europe’s most notoriously congested and polluted urban highways would not only be obliged to drive more slowly, they’d have less room to do it: The number of beltway lanes open to all traffic would also be slashed from eight to six. One lane will be reserved for public, emergency, and zero-emissions vehicles. The other one is to be devoted to trees.

Paris officials are making plans to redesign the traffic lanes for the city's 22-mile-long ring road, Boulevard Périphérique.

A recent report calls for retrofitting the eight-lane highway as part of a wider effort to crack down on car usage across the city. Since taking office in 2014, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has successfully pushed the city to lessen its autocentric configuration by pedestrianizing the streets surrounding the Seine, among other efforts.

A relic of post-World War II urban planning logic, Boulevard Périphérique was built between 1958 and 1973 on the former site of the Thiers Wall, the final remaining set of fortifications surrounding Paris. Today, the concrete highway is a source of toxic air pollution and noise, qualities the coming retrofits are aimed at addressing.

Put a park on it: BIG's Brooklyn-Queens Expressway proposal

2019-04-05T14:14:00-04:00

The crowded field of competitors who’ve proposed solutions for the ailing Brooklyn-Queens Expressway has gotten another entrant: Bjarke Ingels Group, which has unveiled a proposal that it calls “BQP.” The “P” stands for park, and in BIG’s plan, green space takes center stage. [...] the vehicles that use the BQE would be moved to a roadway that would be covered and topped with as much as 10 acres of new parkland.

"Though a cost and time estimate for BIG’s plan has not yet been made public, the firm claims it will be less expensive, and less time-consuming, than what the DOT has proposed," reports Curbed NY (click here for their detailed explainer of what the massive Brooklyn-Queens Expressway reconstruction plan is all about).

Image: Bjarke Ingels Group.

Learn more about BIG's BQE "BQP" proposal here.

Freeway underpasses are more than just dark empty spaces

2018-10-01T17:45:00-04:00

The space under elevated highways are often dark, industrial, and empty. With so much capacity to create a vibrant public space, organizations and cities are exploring ways for creative development in the otherwise unused area.

Underpasses are often overlooked for their building potential, but cities like Toronto and Zurich are redefining the creative opportunity of these spaces. Underpass design is a great way for cities to enrich these often vacant industrial spaces and create areas for community engagement and activity.

In Toronto for example, The Bentway is a public space that made its public debut earlier this year. Under one of the busiest highways in Toronto, The Bentway spans over 1.75km creating a new scene for events and activities. Locals can enjoy a stroll through the community garden, enjoy public art shows, and participate in various events through out the year.

Photo courtesy of www.thebentway.ca

Zurich has taken its own approach to underpass design by allowing architecture students to design a 240-square-meter pavilion. This space allows for students to run events during the year and promote public engagement.

Photo © Anna Positano

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal declares state of emergency after I-85 bridge in Atlanta collapses from fire

2017-03-31T15:03:00-04:00

Transportation officials in Georgia are scrambling to cope with a crisis, after a huge fire caused a bridge on Interstate 85 to collapse in Atlanta on Thursday night. Gov. Nathan Deal has declared a state of emergency, and with the heavily used road closed in both directions, drivers are being told to find other options — from detours to mass transit. Friday morning, officials said they don't yet know what caused the fire or how long repairs will take.

Atlanta's Interstate 85 was first built in 1953 and reconstructed in 1985 to accommodate increased traffic. The closure affects a crucial 3-mile portion, which carries up to 400,000 vehicles a day. U.S. DOT Secretary Elaine Chow directed Federal Highway Administration officials to grant $10 million in emergency funds to begin repairing the bridge.

“Approximately 700 feet of the roadway – 350 feet northbound and 350 feet southbound — will be removed and replaced including support columns. Demolition will begin this weekend and will continue into Monday, April 3,” the Georgia DOT announced today.

Engineers grapple with a melting Alaskan Highway

2016-08-05T14:57:00-04:00

Today the highway serves as the main artery connecting the “Last Frontier” with Canada and the northwestern U.S., bringing tourists to Alaska cruise ships; food, supplies and medicine to remote towns; and equipment to oil fields and mines that are the region’s lifeblood... “Communities are unable to reach each other, it’s harder to get goods there,” [...] Thawing permafrost isn’t “just an inconvenience, folks; it’s a change in the way of life.”

Transforming the Bao'an G107 into a multi-modal “organic highway”

2016-08-04T19:12:00-04:00

[T]he city of Bao'an in Shenzhen is setting its sights on revamping the 30 kilometer, 12-lane G107 highway...By rethinking the notion of a highway and envisioned with a series of utopian-like renderings, [Avoid Obvious Architects + Tetra Architects & Planners] proposed “a smaller, more fluid, multi-layered thoroughfare that will be a spectacular starting point of growth for an organic smart city.”

Here's a preview of their proposal:

Find more of the project on Bustler. You can also watch the video below.

Michael Maltzan proposes greening L.A.'s 134 freeway

2016-07-07T14:13:00-04:00

Christopher Hawthorne, in keeping with his exploration of the ever evolving urban identity of Los Angeles, reached out via the L.A. Times to Michael Maltzan to see if the architect had any ideas about transforming L.A.'s freeways from noisy polluting agents into civic amenities. Maltzan has responded pro bono with an idea to place a 3/4 mile stretch of the 134 freeway into a tunnel which would not only reduce noise and annually absorb 516,000 tons of carbon dioxide, but double as a site for rooftop solar panels and vegetation walls.

Drivers in the tunnel would still be able to see their Pasadena surroundings through the lattice-like exterior, although residents near the just south of the Rose Bowl portion of the freeway would experience a significant traffic noise reduction thanks to the tunnel's acoustically insulated walls. As the L.A. Times notes, Michael Maltzan "describes the proposal, produced in collaboration with the Los Angeles office of the engineering firm Arup, as 'an env...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Foxx on the troubled relationship between infrastructure and race: "We ought to do it better than we did it the last time"

2016-04-28T13:53:00-04:00

As a child, Anthony Foxx knew he couldn’t ride his bike far from home without being blocked by a freeway. By the time he became U.S. transportation secretary he understood why. “We now know — overwhelmingly — that our urban freeways were almost always routed through low-income and minority neighborhoods, creating disconnections from opportunity that exist to this day,” [...] “I really believe that this is an issue that has been on the shelf collecting dust for a long time,” Foxx said.

Photos Show How Detroit Hollowed Out During the Highway Age

2014-06-25T13:20:00-04:00

While searching for images of highway interchanges in urban areas, I came across these historic aerial photos of Detroit on a message board, showing how the city fabric has slowly eroded. It’s a remarkable record of a process that has scarred many other American cities.

Watch Los Angeles's Road Network Grow, From 1888 to 2010

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

A new video by doctoral student and an associate professor at Arizona State University visualizes the expansion of LA's roads, starting in 1888 and running all the way up to 2010 [...] Variations in color denote the age of the thoroughfares, with green being the oldest roads and red being newest. Watch as the map blooms with color in the fifties and the trend carries on through the eighties to the present.

"Growth of the Los Angeles Roadway Infrastructure, 1888 - 2010", by Andrew M. Fraser and Mikhail V. Chester, Ph.D., of Arizona State University:

Compare with the following video of Los Angeles' overall growth as a city during the 20th century, from NYU's Stern Urbanization Project:

Like It or Not, Most Urban Freeways Are Here to Stay

2014-02-20T21:27:00-05:00

So it is that nearly a third of the interstate system consists of stretches through our cities, in the form of loops, spurs and freeways. So it is that American motorists drive nearly twice as many miles on urban interstates as they do the lengthier rural legs. So it is that every metropolis in the country has reorganized itself around these roads, and that they've shaped where we live and work, how we shop, what we eat, and how we pass our time.

Long Beach officials top 600-foot-long 'Great Wall of Mulch'

2013-08-08T13:36:00-04:00

It is, first and foremost, a visual and sound buffer placed between residents and the diesel trucks rumbling along the 103 Freeway to and from the Port of Long Beach. But the wall, two fences stuffed with mulch generated from Long Beach tree trimmings, is also environmentally friendly; it will eventually be seeded with trees and shrubs that will leech vehicle exhaust from the air and transform the pollution into oxygen.

J. MAYER H. Designs a Series of Highway Rest Areas in Georgia

2012-05-04T19:20:00-04:00

Berlin's J. MAYER H. is currently designing a series of twenty rest areas along a new highway in the Caucasus Republic of Georgia, connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey. Two rest areas have already been completed, and a third one is currently under construction with completion scheduled for this year. Here are some photos of the two stations, Gori and Lochini.