Archinect - News

Recalling Philippe Petit’s World Trade Center high-wire act after 50 years

2024-08-09T19:03:00-04:00

The walk can never be repeated, but it also can never be undone. You cannot fly a jetliner into a memory. In hindsight, the so-called art crime of the century has become a tribute to the lives of the 2,753 who were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and whose stories, too, will always live on. When I see a photo of Mr. Petit in the air, it suggests to me that the lost were able to bridge that distance, too.

Philippe Petit’s early morning stunt on August 7, 1974, helped sway public opinion in favor of the recently opened NYC World Trade Center towers, which struggled financially until the Port Authority changed course and allowed financial services companies to begin leasing space by the end of the decade. The 75-year-old is currently on a media tour promoting his two-day performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where his daughter’s ashes are interned.

At the time of their 1973 opening, architect Minoru Yamasaki had said his towers were "a representation of man's belief in humanity." Fans have said this notion also courses through Petit’s life and art in the most serene and apparent, life-affirming ways.

ODA unveils renderings of two massive, mixed-use towers in Fort Lauderdale

2022-05-24T17:08:00-04:00

New York-based architecture and design firm ODA-Architecture has released renderings of its Ombelle project, a pair of mixed-use towers in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Developer Dependable Equities tapped ODA to design the architecture, interiors, and landscape for the 1.5-million-square-foot structure.

Image courtesy ODA

The development, which comprises two mirrored 43-story towers, will offer 1,100 rental units, 11,217 square feet of retail space, and 27,837 square feet of indoor amenities. Ombelle is proposed to rise at 300 Northeast 3rd Avenue in the city’s growing Flagler Village neighborhood.

Image courtesy ODA

The two defining, sculpted towers rise from a 9-story podium, which is supported by a double-height colonnade. According to the architects, this reinforces a visual connection between the indoor and outdoor spaces and is aimed to foster public activity. The ground level is designed to house a mix of retail and restaurants, with open-air seating.

Image court...

Heatherwick Studio unveils updated designs for 1700 Alberni development in Vancouver

2022-01-13T17:00:00-05:00

An update to one of the most significant projects in a spate of recent high-profile Canadian luxury residential developments as Heatherwick Studio has unveiled its upgraded designs for the 1700 Alberni towers complex. The revised proposal follows community feedback taken from Vancouver’s Shape Your City public web forum.

Marked by its intricate latticework and gentle lines, the towers make up a distinctive silhouette contrasted against the city’s rezoned West End skyline. The new plans call for a repositioning and resizing of the towers to create less restricted views of that skyline, in addition to expanding the biophilic outdoor living and pedestrian spaces which give the overall development its green character.

The new street-level view of the tower. Rendering via @wearenarrativ.

“We saw an opportunity to reflect on the past two years and show a more dynamic and contemporary way to live in the city of Vancouver,” Partner Stuart Wood said in a statement. “Our design offers a profo...

The global reach of 9/11 through the memorials across the world

2021-09-11T20:16:00-04:00

Since the events of 9/11 twenty years ago, a vast array of memorials, from modest sculptures to landscaped gardens, have been erected across the world, honoring the victims, survivors, and first responders. While many of the overseas works are lesser known, they have an equally local and worldwide meaning, paying homage to specific individuals and groups while commemorating the tragedy, as a whole. Many are composed of repurposed steel from the towers, breathing new life and meaning into the former structures. In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, here is a collection of impactful tributes, from New Zealand to Germany.

Tribute to Firefighters (2002). Image: Courtesy Graham Bennet

Tribute to Firefighters (2002), Christchurch, New Zealand - Graham Bennett

Sculptor Graham Bennett was invited by the Christchurch City Council to create a sculpture commemorating the firefighters whose lives were lost during 9/11. The piece is composed of steel from the World Trade Center that had fal...

New PBS documentary details the NYC Department of Design and Construction's World Trade Center cleanup

2021-09-10T14:11:00-04:00

A new documentary airing on PBS recounts the efforts of the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) as it spearheaded the gargantuan task of cleaning Ground Zero following the attacks on the World Trade Center 20 years ago.

“NYC DDC 9/11” by Ironbound Films features a collection of historic footage interspersed with interviews of DDC staff, offering a candid recollection of the events of 9/11. The documentary goes into detail about DDC’s steadfast process of removing 1.8 million tons of debris from the site.

“As the City faced one of its greatest crises in its history, DDC managed cleanup of the wreckage of lower Manhattan, even as the search for fellow New Yorkers continued,” said DDC Commissioner Jamie Torres-Springer. “This effort was predicted to take years, but DDC staff was able to accomplish it in eight months of long, hard, and emotionally difficult work. The story of this work is now told vividly by current and former DDC staff members who shared their unique insi...

Mark Cuban just donated a trove of World Trade Center drawings to the Cooper Hewitt

2021-09-10T11:56:00-04:00

In 1962, Diniz was hired by architect Minoru Yamasaki as part of the team designing the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. His drawings in the WTC portfolio show viewers the experience of monolithic structures in the context of Lower Manhattan and inside the buildings themselves. The drawings were intended to illustrate Manhattan as a center of international business.

Carlos Diniz' drawings occupy a revered place in architectural history, and his World Trade Center drawings have been by and large kept out of public collections until now. The illustrator was first hired by Minoru Yamasaki in 1962 to give the public a sense of place and scale caused by the architecture that would later become the domineering experience for users of the buildings after they were completed in 1973.

"It strikes an emotional chord with every American," Cuban told Axios. "I wanted the actual drawings to be where any American can see them, and the Smithsonian was the right home."

The Dallas Morning News has more on the billionaire's gift here.

Frank Gehry's shiny King Street West towers advance in Toronto

2021-02-10T20:29:00-05:00

Frank Gehry is back in Toronto − at least via Zoom. At 91, the world’s most famous architect is actively working on a major project in the city where he was born: two towers on King Street West that are the biggest and the tallest buildings of his career. After more than eight years of discussion, this complex project is advancing. The developers say they will begin sales on its condo apartments in 2022.

The Frank Gehry-designed towers for a massive downtown Toronto development have come a long way since they were first proposed in 2012.

Image: Gehry Partners

Gone are the dramatic curves of the initial Mirvish+Gehry Toronto plan — the latest design updates propose two stainless steel-clad 'stacked-boxes' towers on King Street West, 308 meters (1,010 feet) and 266.5 meters (874 feet) tall respectively.

Foster + Partners unveils plans for twin condo towers in Beverly Hills

2020-07-01T17:14:00-04:00

A newly unveiled $2 billion development proposal crafted by Foster + Partners, Gensler, and RIOS for developers Alagem Capital Group aims to bring a pair of verdant, balcony-wrapped towers to Beverly Hills.

The project would be situated behind the Waldorf Astoria and Beverly Hilton Hotel sites and would bound the Los Angeles Country Club. In all, the development could render 303 units in addition to an adjacent hotel containing 42 high-end suites and 37 condominiums. The lower levels of the complex would include a retail podium filled with restaurants and shops, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Gensler is serving as Executive Architect for the development, while RIOS will provide landscape architecture services for. Under the current design, the ground level areas will be designed as lush landscapes and will be, according to reports, largely publicly accessible.

The project is slated to span over Merv Griffin Drive, a public street that bisects the project site, with a "landscaped ...

World Trade Center blueprints pulled from trash up for sale

2020-03-09T20:59:00-04:00

Blueprints for the original World Trade Center have gone on sale at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair on Friday after a Colorado man pulled them out of the trash. The set of plans for sale represents the largest floor plan of the Twin Towers complex ever offered for sale, according to the New York-based Janes Cummins Bookseller. Cummins told the Associated Press that he expected the sale to be in the six figures.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the plan set includes over 500 original plans from the 1960s and once belonged to Joseph Solomon, one of the World Trade Center architects.

The Twin Towers at the NYC World Trade Center in 2001, shortly before the September 11 attack. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith.

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...

Inside BIG's twisted, twin-towered Grove at Grand Bay

2016-12-14T13:53:00-05:00

At each elevation from the third through 17th floors, the floor plates in Bjarke Ingels Group's new Grove at Grand Bay rotate three feet, creating a twisting set of luxury residential towers that from the ground resemble the splayed bellows of dueling concrete accordions. Indeed, these 20-story sustainable towers, which are expected to attain LEED Gold status, seem to be designed as much for the entertainment value of sweeping aerial flyover shots as actual inhabitation.

The interiors do possess a kind of upbeat brutalist vibe; slanted concrete pillars face off against vibrant murals and landscape architect Raymond Jungles' gardens in the common areas, while the residences themselves take in views of the arts community in which it is sited, Coconut Grove.

“Coconut Grove is a special place with a well-defined soul, so it was important that Grove at Grand Bay respond to its community through a design that was respectful and distinctive,” Bjarke Ingels is quoted as saying in a press rel...

Yamasaki's posthumous critique of the new World Trade Center

2015-06-25T14:07:00-04:00

I must ask myself if we want to design buildings for people to fit some preconceived idea of a glass world. Is this really the future of cities?" – Minoru Yamasaki

While the critical response to the new 1WTC has been, at best, one of resigned acceptance, the original Twin Towers didn't receive much fanfare either when they first opened in 1973. Ada Louise Huxtable, then architecture critic for The New York Times, wasn't much of a fan of Minoru Yamasaki's design: "I, for one, am not in thrall to size; build very big and you can build very bad—and the very bad will be inescapable."

Yamasaki responded, defending his monoliths of slitted windows with an attack on the very concept that characterizes the new 1WTC and Manhattan's skyline today – glass: "As for mirror glass, I detest it, because buildings with it look to me as if they have cataracts, showing no live within. On the interior, it produces strange reflections of lights, objects and people which gives me a feeling I can only describe as eerie."

Yamaski's complete letter was published in CLOG's 2014 "World Trade Center" issue. For more news on the World Trade Center:

Foster's Out, Ingels' In: ...