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MVRDV has shared details on their efforts to revitalize the firm’s former Dutch Expo 2000 Pavilion design into a new, mixed-use development in Hannover, Germany. According to the firm, the project will transform the aging structure into a new anchor of a three-building development called iLive... View full entry
A new adaptive reuse academic project from Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) for Chapman University is getting students' feet moving following the completion of the Sandi Simon Dance Center this January. The project remade an aging century-old former fruit packing warehouse space operated... View full entry
Beijing-based SYN Architects has offered a look inside their recently-completed Tiangang Village ‘Living Room’ in Baoding, China. The project saw the renovation and expansion of an existing village committee building, as well as the reactivation of surrounding buildings and outdoor spaces... View full entry
A team including Gensler and CIVILIAN has completed the adaptive reuse of an old book depository in Detroit. The new center will serve as the headquarters for Newlab, a technology collective hosting startups in the field of decarbonization, energy, mobility, and materials. Image credit: Jason Keen... View full entry
A team of students from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has built a near-zero embodied carbon building on campus using hempcrete, wood, and steel as primary materials. — Construction Canada
Called the Third Space Commons, the project was led by Third Quadrant Design, UBC’s first green building design team. The group is comprised of 60 students from the Faculty of Applied Science and the Sauder School of Business. The building is a wooden structure spanning 2,400 square feet, made... View full entry
Los Angeles-based Darin Johnstone Architects has offered an inside look at their recently-completed renovation of the Ahmanson Auditorium. Located on the ArtCenter College of Design’s Hillside campus in Pasadena, the 3,300-square-foot auditorium saw upgrades to its lobby, main theater, and... View full entry
Mayor Eric Adams opened a new window into his vision for building New York City out of the current housing crisis, with a riff on “dormitory” style accommodations [...]
During a conversation on Monday at the Greene Space, New York Public Radio's live events venue, Adams said he wants to 'do a real examination' of the laws that require windows in bedrooms — a major tweak that could make it easier for developers to convert empty offices into apartments.
— Gothamist
The Mayor’s comments in favor of window features found in Dormzilla-like residential design caught the ire of critics, who were quick to illustrate its potential fire hazards and physiological impacts. Adams’ suggestion seems a bit at odds with the city’s push to deliver better... View full entry
That simple recipe for pandemic lemonade—offices people no longer use, combining with central urban locations where people want to live—is blissfully ignorant of a wide range of architectural and economic factors that make the vast majority of office buildings simply unsuitable as housing. — Fast Company
Labeled by Fast Company as “Goldilocks” zones, the sweet spot for office buildings with the potential to become residential are ones that are mid-rise, built pre-WWII, with at least two sides facing open areas or streets near, but not within, a city’s financial core. According to San... View full entry
A transformational new adaptive reuse project for Harvard Law School’s Lewis International Law Center has been completed recently by Deborah Berke Partners. Meant to “holistically” meet the demands posed by modern legal education, the project remade the original 1957 Shepley, Bulfinch... View full entry
Copenhagen-based 3XN has been included in Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2023 list. The 50-company-strong list is described by Fast Company as the “definitive chronicle of the novel ideas transforming business and society,” ranging from ChatGPT creator OpenAI to the art collective... View full entry
The City of Boston has announced its financial support for a mixed-use, mixed-income development in the Upham’s Corner neighborhood. Called Columbia Crossing, the project will repurpose the historic Dorchester Savings Bank building and adjacent parking lot into an approximately... View full entry
In this case, architecture is the issue and the engine of renewal. With its triple-height library and exalting, barrel-vaulted classrooms with huge punched windows overlooking Manhattan, the redesigned ice plant becomes one of the most spectacular school buildings in the city.
[...] the historical arc of 20 Bruckner, as the building is called, is instructive and tells a larger tale about the Bronx, change and renewal.
— The New York Times
The NY Times critic gets off the sixth train to explore Adjaye Associates' first American K-12 project in Mott Haven, The Bronx. Kimmelman mentioned his two best-known New York projects – 130 William Street and Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development – in addition to D.C’s National... View full entry
Snøhetta has been chosen to design a new National Court of Asylum and Administrative Court in Montreuil, France. The proposed scheme sees the two courts arranged on one site around large green areas, offering what the team calls “a place of calm during what can be a time of intense turmoil.”... View full entry
The city of Philadelphia is prepared to release a report detailing a months-long community engagement effort officials say will inform the fate of the Roundhouse, the unusual concrete building that served as police headquarters for more than six decades.
Many of the residents who participated in that process said they want to see the shuttered building at 7th and Race streets repurposed as a community hub that recognizes the site’s long history of police abuse.
— WHYY
Philadelphia has a long-frayed relationship between its police department and the community, including most notably the 1985 MOVE Bombing that claimed the lives of 11 activists while displacing another 250 people and destroying 61 homes. The Roundhouse has a central role in this fraught... View full entry
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has unveiled an ambitious plan to help convert the city’s unused office spaces into apartment dwellings in an effort to bring online 40,000 new units of housing in the next decade. The plan, which includes a new study and 11 “concrete recommendations” made by... View full entry
