The Los Angeles LGBT Center's existing building in Hollywood. Image via Wikipedia
Leong Leong has been chosen over four others to masterplan and design the Los Angeles LGBT Center's new mixed-use site in Hollywood, California. The Los Angeles-based practice will design a new 183,700-square-foot building that, together with the Center's existing facility across the street, will form a block-wide campus that will include a unique mix of 140 affordable housing units, 100 beds for homeless youth, a new senior center and a center for homeless youth, as well as a new administrative headquarters and cultural arts center.
Lecture, presentation and panel discussion on the newly published book “Building Paradise in California” about the role that David and Mary Gamble played in creating their winter home and garden with the famed Greene brothers.
Walt Disney has unveiled the company's largest single theme land expansion ever: Star Wars Land. An extraterrestrial land of humanoids, aliens, and droids, the 14-acre development is expected to be built at Orlando, Florida's Disney World andAnaheim, California's Disneyland by 2020.
Populous has unveiled plans for a new Chargers football stadium that is meant to capture the "essence of San Diego," California. The 68,000-seat stadium, planned to be built on the Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley, will feature a "kinetic skin" that will mimic the sound of the ocean as it sways in the wind.
"We wanted to make sure as a team that we were making this a really authentic place and people who see it will say, 'That represents our city - that represents where the Chargers should be. They've been here over 50 years and they should stay here.' This stadium represents that. This is an expression of San Diego," Populous senior principal Scott Radecic told the San Diego Union Tribune.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA)'s Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE) has announced the winners of its CAE Education Facility Design Awards, which honor educational facilities that “serve as an example of a superb place in which to learn, furthering the client’s mission, goals, and educational program, while demonstrating excellence in architectural design.”
A variety of project designs, such as public elementary and high schools, charter schools, and higher education facilities, were submitted to the Committee, many of which incorporated “informal and flexible spaces for collaboration and social interaction adjacent to teaching spaces,” as well as staircases with amphitheater or forum designs.
Find out which projects received awards, after the break.
Frank Gehry is said to be "quietly" working on a masterplan for the Los Angeles River in California. Prematurely announced by the Los Angeles Times, the City's mayor Eric Garcetti has confirmed the news, saying Gehry is producing "a master plan, in the truest sense of the word,” pro bono.
“To have the [Frederick Law] Olmsted of our time focusing on this, I think, is extraordinary,” Garcetti said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Hancher Under Construction. Image Courtesy of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects
US firm Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects is renowned for their iconic and sustainable designs, having won numerous awards, including the AIA’sFirm Award. They currently have several projects under construction, ranging from a transit center in San Francisco to an office and retail tower in Seville, Spain. Read on after the break for an overview of three of their current projects, all in various states of completion.
Goettsch Partners (GP) has been commissioned to design a 605-foot-tall "Park Tower" for San Francisco. Planned to rise in the SOMA district, on the corner of Howard and Beale streets, across from the new Transbay Transit Center, the new building will feature a variety of office space, flanked by a series of outdoor terraces - "mini-parks in the sky," hence the tower's name.
AECOM has designed a preliminary study for a mixed-use transportation development in Solana Beach, California, as part of a response for a RFP (Request for Proposal). Located near major roads and connected to railroads, the project proposal consists of a combination of retail stores and restaurants, providing transit users with leisure spaces on their travels, in addition to parking for the nearby AMTRAK train station.
Google has found another way to realize its futuristic Mountain View headquarter's expansion. As the San Jose Mercury News reports, the search engine giant revealed plans to utilize a vacant site just east of their existing Googleplex that was approved by the city almost a decade ago to host nearly 600,000 square-feet of office and commercial space. The approval occurred prior to the city implementing strict legislation that restricts office expansions in the North Bayshore district, therefore Google's entitlement is essentially "grandfathered in."
SHoP Architects and Studio O+A have unveiled designs for a new Uber headquarters in San Francisco. Planned to rise on a 14-acre vacant site in the city's Mission Bay neighborhood, the 423,000 square-foot scheme will consist of two towers: an 11‐story tower at 1455 Third Street and a 6‐story structure at 1515 Third Street.
"Google now has to convince its hometown that its intentions are non-evil," commented Bloomberg Businessweek's Brad Stone on "Building Planet Google." Referring to the City of Mountain View's decision to award land to LinkedIn over Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick's proposed Googleplex in fear of becoming a "one-corporation town," Stone details the backstory of the futuristic plans and how the architects haven't given up yet. "Neither us or Heatherwick are in the business of producing a pretty painting,” Ingels said to Stone. Read the complete story here.
The 2015 Architecture at ZeroCompetition has launched, challenging students and designers to develop 'family-style residential units' for the Mission Bay Campus of the University of CaliforniaSan Francisco. Now in its fifth year, the competition calls for designs that produce "at least as much energy as [they] use over a year," excluding the embodied energy of building materials and transportation of people and materials to and from the site. Entrants must be able to demonstrate that their designs can be reasonably expected to meet a zero net energy goal over a prolonged period of time. The competition is open to student and professional individuals and teams, with up to $25,000 in prize money to be won. Interested parties have until August 28 to register and submissions are due September 25 at 1PM PST. Read more about the competition at Architecture at Zero's website and check out the winners from last year here.
Google's ambitious plans to expand its California headquarters in Mountain View took a major blow last night when council members announced their decision to award LinkedIn three-quarters of the North Bayshore area site. With just 500,000 square-feet of area to work with, Google would only be able to construct one of its four proposed buildings.
Google's proposed California headquarters will be built with robots, according to the most recent planning documents received by the City of Mountain View Council. As the Architects' Journal reported first, the documents detail BIG and Heatherwick Studio's plan to construct the canopy-like structure's interiors with a team of robotic-crane hybrids known as "crabots."
These crabots would, in theory, establish a "'hackable' system for the building of the interior structures," says the documents, that would allow for limitless, easy, and affordable reconfiguration of space throughout the building's life.
Project Site. Image Courtesy of Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design
Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design, Alajajian Marcoosi Architects, Belzberg Architects Group and Frederick Fisher have been shortlisted to design an Armenian American Museum planned for Glendale, California. Announced on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide this past Friday, the competition aims to "promote understanding and appreciation of America's ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Armenian experience" within a 30,000-square-foot museum that will be dedicated to research and education. Stay tuned for more information.
The latest in his high-altitude "AIR" series, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet has captured the sprawling city of Los Angeles at night from a dizzying 10,000 feet. First starting this "dream project" in his hometown of New York then Las Vegas and San Francisco, AIR is taking Laforet worldwide with upcoming visits planned for London, Paris, Tokyo and more.
Preview a stunning selection of Laforet's Los Angeles series, after the break.
What some believe to be an act of revenge, George Lucas has unveiled plans to build the San Francisco Bay Area's largest affordable housing project in the wealthy community of Marin County. As CBS reports, the news comes just three years after valley residents shot down Lucas' proposal to develop the land with a 265,000-square-foot production studio. The new plan aims to provide veterans, firefighters, teachers and other service-oriented working class people with 224 low-income homes.
"We’ve got enough millionaires here. What we need is some houses for regular working people," said Lucas, according to his lawyer Gary Giacomini who also ensured that the plan was "not a form of retaliation."
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