As the new year kicks off, we're taking a look ahead to the projects we're most looking forward to in 2022. With a mix of cultural and commercial programs, the designs are located across five continents, with many under construction for multiple years. Designed across a wide range of scales, they represent a mix of interconnected landscapes, museums, and new skyscrapers.
The early stages of practicing architecture are often met with what many explain as "the slippery slope of being an architect", where expectations do not at all meet reality of the profession and gets worse as the experience progresses. With constant burnouts as a result of working overtime and on weekends on the account of “gaining experience”, extraordinary expectations, low wages, and physical and mental strains, the prestige of being an architect has evidently vanished with modern-day work conditions. So how can architects fight for their labor rights after years of exploitation and what is currently being done to ensure them?
OMA / Shohei Shigematsu, together with artists Charlotte Taylor and Nicholas Préaud, created a series of NFTs inspired by an underwater sculpture designed for the ReefLine project. Commissioned by Aorist for its climate-forward NFT marketplace, the video NFT Coral Arena unfolds a virtual narrative of the monument, simulating the evolution of the future physical artwork from an abstract object to being the support of an underwater ecosystem. The NFTs were unveiled during Miami Art Week, and proceeds from their sale will be donated for the completion of the ReefLine project.
By definition, architecture and urban planning operate within a certain degree of indeterminacy, using present context to find viable answers for an unknown future. As a result, design is a constant search for a balance between prescribing and taking a step back to make room for alternate yet unforeseeable scenarios. Uncertainty is an inherent condition in present-day society, and recent rapid social, economic, and even environmental changes prompt a closer look at how architecture can incorporate indeterminacy. The following reviews some precedents and contemporary examples that programmatically operate with indeterminacy, highlighting several strategies for designing for uncertainty and change.
Virgil Abloh, a great American influential figure in the fashion, art, culture, design, and architecture scene, passed away at 41, after a silent battle with cancer. Known for his collaboration with AMO, especially for the Off-White Flagship Store in Miami, a brand he founded back in 2012, the trained architect was the first African-American to become the artistic director of a French luxury brand.
The news was announced on Sunday on Abloh’s official Instagram Account. The Creative Director of Louis Vuitton menswear battled a “rare, aggressive form of cancer, cardiac angiosarcoma […] privately since his diagnosis in 2019”, according to the post.
The first phase of the POST Houston redevelopment project is nearing completion, and the finished areas are now open to the public. Through adaptive reuse and precise interventions, Jason Long and OMA New York have transformed the historic Post Office mail sorting warehouse into a new public destination and cultural venue for Houston, featuring a diverse collection of programs meant to evolve and adapt to the needs of the city.
Singapore has emerged as a global design center. As a city-state and island country in Southeast Asia, the Lion City is home to a new class of high-rise buildings, gardens and iconic landmarks. While the design world is familiar with structures like the Safdie's Jewel Changi Airport or OMA's Interlace, Singapore has also built a range of new public and civic buildings alongside extensive land reclamation projects.
The winning proposal for redesigning Thessaloniki’s ConfEx fairground features a series of pavilions with large overhanging roofs that float within a park, creating the infrastructure for international events while providing locals with a robust public space. Designed by Sauerbruch Hutton, together with Gustafson Porter + Bowman as landscape architects and Elena Stavropoulou, the project builds on the existing network of landmarks creating a new hybrid landscape that caters to the Northern Greek city’s goal of becoming the region’s primary business and tourist attraction.
On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago had roughly 200 inhabitants. Four years later, in 1837, it was upgraded to The City of Chicago – an interesting fact given that there are still 19 incorporated towns in Illinois. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed 300 people, destroyed about 3.3 square miles (9 km2), and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. However, by that time Chicago had become the world’s fastest-growing city and its population had risen over 300,000 inhabitants. The fire meant these ambitious citizens had to start again.
With admirable strength, the city was reborn from the ashes and some of Chicago’s best architecture was constructed immediately after. Structures like the Rookery Building (1888, Frank Lloyd Wright), the Auditorium Building (1889, Louis Sullivan) and the Monadnock Building (1893, Burnham & Root, Holabird & Roche) are a few examples of the high standards the city was aiming for.
OMA / Reinier de Graaf and Buro Happold have unveiled their design for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha, Qatar. The project explores the "potential of modularity, prefabrication, and automation in relation to the rapid changes in medical science" on a 1.3 million-sqm plot with low cost, cross-shaped modular units that are prefabricated on site. In addition to the prefabrication of the units, a local high-tech farm will supply food and medical plants for medicine production, and a solar farm will allow the district to function autonomously.
The first quadrant of OMA’s Berlin KaDeWe department store transformation opened its doors to the public, revealing a new approach to retail design in the age of online shopping and shifting consumer behaviour. The masterplan divides the historic building, the largest department store in continental Europe, into four smaller, easily accessible and navigable sectors. The completed quadrant features a six-storey void containing a series of escalators and simultaneously acting as circulation, retail and event space.
OMA/Jason Long’s 11th Street Bridge Park has reached new major milestones in its design and capital campaign after a series of design refinements. The design team has further improved the program areas across the bridge park, and has shifted the locations of the amphitheater and main gathering space, extending its capacity up to 250 people. Finishes and landscape designs have also been refined, whereas the pedestrian pathways, terraces, centers and public plazas have remained unchanged.
OMA New York has designed a new 145-meter pedestrian bridge over the Apatlaco River in Jojutla de Juárez, Mexico, as part of a larger reconstruction effort by Infonavit (National Workers’ Housing Fund Institute) following the 2017 earthquakes.
Led by Iyad Alsaka, Adrianne Fisher, and Wael Sleiman, OMA’s latest project, the Prestige Liberty Towers, breaks ground in Mumbai, India. Expected to be completed in 2025, the mixed-used complex is the firm’s first venture in India, located in the historic textile mills at the heart of the city.
OMA’s mixed-use development for Morden Wharf has just been granted planning consent from the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Planning Committee. The scheme created for developer U+I is located on a 2.4-hectare brownfield site, with an industrial past, on London’s Greenwich Peninsula facing the historic Greenwich and the millennial O2 Arena.
OMA / Shohei Shigematsu has completed its Audrey Irmas Pavilion at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the firm’s first commission from a religious institution and first cultural building in California. Expected to open in January 2022, “the new 55,000 square foot Pavilion is a response to the Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s vision for its campus to create a much-needed space to convene”.
OMA / David Gianotten has revealed the design for a five-story office building in Amsterdam, replacing a 1980s bank headquarters. Located on one of the city’s main avenues among high-end offices, housing and luxury hotels, the architecture of the new project is shaped by the characteristics of its surroundings. Featuring interlocking glass volumes towards the boulevard and brick-clad facades towards the residential area, Apollolaan 171 creates a dialogue with both the green avenue of Amsterdam’s south district and the neighbouring 20th-century Berlage architecture.
Among the most renowned and well-established offices in the world, OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, founded in the 1970s by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis, is definitely part of the pantheon of the most famous. Curiously, although it receives large commissions and has already built several emblematic works in different countries, the office is often associated with an approach that is less focused on architectural design, going beyond the strict limits of the disciplinary field and encompassing other areas of practice.
_OMA.jpg?1558539068 "Knoll Celebrates Bauhaus. © OMA / Photography by Fred Ernst")
