Archinect - News

Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation opens multi-use 'The Bev' HQ in Manhattan

2024-01-11T13:52:00-05:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) has opened a new headquarters space called The Bev in Manhattan it says will act as a “beacon for gender equity and innovation” just a few months removed from the passing of its trailblazing founder Beverly Willis at the age of 95.

The new, 2,000-square-foot multi-use space is meant to augment BWAF’s noted professional development, advocacy, and educational programs as well as provide space for its executive and support staff.

Located adjacent to the High Line and Hudson River Park in the SOM-designed Manhattan West development, the space was designed by SHoP Principal Angelica Baccon and overseen by Brookfield Properties Vice President of Design and Construction Sabrina Kanne. The space will also be used to host the BWAF's production of the award-winning New Angle: Voice podcast and special exhibitions, the first of which, the Yay Brigade-designed Pioneering Women of American Architecture, was launched recently.

Photo: Lucas Blair ...

UNStudio completes Booking.com City Campus HQ in Amsterdam

2023-06-28T14:39:00-04:00

A new HQ project from UNStudio for the Dutch travel site Booking.com has opened in Amsterdam, offering a dynamic central location it says will serve as a “recruitment machine” while creating a more inclusive, healthy, and socially engaging experience for the company’s 6,500 employees.

Video courtesy UNStudio on Vimeo.

Designed to maximize connectivity for its users and visitors to the campus’ Oosterdokseiland location, the nearly 700,000-square-foot plan creates a highly-visible, activities-laden consolidation of disparate office locations that, for over a decade, had been spread throughout the city.

Image: © Hufton + Crow

Anchored by a striking main building made of glass and steel and sited on a double-height plinth that creates an urban element underneath and around a cantilevered overhang, the development was influenced by years of research into comparable corporate headquarters and engenders a “platform for human activity,” the architects say.

Image: © Hufton + Crow

A network o...

'A symbol of reinvention': Michelin opens renovated new headquarters in France

2022-12-20T14:43:00-05:00

A recently-inaugurated renovation project for Michelin’s corporate headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, France, has given a new identity to the 130-year-old legacy brand that was “in need of a new setting to project into the future,” according to President Florent Menegaux.

The project was completed last year as a collaboration between the French studios Encore Heureux Architectes, Construire, and Base. It included adding a two-story extension and wood canopy entrance to the existing factory building at Place des Carmes which was acquired by the company in the early 2000s. An all-glass greenhouse that was enacted at the site soon after became the focal point of the project after initial plans called for its demolition.

Image: Nicolas Trouillard

As a “symbol of reinvention,” the new facades and remade greenhouse are combined with other renovated structures in order to create a more welcoming buffer between the site’s public and private spaces. Its design was a pr...

AECOM is moving its headquarters to Dallas, Texas

2021-08-19T14:31:00-04:00

Multinational engineering firm AECOM announced Tuesday that it is relocating its global headquarters from Los Angeles to Dallas, effective October 1, 2021.

AECOM CEO Troy Rudd and select corporate leaders will move to the company’s existing Dallas office, joining the more than 1,200 employees based at the location. The company’s 2,500 employees based in California, across its Los Angeles office and other offices across the state, will remain. As stated in AECOM’s announcement, the move will provide the firm “additional benefits as a corporate hub and talent magnet for the engineering and consulting industry.”

In recent years, the Dallas-Fort Worth area has been an attractive landing spot for businesses and workers. As reported by Construction Dive, since 2010, 140 companies have moved their headquarters to Northern Texas, according to an op-ed by JLL Dallas Managing Director Jeremy McGown. He notes that the metropolitan region has grown faster than any other major city, with nearly ...

Foster + Partners unveils completed PGA Tour global headquarters

2021-06-23T18:26:00-04:00

The new Foster + Partners-designed PGA Tour global headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida has officially opened. The building brings the entire organization under one roof for the first time. It focuses on health and wellbeing, with a design that blurs the boundaries between the surrounding landscape and the interior spaces. Shaded outdoor terraces and generous amenities allow for new ways of working and collaboration.

The project was first announced in 2018 and broke ground the following year. The $65 million complex was completed late last year, ready for full capacity by mid-February.

Nigel Dancey, Head of Studio at Foster + Partners, said: “On our very first visit to the site at Sawgrass, we were inspired by the quality of the landscape, the interplay of light and shade and the water. This led to our very first sketches, maximizing light and views beneath a generous overhanging roof that creates shaded external terraces and plaza spaces. The building was then set amidst a ‘...

BIG unveils infinity loop headquarters in Hangzhou, China

2021-04-20T10:53:00-04:00

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has unveiled their design for the new R+D headquarters of OPPO, the largest smartphone manufacturer in China. Named the O-Tower, the scheme seeks to reflect the company’s ethos of “endless innovation in the pursuit of perfection” and serve as an iconic gateway to Hangzhou’s Future Sci-Tech City.

The O-Tower. Image: IMIGO and BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Colloquially known as “Heaven on Earth”, the city of Hangzhou has a dual identity as both a hub for innovation, and a center of rich cultural and natural history, hosting three of the world’s 57 UNESCO Heritage sites. The O-Tower sits at an intersection of these two conditions, flanked by a natural lake, a 10,000 square-meter park, and a high-rise urban center.

The O-Tower. Image: BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

The scheme’s signature massing is shaped in response to the unique needs of contemporary tech companies. While deep, flexible floorplates are desirable by tech companies for accommodating more creative, var...

Christ & Gantenbein completes "Lindt Home of Chocolate" for Swiss chocolatier

2020-09-14T13:20:00-04:00

Swiss architecture firm Christ & Gantenbein has completed the new "Lindt Home of Chocolate" for Lindt & Sprüngli, the Swiss chocolatier founded in 1845. The new facility is located near Lake Zurich on the outskirts of Zurich and includes a factory, warehouses, an office building, and the new gateway to the Lindt Home of Chocolate, which is operated by the Lindt Chocolate Competence Foundation.

Moreover, the new Home of Chocolate features an interactive exhibition about chocolate, a research and development facility "for the future of chocolate recipes," a production plant, a chocolate shop, a cafe, and offices, all of which are interconnected by spiral stairways and dynamic walkways that span through an expansive atrium space.

The architecture sits as a simple industrial box. The facade consists primarily of red brick, playing off of the aesthetic of its surroundings. At the south-eastern corner is a cut-out that creates an imposing void to add a level of complexity and character to...

PLP Architecture unveils new HQ design for Russian tech giant Yandex

2020-06-24T15:10:00-04:00

PLP Architecture is designing a new "smart headquarters" for Yandex, the Russian tech qiant, in the Gagarinsky District of Moscow. The 170,000-square-meter campus will enable staff to have a singular space for work, recreation, and inspiration, according to the architects.

The titanium-clad building exaggerates the structures sculptural qualities of the proposal, while elevating the structure will allow users to activate the ground floor, opening visitors up to an open plaza on one side with connectivity to neighboring streets on the other side. This ground level will also feature a variety of open public spaces, including restaurants, cafes, and a computer technology museum highlighting Yandex's cultural and technological growth since the early 1990s.

The heart of the building is an open, light-filled central Hub that will house collaborative zones, an auditorium, gadget testing areas, and additional flexible spaces to encourage interaction and exchange. This central Hub will be ...

Zaha Hadid Architects' oblong design for OPPO Shenzhen headquarters

2020-01-29T19:51:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects had the winning proposal to design the new Shenzhen headquarters for consumer electronics company OPPO, China's leading smartphone manufacturer. In stage two of the competition, ZHA was one of five big-name finalist teams, which included BIG, SOM, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and Henning Larsen Architects HK.

As OPPO continues to expand, the new headquarters reflects their “commitment to connectivity through design”. ZHA's 185,000 square-meter scheme comprises of four interconnected towers standing at 200 meters tall (42 floors), which are orientated to maximize views over Shenzhen Bay.

Image courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects.

Two of the towers have flexible, open-plan spaces linked by a 20-story vertical lobby, while the other two external service towers provide vertical circulation. The towers taper inward at the lower levels to create large public spaces at street level.

“Locating the towers' service cores external...

NY City Council approves JPMorgan Chase's new HQ by Foster + Partners

2019-05-09T19:31:00-04:00

The City Council approved JP Morgan Chase’s plans Wednesday for a soaring 70-story tower to replace the Union Carbide Building in East Midtown. [...] The new tower will consolidate all of JPMorgan Chase’s employees in one building and will come with a 10,000 square-foot privately owned public space after Community Board 5 and elected officials pushed for more square footage.

Despite environmental concerns, demolition of the historic 270 Park Avenue tower in East Midtown, New York has already started to make way for JPMorgan Chase's new 70-story headquarters, which Foster + Partners was selected to design. Construction of the new tower is currently scheduled to begin in January 2021.

Rural Danish town approves construction of Western Europe's tallest skyscraper

2019-04-04T14:03:00-04:00

“It’s hard to find anybody here who is opposed to the tower. Everybody thinks it’s a fantastic idea, and me too,” says Morten Dickmann, a reporter for the local newspaper. “The Danish news media tried hard to find someone opposed, but they couldn’t find anyone.”

Move over London—there's a new supertall tower (proposal) in town, and it is aiming to dwarf the current tallest building in Western Europe, Renzo Piano's The Shard.

Courtesy of Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter/Bestseller.

The plan for this new mixed-use headquarters of fast-fashion company Bestseller was designed by Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, but it won't go up in Copenhagen or Aarhus but in the tiny, rural town of Brande, population 7,000.

The project first made headlines in 2017 when the idea of a 320-meter skyscraper in the middle of the completely flat Jutland peninsula was introduced.

Amazon HQ2 — what else can it offer to NYC?

2018-12-28T16:23:00-05:00

For years, suburbia has offered these companies acres of disposable, cheap, anonymous office parks: mostly one- or two-story concrete structures surrounded by loads of surface parking. These sites minimized costs, maximized security and allowed companies to scale up, contract or split into different units quickly — at the same time they promoted sprawl and traffic jams and transformed once-quaint bedroom communities south of San Francisco into phenomenally expensive places to live.

Even though Amazon's search for its new headquarters' locations has ended all the talks and negotiations about the company's potential impact on the cities it will settle in — New York and Crystal City, Virginia—have only begun.

In ways, the choice comes as no surprise as tech platforms have been attracted to America's wealthy coastal cities, with their established cultures, universities and transit systems, for years. The intensifying expansion of the tech industry amidst urban landscape raises many questions about corporations' powers and rights in a city.

Michael Kimmelman of the NY Times notes that companies like Amazon, through their multi-billion biding process, should offer to satisfy more than just the city's growing need for new jobs. The author suggests options: "As for housing, the city’s regulatory and zoning policies are more responsible for driving up costs than tech companies. But, in an ideal world, Amazon would reverse what it did in Seattle and commit resources ...

Snøhetta to design Ford's new Michigan headquarters & campuses

2018-06-21T17:36:00-04:00

More details on Ford's adaptive reuse of Michigan Central Station reveal that Snøhetta has been commissioned as the lead designer as part of Ford's $1 billion capital improvements project. Tasked with re-envisioning the company's Headquarters and Research Campus in Dearborn, Michigan, the firm will also design Ford's new urban campus in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood.

Michigan Central Station renovation rendering. Image: Ford.

The Corktown Campus project, estimated to cover 1.2 million square feet, includes renovating the historic Michigan Central Station, which has been in disrepair for 30 years since Amtrak last used the train station. Spanning 500,000 square feet, the updated building will house Ford and partner company offices along with public spaces.

Michigan Central Station current state of disrepair.

The project also involves developing mixed-use facilities close to downtown Detroit. The plans include restaurant and retail spaces on the ground floor, with residential provis...

Olafur Eliasson completes his first building, Fjordenhus, in Denmark

2018-06-01T19:45:00-04:00

Fjordenhus (Fjord House) is the first building designed entirely by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson. Located in Vejle, Denmark, Fjord House is set to open on June 9th. The structure rises out of Vejle Fjord and can be accessed through Havneøen (The Harbour Island).

Fjordenhus by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson, located in Vejle, Denmark. Image: Anders Sune Berg.

The building was commissioned by KIRK KAPITAL as the company’s new headquarters and includes site-specific artworks by Eliasson with tailored furniture and lighting.

Fjordenhus by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson, located in Vejle, Denmark. Image: Anders Sune Berg.

Fjordenhus by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann with Studio Olafur Eliasson, located in Vejle, Denmark. Image: Anders Sune Berg...

Foster + Partners' new Shenzhen HQ for drone maker DJI will feature robot fighting rings

2018-05-09T15:54:00-04:00

First renderings were unveiled today of Dajiang Innovation HQ, the slick new Shenzhen headquarters of drone maker and robotics company DJI.

Designed by Foster + Partners, the ensemble of two mirrored towers connected via a not so undramatic sky bridge is currently under construction.

Foster + Partners: Dajiang Innovation HQ, Shenzhen, China

"The twin towers combine sensitive research and development spaces with office and other public functions," the project description explains. "The floors are arranged in floating volumes cantilevered from central cores by large steel megatrusses – creating large, column-free spaces throughout, with unique quadruple-height drone flight testing labs. The towers are linked by a sky bridge, which will become another platform for showcasing the latest drone technology."

Foster + Partners: Dajiang Innovation HQ, Shenzhen, China

"The ground floor features a public exhibition space that pays tribute to DJI’s extraordinary reputation for technological develo...

Oscar Niemeyer's former headquarters of L'Humanité recently photographed

2018-04-14T12:31:00-04:00

Another Oscar Niemeyer headquarters building in France has been newly explored by photographer Denis Esakov. This concrete undertaking was previously home to L'Humanité, a daily newspaper formerly a branch of the French Communist Party. Niemeyer completed this project in 1989 – take a look at its current state.

New photos of Oscar Niemeyer's Communist party headquarters in Paris

2018-04-11T16:40:00-04:00

Oscar Niemeyer's Communist party headquarters in Paris was recently captured by photographer Denis Esakov. Take a new look at the Brazilian architect's concrete achievement, one of his first in Europe.

Gehry reportedly tapped for new Facebook London HQ in King’s Cross

2018-02-12T13:44:00-05:00

Facebook is close to signing a deal for a new British headquarters at the King’s Cross redevelopment in London. The social media giant is understood to be finalising outline terms with King’s Cross Central, which is majority-owned by the AustralianSuper pension fund. Facebook is expected to take four buildings covering more than 700,000 sq ft, tripling the size of its footprint in the capital.

King's Cross is further strengthening its position as London's emerging tech hub, following previous proposed developments like Google's mega "landscraper" HQ, designed jointly by Heatherwick Studio and BIG.

According to The Times and Architect's Journal, Gehry Partners is considered as architect for the new Facebook London base. Gehry and Zuckerberg go way back and have already collaborated on Facebook's Silicon Valley, New York, Dublin, and other London offices.

Foster + Partners designs new PGA TOUR global headquarters

2018-01-19T18:58:00-05:00

First renderings have been revealed of the new Foster + Partners-designed PGA TOUR global headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The proposed building will be consolidating workplaces of the more than 750 employees who currently occupy 17 buildings throughout the area, and provide enough capacity to accommodate several hundred more.

Courtesy of Foster + Partners.

From the design brief: "Located to the south of TPC Sawgrass, the new 187,000 square-foot headquarters will be nestled within the verdant landscape and surrounded by a large freshwater lake, echoing the iconic ‘Island Green’ 17th hole at THE PLAYERS Stadium Course. Envisaged as the new Global Home of the PGA TOUR, the innovative building embraces new ways of working and collaboration in response to changing media landscapes and audiences, as the TOUR looks towards the future."

Courtesy of Foster + Partners.

"The bulk of the office space within the building is located on the upper two floors, two bar massings which flank ...

Amazon has reportedly 238 HQ2 proposals to pick from

2017-10-25T13:52:00-04:00

Amazon.com Inc has received 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America vying to host the company’s second headquarters, it said on Monday. The number of applicants underscores the interest in the contest, which Seattle-based Amazon announced last month. The world’s largest online retailer said it would invest more than $5 billion and create up to 50,000 jobs for “Amazon HQ2”. The deadline for submitting proposals was Thursday.

While most cities, counties, and states eager to host Amazon's new 'HQ2' rolled out the expected tax-incentive red carpet, Reuters reports that the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest pulled out a trick from the ol' autocracy box and offered land to create a new city called, you guessed it, Amazon, while granting CEO Jeff Bezos mayorship for life.

For more about Amazon's HQ2 courtship on Archinect click here.

Vitsœ applies Dieter Rams' design philosophy to its stunning new HQ and production building

2017-10-19T20:00:00-04:00

Who said that factory buildings had to be drab, dingy halls devoid of beauty? Vitsœ, the UK-based maker of Dieter Rams-designed furniture systems, opened its new HQ and production building this week, and it's a real stunner.

Located in the small town of Royal Leamington Spa in central England, the new company building has been realized by an in-house Vitsœ team in close collaboration with Yacht designer Martin Francis, architects and fabricators specialized in engineered timber, landscape architects, engineers in their respective fields as well as industrial-sustainability academics.

Sustainability, adaptability, and workplace health were key motives in the design process for the 135-meter-long building that is naturally ventilated and naturally lit during daylight hours, offering employees big windows to connect with nature and the surrounding landscape.

Read on for more images and a project description we've received.

"Like the company’s renowned 606 Un...

Foster + Partners' new Bloomberg European HQ achieves 98.5 percent BREEAM score

2017-10-04T19:04:00-04:00

Designed by Foster + Partners, Bloomberg L.P.'s new European headquarters in London has been dubbed as the “world's most sustainable office building”, the architecture firm announced. Housing Bloomberg's 4,000 London employees, the office building was rated as “Outstanding” in the BREEAM sustainability assessment method with a whopping 98.5 percent — the highest design-stage score achieved by a major office development.

Cannon Street Entrance. Photo courtesy of Foster + Partners.

Photo courtesy of Foster + Partners.

Occupying a 3.2-acre site, the nine-story building is designed to use waste products and is equipped with unique, adaptive solutions that respond to the building's external environment and its occupancy patterns throughout any given day. Compared to the average office building, the Bloomberg HQ delivers a 73 percent savings in water consumption, and has 35 percent savings in energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions.

The ‘living wall’ in the Bloomberg “pantry”, a sp...

Christopher Hawthorne: Apple and Amazon's architectural visions "owe nothing to the American city"

2017-09-14T17:58:00-04:00

It has also been remarkable to watch Amazon pursue a dramatically different strategy. Its plans for a second headquarters suggest that in terms of architecture and campus planning it wants to be everything Apple is not. It wants to lean into the city — and thorny questions about gentrification and housing prices, to the extent that they will be a natural byproduct of this process — rather than away from it.

"Though he took a very different path to get there," Hawthorne writes in his LAT opinion piece analyzing Apple & Amazon's lofty headquarters ambitions with a focus on urban integration (or the complete lack thereof), "Bezos ultimately reached the same conclusion Jobs did: that the wealthiest and most powerful tech companies owe nothing to the American city."

Denmark may soon have its own remotely located tall tower in new mixed-use HQ, designed by Dorte Mandrup

2017-08-18T15:31:00-04:00

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter was appointed as advisor and architect for the new mixed-use headquarters of fashion company Bestseller in Brande, Denmark. Located in the company's hometown of Brande, the project will accommodate retail spaces for up to 30 shops, areas for offices, education, and public events, and even hotel facilities for traveling business guests.

Courtesy of Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter.

But the centerpiece of the mixed-use will be a slender tower that Bestseller says will stand at over 200 meters tall. (Anyone else thinking about Morphosis' proposed 381-meter luxury hotel tower in Vals?) More architectural details about the tower are yet to be released. But with Dorte Mandrup's current renderings, the tower will surely stick out in the small railway town of Brande (Population: 7,065 as of 2014). The architects say the building will be Denmark's tallest tower, once built.

Courtesy of Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter.

According to project leader Anders Krogh Vogdrup, the mixed-use pr...

Architecture critic Rowan Moore on the extravagant “palace” headquarters of tech giants

2017-07-25T20:46:00-04:00

It’s also striking that for all its fame Silicon Valley makes little impression on the visual consciousness of the world – there’s not a strong sense of what it actually looks like. Until now it has lacked landmarks. But that much power and that much money will not always be happy to be unobtrusive. We are only just beginning to see the ways in which it can change the landscape of cities.

Architecture critic Rowan Moore analyzes how tech giants Apple, Google, and Facebook are appointing world-famous architecture firms to design their increasingly extravagant office campuses, as symbols of their global power.

“For the tech giants are now in the same position as great powers in the past – the bankers of the Italian Renaissance, the skyscraper-builders of the 20th century, the Emperor Augustus, Victorian railway companies – whereby, whether they want to or not, their size and wealth find expression in spectacular architecture [...],” Moore writes. “Having as much sense of their own importance as those previous powers, tech companies probably don’t mind commissioning structures that define their time.”

Iotti + Pavarani Architetti-designed office building fills an entire block in Turin

2017-07-13T09:48:00-04:00

The new operations headquarters of Reale Group, designed by Iotti + Pavarani Architetti, was recently opened in Turin, Italy. Located on the southwestern border of the city’s Roman castrum it replaced a building from the seventies, redefining and modernizing the entire block.

Covering a built area of 23,500 square meters, the LEED Platinum certified building will accommodate 800 work stations, 150 parking spaces, a conference room for 280 people and will include a visible from the street 1,700 square meter internal courtyard.

Fernando Guerra | FG+SG fotografia de arquitectura

"The entire complex takes on board the surrounding area and “absorbs” a protected historical façade (that on Via Bertola and Via San Dalmazzo), creating a compositional solution in harmony with the surrounding buildings."

Fernando Guerra | FG+SG fotografia de arquitectura

"The architectural envelope becomes a fulcrum, a gravitational hub in the urban fabric of this part of the surrounding centre of Turin: it foc...

Allison Arieff describes Silicon Valley's outdated and dysfunctional planning

2017-07-10T14:08:00-04:00

The built environment of the Valley does not reflect the innovation that’s driving the region’s stratospheric growth; it looks instead like the 1950s. Looking at aerial views of midcentury campuses like the Eero Saarinen-designed Bell Labs next to contemporary ones like Apple, it’s nearly impossible to tell the midcentury structures from the 21st-century ones.

While Silicon Valley is a place of much interest to many, its architectural image and overall planning is hard to grasp or call successful.

Allison Arieff of NY Times argues that the isolated corporate headquarters of tech giants have no consideration for the larger context of their surroundings, and heavily contribute to the Bay area's ever-worsening traffic which in combination with the outdated zoning laws, makes the whole region an extremely hard place to live in.

"In 2011, when asked by a City Council member what benefit the new Apple headquarters would have for Cupertino, Steve Jobs responded that it’d get to keep the company there. And that’s about the extent of what it got. A project like the new Norman Foster-designed Apple Park shows a blatant disregard not only for the citizens of Cupertino but also for the functionality of the region."

Apple Headquarters in Cupertino

"Because of the Bay Area’s chronic underinvestment in housing and transit, home prices escalate and cong...

Deborah Berke-designed stylish, sustainable tower opens in Indianapolis

2017-01-17T17:13:00-05:00

Nine glassed-in, metal-fin bearing stories make up the new Deborah Berke Partners-designed Cummins Indy Tower, which officially opens this month. With its "projections and inflections," the building simultaneously juts and struts through the metropolis, creating a slender and ecologically conscious corporate HQ.

Referring to Cummins' past collaborations with architects like Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche, Deborah Berke notes that “over the decades, Cummins has demonstrated a commitment to great design that benefits its employees, its customers, and the community. This building carries that legacy forward with an environmentally sustainable design that dignifies the work going on inside while enhancing the urban realm.

The building’s articulated facades and distinctive form serve a purpose—to create a comfortable, light-filled work environment for employees that adds to the vitality on Market Street. Adding some muscle to the great bones of downtown Indianapolis, the park is a public am...

Closer look: Zaha Hadid's new “floating” Port House in Antwerp

2016-09-23T18:07:00-04:00

The glistening Port House in Antwerp is Zaha Hadid's latest project to be completed posthumously. But the glass building isn't mere folly. Built atop a disused historic fire station, the striking landmark operates as the new headquarters for the Port of Antwerp, Europe's second largest port.

ZHA was selected to design the new extension following a competition, in which the main objective was to preserve the original fire station, according to Port of Antwerp president Marc Van Peel. All five shortlisted competitors proposed a new structure above the building, but the Port deemed Zaha's design as “the most brilliant”.

At 111 meters long and 21 meters high, the new glass extension “floats” above the old fire station. “Like the bow of a ship, the new extension points towards the Scheldt, connecting the building with the river on which Antwerp was founded,” ZHA describes.

The building also shows off a glazed facade of transparent and opaque triangular facets that allow sufficient natural l...

Inside the MVRDV House, the firm's new family home-style office

2016-07-22T19:25:00-04:00

MVRDV settled into their new office headquarters inside the remodeled Het Industriegebouw, nestled in the heart of Rotterdam. Now dubbed by the firm as the MVRDV House, the building was originally designed by iconic Dutch architect Hugh Maaskant in 1952. The new 2,400 square-meter interior is modeled like a family home, filled with ample working and gathering spaces that reflect the “work hard, play hard” balance many firms strive for in their office's design.

Now with 140 employees based in Rotterdam, “[t]he expanding MVRDV family needed a new house,” says MVRDV co-founder Jacob van Rijs. MVRDV's new office has “everything that [a] home requires, a living room, a dining room, a sofa for the whole house to sit together,” he described. Surrounded by various creative start-ups and design firms, MVRDV believes they fit right in their new neighborhood.

The Family Room serves as the firm's main communal space for social interaction...