Infrastructures: The Latest Architecture and News

Schmidt Hammer Lassen has won an invited competition for the design of the Marine Knowledge Hub in Liverpool, United Kingdom. The 70,000-square-foot (6,400-square-meter) scheme, intended for marine engineering research, survival training, workspace, and events, seeks to elevate the status of both Liverpool and the United Kingdom in the maritime research industry.

The scheme forms part of the Wirral Waters regeneration project, a £4.5 billion masterplan, which represented the largest planning application ever submitted in the UK in 2009.

VA Australia’s Minister for Transport has unveiled designs for five new underground metro stations in the city of Melbourne, designed by a collaborative team comprising HASSELL, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and Weston Williamson. Scheduled to open in 2025, the new stations will “combine functionality, space and natural light with the latest in public transport infrastructure design.”

The new stations, named North Melbourne, Parkville, State Liberty, Town Hall and Anzac, will each draw on an individual surrounding character to inform their architectural style. The schemes will also include public amenities such as parks, bicycle facilities, and community plazas.

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Photographer Aldo Amoretti has captured new images of one of 2018’s most awaited projects, as the BIG designed Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy Plant takes shape in Copenhagen, complete with an SLA-designed park and ski slope. The images show to the completed power plant, which opened in March 2017, while work progresses on the 170,000-square-foot (16,000-square-meter) park and ski slope that will cap the scheme.

Initially master planned by BIG, the unique design seeks to reclaim a typically unused element of a building for the public through the introduction of the nature-filled program. During summer months, the SLA-designed rooftop activity park will provide visitors with hiking trails, playgrounds, fitness structures, trail running, climbing walls, and of course, incredible views. In the winter, the park will be joined by over 1,640 feet (500 meters) of ski slopes designed by BIG.

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Videos

Foster + Partners has released a video depicting their vision for a future high-speed transportation infrastructure, taking advantage of recent advances in hyperloop technology. Designed for DP World Cargospeed, a collaboration between cargo giant DP World and Virgin Hyperloop One, Foster + Partners’ vision for an infrastructural network seeks to create a new ecosystem where urban centers and rural landscapes are interconnected, as are humans and nature.

C.F Møller and MT Højgaard have unveiled their vision of a new Railway Quarter in Aarhus, Denmark, transforming the area into a car-free urban district. Covering 1,180,000 square feet (110,000 square meters) of new construction, the area will predominantly contain residential buildings up to six stories high, as well as retail and recreational areas.

The idea of covering the railway site in Aarhus has existed for decades, with upcoming infrastructural upgrades to the network calling for tracks be lowered further into the ground, creating the opportunity to occupy the existing overhead site currently dividing several areas of Aarhus.

Adjaye Associates has unveiled images of its proposed reconceptualization of the protective façade of an electrical switching station into an engaging “Art Wall” in Newark, New Jersey. The 30-foot-high walls of the Fairmount Heights switching station will be transformed into a canvas for original works of 14 local and international artists, exploring themes of youth, education, and community, while a canopied passageway will house a market, art installations, and gathering space.

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On a prominent, highly visible site within Harvard University’s Allston Campus, a celebration of the beauty of infrastructure is beginning to take shape. Designed by Boston-based Leers Weinzapfel Associates, the 58,000 square foot Allston Campus District Energy Facility (DEF) represents a new, highly efficient infrastructure typology, delivering electricity and water for the campus, whilst simultaneously showcasing the intricate complexity of engineering and design.

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has won an international competition for the design of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA). A long-awaited infrastructural project for India’s largest city, the scheme addresses capacity issues for the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji International (CSI) Airport, which features a terminal designed by SOM.

ZHA’s brief will encompass the design and execution of new NMIA terminal building, an Air Traffic Control Tower, and associated access. The airport will be situated across Mumbai Harbor, connected to the city by a planned rail link, and access to national rail networks. ZHA's previous work in the airport sector includes the Beijing Daxing International Airport (pictured), which is slated to be the world's largest airport terminal.

Videos

In a country famous for its below sea level towns, combating flooding has been a key challenge for Dutch designers for centuries, resulting in the construction of numerous dikes, levees and seawalls across the country. But when tasked with creating a new pedestrian link across an urban river park in Nijmegen, NEXT Architects and H+N+S Landscape Architects decided to try a different approach: to celebrate the natural event by designing a stepping stone bridge that only becomes useful in high water conditions.

Known as the Zalige Bridge, the structure was completed in March 2016, but only just was given the opportunity to prove itself in January 2018, when water levels in the park rose to 12 m NAP+, the highest point in 15 years.

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A 100-meter-tall air purification tower in Xi’an, China – believed to be the world’s largest air purifier – has significantly improved city air quality, results from its preliminary run suggest.

According to researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the tower has managed to produce more than 10 million cubic metres (353 million cubic feet) of clean air per day since it was launched a few months ago. In the 10-square-kilometer (3.86-square-mile) observed area of the city, smog ratings have been reduced to moderate levels even on severely polluted days, an improvement over the city’s previous hazardous conditions.

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and Aedas have unveiled the design of a new boundary crossing that will serve as an important transportation exchange point within the Pearl River Delta, linking Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. Already under construction, the project is expected to be completed in 2019.

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Metro and subway maps can tell us a lot about cities. For example, by comparing metro maps from different cities, you might be able to understand those cities' relative size or level of development. Or, by comparing a metro map to an earlier version from the same city, you can learn about the pace of development being experienced in that city. What these "maps" rarely tell you with any reliability, though, is the actual geography of the city itself.

In a fascinating series of posts over at /r/dataisbeautiful earlier this year, Reddit users created GIFs comparing the official metro maps of cities around the world with the real geography those maps correspond to. The results show the incredible changes that cities are subjected to in the name of visual clarity: in cities such as London, Tokyo, and Berlin, transit maps expand the urban core, masking the density at these regions' centers; in other cities such as Washington DC, shortened lines hide the extent of the city's suburbs; while in some cities, entire neighborhoods are moved to the other side of the city to make the map layout more attractive (we're looking at you, Prague). Read on to see 11 of the best creations by Reddit users.

Less than five years after the opening of Georgia’s Kutaisi ‘King David the Builder’ International Airport, rapidly increasing usage (from 12,915 passengers a year in 2012 to more than 300,000 in 2016) has prompted the airport to begin plans for an expansion that could serve as many as 1,000,000 passengers by 2020.

To achieve these goals, the airport has returned to the architects who designed the original structure, UNStudio (with local architects Artstudio Project), to develop a unique airport concept featuring terraced waiting areas and a rooftop viewing garden.

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