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OMA to design Wollert Neighborhood Center in Australian suburb near Melbourne

2020-03-23T16:10:00-04:00

OMA was commissioned by Australian retail developer Sandhurst Retail to design the mixed-use Wollert Neighborhood Center in the suburb of Wollert, which is about 25 kilometers (about 15.5 miles) north of Melbourne's Central Business District and is one of the fastest growing regions in the state of Victoria. So far, the practice has released only a few renderings of their scheme.

Concept. Image courtesy of OMA.

The 9,000m2 Center will combine retail and community spaces. A shaded courtyard with an amphitheater will be used for curated community events and daily activities, while the accessible roof makes room for sports, education, and potential urban agriculture and energy-saving initiatives.

Image courtesy of OMA.

Amenity spaces, childcare facilities, and wellness-focused retail spaces are spatially organized into vertical “stripes”. Along with the courtyard's landscape design, this spatial configuration was inspired by the product barcodes used throughout the...

Suburban office parks vie for renewed relevance

2019-12-05T15:45:00-05:00

Efforts to modernize suburban campuses can be as basic as organizing placemaking activities like after-work concerts or food truck Fridays. Usually, though, they require a much deeper investment in elements like upgraded lobbies, outdoor furniture, ball courts, fitness centers, grab-and-go cafes, greenways, bike storage facilities and open-plan offices that let in substantial natural light.

In her NYT piece about the renewed commercial interest in the suburban office park typology, Amanda Abrams takes a closer look at the latest investments and transformations at North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.

"After all, with downtowns everywhere becoming increasingly expensive," writes Abrams, "workers are starting to look farther afield, to areas with affordable homes and good schools."

Comic-strip ads created as marketing to entice millennials to move to a Chicago suburb

2018-04-10T13:51:00-04:00

Welcome to Homewood, Illinois, a suburb of 20,000 that is marketing itself to urbanites as a hidden hipster gem. The town, which is about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago, just launched a new advertising campaign called “Think Homewood.” Ads posted inside trains on the L’s Blue Line and elsewhere in Chicago contrast the laid-back vibe of Homewood to the stress of city living. The ads are comic strips drawn by illustrator and Homewood resident Marc Alan Fishman.

The Chicago suburb Homewood harnessed the graphic skills of a local artist to launch their comic-strip ad campaign, Think Homewood, in order to attract millennials. Joining the list of suburban towns that must now work to attract the demographic they were originally intended for, Homewood strives to market itself as a diverse neighborhood for young families.

Homewood ad campaign by artist Marc Alan Fishman.

Think Homewood addresses the inconveniences of city life, especially for those with kids, and promises a stress free alternative. The campaign plays off millennial tropes including love of avocados, children named "zen", and brunching at farm-to-table cafes.

Homewood ad campaign by artist Marc Alan Fishman.

Mexico's mass residential construction program decays into slums

2017-11-27T20:07:00-05:00

It was a Levittown moment for Mexico — a test of the increasingly prosperous nation’s first-world ambitions. But Mexico fell disastrously short of creating that orderly suburbia. The program has devolved into a slow-motion social and financial catastrophe, inflicting daily hardships and hazards on millions in troubled developments across the country.

The Mexican government collaborated with private developers to undertake the largest residential construction program in all of Latin America. From 2001 to 2012, an estimated 20 million people moved into newly built developments. The program cost more than $100 billion promising affordable housing to one sixth of Mexico's population. Yet most of this new suburbia was improperly built leading to the eventual breakdown of these communities.

On the outside these developments appeared normal, however as residents moved in the structural issues became apparent. These new suburban developments were in many cases abandoned by builders leaving unfinished communities and services. Incomplete or broken waste water systems and electrical grids lead to sewage in the streets and fires in the homes. Water treatment plants broke and were never repaired leaving many of the developments without running water for years now. Improperly built houses were destroyed by flooding resulting in many of the ...

Off-centred Considerations in the Urban Age: Review of MONU #26 by Federico Ortiz

2017-06-01T14:02:00-04:00

Since 2004, MONU has been working towards the disentanglement and collective understanding of the process of global urbanization. With its latest issue, the magazine seems to demonstrate, and at the same time question, the nature of this process, characterizing it primarily as one of decentralizing urbanization. By Federico Ortiz

In a world undergoing a process of constant urbanization, which appears to cover the entirety of our planet’s surface, we have become familiar with the idea of living in the “Urban Age” and with statistics that predict, for example, that by 2030 60% of the world’s population will live in cities. Since 2004, MONU has been working towards the disentanglement and collective understanding of the process of global urbanization. With its latest issue, the magazine seems to demonstrate, and at the same time question, the nature of this process, characterizing it primarily as one of decentralizing urbanization.

With as many diverse perspectives as collaborators, MONU #26 DECENTRALISED URBANISM probably originated in a triggering question: Are cities like London, New York and Paris, with their centralizing power, the ones to blame for Brexit, Trump, and Marine Le Pen? These elections revealed the power of the underestimated peripheral (suburban, rurban and rural) populations, as well as expos...