In 2024, plenty of remarkable projects worldwide reached completion. From headline-making new housing and hotel designs in Denver to scale-pushing cultural centers in China to redevelopments of modern classics in San Francisco, here are some of our highlights from Archinect's news coverage this year.
MAD was on a roll this year, pitching new designs and opening completed projects left and right. The studio kicked off the year with their massive overhaul of the Jiaxing Train Station in China (dubbed the "train station in the forest"), followed by the curvy ZGC International Innovation Center in Beijing, and a "flying saucer-shaped" installation for the Guangdong Nanhai Land Art Festival in Yanqiao Village. Outside of China, MAD dominated headlines and comments sections in October with the anticipated opening of their "cracked-open" One River North scheme in Denver, the Ephemeral Bubble installation for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan, and the Amazing Walk design for Milan Design Week.
While ZHA featured only one completion in Archinect's editorial this year (the innovative Phoenix 3D printed bridge concept developed with Holcim, Block Research Group at ETH Zürich, and incremental3D), the firm certainly kept our attention with plenty of construction updates from high-profile projects in Shenzhen, Wuhan, Bagdad, Mumbai, and Western Sydney.
One of our favorite Foster + Partners contributions this year was the firm's $400 million redevelopment debut of the William Pereira masterpiece Transamerica Pyramid Center for developer SHVO in San Francisco. Also in the news were a pair of interlocking high-end Dubai residential and hotel towers, a new Apple Store concept in Shanghai, the Greenville County Administration Building in South Carolina, and the Radial pavilion (utilizing recycled everyday materials) for the London Festival of Architecture in June.
OMA had people debating their 'anti-iconic' Bordeaux bridge design in July (Is it a bridge? Is it more than just a bridge?). Other noteworthy projects this year included the redesign of Museo Egizio's historic Gallery of the Kings in Turin (in collaboration with Andrea Tabocchini), the LANTERN renovation at the Little Village in Detroit, Singapore's AIR Circular Campus and Cooking Club, the 2024 FW Prada Men's Show for Milan Fashion Week (as AMO), their PRINCIPLES Square furniture collection for Perth Design Week (with with UniFor), and most recently, the temporary installation and retail space for Louis Vuitton in Midtown Manhattan.
It's been a very busy year for Studio Gang, with key project completions happening across the U.S. and abroad. The new Populus hotel (promoted as the first ‘carbon-positive’ hotel development in the United States) finally swung its doors open in Denver, and so did the hybrid mass timber California College of the Arts expansion and 23-story Verde mixed-use tower in San Francisco, the new home for the College of Design at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, the University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center in Paris, and the newly restored Pavilion structure at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo.
Kengo Kuma's office didn't disappoint this year with a variety of new buildings in Europe and Asia, such as the Saint-Denis–Pleyel metro station in Paris (opened just in time for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games in the city), the striking Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian overhaul in Lisbon (in collaboration with OODA), the Audeum (or Audio Museum) in Seoul, and the recent UCCA Clay Museum in China's Jiangsu province.
Folks at BIG released photos of their newly opened Copenhagen HQ in October, and also completed the 28-story 1550 on the Green tower complex in Houston (in collaboration with Skanska), the mirrored Reflaction installation for Audi at Milan Design Week, and earlier this month, the semi-permanent, timber-framed Softshell tent (with modular architecture company Nokken).
Snøhetta was once again very busy opening new buildings on multiple continents, starting with the highly Instagrammable Beijing City Library in February, followed by the highly sustainable 18-story Vertikal Nydalen mixed-use tower in Oslo, the Čoarvemátta cultural and educational hub in rural northern Norway (in collaboration with 70°N architecture and artist Joar Nango), the Blanton Museum of Art grounds for the University of Texas at Austin, the Joslyn Art Museum expansion in Omaha (with Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture), the new El Paso Children's Museum (with Exigo Architecture), and the Far Rockaway Library in Queens, New York.
China dominated the headlines in 2024 with one major project after another opening to the public, including Heatherwick Studio's recent Xi’an Centre Culture Business District, Büro Ole Scheeren's The Axiom high-rise in Shanghai, and the curtain-like Beijing Performing Arts Center by Perkins&Will in partnership with Schmidt Hammer Lassen, to name a few. Elsewhere in Asia, BOIFFILS Architectures completed the biophilic Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 2 renovation, Reiser+Umemoto opened their anticipated Kaohsiung Port Terminal in Taiwan, and Pelli Clarke & Partners cut the ribbon for Tokyo's Mori JP Tower, Japan's new tallest building.
Noteworthy high-profile European projects were Steven Holl's Helsinki Meander Housing scheme (in collaboration with Newil&Bau), and the Henning Larsen-designed mass timber World of Volvo building in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Stateside, we remember Google NYC's adaptive-reuse HQ design by Gensler and COOKFOX at Hudson Square, Apple's new The Observatory underground space in Cupertino, EskewDumezRipple's Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, the undulating Caltech Resnick Sustainability Center by Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign in Pasadena, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s new $75 million expansion by Frederick Fisher and Partners, and, who could forget, the Studio Libeskind-designed 11-story The Atrium at Sumner in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
Smaller-scale buildings left big impressions this year as well with outstanding designs, unusual material choices, and clever detailing. In Los Angeles, we covered the completion of Club James, the latest addition to Hollywood’s famous John Lautner-envisioned Sheats-Goldstein Residence and Estate by Conner + Perry Architects. Other North American projects included Shigeru Ban's The Paper Log House at The Glass House (in collaboration with architecture students from The Cooper Union), the multi-residential housing and rooftop urban farming concept GROW by Modern Office of Design + Architecture (MODA) in Calgary, Dubbeldam Architecture + Design's lovely Bunkie on the Hill cabin in rural Ontario, and the stunning Casa Cono in San Simón el Alto, Mexico, by Estudio Atemporal.
In the UK, we loved the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion installation by Korean architect Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies, as well as Invisible Studio's rammed-earth yoga studio in Somerset.
What was your favorite new project this year? Let us know in the comments below.
Be sure to follow Archinect's special End of the Year coverage by following the tag 2024 Year In Review to stay up to date.
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