The Shanghai Tower is projected to be the one megatall tower to be completed this year, according to The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's 2014 Tall Building Data Research Report. Since construction began in 2008, the 632-meter structure recently began its final phase.Designed by a... View full entry
Why not ask Howard Hughes to abandon its current plan and do something really wonderful and revive the Guggenheim plan for Gehry’s gargantuan palace of titanium ribbons? The residential conversion of so many major office buildings is going, eventually, to create a need for new office buildings. Gehry’s plan could be enlarged gracefully to accommodate both offices and condominiums and rebalance the famous Lower Manhattan skyline... — 6sqft
Does Gehry still the chops to revive Lower Manhattan? One former New York Times architecture critic, Carter B. Horsley, proposes bringing Gehry's aborted idea for South Street Seaport back to life. The plan would replace SHoP Architect's recently scaled-back design for the waterfront site. View full entry
The restoration of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin will cost an estimated €101m [...]. This masterpiece by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, which opened in 1968, was closed in early January.
David Chipperfield Architects has been entrusted with the refurbishment project, having found international acclaim for its work on rebuilding the Neues Museum on Museum Island in Berlin. The British architect pledged to “keep as much Mies as possible” at a symposium in late November.
— theartnewspaper.com
Does it make sense for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup? German architect Albert Speer, whose office is in charge of the project, says yes -- and is doing all he can to ensure sustainability. In a SPIEGEL interview, he says how. — spiegel.de
Related: Desert sands, soccer, sustainability and "symbolic capital"... View full entry
Mitsui Fudosan Co. (8801), Japan’s biggest developer, is building an office tower on Manhattan’s far west side at a cost of about $1.4 billion [...].
Construction has started on the skyscraper in New York’s Hudson Yards development zone in partnership with Related Cos., the area’s principal developer, and Canadian pension investor Oxford Properties. [...]
The project, known as 55 Hudson Yards, is at the north end of the site, at the southeast corner of 34th Street and 11th Avenue.
— bloomberg.com
More Hudson Yards coverage on Archinect View full entry
Mace has been appointed to a pre-construction deal to build the much delayed ‘Can of Ham’ project at 60-70 St Mary Axe, Construction News can reveal. [...]
The project was granted planning approval by the City of London in the summer of 2008 but immediately hit delays as the global financial crisis took hold [...].
The Foggo Associates-designed project will join a cluster of iconic towers in the centre of the City, including neighbouring 30 St Mary Axe, commonly known as the Gherkin.
— Construction News
Previously View full entry
The idea is always that a building like this in a particular light merges with the sky. The building is on a very small site, and has a very small footprint. There was a requirement from a planning point of view, which we fully supported and were actually happy about, that we had to provide a plaza on the ground floor. And that’s actually why the building toward the base, it pulls in its belly and it slopes so that the urban space is adequate and a required size. — nytimes.com
Not long after Muji's Vertical House and Philippe Starck + Riko's eco-prefab house, Danish lifestyle brand VIPP — who is best known for their bins and kitchenware — recently launched their own industrial-chic prefab known as the VIPP Shelter. The VIPP Shelter is a 55 m2, galvanized steel... View full entry
Greater Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has temporarily pulled the plug on the ambitious Taiwan Tower project, citing concerns over safety and its costs, which have ballooned from NT$8 billion (US$253.5 million) to NT$15 billion. [...]
Designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who won an international competition in 2011 to draw up plans for the building, Taiwan Tower’s ornate steel structure was inspired by the trunk of a banyan tree.
— taipeitimes.com
In The Wall Street Journal Magazine's upcoming February issue, writer Tony Perrottet tells the history and potential of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and its location in Moscow's Gorky Park, as he visits the site to meet with art philanthropist Dasha Zhukova and Rem Koolhaas. Founded by... View full entry
George Lucas said Friday that complications in his plan to build his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on the Chicago lakefront may put Los Angeles back in the running.
Last summer, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti made a vigorous push to get the "Star Wars" creator to choose L.A., but the city lost out to Chicago.
"We still have to get through some lawsuits and things in Chicago [...] But it's still a possibility that Chicago will be unable to do it," Lucas said.
— latimes.com
Previously View full entry
But all New Yorkers are losing familiar vistas, and some are losing light and air, as supertall buildings sprout like beanstalks in midtown Manhattan. There are a dozen such “supertalls” – buildings of 1,000 feet or higher – in the construction or planning stages. And the buildings are not, as in Dubai or Shanghai’s Pudong district, being constructed where nothing else had stood. They are, instead, crowding into already dense neighbourhoods where light and air are at a premium [...]. — theguardian.com
Related: Welcome to the permanent dusk: Sunlight in cities is an endangered species View full entry
As a researcher interested in the intersection of urban form and place, Joseph Heathcott set out to explore how one of New York’s borders shapes the lived experience and physical environment of its surroundings. Through historical research, photography, and deep observation, he traces the city’s only major internal land boundary — the Brooklyn-Queens border — and draws out the social and spatial conditions of this largely invisible urban seam. — urbanomnibus.net
Work was halted on a luxury-condominium tower in midtown Manhattan after an 8-foot piece of guardrail from a construction elevator fell from the 81st floor to the street below.
The New York City Department of Buildings ordered all work stopped at 432 Park Ave., the 1,397-foot tower being built by Harry Macklowe and CIM Group [...].
The building, slated for completion this year, is one of the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere, according to the property's website.
— crainsnewyork.com
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry