BIG's Cactus Towers to join Dorte Mandrup's urban IKEA masterplan in Copenhagen

2017-08-15T18:04:00-04:00

Bjarke Ingels Group recently unveiled the renderings for two hexagonal “Cactus Towers”, as part of a 74,000 square-meter masterplan in Copenhagen that fellow Danish practice Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter is in charge of designing. The project will be built in the Vesterbro district at the Kalvebod Brygge waterfront.

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter's urban IKEA masterplan, which includes BIG's Cactus Towers (upper left corner). Rendering: Luxigon.

BIG's residential towers, standing at 60 and 80 meters tall, will have 500 compact “youth rooms” with an average size of 30m2 as well as balconies and terraces on each story. The project gets its name from the towers' rotating hexagonal cores, which form a distinctly “spiky” silhouette. According to Magasinet KBH, the towers are BIG's first residential project in Copenhagen since their acclaimed Ørestad projects, which include the 8 House.

Image courtesy of BIG.

The Cactus Towers will over...

Eric Owen Moss wins top Austrian honor

2016-07-07T13:17:00-04:00

Very few people have a neutral reaction to Eric Owen Moss: in his conversation and his work, he can be abrasive, challenging, enlightening, and inspirational. For its part, Austria awarded him with its Decoration of Honor for Science and Art on June 21st, celebrating five decades of practice that have produced the Hayden Tract and the Albuquerque Rail Yards Master Plan, among other works.

Culver City's Hayden Tract, which has gradually filled out with Moss' buildings since he was initially commissioned to work on the project in 1991, is arguably one of the most compact yet engrossing architectural walking tours in Los Angeles. Formerly a strip of overlooked industrial warehouses, this part of the city has in the past few decades emerged as a low-slung cultural nexus, rewarding those who take the time to note the unusual and painstakingly rendered structural details. There's a raft of cactuses suspended mid-air, the Cold War afterimage of Stealth, the glass bisected Slash and Backsla...

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BIG's Cactus Towers to join Dorte Mandrup's urban IKEA masterplan in Copenhagen

Eric Owen Moss wins top Austrian honor