Architecture News

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.”

Architectural research initiative Arch Out Loud has released the winners of the Tenancingo Square Mediascape international open-ideas competition aimed to engage architects with the topic of human trafficking. The competition challenged participants to reimagine the town square of Tenancingo, Mexico in response to the prevalent issues of sex trafficking existing in the area. “With proposals from both regional designers and designers from other parts of the world, the competition brought forth a large variety of approaches to an extremely sensitive, but immediate, societal problem” Arch Out Loud said in a statement. “Being the first architectural competition to address human and sex trafficking, Arch Out Loud hopes that the culmination of this exploration is only the beginning of the field’s examination of its’ role in the matter.”

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Plans for Apple’s next flagship store, to be located within the historic Carnegie Library at Mount Vernon Square in Washington, D.C, have been approved by the District’s Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB).

The project comprises both an interior/exterior restoration and renovation of the 63,000-square-foot Beaux Arts library, which was constructed in 1903 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. The plan will allow the library to be shared by Apple and the building’s existing tenant, The Historical Society of Washington. The 2-story Apple store will be located on the first floor and basement levels of the building, and will be designed by Foster + Partners, continuing their collaboration with the tech giant.

Architects, as well as painters and sculptors, think about and describe spaces differently from other people, a new study from UCL and Bangor University researchers has found. While the conclusion may sound a bit obvious on its face, the study offers evidence that a person’s chosen career may impact the way his/her brain operates.

The study, titled Sculptors, Architects, and Painters Conceive of Depicted Spaces Differently, invited 16 people from three professions (architect, sculptor and painter) with at least 8 years experience in their fields, to be compared with 16 control participants. Each subject was shown three images, a Google StreetView image of London, a painting of St. Peter's Basilica and a surreal computer-generated environment. They were then asked a series of questions:

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More than 2000 years ago, the Roman Empire invented a unique marine concrete that allowed for the construction of enormous, durable structures – even underwater. Incredibly, the exact chemical properties of this concrete mixture have eluded scientists to this day – but now, researchers from the University of Utah believe they may have finally cracked the code.

According to the findings in the journal American Mineralogist, the secret lies in the chemical properties of two of the mixture’s components: lime and volcanic ash, which contained a rare mineral known as aluminium tobermorite. When exposed to sea water, the substance would crystallize in the lime while curing. Rather than be eroded by the water, its presence actually gave the material additional strength.

Foster + Partners have announced plans for the redevelopment of a major landfill site in Sharjah, UAE, belonging to Bee’ah – the foremost environmental energy and waste management company in the Middle East since 2007. Upon Sharjah reaching its “zero waste to landfill” target by 2020, the site is set for redundancy, sparking a proposed sustainable masterplan as an example of a circular economy and a reflection of Bee’ah’s vision of clean energy and sustainable innovation.

“We believe that this vision, as interpreted through our masterplan, represents a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate just what can be achieved at sites like this which feature in every industrialized nation on the planet,” expressed Giles Robinson, Senior Partner at Foster + Partners. “The project will also serve to further showcase Bee’ah’s waste management center as a place where innovation, environmental best practice, and good design take center stage.”

A 440 feet (134 meters) tall stack of twisting cubes, Nexus is an upcoming residential tower planned for the northern edge of downtown Seattle, as the city experiences a shortage of for-sale housing amidst a thriving rental market. Designed by local practice Weber Thompson and commissioned by Vancouver-based Burrard Development, the tower includes 367 residential units and 3200 square feet of retail, aiming to offer one of few residential opportunities in Seattle’s downtown core.

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How satisfied are you with your city’s garbage service? Its parks? The way it handles pest control? What about homelessness? In the USA’s largest metropolis, which covers a total of 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km2) and is home to over 8.5 million people, New Yorkers’ perception of their city and the services it provides reveals the “uneven distribution of New York’s opportunities,” according to a survey conducted by The New York Times.

The project also shows relative accord and satisfaction with fire and emergency medical services and agreement that use of tax dollars, public housing and traffic can be improved.

The ever-growing realm of “post-digital” drawing is currently at the forefront of a healthy dosage of discourse, appreciation and even criticism, as professionals and students alike continue to push the envelope of accepted architectural representation and exchange a waning hyperrealism for the quirks and character of alternative visual narratives. Central to this new wave of illustration is the inclusion and appropriation of specific icons and characters from famous pieces of modern art, selected in particular from the works of David Hockney, Edward Hopper and Henri Rousseau, whose work undoubtedly remains at the forefront of their individual crafts and styles.

In their winning competition entry, French architecture firm Ilimelgo reimagines the future of urban agriculture with a vertical farming complex in the Parisian suburb of Romainville. The project integrates production of produce into the city through a 1000 square meter greenhouse that maximizes sunlight and natural ventilation. Recognizing the developing world’s diminishing agricultural space, the project aims to meet the growing demands for crop cultivation in urban environments.

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As Mies van der Rohe’s adopted city, Chicago and its surrounding area are home to more of the Modernist architect’s projects than anywhere else in the world, from Crown Hall to Federal Center to the Farnsworth House. Perhaps for that very reason, the McCormick House, located in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, is one of the lesser known projects in the architect's’ oeuvre – despite being one of just three single-family homes in the United States completed by Mies.

Built in 1952 for Robert McCormick Jr. – the owner of the land where Mies' 860-880 N. Lake Shore Drive was constructed – the house was moved down the street in 1994, where it was attached to the newly built Elmhurst Museum of Art via a 15-foot-long corridor. While its relocation allowed the building to remain in good care over the next 23 years, it also obscured the home’s front facade, “camouflaging one of the most prized objects in the museum's collection.”

But that’s all about to change, thanks to an upcoming restoration that will remove the offending corridor, allowing the original architecture to shine once again.

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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It’s one of the core tenants of manufacturing – first, build something useful, then, figure out how to build it cheaply.

Throughout the tech industry’s brief history, the philosophy of economies of scale have helped to achieve the widespread adoption of the latest gadgets across the globe; according to Wireless Smartphone Strategies’ Global Smartphone User Penetration Forecast, an estimated 44% of the world’s population are current owners of an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or other smartphone.

On the other hand, over the past 60 years building construction costs have essentially remained flat, despite the fact that the price of materials and components for nearly every other consumer object has dropped. Architecture is inherently a bespoke process, making streamlining its production difficult. But finally, technologists believe they may have found a solution.

MVRDV have broken ground on a 3,700 square meter creative office project in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Named “Salt,” the new flexible workspace is part of the Minervahaven port redevelopment located on the city’s harbor. Conceived as a response to the lack of flexible workspaces in Amsterdam, Salt aims to provide small, high-quality offices geared towards the demands of creative industries. The building contributes to Minervahaven’s ambition to redefine itself as the city’s new creative hub.

In LEVS Architecten’s newest development Forum City, the firm reinterprets Russian urban life in the center of its fourth-largest city, Yekaterinburg. The nine-building complex, developed by the Forum Group, curates its own metropolitan microcosm inside the larger urban area by combining residential, leisure facilities, and retail inside an archetypal city block.

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FaulknerBrowns Architects have released plans for a revitalization of Queens Parade, a waterfront site in Bangor, Northern Ireland that has long been left underutilized. Situated next to the Bangor Marina, the mixed-used development will include residential, entertainment, and retail buildings in an effort to secure the site as a destination for both locals and tourists to connect with the water.

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