Archinect - News

HKS bid for Texas’ tallest skyscraper gets cut down

2023-04-28T12:12:00-04:00

Amid challenging conditions in the real estate and lending markets, a proposed 80-story residential tower that had been planned to be the tallest high-rise in Texas has now been scaled back to 45 stories. [...] Taylor Wilson, president of Wilson Capital, said the revised design comes in response both to feedback from Austin's Design Commission and to significant changes in the real estate and financial markets, which are grappling with rising interest rates and tightened lending standards.

The revised Wilson Tower proposal would have surpassed I.M. Pei’s JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston as the state’s record-holder. KPF’s Waterline development is still on track to break it by 20 feet. The episode highlights the economic stasis affecting developers in the city’s insanely high-stakes CRE market as the impacts of the tech recession compound.

"We are making some changes to the ground floor in response to both the Design Commission’s feedback and changes to the vertical nature of the building in response to current market conditions," Wilson said via email to the Austin American-Statesman. "Construction costs and interest rates are both higher now than they were when we originally designed the project. We believe this new design is more appropriate to provide an activated ground floor while remaining feasible in today’s environment."

...

Austin Transit Partnership names UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl to lead city's public transit expansion

2023-03-06T19:47:00-05:00

UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl have been selected by the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) to lead the architecture and urban design of Project Connect, a major expansion of the city’s public transit system. The voter-approved investment includes new light rail, expanded bus routes, a subway, and more services across Austin.

Austin voters approved Project Connect in November 2020, followed by the formation of ATP, an independent organization created in partnership with the City of Austin and CapMetro. It will serve to oversee the finance and development of the project, which aims to improve access to essential jobs, health care, education, and entertainment in the city.

Video courtesy UNStudio via Vimeo.

“The design team brings both broad international expertise delivering transit and public realm projects at the highest level of design and an acute sensitivity to Austin’s specific culture and heritage,” said Peter Mullan, ATP Executive Vice President for Architecture and Urban Design. “P...

Will Austin’s tall-buildings boom survive the skyscraper effect and looming tech recession?

2023-01-19T17:52:00-05:00

But joining the fraternity of cities with supertalls can also be a dubious distinction: Real estate is a lagging indicator, and skyscrapers often arrive after the boom is over, looming half-empty as monuments to a bust. Others, however, are convinced that Austin’s high-rise stampede is just getting started. Given the city’s emerging significance as a next-gen manufacturing hub this building boom could defy the skyscraper effect.

With a slate of high-rises and supertalls, including KPF’s Waterline design and the record-setting Wilson Tower from HKS in the works, Bloomberg asks if the pace of development can be sustained amidst tech’s downturn and the annals of urban economic history. The salvation apparently lies in the influx of manufacturing dollars into the city, along with a downtown area that offers what some consider to be the nation’s highest overall quality of living.

A planned cap-and-stitch project could add even more commercial parcels along a stretch of I-35 downtown beginning in 2025. The risks of repeating the same tax incentive-driven boom-bust cycle that led to so many of Dubai’s architectural headaches a decade ago are not lost on developers. For now, Austin’s only real crisis is the affordability of homes and a dearth of convenient worker housing.

HKS and Hood Design Studio’s CMNTY Culture development set for a 2024 groundbreaking in Hollywood

2022-12-06T13:54:00-05:00

An updated version of HKS and Hood Design Studio’s musically-inspired CMNTY Culture campus in Hollywood has been shared after the results of an initial study for the project were published by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning recently.

Urbanize LA has details on the promising development, which, when completed, will be one of the largest Black-owned enterprises in the city.

Image: HKS

Construction on the scheme, which is located on a four-parcel site at 6767 Sunset Boulevard, is now expected to begin in 2024 and wrap up by 2027. In total, the campus will include some 430,000 square feet of office space, a 50,000-square-foot production facility, a 500-seat performance venue, a 10,000-square-foot artists' hospitality area, and a six-story underground parking structure.

Image: HKS

The shared podium will be beset by landscaped terraces designed by Walter Hood's team and bookended by two offset volumes totaling 12 and 14 stories in height and wrapped in an LED screen facade.

Im...

HKS debuts revised plans for Texas’ tallest high-rise

2022-11-15T13:13:00-05:00

[...] Wilson Capital announced this morning that its redevelopment of the Avenue Lofts site will be significantly larger than previously reported. The multifamily residential building planned for the 0.8-acre property at 410 East Fifth Street, now known as Wilson Tower, is set to rise 80 floors to a total height of 1,035 feet — and yes, that would make the project the new tallest tower in Texas upon completion, exceeding the height of the Waterline supertall project [...]

HKS is behind the Wilson Tower project, which will complement the 43-story 700 River development that broke ground recently on a tract fast becoming Austin’s “second” downtown. The would-be new record-setter had been previously planned for only 54 stories and is now advertising lets for its 450 available luxury units. Amenities like a movie theater and indoor dog run are included in a four-story block. The rest of the program appears standard fare for a city that now boasts nine of the wealthiest 1,000 neighborhoods in the country.

Image courtesy HKS/Wilson Capital

"I don't think the need for housing is going anywhere," an unnamed developer told Austin Business Journal, referencing the state capital’s dual status as the fastest-growing city in America. "Looking into the future, when this building is planned to come online, we still see Austin with the incredibly strong fundamentals needed to support a project like this."

Image courtesy HKS/Wilson Capital

...

HKS-designed immersive entertainment venue coming to LA's SoFi Stadium district

2022-08-31T18:31:00-04:00

A new HKS-designed entertainment venue is rising in Inglewood's under-construction Hollywood Park mixed-use mega-development. The project is led by experiential media and immersive technology company Cosm and will reportedly be the first location to utilize their domed and compound curved LED technology.

The site sits adjacent to a fellow HKS-designed project, SoFi Stadium. It will feature a 26.6-meter (87-foot) diameter LED dome in a 65,000-square-foot facility that can house up to 1,700 guests. Programming at the venue will include live sports and entertainment, experiential events and content, immersive art, music, and more.

Image courtesy Cosm

“We look forward to Hollywood Park being the home of Cosm’s first venue. Their modern venue design and immersive LED technology will create a one-of-a-kind entertainment offering for our guests and our community,” said SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park managing director Jason Gannon.

Image courtesy Cosm

“From our live 8K immersive production...

Legoland replica of SoFi Stadium the largest Lego stadium in the world

2022-03-22T17:09:00-04:00

Inglewood’s futuristic SoFi Stadium is considered an architectural feat. Now, the structural marvel has been rendered in miniature form. A Lego model of the stadium — where the Rams recently captured their first Super Bowl title in the L.A. area — will be unveiled to the public Thursday at the Legoland theme park in Carlsbad. But don’t call it small.

The miniature SoFi Stadium is now the largest Lego stadium in the world. It will join Legoland California’s Miniland U.S.A. attraction, an area of the park that features models of U.S. cities, such as San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Video courtesy CBS Los Angeles

The HKS-designed stadium is made from around half a million Lego bricks and is 30 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 4 feet tall. Its assembly required more than 6,000 hours of work by 25 professional model builders. The structure arrived at the park in more than 60 pieces and was assembled on-site, which took place over the course of four days.

Image: Legoland California

The stadium’s distinctive roof reportedly required 3,500 pounds of Legos. Inside the model lies a recreation of the L.A. Rams’ starting roster for Super Bowl LVI, along with an audience of 3,000 Lego people.

HKS will transform a slice of Sunset Boulevard into a hub for Hollywood creativity

2022-03-22T13:35:00-04:00

A popular corner of Hollywood may soon be getting a lot busier thanks to a proposal for a new Grammy-worthy creative campus located at the crossroads of the entertainment industry’s two most important arteries.

Tentatively named the CMNTY Culture Campus, the proposed 500,000-square-foot design from HKS for Record Plant founder Phillip Lawrence and celebrity business mogul Thomas St. John will serve as the former’s “love letter” to the city, offering itself as a nexus of differing spaces reserved for users working across every area of the industry’s creative machine.

Image: CMNTY Culture/HKS

Hood Design Studio will collaborate with HKS for the landscape design on the two-acre site located directly across from Hollywood High School at Highland Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. The development is just a few short blocks removed from Netflix’s corporate headquarters and the site of MAD’s proposed Star office tower, which will be completed in 2026.

Once approved, the Campus will become one of...

EarthCam releases 4k time-lapse of LA's SoFi Stadium construction

2020-12-09T13:47:00-05:00

EarthCam has released a 4k time-lapse video of the HKS-designed SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The video took over 1400 days and four million images to document the construction process. The 3-minute time-lapse captures all 3.1 million square feet of the stadium. Check it out below.

Design & the trade war: American architecture firms on the challenges of doing business in China

2019-07-10T08:30:00-04:00

Trade often gets shorthanded to its most tangible form, the flow of goods from one country to another. But the exchange of services is also part of the equation, with building design offering a high-demand example in China amid an extended economic boom there.

Dallas News correspondent Tom Benning highlights the business setbacks two major U.S.-based architecture firms — HKS and CallisonRTKL — experienced while operating in China: from breach of contract, to intellectually property theft, all the way to corporate imposture, these all-too-common challenges are also part of the ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China, which, as HKS chairman emeritus Ralph Hawkins calls it, "such a growing economy, I don't think any firm can ignore it."

Construction update on L.A.'s new gigantic football stadium

2018-09-25T17:36:00-04:00

Get a bird's eye view of the new Inglewood Stadium with this 360-degree image, courtesy of architectural photographer Hunter Kerhart. The stadium, which is the centerpiece of a $5-billion redevelopment of the former Hollywood Park racetrack, will feature 70,000 seats when it opens in 2020. The HKS Architects-designed facility is expected to serve as the home of the Super Bowl in 2022, and will also play a prominent role in the 2028 Summer Olympic Games.

urbanize.LA recently published new drone's-eye-view construction photos of the impressive $5 billion Hollywood Park site—soon to be home of the shiny new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers NFL stadium (designed by HKS Architects) and a sprawling mixed-use development with office buildings by Gensler (architect) and Studio-MLA (formerly Mia Lehrer + Associates, landscape architect), shopping & entertainment venues by BCV Architecture + Interiors (design architect), Architects Orange (executive architect), and Studio-MLA (landscape architect) as well as residential buildings planned by Hart Howerton (design architect) and TCA Architects (executive architect).

Estimated cost for L.A.'s football stadium project climbs to $5 billion

2018-03-28T14:19:00-04:00

The cost of Stan Kroenke's stadium in Inglewood is climbing [...]. Owners approved raising the debt waiver to $4.963 billion for the first phase of the project, which includes the football stadium where the Rams and Chargers will play, the neighboring 6,000-seat performance venue, the 200,000 square feet of office space for NFL Media, the parking lots surrounding the stadium, and the cost of the entire 300-acre parcel.

The price tag for the stadium itself was originally estimated at $2.6 billion but is now closer to $3 billion — eye-wateringly higher than the most expensive NFL venues to date: MetLife Stadium, the shared home of the New York Giants and Jets, and the Atlanta Falcons' Mercedes-Benz Stadium, both clocking in at 'only' $1.6 billion.

BIG + HKS + MDA unveils Honeycomb resort design for The Bahamas

2014-01-27T15:14:00-05:00

BIG, in collaboration with HKS Architects and Michael Diggiss Architects, revealed their design for the Honeycomb residential building in the beach and golf resort community of Albany in The Bahamas. Commissioned by Tavistock Group and New Valley LLC, the 175,000 ft² (approx. 16,000 m²) residential building will be the tallest structure in Albany, set to become a new centerpiece for the city.

BIG sent us more details on the project right below:

"The façade has a hexagonal pattern that uniquely frames the natural beauty of the Island. The balconies are deep enough to not only provide outdoor spaces, but also summer kitchens and a pool sunken into the balcony of each unit."

"These pools have a transparent edge towards the plaza, eliminating the visual barrier between the pool and the environment. Bathers can be fully immersed in the view of the marina and the ocean beyond."

"Bjarke Ingels: 'Our design is driven by an effort to maximize the enjoyment of the abundant natural qualities of Al...

Atlanta Falcons name shortlist to design new stadium

2013-01-29T11:34:00-05:00

"The Falcons and the Authority have reviewed the Statements of Qualifications received in response to the RFQ, and the Authority has selected the following firms to be finalists and eligible for further consideration (listed alphabetically):"

the short list for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium was released yesterday. they are:

360 Architecture
Ewing-Cole
HKS Inc.
Populous + SHoP Architects
Tvsdesign/Heery/Gensler

HKS is chosen to design new Vikings stadium

2012-09-28T12:08:00-04:00

A nearly two-month search for the firm that will design the new $975 million Vikings stadium ended Friday morning when the team and the public board overseeing construction of the project selected HKS Inc. of Dallas, which recently designed new NFL stadiums for the Dallas Cowboys and Indianapolis Colts.