OMA: The Latest Architecture and News

The team of OMA and FABRICations in collaboration with LOLA landscape architects has been selected as the winners of a competition to transform a former prison complex in Amsterdam into a 135,000-square-meter mixed-use development. Located in southeastern Amsterdam, Bijlmerbajes has been seen as a distant landmark for the city since its construction in the 1970s. But with recent expansions, the once peripheral site has moved to the center of new urban development, making the property prime location for redevelopment.

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The Design Museum in London has announced the shortlist projects in the running for the 2017 edition of their prestigious Beazley Design of the Year award. Now in its tenth year, the award was established to “celebrate design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year.”

This year, a total of 62 projects have been nominated across six categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Product and Transport – including 13 projects from the Architecture category. A winner from each category and the overall winner will be announced on January 25, 2018. Previous winners of the architecture category include: IKEA’s Better Shelter last year (also the overall winner), Alejandro Aravena's UC Innovation Center in 2015, and Zaha Hadid Architects’ Heydar Aliyev Center (overall winner in 2014).

See all of the architecture nominees below.

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The Urban Development Corporation (SAU-MSI) has announced the seven shortlisted teams competing for the design of the latest Centre Pompidou outpost in Brussels, Belgium. The finalist teams were selected from 92 entries to the competition, which sought proposals to transform the existing Art Deco Citroën Yser garage in the heart of the city into a mixed-use museum complex focusing on contemporary art and architecture.

To be known as the Citroën Cultural Centre, the $135 Million project will consist of 375,000 square feet (35,000 square meters) of public cultural, education and recreation space, including 160,000 square feet (15,000 square meters) designated for the new Centre Pompidou Brussels. An additional 108,000 square feet (10,000 square meters) will host a museum run by Brussels’ International Centre for Urbanism, Architecture & Landscape.

Facebook has announced plans for a new mixed-use neighborhood adjoining their existing headquarters in Menlo Park, California to be led by the New York office of OMA and Partner Shohei Shigematsu. Known as Willow Campus, the campus masterplan seeks to further invest in Facebook’s home community, joining the original campus designed by Frank Gehry.

“It’s exciting to collaborate with Facebook, whose innovation in networking and social media extends to urban ambitions for connectivity in the Bay Area,” commented Shigematsu. “The Willow Campus masterplan creates a sense of place with diverse programming that responds to the needs of the Menlo Park community. The site has the potential to impact the future of regional transportation, housing, and environment.”

Manifesta 12 creative mediator OMA has revealed the Palermo Atlas, an interdisciplinary urban study of Palermo that will inform the organization of 12th edition of Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, that will be held next year in the Italian city. Led by OMA partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, the project outlines a blueprint for Palermo “to plan its future and as a research framework to ensure that Manifesta 12 achieves a long-term impact for the city and its citizens.”

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With a majority of architecture schools in the Northern Hemisphere ending and the official start of summer fast approaching, architects across the globe – whether fresh out of school or with years of experience under their belt – are playing jobs musical chairs. And with the AIA’s Architecture Billings Index continuing to show growth in the profession, firms of all sizes are looking to add valuable members to their teams.

One of those firms is OMA, whose Jobs site has seen a bounty of positions open up in recent months to keep up with the continued success of their seven offices across the globe. While many of the openings are given ambiguous descriptors, more than a few have titles that can speculatively be connected to projects announced over the past few years:

"Architect with Stadium/ Arena Experience – Rotterdam," for example, likely concerns the recently planning-approved Feyenoord Stadium and Masterplan, while "California Licensed Senior Architect – New York" will probably be involved in either their San Francisco tower or their mixed-use development scheme in Santa Monica, or both.

What other projects might need some help? Check out the full list of job openings, below. 

OMA New York has revealed renderings for it latest project, a 490,000-square-foot mixed-used retail and office development located at 88 Seaport Boulevard in the emerging Boston Seaport neighborhood. Being developed by Massachusetts-based property developer WS Development, the structure adds to a growing collection of quality architecture commissioned for the district, including projects by James Corner Field Operations, Sasaki, and NADAAA.

A new exhibition by OMA/AMO, lR100-Rinascente: Stories of Innovation, has officially opened in Milan’s Palazzo Reale. Marking the 100th anniversary of the classic Italian department store, la Rinascente, the exhibition commemorates the company’s long creative history and experimental spirit that has served as an influential part of Italian design, culture and commerce.

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The design of OMA and Mia Lehrer+Associates’ park at First and Broadway (FAB) in Los Angeles has received a green update, reports LA Downtown News, following a community feedback session in which residents voiced their desire to add additional plantings to the scheme.

A large-scale masterplan for Feyenoord (or Feijenoord), a suburb-city of the Dutch city of Rotterdam, has been approved by Rotterdam City Council. The successful concept design from OMA, led by Partner David Gianotten, incorporates a historically-important football stadium—for the nationally significant Feyenoord football club—which "no longer fulfills modern demands." Aligned with the football club's "expanding ambitions" both in the Dutch and European football leagues, this proposal is the latest in a string of plans to expand, but the only one to have been accepted.

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OMA, in collaboration with local architects ECADI and landscape architects West 8, has developed a new mixed-use masterplan for Columbia Circle in the center of Shanghai. Layered with rich history, the site contains preserved colonial monuments, former industrial buildings and 1920’s country club buildings by architect Elliott Hazzard – these elements will be renewed and transformed by the master plan to return Columbia Circle into one of Shanghai’s most prominent public spaces.

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The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has selected Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of OMA for the design of Melbourne’s 2017 MPavilion. The announcement comes after this weekend’s closing of the 2016 MPavilion, designed by Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, which welcomed more than 94,000 visitors to over 287 free events in its 139 day run. Now in its 4th year, the MPavilion program invites architects who have yet to completed a project in Australia to design and construct their first structure in the country.

Posted on the OMA website with the description, "Presentation on how S, M, L, XL intends to both undermine and simultaneously reinforce architecture," this lecture delivered by a then-51-year-old Rem Koolhaas delves into the "intentions" behind the 1400-page behemoth monograph. The Dutch architect laments that he must spoil the experience of the book's nuanced relationships and surprises, stating "I'm exposing connections now that I would have preferred to remain hidden for you to discover or ignore."