Foster + Partners Prize: The Latest Architecture and News

Foster + Partners' Apple 2 Campus is racing towards its December 2016 completion date. As seen in this drone video captured by aerial videographer Matthew Roberts, the exterior of the spaceship-like main building is nearly finished, with many of the campus' other buildings, such as the auditorium, the research & development center and the 100,000 square foot corporate fitness center, also approaching full realization.

Brandon Haw Architecture (BHA) has unveiled the plans for Serena del Mar, one of two “twin” buildings that will host the Universidad de Los Andes International School of Management in Cartagena, Colombia. As the first office and institutional building to be constructed as a part of a long term, two-phase master plan, the four-story building will additionally house offices for corporations and businesses to support the upcoming master plan, specifically a new hospital building for Johns Hopkins University.

Serena del Mar is designed to respond to the “local climatic conditions in the most naturally passive yet contemporary way,”  explained the architect . It will feature precast concrete vertical fins to shade from the intense Caribbean sun, but will also allow for views of the surrounding landscape.

Madrid's Museo del Prado has announced the finalists for the competition to redesign and transform the museum’s Hall of Realms. Among the list are acclaimed firms OMA; Souto Moura Arquitectos; a team of Foster + Partners - Rubio Arquitectos; B720 Arquitectos - David Chipperfield Architects; Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos; Nieto Sobejano Architects; Stedebouw B.V.; Juan Miguel Hernández León - Carlos de Riaño Lozano; Garces de Seta Bonet Arquitectes - Pedro Feducci Canosa; and Gluckman Tang Architects - Estudio Alvarez Sala - Enguita and Lasso de la Vega.

Back in September, Foster + Partners released details of their designs for a droneport in Rwanda, a humanitarian initiative that seeks to jumpstart and navigate the infrastructural challenges of emerging economies. In this video, Foster and others involved in the project explain the process of realizing the droneports, giving further details on its inclusion in this year’s Venice Biennale—with engaging new architectural visualizations to boot.

Foster + Partners has designed a mammoth, mixed-use complex on the Brooklyn waterfront in Red Hook, with 600,000 square feet (55,700 square meters) of offices and 23,000 square feet (2,100 square meters) of retail space and restaurants. Located on a former industrial site, the buildings will provide flexible open floor plans of up to 100,000 square feet (9,300 square meters). The facility is intended to build on a dramatic growth in technology companies in Brooklyn, creating an office environment that is open and collaborative, reflecting a style that is de rigueur in the tech-sector.

Foster + Partners' Craft + Manufacture: Industrial Design exhibition is currently on display at The Aram Gallery in London. It is the firm’s first exhibition dedicated to the industrial design work they have created over the past fifty years. It shows how “the science, art, and craft of making things” has been the foundation of the firm, and how the “collaborative nature of the design team pioneered by Norman Foster” has been translated into their architectural practice.

Foster + Partners, in collaboration with Heller Manus Architects, has received permission from the San Francisco Planning Commission for Oceanwide Center. The 2.3 million square foot (215,000 square meter) development is part of the Transbay development plan, to provide increased density to the city’s South of Market district (SOMA). The plan calls for two buildings, the 605-foot Mission Street Tower, with a hotel and residences, and an 850-foot office and residential tower along First Street. In addition, the project creates new public spaces and pedestrian connections at the base of the towers, simultaneously restoring and revitalizing two historic buildings on the site.

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The impacts of architecture on the quality of human life are often debated, and in the 21st century, projects are under greater scrutiny than ever for the experiences they provide for people. Buildings all over the world must address a specific context, responding to the cultural framework of their users.

In light of this, we’ve gathered 8 projects that have a different sort of user -- projects designed not just for people, but also for animals. Ranging from zoo buildings to aquariums, stables and shelters, these projects have the unique challenge of balancing a human and animal experience. See them all after the break.

Foster + Partners, BIG and Grimshaw Architects have won a competition to design pavilions for Expo 2020 Dubai. Under the Expo’s 2020 theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, the teams were selected from 13 invited practices to design three themed pavilions within the Expo's HOK-designed masterplan: Opportunity, Mobility, and Sustainability.

"A key criterion for the competition was ensuring that the designs not only embodied one of Expo’s core themes, but also had the flexibility and longevity to live on as landmarks and functional structures after the Expo is complete in 2021," said the organizers in a press release. 

AL_A has won a competition to design a new mosque within the Foster + Partner-designed World Trade Center complex in Abu Dhabi. The 2000-square-meter project, envisioned as a "pathway to serenity" rather than a single building, leads visitors on a journey through an informal park of palm trees that slowly align with the mosque's shifted grid as users approach the Prayer Hall. Once inside, visitors are facing towards Mecca.

"The mosque is envisaged as a piece of the city, one that reflects the journey from the temporal to the spiritual," said AL_A director Ho-Yin Ng. "The mosque and the garden become one, with the trees and the columns forming an informal vertical landscape and allowing Friday prayers to spill outside."

Construction is underway on a new office and retail tower in the Dubai International Financial Center district (DIFC). Designed by Foster + Partners, the 1.5-million-square-foot "ICD Brookfield Place" has officially broke ground and is expected to be completed by late 2018.

"The beginning of construction at ICD Brookfield Place marks the next phase of one of Dubai's most prestigious developments at the DIFC. We were honored to be chosen by ICD Brookfield to design a project that we believe will become a new social focus for Dubai, combining world class office space with a major civic plaza," says Foster. 

Videos

In the race to bring driverless cars from a futuristic fantasy to a present-day reality, developers have touted a plethora of advantages, from reduced traffic congestion on roads to improved safety thanks to the elimination of human error. But the potential widespread implementation of driverless cars could also have profound impacts on the form of our urban environments, fundamentally reshaping infrastructure and land use. As recently as a year ago, this new technology was seen as decades away; however, recently Elon Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla, predicted that driverless cars will be capable of making cross-country treks within about two years, and a pilot program in the United Kingdom city of Milton Keynes plans to launch a fleet of driverless pod-taxis by 2018, matching Musk’s timeline.

The driverless car future could be just around the corner, and the normally slow-changing infrastructure of cities could be forced to apply quick fixes to adapt. At the same time, the full potential of driverless cars cannot be realized without implementing significant changes to the urban fabric. So how will driverless cars change how our cities work, and how will our cities adapt to accommodate them?

Henning Larsen Architects, Foster + Partners and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios are all competing to design the University of Cincinnati's (UC) new Carl H. Lindner College of Business. According to the Cincinnati Business Courier, public presentations by the three finalists for the $135 million project took place last week. The University is expected to select an architect early next year. The (roughly) 275,000-square-foot building will be part of the campus' "Beautification Plan."

In this day and age, innovation is occurring at a faster rate than ever before. And while a majority of ideas may make a small impact before fading away, some inventions are able to slip through the cracks and become a real game changer in their field. Our field, of course, is architecture, and this year there have been no shortage of inventions that may change the way we live and work forever. In TIME magazine’s annual release of inventions of the year, at least 6 may have an impact on the world of architecture, encompassing inventions within the field of architecture itself and developments that could change how we design and experience space. Read on for those projects and what they might mean for our future.

Apple's new Foster + Partners-designed flagship store in Chicago is said to have been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style Homes outside the city. Unveiled first by the Chicago Tribune, the store will feature a 14-foot entry pavilion that will usher visitors from Michigan Avenue down into the sales floor backdropped with views of the Chicago River. A "grand flight of stairs" will offer pedestrians an alternative route to the riverside walkway that flanks the bank.

RFR and Foster + Partners have released new images of One Hundred East 53rd Street, a 63-story luxury residential tower in New York next to Mies van der Rohe's famed Seagram Building. The skyscraper, which was announced last year, will contain 94 residences, a swimming pool, wellness facility, spa, library and sitting rooms, and its trademark Foster minimalism is intended to "provide a counterpoint to the Seagram’s bronze edifice," according to the developers RFR.

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Foster + Partners has been shortlisted among 30 other finalists in the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge organized by America Makes and NASA. The proposal calls for a 3D printed settlement built by pre-programmed, semi-autonomous robots who use regolith found on Mars' surface to construct dwellings that can house up to four astronauts each.

"The proposal considers multiple aspects of the project from delivery and deployment to construction and operations," says Foster. "The habitat will be delivered in two stages prior to the arrival of the astronauts."

Foster + Partners, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and UNStudio have been shortlisted in a competition to expand the Taoyuan International Airport - Taiwan's largest airport, formally known as Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. Each team will now be given £126,000 to develop their proposals for a new 640,000-square-meter Terminal 3 building which, as the Architect's Journal reports, is expected to host 45 million passengers each year.

The full shortlist includes: