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.
A new landmark on the Brooklyn skyline, TEN Arquitectos’ DBCD (Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District) South building at 300 Ashland, is nearing completion, with tenants expected to move in by the end of the summer. The mixed-use building will feature 379 apartment units and will also become the new home of a number of cultural tenants, including the performing arts organization 651 Arts, MoCADA, Brooklyn Academy of Music cinemas, and a new branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Southwest Facade After. Image Courtesy of Perkins Eastman
Perkins Eastman has released plans for a two-story expansion and redesign of the SOM-designed Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research at the University of Chicago campus in Chicago, Illinois. Construction on the 63,500 square foot building has just begun, and once completed, will serve as the renewed home of the University’s Department of Physics. The addition and renovation will create a new physics hub on campus that will allow students of different sub-disciplines to collaborate under the same roof for the first time.
Woods Bagot has revealed designs for the new Biological Sciences building at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia). Currently under construction, the 21,000 square meter (226,000 square foot) building will provide world-class facilities for UNSW biomedical and environmental researchers and create a new northern gateway for the university’s upper campus.
In the design process, Woods Bagot explored a series of iterative responses aimed at dividing the eight-story structure into three distinct elements: the laboratory box, the workplace box, and the atrium. The building skin takes inspiration from natural elements, such as the movements of a butterfly and the colors of Australian rock landscapes, to produce a distinct aesthetic for the Biomedical Precinct, as well as reference the terra cotta heritage on the university grounds.
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.
Ingenhoven Architects have released images of Marina One, a high-density mixed-use complex for the new Marina Bay Financial District in downtown Singapore. The plan consists of two office towers, two residential towers and a retail podium set between two large urban parks. The project’s centerpiece is the “Green Heart,” which upon completion will become the largest public plaza in the central business district. Construction has currently topped out, with an expected completion date falling sometime in 2017.
Bing Thom Architects have released new images for Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre, designed in collaboration with Ronald Lu & Partners. Currently under construction, the building is scheduled for completion in 2017, becoming the first venue to open within the new West Kowloon Cultural District. The Xiqu Centre will serve as the home of the Chinese Opera, as well as play host to an array of cultural events.
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects is part of the winning SPARK consortium to design the new educational facility for the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht in the Netherlands. The new educational facility completes the existing ‘Kasbah’ master plan and will provide space for over 6,500 students, staff and visitors, as well as house seven institutes.
"It forms a strong and clear mark on the site, where it will activate and support the dynamic life on the campus," says the architects.
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects (SHL) has broken ground on a new clubhouse and gallery in GaoYao, China - a mountainous district 100 kilometers west of Guangzhou. The project, focused on "space, light, view and program," was designed for a new development of luxury villas at the base of a nearby mountain. It will be built in the center of a lake by early 2017.
"The sculptural project was designed in collaboration with a Feng Shu Master to respect angles of approach and its location on the site," says SHL.
Architectural design office UNK project has won a competition to design the Atomic Energy Pavilion in Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNH), an area that has been in the process of redevelopment and growth since 2013. The pavilion aims to share the “history of the native nuclear industry” and its “contribution into modern economic development," according to competition organizer ROSATOM.
Of the six competition entries to advance to the final stage, the UNK project design, was the only that “decided not to pursue the literal associations with the atom and atomic energy in the hardware of the pavilion, but rather dispersed it in its software," according to the architects.
Studio Gang has designed a new training facility - Fire Rescue 2 - for New York's elite FDNY Company 2. Planned to be built on a Brownsville site in Brooklyn by 2017, the station uses voids as an architectural element that helps the fire team better stage and simulate emergency situations, while bringing natural light and fresh air deep into the building.
"Company 2 is trained to respond to various emergency scenarios, from fire and building collapses to water rescues and scuba operations. During emergencies, the Company must often utilize voids in buildings, whether creating them to let heat and smoke out of a structure or locating them as a means of escape," describes Studio Gang.
HENN has won first place in the competition to design Kingdee Tower, the headquarters for software company Kingdee in Shenzhen, China. The 44-story glazed tower will be the central building for the new headquarters, rising from an irregular pentagon plan situated between two existing nine-story blocks.
Designed by Post-Office Architectes, 30 Warren St. is a new, luxury 12-storey building, featuring 23 residences and 9,700 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Located along Church St. between Warren and Chambers St in the Tribeca neighbourhood of New York City, the project is set for completion in the fall of 2017.
David Chipperfield Architects is preparing to break ground on a new concert hall in Künzelsau, Germany. Planned for a hillside site south of the city, the quaint "Carmen Würth Forum" will add a new event hall and a chamber music hall to the area by 2017. In the project's second phase, a conference center and museum for the Würth art collection will be added.
"The building is embedded in the landscape, characterized by expansive meadows and fields, which it integrates as an architectural theme," says Chipperfield.
Rendered Exterior View. Image Courtesy of New Wave Architecture
Located in Pardis Technology Park in the suburbs of Tehran, the new Turbosealtech office by New Wave Architecture is a small, but complex building with a site of 1,300 square meters. Envisioned as an “incubator,” the project will provide a platform for people to research and innovate. Pardis Technology Park is made up of developments by young architects from Iran, and this project continues this pattern of expressing the vision of young Iranian architects through its design team. Read more about the project after the break.
Addressing the budding concept of intellectual property in China, KUAN Architects has revealed their proposal for the Intellectual Property Office Headquarters at the Beijing TBD. The project sits at the crossing of the North-South axis of the Badaling Expressway and the East-West axis of the TBD, an irregular quadrilateral footprint among several rectangular developments. Both sides of the main axis of the TBD are divided into 5 parcels - simple, concise shapes that balance the irregularity of the site and reconcile its plan with the surroundings. Using these building volumes, a plaza is created in the centre.
The landscape architects of Gustafson Porter has shared with us their newest project in the center of Singapore's business district: Marina One. The massive mixed-use scheme is said to be "one of the first" to "integrate soft landscape into the fabric of the building," carving a public "Green Heart" in between the development's four towers - two residential and two commercial high-rises designed by Ingenhoven Architects and A61.
"The ‘Green Heart’ at the center of the Marina South towers evokes a rice paddy field, terraced into steep hillsides and made arable for the cultivation of rice, an essential crop of the East Asia," says Gustafson Porter. "Visitors and inhabitants ascend skywards from the Green Heart into Strata Terraces, a Cloud Garden, Green Screens and Rooftop Gardens that allude to the changing environments and habitats that one might experience whilst climbing a mountain."
HENN has broken ground on the Innovation Center at pharmaceutical company Merck's corporate headquarters and factory in Darmstadt, Germany.
The new Center follows the site’s pre-established master plan, also designed by HENN, placing the new building complex between two existing company buildings and at the end of what is to become a spacious public square.
_AlexanderSchmitz.jpg?1467999479 "© Alexander Schmitz. Courtesy of Ingenhoven")
.jpg?1447568092&format=webp&width=640&height=580)
