Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects' Infinitus Plaza opens in Guangdong

2021-11-11T18:11:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects’ Infinitus Plaza has opened in Baiyun, a city in the north of China’s Guangdong Province.

The 185,643-square-meter project serves as the new global headquarters for healthcare provider Infinitus China. It includes the company’s herbal medicine research facilities and safety assessment labs, as well as a learning center for conferences and exhibitions.

Photo: Felix Amiss / Zaha Hadid Architects

A plaza defines the gateway to the new Baiyun Central Business District at the site of the decommissioned Baiyun Airport. With the aim of establishing healthy, adaptable, and collaborative workspaces, the plaza is designed over eight stories as a series of infinity symbol-shaped layers, claiming to enhance interaction and communication between all departments.

Photo: Liang Xue / Zaha Hadid Architects

The structure is arranged around central atria and courtyards, creating a variety of shared indoor and outdoor spaces. Interconnecting bridges also house various flexible co...

Rockefeller Center's sunken plaza could receive substantial renovations

2020-01-20T15:40:00-05:00

Architects Gabellini Sheppard Associates and developers Tishman Speyer have unveiled a series of substantial changes for the outdoor public realm areas associated with the Rockefeller Center complex in New York City.

The proposal, presented to the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission last week, aims to improve pedestrian circulation and visibility throughout the iconic sunken plaza and surrounding areas by adding new stair configurations, upgrading the storefronts that currently line the plaza with a ribbon of operable doors, relocating several statues, and repaving the terraces overlooking the sunken court to make them more wheelchair accessible.

View of 30 Rockefeller Center, designed by Raymond Hood. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user David Shankbone.

The 19-building Rockefeller Center complex was originally designed in the 1930s by architect Raymond Hood, the designer behind the Chicago Tribune Tower and other notable early 20th Century skyscrapers. The complex was built in p...

Adjaye Associates teams up with Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd for their first Sydney project

2019-12-08T14:29:00-05:00

Following a competitive expression of interest, the City of Sydney recently commissioned Adjaye Associates and renowned locally based Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd to design the scheme for 180 George Street, which comprises a new public square, plaza building, and public artwork near Circular Quay. Currently scheduled for a 2022 completion date, the development will be Adjaye Associates' first Sydney project.

The team's design is rooted in lost history and revolves around the themes of heritage, identity, and place. Inspired by Aboriginal dot painting, one of the building's distinct features is a 27x34m perforated canopy of scattered, circular mirror-lined openings that will filter dappled light onto the plaza below. The same circular pattern continues onto the paving of the plaza through a series of steel circles and cylindrical glass skylights, which allows light to filter all the way down to the bicycle facility beneath the plaza.

Image courtesy of Adjaye Associates.

Artist Dani...

The Cultural Landscape Foundation organizes tour of San Francisco's finest public spaces

2019-09-10T10:00:00-04:00

Drawing on the Bay Area's rich cultural landscape legacy, this weekend of free, expert-led tours will feature dozens of sites, including gardens, campuses, plazas, public parks, and cultural institutions. An online city guide and printed guidebook will be produced in tandem with the Weekend.

The tours, scheduled for September 14 and 15, include visits to the Makoto Hagiwara-designed Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden, the first public Japanese garden in the U.S., and to San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, a site currently undergoing substantial renovations.

Los Angeles's Music Center Plaza makes its public debut

2019-09-06T19:45:00-04:00

RCH Studios recently completed a $41 million renovation of the public plaza that unifies the Music Center arts complex in Downtown Los Angeles.

Flanked on either side by the Welton Becket-designed Mark Taper Forum and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the plaza has been revamped with an eye toward universal design and passive recreation.

Aerial view of the revamped plaza. Image courtesy of Tim Street Porter.

For the project, RCH Studios has added a total of five new structures to the 53-year-old plaza, including a welcome center, a full-service restaurant, a wine bar, a coffee shop, and a series of accessible public restrooms.

The space, designed as a multi-functional “plaza for all,” has been reconsidered by the architects as the Music Center's "fifth venue," joining the Ahmanson Theatre, located behind the Taper Forum building, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which sits across the street.

At the center of the space sits a joyful splash pad, while surrounding areas, formerly composed ...

A plastic pavilion dazzles in Mexico City through innovation and discourse

2019-01-16T11:56:00-05:00

Showcased during the Mextrópoli International Festival of Architecture, one of the largest festivals in Latin America with over 50,000 people in attendance, I-CONO dazzles the streets of Mexico City. Aimed at creating and sparking discussion around architecture and the city architects, students, locals, and tourists from all over come to the event. The 2018 project winners, Bianchimajer and Anna Merci, were chosen to headline the festival's Mextrópoli Pavilion structure with I-CONO. Made of 2500 plastic bottles and standing a little over 21 feet high, the project reflects on the public's interaction with architecture and the city. The public piece creates an immersive sensorial display, allowing visitors to be transformed through sound, light, shadow, and color all while standing in one of Mexico City's most famous plazas. The pavilion strives to spark thoughts and discussions of how the architecture of Mexico City can be understood and juxtaposed with a temporary public installatio...

The New Yorker commiserates the demolition of Citicorp's brutalist plaza, recently named a protected "city landmark"

2017-10-17T14:42:00-04:00

New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission declared the Citicorp complex a protected landmark on December 6, 2016, but between that designation and its earlier “calendaring” (the scheduling of a public hearing and the first formal step in the designation process) in May of last year, approvals for demolition and new construction were secured.

Despite being named a city landmark in 2016, the brutalist sunken plaza of 601 Lexington Avenue, formally known as the Citicorp Center, was demolished over the summer.

"The finest part of the new urban composition was a sunken plaza, a dozen feet below sidewalk level. Entered from the block’s southwest corner and uncannily sheltered by the underbelly of the elevated skyscraper ten stories overhead, it was a consequence of the city’s “plaza bonus” zoning, which allowed developers to build higher in exchange for incorporating public space into their property. It was the work of Hideo Sasaki, one of a great generation of landscape architects—Dan Kiley, Lawrence Halprin and Harriet Pattison prominent among them—who worked alongside such familiar heroes of mid-century modern design as Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn. "

Gensler will lead the 200,000-square-foot renovation of the plaza.

Brooks + Scarpa unveils “spinning” Gateway Sculpture in Pembroke Pines, Florida

2017-08-08T17:39:00-04:00

Brooks + Scarpa designed the Gateway Sculpture to welcome visitors to Pembroke Pines' new City Center in Florida. Painted in a bright, hard-to-miss yellow, the sculpture provides “way-finding and anchor[s] a sense of arrival.”

The steel sculpture rises as tree columns that lead to perforated plates. Located in breezy Pembroke Pines, the sculpture's plates appear to spin continuously in the wind (animation clip below).

Photo courtesy of Brooks + Scarpa.

During the day, the sculpture creates a dappled light effect on the ground, while providing necessary shaded seating. It also includes programmable up lighting at night. Working with a limited budget, Brooks + Scarpa used durable materials like stainless steel and environmentally sensitive paint that could withstand Florida's humid, coastal climate. Large planting areas that surround the structure act as “rain gardens” that can collect stormwater from the entire building and the hardscape of the publi...

Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill unveils Al Wasl Plaza scheme for Dubai Expo 2020

2017-04-26T20:07:00-04:00

After securing the commission in a fierce competition, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture revealed their design of the Al Wasl Plaza for the World Expo 2020 in Dubai. As the Expo's last major design element to be finalized, AS+GG's building will stand among other major pavilions designed by Foster + Partners, Grimshaw, BIG, and Santiago Calatrava's falcon-like UAE Pavilion. Back in 2013, AS+GG had the winning scheme for the 2017 Astana World Expo site.

According to the architects, Al Wasl Plaza is named after a historical reference to Dubai and also translates to “connection”, pertaining to the Expo's overall “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future” theme.

Al Wasl Plaza will be a central event hub at the heart of the 4.38-square kilometer Expo site that is being masterplanned by HOK, Populous and Arup. It'll also connect the three sub-thematic districts, “Opportunity”, “Sustainability”, and “Mobility” — whose pavilions are being designed by BIG, Grimshaw, and Foster + Partners, r...

DTLA's Music Center Plaza will get a $30M remodel, its first since 1964

2016-07-19T15:56:00-04:00

Grand Avenue’s Music Center Plaza is about to get a major renovation for the first time since it opened to the public in 1964. Often overshadowed (literally) by the prominent Downtown venues that stand above it, the plaza is a gathering place and event space in its own right. Thus, a major part of the plan would increase event capacity from 1,500 to 2,500. [LA County] has already given $2 million to plan the project, with $25 million of funding expected down the road.

More recent L.A. news on Archinect:

Michael Maltzan proposes greening L.A.'s 134 freeway

Downtown LA has a new museum on the horizon

Historic LA Times Building to be redeveloped

"Bouncy-house urbanism is on the rise." – Christopher Hawthorne rides the U.S. Bank Tower's 'SkySlide'

Agence Ter and Team wins Pershing Square Renew with “radically flat“ proposal

L.A.'s "People St." initiative puts public place-making into the public's hands

2014-02-13T14:27:00-05:00

Communities can transform underused areas of L.A.’s largest public asset—our 7,500 miles of city streets—into active, vibrant, and accessible public space with People St, a program of the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). Eligible Community Partners can apply for approval to create projects that enhance the quality of life in this city. Three innovative types of projects are available: Plazas, Parklets, and Bicycle Corrals.

Los Angeles began piloting its "People St." program in 2011, developing spaces designed to reclaim sections of streetspace for public recreation and use, rather than car traffic. The projects were few but popular, including the Sunset Triangle (designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios) plaza in Silverlake, a couple of parklets in Downtown, and bike corrals in Atwater Village and Highland Park. Led by LA's Department of Transportation and invigorated by LA's current mayor, Eric Garcetti, the program will accept applications for "People St." initiatives by any eligible community group, beginning this March.

The program is designed not only so communities can individualize their surroundings and make their city more livable, but for LADOT to expedite city improvement projects. Initiatives that otherwise would have taken years of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars become faster and cheaper to execute, led by the people most in touch with the project site, and approved by city of...

Stewart Hollenstein & Colin Stewart Architects Win Sydney’s Green Square Library Competition

2013-02-27T19:00:00-05:00

The City of Sydney has just announced the winning team in the international competition to design a new library and plaza for Green Square, one of the city's major new developments. The jury, including famed architects John Denton, George Hargreaves, and Pritzker Prize winner Glenn Murcutt, selected the entry by Stewart Hollenstein in association with Colin Stewart Architects from a field of 167 entrants from 29 countries.