Archinect - News

BIG + Heatherwick Studio's Google Campus roof canopy unveiled

2019-09-11T21:00:00-04:00

Construction on the long-anticipated Google Charleston East HQ is making steady progress. The campus, designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, will be partially accessible to the public and will include a series of pavilions, cafes, shops, as well as retail and plenty of landscaping for both employees and local residents to enjoy. A series of aerial photos of the construction progress have been released by the 111th Group.

The 111th Group has provided the finest in aerial photography for California's Bay Area and beyond since 1994. Specializing in commercial real estate photography, mapping, aerial surveys, GIS, construction progress photography and more, the 111th utilizes airplanes, helicopters and FAA approved drones to provide high quality photography and videography services. The 111th Group is located in the heart of the California's Silicon Valley.

Also, check out this drone video of construction progress from earlier this year:

Controversial plan for garden bridge in London is finally scrapped

2017-08-14T13:58:00-04:00

Lord Davies, the chair of the trust, wrote to Khan outlining the reasons why the trust had taken the decision. He said it was “with great regret that trustees have concluded that without mayoral support, the project cannot be delivered”.

Back in April, London mayor Sadiq Khan announced that he would not spend any more taxpayer money on the controversial garden bridge plan. The project, propelled by Khan's predecessor, Boris Johnson, has been criticized for its inability to raise the private funds promised and its subsequent mishandling of public money. Upon taking office, Khan ordered an investigation into whether the bridge represented value for public money and ultimately, the city decided to remove financial backing. Without help from the city, the Garden Bridge Trust has struggled to come up with the remaining funds necessary to complete the project and the bridge has been officially scrapped by the organization.

London Mayor Sadiq Kahn scraps Garden Bridge

2017-04-28T05:07:00-04:00

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has finally pulled the plug on the controversial plan for a garden bridge across the Thames, announcing that he would not provide the vital financial guarantees needed for construction to begin. In a letter to the Garden Bridge Trust, the charity leading the much-delayed project, Khan said he was taking the decision because of a continuing shortfall in fundraising for the scheme, and a lack of the necessary land use agreements despite three years of talks.

The Garden Bridge: a sign of our "post-truth" times?

2017-04-17T12:29:00-04:00

The garden bridge, proposed to cross the Thames from the South Bank to Temple, is nothing if not a landmark of the post-truth era. It has wrung tens of millions out of the public purse on the basis of deceptions, distortions and facts that proved to be fake. First sold as “a gift to the people of London”, entirely paid for by private sector donations, it is now due to cost a minimum of £60m in public money. Its estimated total cost has gone from £60m to “north of £200 million”.

Its claims to fundraising prowess are exaggerated, its promised transport benefits minimal. Its backers assert overwhelming public support on the basis of a poll that told those polled nothing of the costs and drawbacks of the project.

Thomas Heatherwick awarded Honorary Fellowship by Goldsmiths, University of London

2016-07-05T10:47:00-04:00

Heatherwick who founded Heatherwick Studio in 1994 has been recognised for his 'innovative' contribution to the architecture and design field.

Writer and Goldsmiths lecturer Adam Mars-Jones, who will introduce Goldsmiths’ new Honorands to the stage over four graduation ceremonies this July, says:

“Thomas Heatherwick has a multi-disciplinary approach, a practice of looking
at things afresh and moving in unexpected directions, so that the resulting objects are both elegant design solutions and examples of lateral thinking made visible.”

His best known projects include the Olympic Cauldron for the London 2012 Olympic Games and the New Bus for London. In 2013 he was awarded a CBE for his services to design.

London's garden bridge, the saga continues

2016-05-31T04:44:00-04:00

A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun. “We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said.

Although Khan originally showed reservations, it was revealed last week that he would back the project pertaining to certain conditions.

Read more on the controversial project here:

Google loses to LinkedIn in Silicon Valley HQ pitch

2015-05-06T15:29:00-04:00

In a blow to Google’s expansion plans, on Tuesday the Mountain View City Council voted to give the search giant roughly a quarter of the office space it had requested for the project, and instead awarded the lion’s share of the city’s future office development –- 1.5 million square feet –- to LinkedIn. Google received about 500,000 square feet, or about enough to build one of the four buildings it had proposed.

How this news will affect BIG and Heatherwick's design for the Googleplex expansion is as of yet undetermined. Earlier today, we learned that Google planned on constructing its new HQ using "crabots", so clearly sights were set on the Mountain View City Council giving the go-ahead. David Radcliffe, Google's VP of real estate, said in an emailed statement: “We know the City Council had a tough decision to make last night and thank them and our community for more than six hours of debate,” and that Google would “continue to work with the City on Google’s future in Mountain View.”

Details on BIG and Heatherwick's proposal here.

Look inside Heatherwick Studio's newly opened Learning Hub at NTU Singapore

2015-03-12T20:53:00-04:00

After Heatherwick Studio won the competition to design the Learning Hub at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the cocoon-like building finally opened its doors this week. Alongside Heatherwick Studio, CPG Consultants worked as the Lead Architect and Sustainability Consultant for the Learning Hub. The 8-story building is NTU Singapore's first redevelopment in 20 years, and is also part of the university's larger £360 million ($536.3 million) redevelopment plan for the campus.

Although the building looks enclosed from the outside, the mixed-use Hub forgoes the traditional box-shaped layout of university buildings to encourage instead an open learning environment for the school's 33,000 students and faculty. Tapering toward a central public atrium, the building's 12 concrete towers provide a total of 56 cornerless smart classrooms that NTU designed to reflect their new pedagogy that promotes small-group teaching and active in-person learning, an important method to uphol...

Critical response to Googleplex expansion focuses on suburban development, not architecture

2015-03-10T15:37:00-04:00

Google’s choice of BIG and Heatherwick Studios to design their Mountain View campus expansion is true to form: big, brash, debatably realistic, with a dash of techno-utopianism. The critical response to the proposal – a series of webbed glass shells covering reconfigurable utility spaces, integrated with the North Shore’s natural landscape and urban life – depended on where it was published. Design and architecture publications picked at BIG and Heatherwick’s design; tech and general publications focused on mega-client Google and the changes to Mountain View.

The renderings released at the end of February (see here) are part of a massive master plan submitted by Google to Mountain View officials on February 27. It is highly unlikely it will proceed as-is. But with the sheer real estate that Google commands in Mountain View, this project adding 2.5 million new square feet to Google’s cache of the majority of privately owned land in the North Bayshore area, it’s certainly not scaling ...