Archinect - News

Sasaki will design new comprehensive master plan for Taliesin West

2024-03-26T16:54:00-04:00

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has announced its selection of Sasaki Associates to create a new comprehensive master plan for Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Plans for a new campus will guide the development of any new projects on the 620-acre campus (a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site) in line with the Foundation’s Taliesin West Preservation Plan from 2015. Their aim is to re-establish the site as a cultural destination for "future generations."

The site, which Wright settled with his third wife Olgivanna in the 1930s, had included a school that almost shuttered due to financial difficulties before reversing its decision and relocating to two sites in Paradise Valley at the start of the pandemic.

Photo credit: Andrew Pielage

The firm says: "The comprehensive plan for Taliesin West represents a significant step in ensuring the long-term preservation and vitality of this architectural masterpiece. By engaging with the site’s history and ecology, Sasaki’s plan will guid...

Foster + Partners, Sasaki, and actor Idris Elba float plans for a 'smart city' island development in Sierra Leone

2024-03-19T13:34:00-04:00

Foster + Partners is working on a new smart city design with actor Idris Elba for a coastal island off the shores of Sierra Leone. The news was reported by the BBC on Sunday, when the plan was revealed for the first time after five years of planning.

Sasaki Associates will collaborate with the firm, Elba, and his business partners at the Sherbro Alliance Partners (or SAP). Their plan is to preserve nature areas on the 230-square-mile Sherbro Island (which has roughly ten times the land area as Manhattan) while enacting a new "eco-city" capable of supporting up to one million residents.

The outlet reports the project is to be financed through a public-private partnership and that the island will "be designated a special economic zone with a separate legal and economic system from the rest of Sierra Leone." Some online commentators have compared it to Disney World, the crypto-funded Akon City in Senegal, or the new planned community in Northern California that’s backed by a group of...

LA’s Wilmington Waterfront Promenade opens after Sasaki landscape overhaul

2024-02-29T12:24:00-05:00

The Wilmington Waterfront Promenade in Los Angeles has opened to the public following an extensive public landscape project by Sasaki Associates. The park seeks to improve public waterfront access near the Port of Los Angeles and expands on the 30-acre Wilmington Waterfront Park that Sasaki completed in 2011.

Image credit: Barrett Doherty

The new promenade, designed by Sasaki and Studio-MLA, is described by the team as “the first opportunity for the community to reconnect with the waterfront.” Among the spaces designed as part of the promenade is ‘The Landing,’ which sits at the highest point of the park, doubling as a spot for a future bridge. Meanwhile, the ‘Upland Walkways’ consists of a series of meandering paths landscaped with coastal planting.

Image credit: Barrett Doherty

‘The Bluff’ consists of a large, flexible open lawn intended to host community events, while the ‘Tidal Steps’ is described as a “dynamic water's ...

Sasaki will oversee redevelopment of Santa Monica Airport into park space for LA County

2024-01-02T17:46:00-05:00

Plans for the redevelopment of the soon-to-close Santa Monica Airport have become clearer after the City Council approved an agreement with Sasaki Associates in December that would deliver a “Great Park” concept to the 227-acre site after 2028.

The new *Airport Conversion Planning Project agreement calls for a five-phase public consultation and research effort to be conducted by the firm before the end of 2025. A framework will come first in Phase One and precedes a draft of the project’s guiding principles in Phase Two, with the eventual naming of a study-informed ‘preferred scenario’ and alternative suggestions being produced by the end of Phase Three.

Phases Four and Five will round out the plan with a proposed implementation strategy for the alternative and eventual publication of a ‘Preferred Scenario Vision Book’ that coalesces the previous four phases into one written framework. Considerations for the immediate on-site activations after ‘Day One’ (e.g. January 1, 2029) are al...

The Cultural Landscape Foundation acquires photographer Alan Ward's archive

2023-08-31T14:19:00-04:00

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has just announced a gift of landscape photographer and architect Alan Ward’s digital archive, a donation they say provides both the public and scholars exposure to one of the profession’s most beloved practitioners.

The Sasaki Associates principal’s bequest includes 2,500 photographs. Each will be made accessible through the Alan Ward Portfolios of Designed Landscapes section of TCLF’s website and is part of the “Related Content” holdings, which currently includes over 13,000 images depicting more than 2,600 sites across the world.

Sissinghurst, Cranbrook, Kent, U.K., 1999. Photo © Alan Ward, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

France’s iconic garden at Vaux-le-Vicomte is one recent documentary subject included in the trove, which features work from the United States and twelve other countries taken over a 50-year span. A total of 20 of 110 separate portfolios will be unveiled first as part of the launch. The TCLF says they are useful...

Sasaki Associates will lead in designing the largest public park in Athens, Greece

2023-08-03T13:52:00-04:00

The city of Athens is preparing for a groundbreaking addition to its already historic city. Thanks to the efforts of Lamda Development, the city will welcome Ellinikon Metropolitan Park, set to not only be the largest park in Athens but also "Europe's largest coastal park."

Urban Land's Bennett Voyles reports that "after 3,400 years, Athens will soon get its first big park [...] When completed in 2030, Ellinikon Metropolitan Park will be 600 acres (243 ha), about three-fourths the size of New York City’s Central Park, an enormous addition of public green space that may prove as important to Athenians as Central Park is to New Yorkers."

Project render of Ellinikon Metropolitan Park shows design details inspired by the Olympic venues. Image courtesy of Sasaki Associates.

Spearheaded by international planning and design firm Sasaki Associates, the site acts as another unique factor to the development, with areas of the new park being "leftover remnants" of venues from the 2002 Summer Ol...

Sasaki is moving to NYC after acquiring Brooklyn's DLANDstudio

2022-05-03T13:44:00-04:00

Sasaki Associates will be branching out and adding a new component after an announcement this week that they are acquiring Brooklyn-based DLANDstudio and opening a new office in New York City for the first time.

The 70-year-old firm has traditionally operated out of offices in Denver, Shanghai, and Watertown, Massachusetts, where it is headquartered, and boasts an impressive and well-known international portfolio which includes the Chicago Riverwalk, Xuhui Runway Park, and soon-to-be remade Boston City Hall plaza.

Sasaki says the new addition will help bolster its ability to address core issues such as climate adaptation, biodiversity loss, environmental justice, and social equity in keeping with its founder’s visionary pursuit of ecologically-minded architecture and design.

Related Archinect Feature: Meet the Architects Designing Software to Fight Climate Change

Speaking in a press release, DLANDstudio founder and principal Susannah Drake, FASLA, FAIA said: “Environmental justice wa...

Free tool to measure embodied carbon at early design stage launched by Sasaki

2021-12-07T10:45:00-05:00

Sasaki has launched a free tool to help designers to assess a proposal’s carbon emissions from early in the design process. The Carbon Conscience App, which builds on a year-long internal research project within the firm, seeks to differentiate itself from rival applications which require extensive detail on form, materials, and quantities, and instead focuses on use in early concept stages.

The app is centered around a geographic map interface, upon which designers can allocate land to buildings and landscapes. By inputting preliminary data such as the number of floors, basic material decisions, and ecosystem typologies in the case of landscapes, the app generates estimates for carbon emissions, carbon storage, and carbon sequestration.

Carbon Conscience App interface. Image: Sasaki

“The user can compare design options, test alternate land uses, structural systems, and landscape and façade materials—and see the impact of their choices,” explains Sasaki. “By switching from turf t...

Construction update: Halfway there for Sasaki's Boston City Hall Plaza upgrade despite a slate of unforeseen obstacles

2021-08-09T20:23:00-04:00

It’s been a year since former Mayor Marty Walsh announced the start of renovations to City Hall Plaza and work is about halfway complete, despite unexpected obstacles.

The renovation is the brainchild of former Boston mayor (and current Secretary of Labor) Marty Walsh, who promised an 18–24-month construction period when the project was announced in 2019. The barren 7-acre plaza has long been an object of derision in the city after the McKinnell & Kallman-designed Brutalist building opened in 1968.

Site plan of the plaza overhaul. Image courtesy Sasaki.

Sasaki is leading the $70 million redesign which will add green space, children's play areas, and a promenade to a more accessible City Hall Plaza.

Boston.com has more on the renovation’s progress here.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sasaki (@sasakidesign)

Sasaki Associates, with RDG and AES, Wins Water Works Parkitecture Competition

2012-01-31T13:50:00-05:00

Des Moines Water Works, working in partnership with Iowa State University Department of Landscape Architecture, recently announced that Sasaki Associates, with RDG Planning & Design and Applied Ecological Services (AES), is the winning team of the Water Works Parkitecture Competition.