Construction broke ground last month for ‘The Exchange’ tower in Vancouver, Canada's first LEED Platinum heritage conversion and Harry Gugger Studio’s first North American building. The 31-floor office building resolves the strict urban regulations imposed on high-rise construction downtown and addresses the historical context by preserving and integrating the façade of the city's historic Stock Exchange building.
BIG has released plans, alongside collaborators HKS and Michael Diggiss Architects, of a luxury, mid-rise condominium at the Albany Bahamas resort. Located on the south coast of New Providence Island, “The Honeycomb” will offer 34, 3,000 to 8,000 square foot apartments, each complete with a private outdoor pool and summer kitchen integrated into the structure’s hexagonal-shaped facade.
NBBJ has unveiled a 250-meter-high, two-tower campus that will become Tencent’s main headquarters at the Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park upon completion in 2016. As the world’s third-largest internet corporation, and 2013’s most innovative Chinese company according to FastCo, Tencent hopes the new campus will serve as a vibrant workplace for an expanding workforce of 12,000 employees.
schmidt hammer lassen architects has been announced as the winners of a competition to design a large new central library in Ningbo, one of China's oldest cities with a population of seven million. The building will house the library's significant collection of over two million historic and ancient books, and will aim to double the library's daily visitors to around 8000 per day. Situated on the edge of a new ecological wetland area, the proposal will also form a new cultural hub within the city. As the latest in schmidt hammer lassen's long list of libraries (including the Royal Library in Copenhagen) with eight completed and four currently under construction, Ningbo's will be the practice's first in China.
A team led by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has been announced as winners of a competition to design the Vendsyssel Theatre and Experience Centre in Hjørring, Denmark. Once complete in 2016, the 4,200 square meter building will act as a new and vibrant cultural hub within the city.
Henning Larsen Architects has won a competition to design a new city hall for Kiruna in northern Sweden. The design, which has already been named Krystallen (The Crystal), is intended to "become the city's natural gathering point, where the traditions of democracy will be united with a vision about a dynamic meeting place for politics as well as social and cultural events". Comprising of two buildings, the outermost circular in form and the innermost "shaped like a crystal", the design has been "inspired by the enormous concentration of iron ore" that can be found beneath the site, the discovery of which led to the founding of Sweden's northernmost city.
This 33-story SOHO Hailun Plaza is currently being constructed in the dense city of Shanghai. Located at the intersection of two metro lines, the plaza will include a 130-meter office tower and five mixed-use podiums. The design, by UNStudio, treats each structure as a set of objects shaped by the flow of commuters. Each facade will be cloaked in a similar, faceted texture that will “change in appearance when approached from different directions.”
Construction has begun on OMA’s competition-winning proposal for the BMVR (Bibliothèque Multimédia à Vocation Régionale) Library in northern France. Located at the tip of a peninsula in an old industrial port area of Caen, the 13,000 square meter public library is shaped by four protruding wings that point towards four of the city’s landmarks: l'Abbaye aux Hommes, l'Abbaye aux Dames, the train station to the south and a new urban development to the west.
More on BMVR after the break...
The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority (MSFA), the Minnesota Vikings and HKS Sports & Entertainment Group together unveiled the design of the state’s new $975 million multi-purpose stadium in Minneapolis.
SOM has designed what will be Singapore’s tallest tower upon its completion in 2016. Positioned as a premier quality business and lifestyle hub, the 290-meter, 1.7-million-gross-square-foot Tanjong Pagar Centre will provide a mix of uses, comprising office, residential, retail and hospitality, in the historic Tanjong Pagar central business district. The development will be a significant contribution to the evolving skyline of Singapore and will become a landmark destination, serving as a gateway to the future waterfront city.
This dynamic cultural center in Grottammare, Italy, will be Bernard Tschumi Architects’ first commission in Italy. Inspired by the city's small medieval center, the roughly 7,000 square meter structure will house a variety of exhibitions, conferences and workshops in an effort to “strengthen people’s ties to the territory with which they identify” by exchanging information about the existing city and envision its possibilities for the future.
The architect's description after the break...
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has announced further details of its 235,000-square-foot building expansion that will support the museum's increasing role in city life and the international art community. Designed by Norway-based practice Snøhetta, in collaboration with local firm EHDD, the 10-story concrete structure will compliment SFMOMA's original, Mario Botta-designed, red-brick museum by offering more free-to-the-public space, expanded education programs and an abundance of flexible performance-based gallery space.
