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REX: The Latest Architecture and News

Clad in Translucent Marble Slabs, The Perelman Performing Arts Center Opens in New York’s Ground Zero

After over two decades in the making, the Perelman Performing Arts Center opened to the public on September 19, 2023. The luminous cube-shaped building was designed by the architecture firm REX, led by Joshua Ramus, to become one of New York City’s cultural keystones and the final piece in the 2023 Master Plan for the rebuilding of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. The inaugural season will feature commissions, world premieres, co-productions, and collaborative work across theater, dance, music, opera, film, and more. While only eight stories high, the venue stands out due to its monolithic façade composed of translucent veined Portuguese marble.

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What Will Post-Pandemic Performance Venues Look Like?

What Will Post-Pandemic Performance Venues Look Like? - Featured Image
Grand Junction Rendering.. Image Courtesy of HWKN Architecture

Metropolitans take pride in their storied cultural venues, the chroniclers of intellectual acumen and architectural achievement. While these icons revel in their ornate design, immersive grandiosity, and dramatic acoustics, the pandemic has introduced numerous challenges to the rules of assembly.

Recognizing changes in the rituals of attending a show—from procession and gathering to engagement—architects and cultural leaders are designing the next generation of performance venues while asking the question: How does architecture solve issues raised by a building’s inherent purpose? Is it possible to maintain the essence of a venue through gentle yet effective changes in people’s habits? The answers seem to rely on updating the auditorium culture (which dates as far back as the Colosseum) with contemporary design solutions rooted in new technologies.

The Refurbishment and Adaptive Reuse of Brutalist Architecture

"Demolition is a waste of many things – a waste of energy, a waste of material, and a waste of history," says Pritzker-winning architect Anne Lacaton. In recent years, refurbishment and adaptive reuse have become ubiquitous within the architectural discourse, as the profession is becoming more aware of issues such as waste, use of resources and embedded carbon emissions. However, the practice of updating the existing building stock lacks consistency, especially when it comes to Brutalist heritage. The following explores the challenges and opportunities of refurbishment and adaptive reuse of post-war architecture, highlighting how these strategies can play a significant role in addressing the climate crisis and translating the net-zero emissions goal into reality while also giving new life to existing spaces.

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​Civic Works: Iconic Dallas Landmarks Rethinking Design in Texas

Dallas is home to a high concentration of structures by world-renowned architects. With some of the most iconic architecture per square mile of any American city, Dallas boasts designs by six Pritzker Prize Laureates, all within close distance to the up and coming Arts District. From Norman Foster’s Opera House to Thom Mayne’s Museum of Nature and Science, these projects are emblematic of a larger city-wide design culture.

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Get to Know These Distinguished Architectural Visualization Studios and Their Artwork

As architecture is increasingly reliant on renderings to convey its message and depict the unbuilt, many practices turn to seasoned 3D artists to help them portray their designs in the most favourable light; thus they externalize visualizations to a handful of firms. 

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REX Creates New Skyscraper Design for Perth’s Elizabeth Quay Towers

Architecture and design practice REX has submitted a revised design for a mixed-use tower development in Perth, Australia. Located along the city's Elizabeth Quay, the new project is created with executive architect Hassell, and will combine hotel, retail, offices and residences in two towers. The latest design has been submitted to the city's Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority, and if approved, would become Perth’s tallest skyscraper.

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Spotlight: Joshua Prince-Ramus

Joshua Prince-Ramus (born 11th August, 1969) has made a significant mark as one of the most promising young architects working today. Named one of the five greatest architects under 50 in 2011 by The Huffington Post, Prince-Ramus made a name for himself as one of Rem Koolhaas' many protégés before forming his practice, REX, in 2006.

REX, SOM and SHoP Among Finalists for $600m Tower in Brisbane

Developers Cbus and Nielson Properties have released a shortlist for the design of a $600 million office tower in Brisbane’s North Quay. Four local and international architectural teams have been selected to create proposals for the commercial tower that will accommodate 50,000 square meters of office space. The developers aim to establish an innovative workplace of the future that will represent the new world of work.

REX Unveils Final Design for Mirrored Necklace Residence

Architecture practice REX has unveiled the final design for their mirrored Necklace Residence project overlooking Long Island Sound. After winning the competition for the project in 2013, the firm has made a series of changes to their plan. The design includes five private family homes for a husband and wife, their four children, and each of their children's families. Made to be experienced autonomously and as part of a larger whole, each home rethinks archetypal American houses.

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REX Reveals Brown Performing Arts Center Design

Architecture and design practice REX has unveiled their design for Brown University’s new Performing Arts Center. The academic and cultural building was made to be a flexible and adaptable space that serves as a hub for performance. Combining a multi-functional main hall with an open stage floor, the design addresses the need for a dedicated performance space suitable for large ensembles. The new center was designed to encourage collaboration and inspire new modes of artistic and cultural production.

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REX, Firm Behind World Trade Performing Arts Building, to Design Brown University's New Performing Arts Center

The New York City-based architecture firm REX will be designing the new performing arts center for Brown University's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. Known for their portfolio of office and cultural projects - notably and recently including The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center - the firm aims to accommodate performances and events while serving as a hub for daily social interactions on campus within the 81,000 square-foot site. The building will become a central convening space of multimedia and performing arts for students, faculty, and visitors.

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REX's World Trade Center Performing Arts Center Back on Track After Signing 99-Year Lease

REX's World Trade Center Performing Arts Center Back on Track After Signing 99-Year Lease - Featured Image
Image © Luxigon

After funding issues threatened to halt the project last year, plans for the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center are now back on track after an agreement made between the venue and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

OMA, Aires Mateus + Staab Architekten Unveil Honorable Mention Proposals for New Neue Galerie Competition

Two weeks ago, Herzog & de Meuron was announced as the winners of the international competition to design the new Museum of the 20th Century to be located adjacent to Mies van der Rohe’s seminal Neue Galerie in the heart of the Berlin Cultural Forum in Berlin, Germany.

We’ve now received additional proposals for the competition, including honorable mention-awarded entries from OMA, Staab Architekten, and Aires Mateus e Associados, and a finalist proposal from REX, that show alternative strategies for the site.

REX Reveals Design of Perelman Performing Arts Center at WTC in New York

REX has released images of the future Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (The Perelman Center), located on the World Trade Center site in New York City. Located between the gleaming glass tower of One World Trade and the future Two World Trade Center, the Perelman Center takes on a solid, pure form as it is set to become a new home for theater, dance, music, film, opera, and multidisciplinary works for visitors and residents of Lower Manhattan.

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REX Designs a Concave and Crystalline Office Building for Washington DC

REX has released designs for 2050 M Street, an office building in Washington DC’s Golden Triangle Business District. The 41,800 square meter (450,000 square foot) building evolves and merges two existing typologies in the US Capitol: heavy masonry or concrete buildings, with high relief facades and punched windows – in styles ranging from Beaux Arts to Neoclassical, Art Deco and Brutalist – or modern structures with taut glass envelopes, many with applied decorative treatments. To reconcile these two competing strategies, 2050 M Street provides hyper-transparent, floor to ceiling glass, without view-impeding mullions. From the exterior, the panels appear scooped or concave, establishing that an all-glass building can also have a high-relief facade befitting of the nation’s capitol.

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REX to Design World Trade Center Performing Arts Building in New York

A commission that was originally set to be Frank Gehry's, Brooklyn-based REX has been selected to design The Performing Arts Center at New York's World Trade Center site - PACWTC. REX was chosen over finalists Henning Larsen Architects and UNStudio through a "rigorous invitational process" that focused on the practices' experience with similar projects, including REX's Dee and Chales Wyly Theater in Dallas, Seattle Public Library and Vakko Fashion Center in Istanbul.

"Throughout the architectural selection process, REX presented us with an inspired vision. Joshua [Prince-Ramus] totally blew us away with his innovative ideas about how to present cutting-edge culture, but also about how to make the PAC relate to everyone who comes to the WTC site," said PACWTC director and president Maggie Boepple.

Joshua Prince-Ramus Wins $100,000 Marcus Prize

REX founder Joshua Prince-Ramus has won the $100,000 Marcus Prize. Awarded by the Milwaukee-based Marcus Corporation Foundation, the biennial award is dedicated to honoring emerging designers who've had a decade of exceptional leadership in their field.

"He is headed to the pantheon of greatness...and yet his ideas are still evolving," said Bob Greenstreet, dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which administers the award.

Big Ideas, Small Buildings: Some of Architecture's Best, Tiny Projects

This post was originally published in The Architectural Review as "Size Doesn't Matter: Big Ideas for Small Buildings."

Taschen’s latest volume draws together the architectural underdogs that, despite their minute, whimsical forms, are setting bold new trends for design.

When economies falter and construction halts, what happens to architecture? Rather than indulgent, personal projects, the need for small and perfectly formed spaces is becoming an economic necessity, pushing designers to go further with less. In their new volume Small: Architecture Now!, Taschen have drawn together the teahouses, cabins, saunas and dollhouses that set the trends for the small, sensitive and sustainable, with designers ranging from Pritzker Laureate Shigeru Ban to emerging young practices.

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