News broke that the team consisting of OMA, Tishman Realty and UIA Management has won the Miami Beach Convention Center Master Plan competition. The team was one of the two remaining contestants fighting for the bid, the other team featuring BIG, West 8 and Fentress Architects among others [...].
OMA had already won another competition earlier this month for a large mixed-use development in Santa Monica, California.
— bustler.net
Previously: BIG & Design Partners Propose Miami Beach Square as Massive Convention Center Redevelopment Related: OMA’s Winning “The Plaza at Santa Monica” Entry View full entry
The last several years have seen a series of tall towers sprout from the Downtown Brooklyn skyline, but [...] these new edifices leave much to be desired in the looks department. The title of the borough's tallest building keeps passing from one development to the next, but none of these buildings—the Brooklyner, 388 Bridge Street, or Avalon Willoughby West, to name a few—offer any architectural integrity. — Curbed NY
A little of the less-than-beautiful Downtown Brooklyn buildings that are dominating the borough's skyline, from tallest to shortest. View full entry
The 11-story development will feature approximately 37 residences of up to 5,500 square feet, focusing on expansive, gracious layouts with 11-foot ceilings, thoughtful technological integration and state-of-the-art finishes and features. Designed with multiple elevator cores, a majority of the residences will have a private vestibule and entrance that adds to the intimacy of the building. — prnewswire.com
Related Companies, New York's premier residential developer, today announced that it has commissioned world renowned Zaha Hadid Architects to design a boutique condominium adjacent to the High Line at 520 West 28th Street in Chelsea just south of Hudson Yards. The 11-story residential development... View full entry
It is one of the most drastic displays of a concerted government effort to end the dominance of rural life, which for millenniums has been the keystone of Chinese society and politics....All told, 250 million more Chinese may live in cities in the next dozen years. The rush to urbanize comes despite concerns that many rural residents cannot find jobs in the new urban areas or are simply unwilling to leave behind a way of life that many cherish. — New York Times
What if the rubbish was refabricated to become real urban spaces or buildings? If it is plausible to adapt current machinery, how much material is available? At first sight, any sanitary landfill may be viewed as an ample supply of building materials. Heavy industrial technologies crush cars or to automatically sort out garbage are readily available. 3-D printing has exhausting capabilities if adjusted to larger scales. — bbc.com
The director of the Madrid heritage department, Jaime Ignacio Muñoz of the Popular Party, explained to EL PAÍS that Apple had been instructed to change the flooring of the basement so as to “symbolically” trace the outline of these newly discovered walls.
The walls themselves will then be covered up again so the floor of the new store can be placed on top. The actual original foundations of the hospital will not be visible.
— elpais.com
SCAPE and Rogers Marvel will shape one of the most dynamic destinations on the Mississippi River, the Minneapolis Parks Foundation and Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board announced today. The team was selected to create a schematic design for Water Works, a Minneapolis Park Board-owned riverfront district including the former Fuji Ya restaurant site and centered on St. Anthony Falls, the only true waterfall on the Mississippi River – “America’s fourth coast.” — mplsparksfoundation.org
Previously: Minneapolis’ Water Works Competition Shortlists West 8, SCAPE, Gustafson Guthrie Nicol View full entry
Behind that hyperrational menu of engineering options is a technocrat’s love letter to the maritime city. The charts and recommendations amount to a statement of faith that the waterfront is the city’s future as well as its past...But even if he did not have his legacy on the line, Bloomberg grasps an essential truth: This is a city built not just near the water, but over, under, and in it. — NY Magazine
Seven months after Hurricane Sandy Mayor Bloomberg has released 'A Stronger, More Resilient New York' a manifesto for a more resilient, waterfront metropolis. Justin Davidson reviews New York's 400 year history, during which it has embraced, spurned, ignored, harnessed, and feared the water... View full entry
Pan and several colleagues argue that the underlying force that drives super-linear productivity in cities is the density with which we're able to form social ties. The larger your city, in other words, the more people you’re likely to come into contact with.
"If you think about productivity, it’s all about ideas, information flows, how easily you can access ideas and opportunities," Pan says. "We believe that the interaction mechanism is what drives the productivity of the city."
— theatlanticcities.com
Writes New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman: "Las Vegans I spoke with, young and old, complained about not having 'enough authentic places,' which are 'locally owned, one of a kind, less corporate,' as Tyler Jones, a 35-year-old architect-developer of luxury homes and third-generation Las Vegan, put it to me. They wanted a Las Vegas for Las Vegans." — New York Times
Las Vegas, a city long-defined by googie, short-term stays, and the flash and pulse of the Strip, is doing some soul-searching. The Downtown Project, backed by online apparel mogul and Zappo's executive Tony Hsieh, is leading efforts to cultivate authentic neighborhood feel and life at street... View full entry
Can Atalay, a lawyer for the Chamber of Architects which brought the lawsuit, said the administrative court ruled in early June at the height of the unrest that the plan violated preservation rules and unacceptably changed the square's identity. It was not clear why it had only now been released. — Reuters
Ayla Jean Yackley reported that a Turkish court has canceled an Istanbul building project backed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan which provided the trigger for nationwide anti-government demonstrations last month, a copy of the court decision showed. View full entry
Zhang, a Chinese real estate developer, is the seventh richest self-made women in the world, worth $3.6 billion, according to Forbes. She's worth $800 million more than Oprah Winfrey, the world's best known self-made female billionaire.
Not only does Zhang's rags-to-riches story mirror that of China itself, but it is Zhang who has shaped much of the country's modern urban landscape, with the logo of her company SOHO China, on the side of buildings wherever you turn in Beijing.
— cnn.com
Galaxy SOHO, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid for Zhang' SOHO China, was built in 2012 on a 50,000 square meter plot in central Beijing. It was Hadid's first building in Beijing. View full entry
Aerial footage from a helicopter of the largest demonstration in history when millions of Egyptians gathered in Tahrir square and other squares in Cairo demanding the fall of the Muhammad Morsi and Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood regime.) View full entry
"We hoped the canals would simply make it easier to move around the city, for civilians and police but the reality is Water Level is one giant port of entry for whoever has the cash."
- Yoko Aramaki, City Planner
— Flickr
At Brickworld 2013, Nathaniel Brill and a team led by Carter Baldwin, worked together to produce a vision of a cyberpunk city of the somewhat near future. h/t Fred Scharmen View full entry
The solution, or so the city’s traffic planners hope, is to encourage people to cycle for longer distances by creating the cycling equivalent of freeways, which will provide fast, direct routes of up to 22 kilometers into the center. A total of 28 highways are planned, providing 495 kilometers of dedicated bike tracks... Nine routes are under construction and should be completed by 2015 at a cost of 208 million krone, or $36 million, divided equally between central and local government. — nytimes.com