Archinect - News

MVRDV breaks ground on terrace-roof produce market in Tainan

2019-03-05T15:56:00-05:00

In one of their latest developments in Taiwan, MVRDV announced the groundbreaking of their upcoming Tainan Xinhua Fruit and Vegetable Market. Designed with LLJ Architects, the open-air wholesale produce market transforms an often-overlooked part of the food industry into a public experience where visitors can meet up, enjoy the products, and take in views of the surrounding rolling landscape.

Image © MVRDV.

Interior. Image © MVRDV.

Located in East Tainan, the market will be a simple 4-story structure topped by an undulating green roof whose terraces will each grow a different crop like pineapples, rice, tea, roses, and more. The accessible roof will also provide sheltered spots, benches, and picnic tables for visitors. As a mixed-use structure, the building will also contain the market's administrative offices, a restaurant, and an exhibition center where the region's agricultural products can be displayed.

Garden. Image © MVRDV.

“[Tainan Market] is completely functional and caters to...

Finalists named for Portland's Broadway Corridor site

2018-03-15T18:22:00-04:00

Portland's urban renewal agency has named three finalists to shape the redevelopment of the soon-to-be-vacated downtown post office blocks. Not among them: a headline-grabbing but unlikely proposal for two massive skyscrapers, the taller of which would be nearly twice the height of any existing building in Portland.

Prosper Portland has selected 3 finalists for the 14 acre post office site located in the heart of the city: McWhinney, Related Cos., and Continuum Partners. It comes as no surprise that William Kaven's two tower proposal was not selected.

Broadway Corridor total development site of 32 acres in Portland. Image: Prosper Portland.

The redevelopment effort will include approximately 500 units of public housing developed by the Portland Housing Bureau and about 2,000 units of privately developed housing—of which 10 percent will include rent restrictions for low-income households.

The Colorado developer McWhinney has proposed a partnership with the James Beard Public Market, a food culture concept which would include 100 to 120 vendor stalls as well as full service restaurants. The New York developer Related Cos. has partnered with local real estate firm Melvin Mark Cos. and the homelessness nonprofit Central City Concern.

Snøhetta gives its new Muttrah Fish Market in Oman a playful canopy roof

2018-01-03T15:00:00-05:00

Doors recently opened at the new Snøhetta-designed Muttrah Fish Market in Oman. The 4,000-square-meter facility is an upgrade from the city's older 1960s fish market and offers refrigeration, packaging, storage spaces for fish, vegetable, and fruit vendors, as well as offices, coffee shops, and a restaurant gathered below the dynamically swooping curves of the canopy roof.

From the architects: "Situated at the heart of Muttrah, on Oman’s largest harbor, the new fish market is a tribute to both the past and the future of Oman. The city of Muttrah is known for its long history of commercial trade, its characteristic port, and long-standing fishery traditions."

"Located close to the city’s original fish market, built in 1960, the new market marks a continuity of the region’s trade and fishing traditions, while also fulfilling Oman’s need to accommodate for the country’s growing tourism industry."

New Renderings of SuperPier: Google’s New NYC Digs + Bourdain Food Market To Arrive in 2018

2015-11-16T11:12:00-05:00

Last month, Seth Pinsky, Executive Vice President at RXR Realty, shared a presentation regarding the development of the long-planned rehabilitation and conversion of Pier 57 aka “SuperPier.” According to him, the 450,000-square-foot development will invest $350 million of private capital to redevelop the structure, and in return create hundreds of jobs, generate millions of dollars of revenue for the Hudson River Park Trust, and create a new destination for New Yorkers and visitors alike.

Hunger Crisis in American Universities

2014-08-20T14:12:00-04:00

As low-income populations have gone to college and food insecurity has risen up to swallow the lower rungs of the middle class, hunger has spread across America’s university campuses like never before. In some places, it’s practically a pandemic: At Western Oregon University, 59% of the student body is food insecure [...] 39.2% of the [CUNY's] quarter of a million undergraduates had experienced food insecurity at some time in the past year.

Lack of adequate and steady food is a rampant problem both domestically and internationally. A recent National Geographic article analyzed the problem of food scarcity in the US across the last fifty years. Traditionally concerned with "hunger," since 2006 researchers at the USDA have shifted focus to "food insecurity," a term that refers more to a generalized state of precarity. This is to say, in recent years, the issue has less to do with people being hungry all the time and more with people who can't count on not going hungry in the future. That this condition encompasses such a large percentage of college students is a frightening indictment of both the values and mechanics of the US economic system and its social programs.

A "food desert" is an area where consistent access to nutritious food is difficult to obtain. Many architects and socially-concerned individuals and groups are working towards ameliorating conditions in such places. Mogro – or mobile grocery – is a project th...

A privately run market misses the point

2014-02-06T00:27:00-05:00

In 2011, the Howard Hughes Corporation offered to collaborate with Mr. LaValva. He turned them down. “Hughes suggested we be part of the Pier 17 renovation,” Mr. LaValva said. “But we wanted to preserve the market.”

Joseph Hanania digs into the ongoing tussle over the fate of the buildings that once housed the Fulton Fish Market. The Howard Hughes Corporation, a major developer, has plans (designed by SHoP architects) currently underway to redevelop the site. However the New Amsterdam Market Asso ciation, which runs an existing market on the site is proposing instead to repurpose both the Tin and New Market buildings as the city’s premiere public market.

A Michigan City Bets on Food for Its Growth

2012-11-15T18:22:00-05:00

The Downtown Market, in effect, is the newest piece of civic equipment built here since the mid-1990s to leverage the same urban economic trends of the 21st century — higher education, hospitals and health care, housing, entertainment, transit, and cleaner air and water — that are reviving most large American cities.