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Multiple Detroit news outlets are reporting about the controversy swirling around a potential demolition of the city’s downtown Renaissance Center five-tower block as General Motors looks to secure public funds needed for a renovation. The company is apparently pursuing an all-or-not approach to... View full entry
Fans looking for a better grasp of Eliot Noyes' impact on modernism and corporate America should not miss their chance to stream the new documentary 'Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story' which came out last year and has gained in popularity thanks to wider release in select U.S. markets... View full entry
Apple’s new The Observatory event space at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, has been unveiled by the tech giant as part of the launch event for the new iPhone 16. The design, which is in ways reminiscent of several of James Turrell’s skylit spaces, is marketed as a contemplative experience... View full entry
The plan from Kohn Pedersen Fox for a major redevelopment of the 42-story Norman Foster-designed 8 Canada Square tower in London (opened in 2003 and currently leased by HSBC) has gone public for the first time. The project, which commences in 2027, is expected to be realized at 1.1 million... View full entry
David Chipperfield Architects has just broken ground on a new corporate headquarters project for a South Korean IT company in Seoul. Construction for the new K-Project will advance toward a late 2027 completion and culminate in a new highly adaptable design that doubles as a piece of “social... View full entry
Gensler has unveiled plans for a major renovation of JPMorgan Chase’s 55-year-old Chicago headquarters in the South Loop that will transform the building into a new state-of-the-art workplace aimed at fostering collaboration and ushering the bank’s over 14,500 local employees into what the... View full entry
SOM has completed work on their Two Manhattan West tower project to culminate the shorter second half of its $4.5 billion mixed-use Manhattan West development in New York City. The four-year construction effort yielded a total two million square feet of new office space that was built above... View full entry
A $36 million restoration of Eero Saarinen’s 1964 corporate headquarters for CBS in Manhattan has been announced by New York-based Harbor Group International, LLC (HGI) ahead of the project’s expected completion early this fall. The architect’s lone skyscraper design, an ominous 38-story... View full entry
A new HQ project from UNStudio for the Dutch travel site Booking.com has opened in Amsterdam, offering a dynamic central location it says will serve as a “recruitment machine” while creating a more inclusive, healthy, and socially engaging experience for the company’s 6,500 employees. Video... View full entry
Now called Willis Tower, the building has been a trendsetter since its debut. After starting life as a headquarters for Sears, Roebuck & Co., the building saw its namesake tenant relocate to the suburbs. Along with the rest of downtown, it suffered other blows, including fears raised by the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the Great Recession. It’s always bounced back.
But the tower now faces what might be its biggest test.
— The Chicago Tribune
SOM won the commission from the Sears corporation in 1970 at a time when office parks and the desire to project a stronger image of America against the backdrop of the Vietnam War were separately prevailing forces in the AEC industry. Sears eventually sold the 110-story building, which was the... View full entry
Ken Griffin’s empire will occupy more than half of the office space at a new Manhattan skyscraper at 350 Park Ave., which is expected to be completed in 2032. [...]
Citadel confirmed plans to construct a tower at 350 Park Ave., a 1.7 million-square-foot (158,000 square-meter) building that would replace three properties in that area. The firm has been working with developers Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin Management Co.
— Bloomberg
Citadel's fund is managed by billionaire philanthropist Kenneth Griffin, whose 2018 donation to West Palm Beach, Florida's Norton Museum of Art earned him a special named wing also designed by Foster + Partners' New York office. If approved, the new 1,350-foot supertall 350 Park Avenue tower... View full entry
A recently-inaugurated renovation project for Michelin’s corporate headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, France, has given a new identity to the 130-year-old legacy brand that was “in need of a new setting to project into the future,” according to President Florent Menegaux. The project was... View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled its design for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s new 75,000-square-meter (807,209-square-foot) campus expansion in Shanghai. The building is designed to recall a cloud in reference to the computing technology that has propelled its 23-year ascension... View full entry
Portland-based Skylab Architecture has shared new photos of its recently-completed signature office building dedicated to an American tennis legend (and design aficionado) and located at Nike’s World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. The more-than-one-million-square-foot Serena Williams... View full entry
“As the story goes, Burke had originally charged the brothers a hefty upfront fee that the fledgling pizza start-up wasn’t able to scrape together,” the company wrote in a 2015 blog post. “Instead, they offered Burke $100 per store built using his design, never guessing that Pizza Hut would become the global company that it is today.” — The Hill
Contemporary licensing agreements between architects and chains like the Hut are typically undisclosed, but the low price commanded for each meant that, for all their liminally-pleasurable aesthetic, the otherwise unknown designer of the "red roof" restaurants, Richard D. Burke, might... View full entry
