This week, Zaha Hadid Design released a new platform wedge shoe and accompanying clutch bag with British shoe and accessory brand Charlotte Olympia. The limited edition pieces, which sport the familiar flowing forms perfected by Hadid in her architecture, are both constructed using a combination of transparent perspex and rose gold accents.
HOK's Mercedes-Benz Stadium is officially the first LEED Platinum certified professional sports stadium in the United States. The new home to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons boasts the highest sports venue LEED score at 88 total points.
There is much more to learn from this stadium than just its unique retractable roof system. The two-million-square-foot venue is an unprecedented model for sustainability and performance innovation. Its notable design solutions conserve water, lighting, and energy.
In an exclusive half-hour interview with Graham Stirk, partner at Richard Rogers' London-based practice RSHP (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), Monocle's Tom Edwards dives into discussing the complexity of some of the practice’s recent projects. Stirk is best known for designing some of the firm's iconic London buildings, such as the Leadenhall Building (or “Cheesegrater”) and the more controversial NEO Bankside.
A School of Schools, the theme for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, will "use, test, and revise a variety of educational strategies to reflect on the role of design, knowledge, and global connectedness" in Istanbul and around the world. Two calls for ideas—one for "schools" and one for "learners"—have been opened to interested parties.
MVRDV has unveiled the design of an adaptable building to be located at the center of Munich’s Knödelplatz square adorned with 5-meter-tall (16-foot-tall) German internet slang words as a homage to the neighborhood’s graffiti culture. To be known as WERK12, the building will house flexible entertainment, restaurants, office space and a multi-story fitness center within a highly transparent envelope, allowing the building to become a vertical extension of the plaza.
Architect Albert C. Ledner, known for his unorthodox style that subverted the seriousness of the Modernist period, has passed away at the age of 93 in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Beginning as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, Ledner went on to have his own successful career designing buildings mainly in New York and New Orleans, where he completed more than 40 projects. He also completed a series of futuristic buildings and meeting halls around the country for the National Maritime Union, including what were perhaps his most famous buildings, the wavy O'Toole Building and the porthole-dotted National Maritime Building (renovated into a hotel by Handel Architects in 2011) in New York.
Architect Magazine has unveiled the 2017 edition of the “Architect 50,” their list of the 50 best architecture firms in the United States. The 2017 rankings are based on scores from three categories: business, design and sustainability. This year saw more entrants than ever before, with several first-time entrants making notable impressions, including the number 1 ranked design firm, WORKac. Topping the overall list was Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), who also ranked in the top 10 in both design and sustainability.
See the top 10 from each category after the break.
After being saved from a major renovation that would have eliminated its iconic Postmodern facade, James Stirling’s No 1 Poultry building is now receiving a gentler retrofit that will upgrade its spaces to house 110,000-square-feet of contemporary office space.
Fitting right in with the update, coworking giant WeWork has now been announced as the building’s first tenant, and the company has revealed some details of how the building will work for its users.
Bold, innovative and set to become the largest botanic garden in the world, images of Oman’s future light-filled oasis in the desert have been revealed. A collaboration between Arup, Grimshaw, and Haley Sharpe Design delivers the architecture, engineering, landscaping, and interpretive design in a scheme of over 420 hectares for the Oman Botanic Garden.
The Oakland Athletic's have hired four firms to lead the design and urban planning for their new ballpark on the Peralta site, near the heart of Oakland. HOK will be collaborating with Snohetta on the design of the ballpark. Snohetta will also be working on the masterplan along with Sasaki and Oakland-based Studio T-Square.
William / Kaven and Kaven + Co. have unveiled plans for a bridged mixed-use skyscraper development that, if built, would become the tallest building in Portland, Oregon.
The project would replace the city’s soon-to-be-demolished USPS headquarters with a new 5-million-square-foot development consisting of multiple high-rise buildings containing facilities for retail, office, residential and a hotel.
The plan is organized around two central skyscrapers, the taller of which would top out at over 970 feet – more than foot feet taller than the city’s current tallest building, the Wells Fargo Center. The two skyscrapers would be linked at 680 feet high by a 236-foot-long glass-walled bridge housing a skygarden and offering unparallelled views of the city and the surrounding landscape.
New construction photos capture the progress of OMA’s Miami development, “Park Grove,” as the project’s details and finish begin to emerge.
Located next to the twisting towers of BIG’s recently completed “Grove at Grand Bay,” OMA’s trio of towers will consist of 1,000,000 square feet of luxury residential spaces with panoramic views of Florida’s Biscayne Bay.
With its massive, intricate roof and man-made pools and canals, Ateliers Jean Nouvel's astonishingly complex Louvre Abu Dhabi was a project 10-years in the making before finally debuting to the public earlier this month. But even if the project missed it's original completion date, it certainly wasn't for lack of trying – and that's proven in this new video timelapse from EarthCam.
The video captures the 8-year-long construction process from groundbreaking to completion, showing the museum as it came together from a variety of perspectives, including how the roof was assembled in mid-air before being gently lowered into place, and the enormous effort of earth moving to build the unique site.
Check out the video below.
The Visitor's Center at Apple's new Cupertino campus has opened to the public. As the public face of a vast complex designed by Foster + Partners, the independent building is "a uniquely designed architectural extension" of the company's new headquarters. "With similar aesthetics in staircases, stone walls, and terrazzo floors," the center’s "cantilevered carbon fiber roof appears to float," supported only "by stone clad cores and no other extraneous columns for support."
With a growing global trend of rural to urban migration, a focus on an understanding of parks, gardens and general green space in city centers is more important than ever. While a move to an urban center can offer improved access to employment, schooling, healthcare and cultural opportunities, it can come at a cost of increased stress and noise and decreased access to open space, fresh air and nature. For urban and forestry researcher Phillipp Gärtner, this raised the question of which European capital cities have the greenest space.
Born from a system of sliding, curved glass doors, and inspired by its potential presence in nature, this house takes new technology and uses it in a beautiful way.
LUMISHELL is a collaboration between a young engineer and architect, Christophe Benichou, and LUMICENE, a company developing curved and reversible glass windows. The result is a small, pre-fabricated accommodation unit that capitalizes on the nature of the curved windows to generate living and bedroom spaces.
Your obsession with transit-oriented design has been answered with the newest map series by Blue Crow Media. The first in this series, London Underground Architecture and Design Map curates original content by transport design historian, Mark Ovenden paired with photography by Will Scott to depict the London Underground. Mark Ovenden is a specialist in graphic design, cartography, and architecture in public transport with an emphasis on underground rapid transit, making him the natural fit for the design of this map.
SPACE10, the future-living lab created by IKEA, announced this week a "playful research project" to investigate the future of co-living. One Shared House 2030, a website created in collaboration with New York-based designers Anton & Irene, asks members of the public to "apply" for acceptance to an imagined co-living community in the year 2030, outlining their preferences for the types of people they would like to live with, the way they would like the community to be organized, and the things they would be willing to share with others. SPACE10 hopes that the research project will provide information on whether co-living could offer potential solutions to issues such as rapid urbanization, loneliness, and the growing global affordable housing crisis.
