BIG has completed their second building on U.S. soil, a 92,000-square-foot office building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that also marks the firm’s first realized office building design. Located within the revitalized Philadelphia Navy Yard master plan (designed by Robert Stern), the four-story building features a bowing, double-curved facade and a supersized “periscope” inspired by the historic battleships docked a few blocks away.
OMA has released new images of their design for Axel Springer’s business and digital division, in Berlin, Germany. One of the largest digital publishing houses in Europe, Axel Springer officially launched the project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company’s publishing building.
OMA’s proposal was selected in a 2014 international design competition, beating out finalist entries from BIG and Büro Ole Scheeren. The brief called for a new modern work environment to house Axel Springer’s growing business and digital divisions.
Aedas has released new renderings and photos of Lè Architecture as the 18-story building approaches completion. Inspired by the form and striations of river pebbles, the office building will provide a unique work environment along the Jilong River and will mark an important milestone in the revitalization of the Nangang District of Taipei.
Foster + Partners' Apple 2 Campus is racing towards its December 2016 completion date. As seen in this drone video captured by aerial videographer Matthew Roberts, the exterior of the spaceship-like main building is nearly finished, with many of the campus' other buildings, such as the auditorium, the research & development center and the 100,000 square foot corporate fitness center, also approaching full realization.
Richard Meier & Partners has completed their first project in South America, a 7-story, sustainable office building in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Leblon. The building will feature concrete, glass and vertical gardens, and will serve as the new international headquarters for top Brazilian investment firm VINCI Partners. The structure consists of open office spaces looking out onto several private interior courtyards and a series of terraces that create a connection with the main urban thoroughfare of Bartolomeu Mitre Avenue.
The “Googleplex” is back on. After the Mountain View City Council announced last year that they would be awarding the majority of the land needed to construct the futurist masterplan designed for Google by BIG and Thomas Heatherwick to fellow tech giant LinkedIn, the future of the ambitious glass-canopied corporate campus seemed to be dead in the water, with the architects even releasing images of a pared down design that would occupy a much smaller footprint. But all of that has now changed thanks to a surprising property swap between the two companies that will see over three million square feet of real estate switch hands.
This past February, BIG and Heatherwick Studio unveiled their designs for Google’s new Mountain View Headquarters in California. The project, which will be built by robots, faced sizeable critique, as well as site complications—that have since been resolved—over the past year. Now, as a part of Esquire’s 2015 Breakouts, Bjarke Ingels—founder of BIG—is speaking out about how the firm won the Google bid, and why the headquarters could create a new mold for Silicon Valley urbanism. Ingels goes on to discuss other major BIG projects, like 2 World Trade Center, and an upcoming NFL stadium. Read the full Esquire interview, here.
Plans for Apple's newest California "spaceship" has been unveiled. Named after its bordering streets, Central & Wolfe hopes to transform a 1970s office park in Sunnyvale into a "futuristic office campus." The 19 acre site, located just five miles from Apple's main Cupertino campus (currently underway), was designed by HOK and is currently under review.
If built, it will replace nine aging buildings with a clover-like design comprised of three interconnected structures - each rising six stories.
Zaha Hadid Architects has proposed an office tower in Beijing that is said to have the "world's tallest atrium." As the Architects' Journal reports, the Leeza SOHO project features a 200-meter-high atrium that extends the building's full height, visually splitting the cylindrical structure in two. If built, it will be anchored by an underground promenade that connects to a subway station below and public park to the west.
"Buildings shouldn't just be a place where you go to do stuff. How can we enable the buildings themselves to be a positive contributor to the activities that happen within them?"
This is how David Fano, co-founder of New York consultancy CASE, explained the logic behind their acquisition by WeWork, the company that provides flexible coworking spaces for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Announced today, the merger could potentially mark a new chapter in the field of office design, as CASE proposes to bring their trademark attitude to Building Information Modeling (BIM) and other cutting edge technology to every space developed by WeWork.
Find out how this acquisition could change the face of Office design after the break.
Norman Foster attended the recent groundbreaking ceremony for 425 Park Avenue, which will be the first full-block high-rise office building to be built on New York City's Park Avenue in the past 50 years. Foster+Partners, in collaboration with Adamson Associates, designed 425 Park to be a new icon in the Manhattan skyline, featuring a tri-blade, sheer wall top. In addition to its LEED Gold certification, the 560,000m² tower will be the first in New York to be WELL certified.
BIG has revealed plans for the fourth and final skyscraper planned for the World Trade Center site - the 2 World Trade Center (2 WTC) - confirming rumors that the Danish architect has replaced Norman Foster as the project's architect.
As announced by WIRED, the controversial take over is the result of James Murdoch's distaste for Foster's decade-old scheme and preference for a more integrated workplace. Though the foundation of Foster's building has already been built, the BIG scheme will now be realized and become the new headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s media companies, 21st Century Fox and News Corp.
Designed as seven unique building stacked on top of each other, the stepped 2 WTC tower will rise 1,340 feet - a height that would make it Manhattan's third-tallest building if built today.
Watch Bjarke Ingels explain the concept in a video, after the break.
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