Archinect - News

Moshe Safdie discusses the donut-shaped Jewel addition to the Changi Airport in Singapore

2018-05-31T15:47:00-04:00

A 250-meter-long bouncing net three stories above ground. A 50-meter-long suspended bridge with glass-panel flooring. Walking trails amongst a lush jungle of animal-shaped topiaries in a five-story terraced garden. A 40-meter-tall waterfall cascading from an opening in a vaulted glass roof canopy. An art sculpture made up of four giant, integrated slides. And that's just scratching the surface.

Safdie Architects's $1.27 billion Jewel Changi is the latest addition to Singapore's impressive Changi Airport. This donut-shaped structure will function as a central hub connecting three of the airport's current four terminals. Safdie's design features five stories of retail, gardens and restaurants, as well as a hotel with a five-story underground parking lot.

Safdie Architects's Jewel Changi addition to the Singapore Changi Airport. Image: Jewel Changi Airport Devt.

The domed structure consists of glass panel latticework framed in steel, producing a delicate covering over the space and allowing in plenty of light for the expansive gardens within.

Jewel Changi by Safdie Architects section view.

Jewel Changi also boasts a large mall within the gardens to attract both visitors and locals, further solidifying the airport as not only a function of travel but also a destination. T...

An analysis of donut-shaped buildings in modern work culture

2015-11-20T17:54:00-05:00

That’s not to say that all circular buildings represent some emergent 21st-century order. It is interesting, though, that past precedents have usually been buildings designed for spectatorship: sports stadiums or, more resonantly, panopticon prisons, where inmates’ cells are arranged in a ring so they’re visible to guards in a central observation tower. Take away that tower and you have the Apple campus.

Circles are an emerging form of office buildings (e.g. Apple HQ, Zappos, Government Communications HQ) and organizing people (Holacracy), as they convey positive qualities like transparency and open collaboration. But, as one New Zealand artist warns in his work, what sinister undertones linger within these structural concepts?

SOM Proposes Hovering Pedestrian Donut for Future Grand Central Terminal

2012-10-19T12:28:00-04:00

Perhaps to palliate our worst Kafka-esque architectural nightmares, the city invited three renowned architecture firms, WXY Architecture + Urban Design, Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), and Foster + Partners, to imagine “the next 100 years” of Grand Central Station (which is fast approaching its 100th birthday) and the surrounding Midtown cityscape.