Archinect - News

Snøhetta’s Orionis planetarium debuts in France

2023-06-30T14:58:00-04:00

Snøhetta has revealed photos of its just-completed Orionis planetarium and observatory design in the northern French city of Douai.

The project opened in May following a three-and-a-half year construction phase and is defined by a pronounced desire to provoke continuous movement while encouraging users towards a rich multisensory experience on a site adjacent to the city’s Arkéos archaeology museum and Scarpe river.

Image: © Jad Sylla

The 21,527-square-foot planetarium is designed around two offsetting domes connected by a curving envelope that surrounds an elliptical interior courtyard. A landscaped garden path connection to the existing museum completes the exterior program while promoting biodiversity and linking various outdoor spaces together into one accessible whole.

Image: © Jad Sylla

According to the design team, materials used in the paneled curtain wall façade are supposedly inspired by the surrounding landscape and residential structur...

World's largest astronomy museum opens in Shanghai with an interstellar design from Ennead

2021-07-12T19:42:00-04:00

A cosmic new museum is bringing out the stars in Shanghai thanks to a celestial design from Ennead.

The Shanghai Astronomy Museum opens this weekend following a five-year construction process that left client Shanghai Science and Technology Museum with a new outpost in the heart of the city’s burgeoning Lingang district.

Photo: ArchExists.

The New York-based firm’s plans for the 420,000-square-foot museum won an international competition in 2014 for its tripartite scheme comprised of a planetarium, IMAX theater, exhibitions spaces, and a new 78-foot-tall solar telescope that will make the research center the largest of its kind anywhere in the world.

Photo: ArchExists.

Sun, moon, and stars come together to make a smart reference to the three-body problem of mathematics. The curvilinear structure of the museum is meant as a reflection of the orbit of the planets themselves. The planetarium’s profile is choreographed to look like a moonrise. Heaven an...

University of Virginia's Rotunda transformed into a planetarium, sharing Thomas Jefferson's original vision for the building

2019-11-08T18:22:00-05:00

Neal Curtis, Samuel Lemley and Madeline Zehnder conducted some keen literary sleuthing to discover Thomas Jefferson’s original intentions for the Dome Room, and then harnessed modern digital technology to bring the planetarium to life in a way that the University’s founder could not have imagined. “The concave ceiling of the Rotunda,” Jefferson wrote in 1819, “is proposed to be painted sky-blue and spangled with gilt stars in their position and magnitude copied exactly.”

While planning the early stages of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a fantastical planetarium for the school's historic Rotunda. In 2019, that vision has been achieved as the Rotunda Planetarium, thanks to three Ph.D students from the school's English department, and a grant from the Jefferson Trust.

In addition to the temporary digital-projection installation, there is a related exhibition — which features books, specimens, and artifacts from the Rotunda’s early history — that is on view through February 18.

Snøhetta designs Planetarium and Visitor Center for Norway's largest astronomical facility

2018-05-02T15:01:00-04:00

In the dense forest of Harestua, located 45 kilometers north of Oslo, Norway, the familiar firm Snøhetta has designed the expansion for the country's biggest astronomical facility. Originally built for the total solar eclipse in 1954, the Solobservatoriet is the largest solar observatory north of the Alps and an active research center, credited for several major advances including the spectrograph and the discovery of solar storms.

The otherworldly expansion, headed by the Nordic architecture practice, will add a planetarium to the site as well as other ambitious facilities aimed at providing travelers and students with a place to observe the world's natural wonders.

The centerpiece of the campus, a new 16,000-square-foot planetarium, will appear as a large golden dome engraved with constellations. It is surrounded by an undulating, crater-like ring lushly planted with grass, wild heather, blueberry and lingonberry bushes. It will house an 100-seat viewing cent...

New "C-City" museum district breaks ground in The Netherlands

2014-11-01T12:03:00-04:00

Continium. Cube. Columbus. What sounds like characters in a comic book series is really the three defining components in "C-City", a new museum district located at the entrance into the Dutch-German border town of Kerkrade. Designed by Rotterdam-based Shift Architecture Urbanism, the €20.5 million project recently broke ground and is currently scheduled to open by the end of 2015.

C-City will bring technology, science, and design in one integrated museum district. Next to the existing Discovery Centre Continium will be the C-Square, a sunken-square space for student labs, restaurants, and other public amenities. C-Square will also serve as an underground pathway landscape that connects all of C-City's facilities.