Archinect - News

David Chipperfield Architects debut three-building La Confluence contribution in Lyon

2024-12-16T17:18:00-05:00

David Chipperfield Architects has just completed a three-building scheme for the larger La Confluence master plan in Lyon, France designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

View of the office building from one of the garden courtyards. Image: © Simon Menges

The program includes a small office building, housing block, and mixed-use tower. The firm tells us each is "shaped by their structure and defined by their simple rectilinear forms yet react to their specific location in different ways."

View of the social housing building from one of the garden courtyards. Image: © Simon Menges

All three mirror each other and the other buildings in the plan thanks to the choice of mineral-like materials to cover each of their facades. The three buildings combined offer a gross floor area equal to 30,000 square meters (appx. 323,000 square feet) and were designed especially to enhance their site's riverfront connection.

The mixed-use tower building. Image: © Simon Menges

Housing—or at least its possibility—b...

David Chipperfield’s K-Project corporate headquarters breaks ground in Seoul

2024-05-14T12:53:00-04:00

David Chipperfield Architects has just broken ground on a new corporate headquarters project for a South Korean IT company in Seoul. Construction for the new K-Project will advance toward a late 2027 completion and culminate in a new highly adaptable design that doubles as a piece of “social infrastructure” for the city’s Seongsu district.

Chipperfield says: “The energy and culture of the company occupying the building, and that of the diverse neighbourhood in which it is located are used to define a strong identity for the headquarters both visually through its dynamic façades and programmatically through a multi-use atrium.”

Rendering: Artefactory Lab, DCA, Brick

Programmatically, the concept works by traversing ‘Hardware’ and ‘Software’ layers vertically supported by eight vertical cylindrical cores, which lift the office component above a two-level ‘multiplex’ for retail and culture. This is the firm’s second corporate commission in Seoul after the completed Amorepacific Headqua...

David Chipperfield has big plans for the expansion of Miami’s Design District

2023-12-29T15:14:00-05:00

A new project from this year’s Pritzker Prize laureate, David Chipperfield, was announced recently as the architect of a new western expansion plan for the Design District in Miami.

Local developer Craig Robbins made the news public in earlier December via Instagram. The plan will reportedly include a high-end luxury hotel, a residential component, and an undisclosed total of retail spaces. No further details of the project have been publicized. Chipperfield spoke to his vision briefly during an impromptu sit-down with critic Paul Goldberger at the Design Miami fair.

“I think [it has] a very interesting context, because [the district] has grown out of a pre-existing fabric in an organic way. There’s been a sort of intelligent reuse of buildings in a rather agile way,” he said, speaking to the appeal of working in the transformed district and the difference between the European cities he's worked in and Miami. “I think it’s very interesting now to be doing a project there, which ...

David Chipperfield reflects on his journey in Pritzker Prize ceremony video

2023-11-14T12:50:00-05:00

A video of the special Pritzker Architecture Prize ceremony honoring this year’s laureate David Chipperfield has been shared with Archinect, following the culmination of the event held this May from the Ancient Agora in Athens.

Chipperfield spoke to a crowd who were assembled at the cultural site in honor of the 45th year of the Pritzker Prize, which has been presented annually by the Hyatt Foundation since its establishment in 1979.

Video courtesy of The Hyatt Foundation/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

“My debts are enormous,” he began in stating. “I’m thankful for this prize but even more thankful for the wonderful journey that got me here... Architectural practice depends not only on creative talent but just as much on the collaboration of individuals within the studio and without. It has been a journey of privilege.”

Other speakers in the documentary-style video include Greek First Lady and designer Mareva Grabowski; Hyatt Foundation Chairman Tom Pritzker; and the Prize’s Jury...

David Chipperfield's Elbtower project halts construction over payment dispute in Hamburg

2023-11-07T12:19:00-05:00

Reuters is reporting that construction on the forthcoming 64-story Elbtower Tower project in Hamburg, Germany, from David Chipperfield Architects has been halted over a payment dispute between its client Signa and a local builder.

The news came last week after more than two years of construction. Work was halted at exactly 100 meters (or 330 feet), which is under half the 245-meter (803-foot) anticipated height of the design for which Chipperfield won the 2018 international competition. The tower was expected to open in 2026, with a 188-room NOBU hotel and restaurant concept and a final price tag of €950 million ($1.015 billion). Once erected, it will become the tallest building in Germany outside of Frankfurt.

Signa’s CEO Timo Herzberg nevertheless posted to LinkedIn that he remains confident in the eventual realization of “Hamburg's future landmark,” Reuters reported. (Signa also operates the Chrysler Building in New York City.)

Previously on Archinect: David Chipperfield wins El...

Pritzker Prize winner David Chipperfield and others reflect on the role of architectural practice

2023-05-23T17:19:00-04:00

This year’s Pritzker Prize laureate David Chipperfield has concluded his remarks at the special awards ceremony and presentation held this morning at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).

Topics covered by Chipperfield’s address include the limits and responsibilities of practice, the market’s influence over the industry, and an overview of his career, all framed by the impetus of climate change and the responsibility of designers within the context of the current global architectural stasis.

Chipperfield began by paying homage to Le Corbusier, Josep Lluís Sert, and the other architects who met at the school for the influential Fourth CIAM Congress on urban planning in August of 1933, stating: “We find ourselves again, in this room, needing more than ever the sort of planning structures that were proposing in order that we can confront the environmental issues of our time.”

“We must become incr...

David Chipperfield's former staffers share their experiences working for the newest Pritzker winner

2023-03-10T06:00:00-05:00

Following this week’s announcement of David Chipperfield as the 46th Pritzker Prize laureate, we reached out to several of his former employees that now run their own firms and studios in order to get their thoughts and recollections on working for the architect as younger designers.

Chipperfield himself benefited greatly from his time in the offices of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster shortly after completing his studies at the Architectural Association (AA) in London and in advance of starting his practice later in 1985. Speaking to Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright after the win, Chipperfield said: “In both those offices, they were quite obsessive about doing more than you’re asked to do.”

“My generation has always been about the product,” he added, “but I believe more than anything now that we need to focus on the process.”

Read about his influence shared by his protégés as to if (and how) their experience at DCA influenced their current practice and stylistic sen...

David Chipperfield is the 2023 Pritzker Prize winner

2023-03-07T10:00:00-05:00

British architect Sir David Chipperfield has been awarded the 2023 Pritzker Prize.

The Pritzker jury described Chipperfield as a "prolific architect who is radical in his restraint, demonstrating his reverence for history and culture while honoring the preexisting built and natural environments, as he reimagines functionality and accessibility of new buildings, renovations and restorations through timeless modern design that confronts climate urgencies, transforms social relationships and reinvigorates cities."

The Neues Museum, courtesy of SPK / David Chipperfield Architects, photo Joerg von Bruchhausen

Chipperfield's work spans over four decades with over one hundred projects ranging from civic, cultural, and academic buildings to residences and urban masterplanning throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. When naming Chipperfield as the 2023 Pritzker laureate, the organizers singled out his Neues Museum restoration (Berlin, Germany, 2009) as demonstrating "Chipperfield’s discer...

OMA, David Chipperfield, and Sou Fujimoto team up to design $1.4 billion cultural-retail complex in Shenzhen

2022-07-22T17:38:00-04:00

A team consisting of David Chipperfield, OMA, and Sou Fujimoto is leading the design of an expansive, $1.4 billion cultural-retail complex on the coast of Shenzhen.

Called K11 ECOAST, the development will span more than 2.4 million square feet and be located in Prince Bay in Shenzhen’s Nanshan District. The project is being jointly developed by Hong Kong billionaire Adrian Cheng’s New World Development Company Limited, along with China Merchants Shekou Holdings in Shenzhen.

Image courtesy K11 Group

The project is part of the Chinese government’s effort to develop its Greater Bay Area region, which includes southern cities, such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou, into arts and business hubs by 2035. Cheng’s vision for K11 ECOAST is to establish a new creative and cultural destination for the region. The complex will consist of a mall, multi-purpose art space, office buildings, and a promenade. The complex’s design places an emphasis on balancing the architecture with the surrounding coastal...

David Chipperfield's reinvented Morland Mixité Capitale is now complete in Paris

2022-05-18T14:14:00-04:00

David Chipperfield Architects is celebrating the recent completion of their Morland Mixité Capitale project in Paris following six years of construction on a ‘Reinventing Paris’ scheme first announced by developer Emerige in 2016.

The firm’s Berlin office, in collaboration with CALQ, had been hard at work restoring and expanding the former Préfecture de Paris building into a new public attraction near Canal Saint-Martin.

Image © Simon Menges

Per the architects: “Two new building volumes facing the boulevard and the River Seine, which mediate between the scale of the existing and neighbouring buildings, contribute to the repair of the city. The volumes are raised above the ground to create a new public axis that provides a passage from the boulevard to the River Seine. Load-bearing, vaulted arcades characterize this passage at ground floor level and act as a counterpart to the stringent column grid of the existing ensemble. The complex accommodates a wide spectrum ...

Edoardo Tresoldi's installation 'Monumento' opens the Chipperfield-restored Procuratie Vecchie with a timely message on fragility

2022-04-14T12:30:00-04:00

To coincide with the long-awaited public opening of Venice’s iconic Procuratie Vecchie, Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi has produced an installation that helps highlight the mission and function of its newly reclaimed space.

Titled ‘Monumento’ and taking as its backdrop the 16th-century monumental staircase restored by David Chipperfield Architects as part of its five-year renovation project, the installation presents a subversion of the traditional thinking and rhetoric that surrounds monuments worldwide.

Image © Roberto Conte

Using his standby wire mesh material, Tresoldi was able to replicate past installations in New York and Abu Dhabi using the column itself as a kind of 50-foot-high metaphorical guidepost standing between societal values and contemporary life. Developed in collaboration with architect Carlotta Franco and with support from GICO Studio, the wrapped column is also meant to be as much in dialog with the space around it as it is expressive of a...

Prominent architecture firms voice intent to suspend work in Russia as statements of solidarity with Ukraine continue

2022-03-02T17:50:00-05:00

As the walls of the international community begin to cave in on Vladimir Putin and his acolytes in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, more prominent architecture and design firms have joined the effort to isolate Moscow from the rest of the world economically.

The past 24 hours saw the addition of David Chipperfield and Zaha Hadid Architects to the list of practices that includes BIG, UNStudio, MVRDV, Herzog & de Meuron, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Foster + Partners in either refusing to continue work on ongoing projects or issuing statements of solidarity which have resounded across the professional design world.

“As a practice, we are affected twofold. Our projects in Ukraine have sadly been put on hold by the atrocities,” began the statement published Monday by MVRDV. “Right after the start of the invasion, we began contacting our Ukrainian friends and partners in support, and we try to remain in touch. They are brave, and they are experiencing incredible hardship. We h...

Neue Nationalgalerie finally reopens in Berlin following a David Chipperfield Architects-led restoration

2021-08-24T13:16:00-04:00

Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie is finally back open following a six-year, $160 million refurbishment by David Chipperfield Architects.

The original Mies van der Rohe building from 1968 now features a restored glass facade, expanded exhibition space, sculpture garden, and improved LED lighting.

Chipperfield incorporated an earlier unrealized design for a Bacardi Rum corporation building in Cuba. The building itself was taken apart in 35,000 individual segments which each required their own 16-digit bar codes.

“We had to turn over every stone,” DCA’s Martin Reichert told the Art Newspaper last week before the museum reopening. “But we had to treat it with the same care shown by restorers handling a world-famous artwork. After 50 years of use with no refurbishment, there were a great many deficits—this was not just a case of fixing things, it was about making sure it survives the next 30 to 40 years without additional renovation work.”

Chipperfield Architects wins commission for Hamburg office development

2021-06-24T12:59:00-04:00

A three-juror panel in Hamburg has announced David Chipperfield Architects as the winner of its two-stage competition to build the future headquarters of the nation’s largest insurance company, Signal Iduna Group.

The firm submitted plans for a multi-building office complex in Hamburg’s Eimsbüttel district that will represent its second major commission in the city in recent years.

DCA’s Berlin office beat out 11 other entries with its design featuring several buildings made from recovered materials and composed of varying timber, mixed-timber, and concrete frames customized to match their differing spans.

Centered by a courtyard house that will greet workers and users of its ground-floor public space the new complex will “integrate into the heterogeneous urban environment consistently and confidently” by joining with a closed street to create a flexible scheme capable of adaptation throughout the building...

Take a look at the Chipperfield-refurbished Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin

2021-05-27T17:29:00-04:00

Nearly a decade after being appointed to refurbish one of Modernism's most iconic buildings, the team of architect David Chipperfield wrapped up construction on the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

In a recent virtual ceremony, the keys were handed over to the clients — Berlin State Museums and Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation — and the building is being readied now to re-open to the public in August with an exhibition of Alexander Calder sculptures.

The gallery, which first opened in 1968, is the only building designed by German-born architect and former Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Europe after his emigration to the United States in 1937.

"The existing building fabric has been refurbished and upgraded to current technical standards with a minimum of visual compromise to the building’s original appearance," notes a statement from David Chipperfield Architects. "The functional and technical upgrades include air-conditioning, artificia...

Modernizing a modernist icon: Neue Nationalgalerie to reopen next summer after Chipperfield-led renovation

2020-11-04T13:46:00-05:00

The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is set to reopen in the summer of 2021, more than six years after it closed for renovation, with an exhibition of the American sculptor Alexander Calder in the temple-like steel-and-glass upper level of the building. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and first opened in 1968, the museum is undergoing a €100m modernisation and refurbishment by the Berlin-based British architect David Chipperfield [...].

Reflecting on the significance, and also quirks, of Mies van der Rohe's 1967 New National Gallery, the architect of the ambitious renovation project, David Chipperfield, told the New York Times in a 2017 interview: "Mies took architecture to its extreme. And as a result, the building has some… let’s not call them flaws — it has some challenges, which we’ve had to address."

David Chipperfield Architects complete historic building conversion in western Germany

2020-10-26T14:00:00-04:00

After three years of construction, the Jacoby Studios in Paderborn, Western Germany has been completed. It was converted from a historic building complex and extended by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin. The building serves Tap Holding as their new company headquarters.

The site was originally a seventeenth century Capuchin monastery which was converted into a hospital from 1841 onwards. The Jacoby Studios project removed much of the post-World War II additions, exposing the hidden historic character of the monastery. Quarry-stone masonry from the original building resurrected the lost aesthetic of the original building.

New extension wings have been arranged following the orthogonal structure to the north, west, and south of the original buildings.

"Rooted in an appreciation of its complex historical context, the Jacoby Studios create a new urbanistic whole out of fragments," said David Chipperfield in a statement. "The project combines a wide range of the practice’s experience...

David Chipperfield's Carmen Würth Forum in southern Germany is now complete

2020-06-29T15:18:00-04:00

The extension of the culture and congress centre Carmen Würth Forum designed by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin for the Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG in the town of Künzelsau in southern Germany is now completed. The new wing comes in at 5,500 square meters and adds a flexible conference area and an art museum with a foyer and cafe to the existing concert hall and large event hall that opened back in 2017.

"This second construction phase marks the completion of the Carmen Würth Forum, fulfilling Reinhold Würth’s vision to create a gathering place for the employees of Würth and the wider community beyond. It symbolizes the connection between a place of work, its community and the surrounding environment, which the company has nurtured so impressively over the years," said David Chipperfield in a statement.

Alexander Schwartz, Partner and Design Director at David Chipperfield Architects Berlin added: "The museum and conference centre extend the events hall and chamber music hall, emb...

David Chipperfield Architects to build Rolex USA HQ

2019-10-08T11:50:00-04:00

After emerging triumphant in an international design competition, David Chipperfield Architects have received the commission for the Rolex USA headquarters in New York. It will be located on the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd Street and will replace an existing building that has been occupied by Rolex since the 1970s.

At 25 stories and 165,000 square feert, the new structure will hold new office areas, a new Rolex store at the ground level. According to a recent press release, the building will provide brand experiences across a wide range of the company;s interest and become an important symbol of Rolex's legacy of excellence, quality, and precision.

"We are proud to have been selected to design the Rolex USA headquarters building. Our team is committed to creating an exemplary building befitting the heritage and culture of the Rolex brand, as well as its prominent 5th Avenue location.," expressed David Chipperfield about the new project.