Archinect - News

3XN's mass timber Sydney Fish Market project tops out in Australia

2024-12-20T13:16:00-05:00

Construction on the new Sydney Fish Market from 3XN has topped out in Australia. The 700,000-square-foot building will become the largest fish market and have the largest glulam roof structure in the southern hemisphere once completed. Its PV-paneled roof is calibrated to withstand high wind loads while meeting the spatial demands required by the marketplace, is held in place by 594 beams, and is capable of harvesting rainwater throughout the year.

The project offers a worthy follow-up to the Danish firm's award-winning work on the upcycled Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney. They are working locally with local architects BVN, GXN Innovation, and the landscape architects Aspect Studios.

3XN shares new Copenhagen Children's Hospital images ahead of 2026 opening

2023-08-16T13:57:00-04:00

3XN has shared photos of their nearly complete Copenhagen Children’s Hospital project in the Danish capital.

Spanning 58,000 square meters (about 624,300 square feet), the design will yield a total of 219 beds for children, teens, and pregnant women, 15 operating rooms, 57 ambulatory care suites for children and adolescents, another 30 for adults, 14 delivery rooms, and a nuclear diagnostics center.

Once it opens early next year, the hospital will have a capacity for 900 persons in addition to 1,200 staff. The firm says its design is meant to harness the power of play as a palliative measure and will be completed at a cost of $350 million for its client, the Capital Region of Denmark.

Image: 3XN

Formed by two asterisk-shaped volumes meant to evoke the image of a pair of widespread hands connected together at the wrist plate, the bays inside the individual "fingers" in the design are bookended by winter gardens at the tips and share a central core reserved for family lounge...

Innovation is the key to 3XN and Itten+Brechbühl's new mass timber campus expansion in Switzerland

2022-08-18T09:00:00-04:00

A little more than 30 years after its opening in 1991, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Innovation Park in Ecublens, Switzerland, has announced a major campus expansion effort to be spearheaded by 3XN and the local studio Itten+Brechbühl (IB).

Their new masterplan, named Ecotype, includes 10 new mass timber structures and a smattering of biophilia-lined greenspaces that will gradually double the size of the entrepreneurial-oriented EPFL’s campus over the course of a ten-year timeframe. According to 3XN’s Jan Ammundsen, "Ecotope will be a campus that facilitates and generates disruptive innovative solutions by being the interface between EPFL and society at large."

Image render courtesy of 3XN.

The project is being undertaken in order to ensure that the 30 or so startups the Innovation Park produces annually will provide the physical spaces needed to thrive. The innovation park will be developed around six core "principles" of biophilia – "serendipity, modularity, ...

Design team selected for the new Shenzhen Natural History Museum

2020-11-30T11:22:00-05:00

3XN, B+H, and Zhubo Design were recently awarded first place in an international design competition for the new Shenzhen Natural History Museum, set to be the first large-scale comprehensive natural museum in Southern China once complete.

The new 42,000-square-meter museum will be dedicated to the interpretation and communication of the theories of natural evolution, showing the region of Shenzhen and its ecology in the larger context of the world.

The design scheme, entitled "Delta," organically emerges from the river delta that sits on the site, inviting visitors to traverse atop its accessible green roof. A public park expands throughout the roof and articulates the museum's organic form. The bending geometry leads museum-goers to a cave-inspired passage that connects to the museum lobby along with multiple cafes and public spaces.

Pritzker Prize Laureate Yvonne Farrell, Co-Founder of Grafton Architects and one of the judges for the competition, said of the proposal: "This buildi...

3XN unveils design for tallest timber office structure in North America

2019-03-26T09:12:00-04:00

Danish firm 3XN revealed their design for T3 Bayside, which will be the first office structure to emerge in Toronto's Bayside neighborhood. Once built, at 42 meters high, the 10-story structure would reportedly be the tallest timber office building in North America. Currently in design development, the project is part of a 2,000-acre revitalization initiative that will transform the Toronto waterfront.

Exterior. Credit: 3XN.

Built using sustainable Cross Laminated Timber, T3 Bayside's two wooden buildings were designed to complement and activate its surrounding live-work-play neighborhood. Retail spaces will be located on all sides and a new central plaza will be surrounded by stepped community and shared spaces like galleries, flexible offices, and coworking facilities.

“Located along Queens Quay East and flanked by Merchant's Wharf, T3 Bayside presents an opportunity to enhance and enforce the existing master plan on multiple levels. Through a series of stepped roof terraces, the b...

Sydney's famous fish market reveals new design by Danish firm 3XN

2018-11-06T15:58:00-05:00

Sydney's Fish Market will undergo a $250 million expansion designed by the renowned Danish firm 3XN. As part of the city's plan to revitalize the harbor, the iconic attraction will be relocated to Blackwattle Bay, where it will provide greater public access to the city's prime waterfront.

Currently, the Sydney Fish Market brings in more annual visitors than the Great Barrier Reef and accounts for more than 20% of international visitors to the Sydney area. The new cultural facility will help the attraction become more community oriented, providing improved public space, dining options, and transport connectivity.

The upgraded market will host a seafood cooking school, restaurants, bars, new public wharves, a waterfront promenade, and a new ferry stop. Working with with local architect BVN, GXN Innovation, and landscape architect Aspect Studios, the project will also provide improved facilities for the city's fishers and fishmongers, as the original center was beginning to show signs ...

3XN to design new arena in the heart of richly historic Bergen, Norway

2018-08-31T20:22:00-04:00

3XN was put in charge of designing a new arena and masterplan in Norway's historic port city of Bergen. Located in central Bergen's Nygardstangen district, the arena will be a catalyst to revamp the area, which has long been disconnected with the rest of the city and its waterfront.

Nygårdstangen Utvikling — a consortium comprising of Olav Thon, EDG Property, and Rexir — appointed 3XN for the project. The Copenhagen-based firm will work with GXN and Arup on a design that will revive the area while remain considerate of its historic surroundings and UNESCO heritage sites. Opus Bergen will lead a feasibility study of the area.

Image courtesy of 3XN.

3XN hasn't revealed too many project details and only a few renderings, but so far, the urban arena masterplan will include new housing, hotel, cinema, and a police academy, and will connect to surrounding districts via public plazas and vibrant street scapes.

“In developing this new arena, we considered the character...

3XN + Gerner Gerner Plus propose undulating aquarium at Vienna's Schönbrunn Zoo

2018-04-25T15:04:00-04:00

3XN and Austrian firm GERNER GERNER PLUS unveiled a new aquarium scheme titled “Poseidon's Realm”, which won second place in an international competition of the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna (A winner is yet to be announced). Working with aquarium specialists ATT, the team designed the aquarium with an undulating silhouette so that it appears like “a great, mysterious veil” across the zoo's landscape.

Image © 3XN.

Covering 6,000 m2 (65,000 sq.ft), the building is divided into four levels and topped with a green roof that is embedded within the zoo's path network — plus, the roof houses a bearded vulture aviary.

The aquarium features a glazed, wave-shaped welcome entrance that leads visitors into a “waterworld” tour. Changing temperatures, ambient sounds, lighting, and ceiling heights add to the experience. The main path widens into smaller bays that lead to individual tanks, creating a more intimate experience between visitors and aquatic life. At the end of the tour is a gi...

3XN to Design University Building in Stuttgart, Germany

2013-07-10T16:21:00-04:00

[...] the Danish architects have been announced winners of the invited competition for a new building for German university Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart. A total of 25 companies were invited to compete, more than 130 had applied for prequalification.

Editor's Picks #253

2012-03-04T18:04:00-05:00

Chinese architect Wang Shu was this week named the 2012 Pritzker Prize winner. Will Galloway commented "unexpected but very coolio. i met wang shu last year at conference held by my uni her in tokyo. nice guy and very impressive presentation. love his work and his approach. i like that pritzker is not going after the usual suspects, personally."

Woody Evans a librarian living on the south side of Dubai., recently interviewed Sophia Vyzoviti an assistant professor of architectural design methodology at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly Greece, about Building Between Dimensions.

They discussed augmented reality, touching stuff, and the aesthetics of smart textures. Sophia is quoted therein saying "Material computing is a recent discipline specific term that describes the analogue form-finding processes complementing the new digital design tools". The two also explored the possible implications of applying the phrase uncanny valley from robotics to the development of biomimetic architecture. There is also this mouthful of a passage, used to describe Sophia’s book Soft Shells, "The work is primarily analogue, conducted in a low-tech, high-concept fashion, but operates as a digital morphogenesis propedia, exercises algorithmic thinking and suggests alternative and cross-over fabrication methods".

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