Archinect - News

Gensler study proposes reimagined North Michigan Avenue in Chicago

2024-07-17T11:43:00-04:00

The main artery along Chicago’s iconic Lakefront area — North Michigan Avenue — is the subject of a new proposal from Gensler that would revitalize a major segment of the street into a major hub of pedestrianization, retail, and hospitality.

The proposal targets a stretch between Chicago Avenue and Oak Street Beach for a series of interventions and innovations that will remake it into the Avenue's northern 'anchor' opposing the existing Chicago Architecture Center, Apple Store, Wrigley Building, and the recently renovated Tribune Tower at its southern edge.

Image courtesy Gensler

Local developers Bob Wislow and Camille Julmy are said to have worked with Gensler’s team to produce a study for the redevelopment, which puts Chicago squarely on par with many other global high streets in an attempt to recover the staggering economic losses created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Image courtesy Gensler

"This study demonstrates that design truly has the power to transform experience in our cities,...

OMA debuts PRINCIPLES Square collection for Perth Design Week

2024-03-14T19:28:00-04:00

Photos of the central hub for Perth Design Week, the eight-day event taking place now in the Western Australia capital, have been revealed by OMA to go along with the start of festivities.

Their colorful design for PRINCIPLES Square is located inside Cathedral Square in Perth's city center and features the Australian debut of the firm's office furniture collaboration with UniFor, which first premiered at Milan Design Week in 2022.

Intended as the main gathering space for Design Week, the concept creates a variety of socializing and spatial scenarios. For the event's second edition, no less than 20 events will be hosted there. Philippe Braun, the project's associate-in-charge, told the press that its realization "stimulated us to further explore how the collection can be applied beyond the typical."

Photography by Frans Parthesius, courtesy OMA

OMA says of the arrangement: "PRINCIPLES Square is the manifestation of the potential of the collection. The installation takes advantage of ...

Renewed modernist Esplanade Place Ville Marie opens in Montreal

2023-04-18T14:46:00-04:00

A comprehensive overhaul of Montreal’s Esplanade Place Ville Marie by Sid Lee Architecture and Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes (MSDL) is now complete, marking the end of a $200 million revitalization project that’s brought much-needed civic life back to a busy section of the city’s downtown commercial core.

Originally constructed in 1958 and designed by I.M. Pei and Henry Cobb, who had opened their practice in New York just three years before, the site had become shopworn since its last redevelopment was completed in the 1980s.

Image: David Boyer

The new Esplanade PVM comes with improved pedestrian access, a modernized shopping mall, and reconfigured underground entrance to public transit. MSDL worked to enact new monumental staircases and a horizontal floating glass structure it says is the longest in North America. The perimeter of the plaza area is also reopened to attract circulation between the street and raised public level, and the original parking lot entrance ...

James Corner Field Operations to design the final phases of new Underline park in Miami

2022-10-21T16:31:00-04:00

James Corner Field Operations have been selected to lead the final six phases of Miami’s 10-mile long Underline linear park, the firm announced Thursday via social media.

With the first phase now open at its northern terminus in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood, the firm will look to take over the remaining longest portion of the project that is activating an 120-acre area directly underneath the city’s Metrorail with a series of recreation areas, bike paths, and other open spaces specially intended for the display of art commissions and outdoor public events.

Graphic courtesy James Corner Field Operations

The last 7.5-mile stretch will start just south of the now halfway completed Phase 2 at Southwest 19th Avenue before terminating at the Dadeland South Metrorail station. The budget for the project is reportedly $140 million, and the Phases 3-9 work is being undertaken with the help of design-build partners NV2A Group, the Central Civil Construction company, and Stantec.

With an exp...

Two years ahead of schedule, Diamond Schmitt/TWBTA's David Geffen Hall revamp is ready to debut at Lincoln Center

2022-09-27T18:23:00-04:00

A revamp inside one of America’s most important cultural venues is ready to debut two years ahead of schedule (and reportedly on budget) after the project team behind Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall in Manhattan announced an October 8th public opening date on Tuesday.

NYC's redesigned new "cultural living room" is the product of a collaboration between cultural sector heavyweights Diamond Schmitt Architects and Tod Williams Billie Tsien (TWBTA), noted acoustician Paul Scarbrough of Akustiks, and theater design specialist Joshua Dachs of Fisher Dachs Associates.

The project's scope includes an acoustical and seating arrangement overhaul of the New York Philharmonic's main Wu Tsai Theater performance space, the creation of a new restaurant and 1,680-square-foot Welcome Center, new multipurpose Sidewalk Studios, and the reconfiguration of public spaces around the building that was originally designed by Max Abramovitz in 1962.

Video courtesy of Lincoln Center for the Performing A...

OMA's Audrey Imas Pavilion makes its long-awaited debut on Wilshire Boulevard

2022-01-04T18:38:00-05:00

The wait is over for one of the most hotly-anticipated editions to the cultural landscape of Los Angeles in recent memory.

OMA has announced the official completion of its much-heralded Audrey Irmas Pavilion for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown.

The new building offers a unique center for aging in addition to a rooftop terrace and sunken garden that connect through a series of small meeting rooms that provide users the chance to gather in the topmost example of three distinct voids defined by their separate sacred and public meeting spaces wrapped in gray GFRC panels which form a hexagonal motif geometric facade.

Image by Jason O'Rear, courtesy of OMA New York

Back in September, OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu referred to the project as a potential catalyst for a return to mass-scale social interactions, stating that its completion “comes at a time when we hope to come together again,” and that the pavilion “can be a platform to reinstate the importance of gathering, exchange, an...

Ekene Ijeoma's latest public installation reflects on social inequality to create a place of 'sanctuary at a time of intense hardship and loss'

2021-03-19T15:09:00-04:00

"Between the ongoing struggles in the racial and political movements in the United States and the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be difficult to find the time and space to breathe deeply and rest well. I held my breath for most of last year..." — these are the words of Ekene Ijeoma, artist, professor of Media Arts and Science at MIT, and founder/director of the Poetic Justice group at MIT Media Lab.

On March 16, Ijeoma unveiled his public installation Breathing Pavilion to the public. Located at The Plaza at 300 Ashland in Brooklyn, the pavilion was co-produced by Van Alen Institute and the not-for-profit local development corporation Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.

Ekene Ijeoma is the founder of Studio Ijeoma. "Through both his studio and lab at MIT, Ijeoma researches social inequality across multiple fields including social science to develop artworks in sound, video, multimedia, sculpture and installation." Text courtesy of studioijeoma.com Photo: Kris Graves

Breathing Pavilion, Ekene...

Ric Abramson tapped to lead West Hollywood's new Urban Design and Architecture Studio

2019-11-15T13:17:00-05:00

Los Angeles area architect Ric Abramson has been selected to head a new Urban Design and Architecture Studio housed within the City of West Hollywood's Community Services Department.

Abramson, whose practice, WorkPlays studio*architecture, is based in West Hollywood, has been active in the city's project review and design commission boards for many years. According to a report in Wehoville, the architect will oversee the city's sometimes-contentious Design Review process while also applying his expertise toward the redesign of West Hollywood's streets and public spaces. Abramson will also be tasked, according to the report, with implementing a series of new urban design strategies for the city as the West Hollywood negotiates for a potential transit line extension through the city in advance of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The focus of these efforts will include improving the city's "architecture, infrastructure, and the relationship of private developments to public spac...

Breastfeeding pods are proliferating across America

2019-10-02T14:01:00-04:00

Thanks to the Friendly Airports for Mothers Act (FAM) passed in 2018, the number of private breastfeeding pods available to the general public has steadily increased over the last year. Passed as part of a comprehensive Federal Aviation Administration funding package, the FAM Act requires the nation's 61 "large and medium hub airports" to provide a private lactation area beyond the security zone of every airport terminal.

According to Mamava, a lactation pod manufacturer, the act requires that these lactation areas have a locking door, include a place to sit, and be accessible and usable by people with disabilities. The act also requires each pod to offer a table or flat surface as well as an electrical outlet and a sink or specialized sanitizing equipment. The act also requires that these spaces not be located within bathrooms.

ADA-compatible lactation pods are coming to many of America's airports. Image courtesy of Mamava.

Over the last year, the Port Authority of New York and Ne...