A new video by AERIAL FUTURES explores commercial space flight through the Houston Spaceport. The video was produced as part of a broader research initiative bringing together leading thinkers, practitioners and operators to imagine the potential opened up by spaceports. The video explores the spaceport as a new kind of architectural typology, and asks what kind of impact a spaceport is likely to have on the city and its population.
Tech giant Apple has announced plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin Texas, along with smaller facilities in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City. The Austin plans, images of which have not been released, will see the creation of at least 5,000 jobs in the Southwestern city as house prices in the San Francisco Bay area begin to discourage creatives from Silicon Valley.
Apple had announced plans for a second U.S. headquarters at the beginning of the year, as part of a $30 billion investment strategy. In 2017, it opened the Foster + Partners-designed Apple Park, pictured above.
Snøhetta has been selected to design the El Paso Children’s Museum in the city’s Downtown Arts District. The team proposed a vaulted museum lifted of the ground, a design made to preserve public space and an interactive garden below. Snøhetta was one of three finalists alongside Koning Eizenberg Architecture and TEN Arquitectos, each invited to submit concepts for the museum. The Children’s Museum aims to welcome and engage children and families from El Paso, Ciudad Juarez, the American southwest, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora.
The office of Santiago Calatrava, known for their incredible feats of architecture and engineering, has come under scrutiny for the failures of three cable connectors on their Margaret McDermott Bridge in Dallas, Texas, which has been delayed in opening due to the failures that occurred in Spring of 2016. However, while the office has taken heat for the malfunction, as the Dallas Observer reported, a newly released set of documents show that Calatrava’s team tried to insist on testing the strength of the cables, even going so far as offering to loan money for these tests, but these offers were declined by the city.
BIG has revealed plans for a new sports and entertainment district in Austin, Texas, that will bring soccer, rodeo, music, shopping, dining and hospitality under one roof. Called the East Austin District, the 1.3 million-square-foot complex will be located on the site of the existing Rodeo Austin, offering a new entertainment experience for the city’s booming population.
Construction has begun on The Independent, a 685-foot residential tower set to be the tallest of its kind, located west of the Mississippi in Austin. Designed by local practice Rhode Partners, major progress in shaping the building’s stacked and offset form has been made, through the setting of the 24th floor to create the first of these tiers, which encompass 58 stories and 370 units.
Steven Holl Architects has broken ground on the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building for Modern and Contemporary Art at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. Selected through an international competition in 2012 among finalists Snøhetta and Morphosis Architects, the winning proposal is a 164,000-square-foot museum building that will be one of the campus’s two newest additions. To expand and unite its campus as an integral experience, the Museum is also realizing a new Glassell School of Art also designed by Steven Holl Architects, totaling a 14-acre redesign led by the office.
Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is a masterclass in natural lighting, with thin-shelled concrete vaults that feature subtle openings to reflect light into the galleries below. While Kahn’s wing of the Fort Worth Museum opened in 1972, in 2013 a second Renzo Piano-designed pavilion was added to the complex. Piano was selected to design the addition because he had worked for Kahn as a budding architect, and the homage to his former mentor is evident in the building’s similar layout and use of translucent glass panels. In this video, architect-photographer Songkai Liu takes viewers on a serene stroll through the museum’s campus. Time-lapses and pans of Kahn’s concrete are juxtaposed with the clean details of Piano’s glass in a soothing exploration of the two complementary projects.
From the soaring infinity pool on top of Marina Bay Sands to a glass-bottomed pool hovering over a mountainous Italian landscape, it’s safe to say death-defying swimming elements have emerged as the most high-adrenaline trend in luxury accommodation.
Now, a new pool at Houston’s Market Square Tower is upping the ante even further with a transparent plexiglass wading pool that projects out 10 feet past the end of the building – and 500 feet above the busy street below.
John Redington, a Texas-based illustrator, documents abandoned rural sheds and their modest architectural impact. In this visual essay he reveals this unseen, underrepresented vernacular arguing that the "shaky charm of the abandoned shed could offer a look into a more humble form of inspiration for architects."
The car rattles on a loose road as thick white dust rises from the back of its tires. On either side seas of sunburned grass just barely keep themselves from breaking onto the path. The sky sits heavily on the horizon, as the fragrance of both wild and cultivated plants fill the air.
HKS Architects has been selected to design a new Major League Baseball stadium for the Texas Rangers, to be built in Arlington, Texas. As part of a new multipurpose sports and entertainment venue, the stadium will feature a retractable roof for climate control and shelter during the hot Texan summers.
Seattle-based firm LMN Architects have won an Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Award for Excellence for its Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio, Texas.
“Designed by LMN Architects in partnership with executive architects Marmon Mok Architecture, the $150 million expansion and renovation project embrace the multi-faceted cultural identity of the city with a distinctive tapestry of form, materiality, light, and landscape" stated Mark Reddington, FAIA, lead designer and partner at LMN Architects.
Completed in 2014, the project incorporates a metallic veil that wraps program elements in programmable LED lighting, in order to create a variable play of light on the city’s skyline.
New York’s Architecture Research Office (ARO) has been selected to lead in the renovation and master planning of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. The project aims to modernize and improve the renowned structure, which houses 14 monumental paintings by Mark Rothko in an interior space designed to meet the artist’s precise specifications, and its surrounding plaza and reflecting pool. The original building was largely designed by Rothko himself, with consult from a trio of architects including Philip Johnson.
Michael Maltzan Architecture has released new images of their design for the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, Texas, coinciding with the announcement that the building will open to the public on February 24, 2017. The building is conceived as a multi-disciplinary lab for creativity, which will contain “an experimental platform for creating and presenting works in all disciplines” as well as a flexible teaching space and a forum to host partnerships with visiting national and international artists.
Ennead Architects has released images of the new Engineering Education and Research Center for the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering. Currently under construction, the 433,000 square foot (40,200 square meter) building will house undergraduate education, interdisciplinary graduate research and two distinct engineering departments, and will become a new hub of activity at the edge of campus. The design takes advantage of a unique section featuring stacked atrium and outdoor spaces to serve a variety of educational and public functions.
Completed in 1986, Donald Judd's 100 aluminum boxes offer one of the most exciting locations to study the grace of minimalism. His vision at Marfa in Texas has transformed a piece of military history into a peaceful and unique environment for art and architecture. Here, the shimmering material transcends the formal strictness of plain patterns and the narrow concepts of minimalism. The multiple reflections of light and space create an illusionary atmosphere beyond ascetic ideas.
_Houston_Airport_System.jpg?1547840428 "Houston Spaceport. Image Courtesy of Houston Airport System")
_Houston_Airport_System.jpg?1547840382 "Houston Spaceport. Image Courtesy of Houston Airport System")
_AERIAL_FUTURES.jpg?1547840248 "The Next Frontier. Image Courtesy of AERIAL FUTURES")
.jpg?1502671282 "Courtesy of The Independent")
