2019

+ 18

Aedas has been selected as the winner of a competition for a new mixed-use tourist and transportation hub in Sanya, China. To be located in front of the existing Sanya High-Speed Railway Station, the Sanya Integrated Commercial and Transportation Hub will feature a variety of public program elements serving visitors to the city.

The City of Frederiksberg, along with Real-dania By and Byg Foundation have selected a team led by Danish architects COBE to develop the "House of Food Culture." The project will be constructed on top of the new metro stations in Copenhagen's new Metro City Ring. The House of Food Culture and its townhouses will be built in brick, imitating the neighbouring facade lines and keeping with the style of the historic surroundings.

The House of Food Culture is to be built on top of the entrance to the forthcoming metro station that will host a daily flow of 10,000 people, while focusing on making it the focal point for urban life and a central meeting place. 

+ 6

Videos

Visualizations of the last full-scale skyscrapers in Moscow’s new International Business Center (“Moscow City”) have been revealed. Designed by an international team made up of HOK (USA), FXFOWLE (USA) and SPEECH (Russia), the two “Neva Towers” will provide additional residential and office space to the skyscraper district, which includes many of Europe’s tallest structures, including Europe’s tallest building, Federation Tower (sometimes called Vostok Tower); and one of the world’s tallest twisting buildings, Evolution Tower.

MAD Architects has unveiled the design of the new China Philharmonic Hall in Beijing. Conceived in collaboration with renowned acoustic expert Yasuhisa Toyota (Walt Disney Concert Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Suntory Hall, etc.), the concert hall will serve as the China Philharmonic Orchestra’s first permanent residency while becoming “a cultural exchange and China’s new locus for classical music.”

To be located at the south side of the Workers Stadium East Gate in Beijing’s Central Business District, the 26,587 square meter (286,000 square foot) building has been envisioned as a “hidden gem” and a place of peaceful respite within the city.

“We wanted to create a pure and sacred oasis in the midst of the bustling city,” says Ma Yansong, founder & principal partner of MAD Architects. “From the moment you enter the building, you will be taken to another time and space.”

+ 17

The building permit for MVSA Architects’ 'Mall of the Netherlands' has officially been approved by the municipality of Leidschendam. Commissioned by Unibail Rodamco, the project entails a renovation and extension of the existing Leidsenhage shopping center, as well as an entirely new interior design.

• Architects

  White Arkitekter

• Location

  Skellefteå, Sweden

• Project Year

  2019

• Photographs

  Courtesy of White Arkitekter

ingenhoven architects has released its design for the Toranomon Project, a new business and lifestyle development that will include a 175,000-square-meter office tower and a 122,000-square-meter residential tower, which will become Tokyo’s highest residential building at approximately 220 meters tall.

Located in the Toranomon area of Tokyo, the project will be built around the existing Toranomon Hills Mori Tower, with respect for the existing structure, but with its own identity as a set of nodes in the larger urban green network.

+ 17

After an international design competition, sports venue specialists HOK and Barcelona-based TAC Arquitectes have been selected to design the new 10,000 seat arena for FC Barcelona, the New Palau Blaugrana. Replacing the old arena which was built in 1971, the building is estimated to open for the 2019-2020 FC Barcelona Lassa basketball season. The redevelopment of the Palau Blaugrana is part of a larger scheme by the football team to refresh their entire campus - including the famous Camp Nou stadium for which a shortlist including BIG, Populous and HKS was announced in September, with a winner expected to be announced in March. Read on for the architects' description of their Palau Blaugrana design.

Ron Arad Architects will soon break ground on Beit Shulamit (or “Shulamit House"), a new cancer centre for the Emek Medical Centre in Afula – a regional hospital campus in the north of Israel. Designed to be "an inviting and unthreatening intervention within the hospital context," the center will be situated east of the main campus’ perimeter road within the foothills of the nearby Giv’at Hamoré mountain.

"The three-story building is arranged upon a generous new ground level deck, which rests over two covered car parking levels," says the architects. "The Centre’s three upper floors step down towards the South, to create a terraced arrangement in keeping with the site’s topography. This enhances both the views out of all parts of the building towards the natural environment, and offers a variety of indoor/outdoor spaces for circulation and reflection."

David Chipperfield Architects has revealed plans to transform Berlin's former Bötzow Brewery into a new "public destination." Located near the city's Alexanderplatz, the 24,000-square-meter industrial site was first home to the Bötzow Brewery in 1885, before being severely damaged during World War II.

With the new masterplan, Chipperfield plans to restore the surviving 19th-century structures and added three new buildings - all centered around a public plaza - to provide space for a brewery, art gallery, restaurants, medical innovation center, boutique hotel and more. Construction is expected to complete in 2019.

After an international competition, the contract for the extension and renovation of the Main Library at the University of Graz in Austria has been awarded to Atelier Thomas Pucher. The project, located at the heart of the campus, includes the addition of a 430 student auditorium; 650 reading/work areas; study and examination rooms; and administrative and storage areas. Read more about the winning design proposal after the break.

PLP Architecture has released their new design for a skyscraper at 22 Bishopsgate. Set to be 278m tall, it will be the tallest building in the City of London, second only to the Shard in the UK. The site was originally home to the Pinnacle, a slightly taller proposal that stopped work in 2012 due to economic restraints. Located in the midst of the city’s cluster of tall buildings, the new design will pick up where the Pinnacle left off, reusing the already built foundations and basements. Read more about this new development in London after the break.

Aiming to make a statement that architecture can no longer be designed with a single “move”, Rome-based firm, Paolo Venturella Architecture has unveiled their proposal titled “Plus is More” for the WHO Headquarters Extension competition. Although not selected as the winning proposal, Plus is More takes on the maxim of its name, investigating the complexity generated by a combination of "moves," circumventing the common tilted, lifted or pushed buildings that rely on a single movement. Read more about the project after the break.

Dürig AG has won a competition to design a new Student Housing building for the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Dubbed Vortex, the residential building will house 1,350 students and is also a candidate for the Athletes Village for the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games. For this reason, the design of the building includes a common path that spirals from the ground floor to the rooftop, creating a distinct social atmosphere that caters to students and athletes.

+ 4

Studio Gang Architects has gone public with what will be Chicago's third tallest tower, Wanda Vista. The massive mixed-use development, planned to open adjacent to the Chicago River in the city's Lake Shore East community by 2019, will reach 1100 feet (335 meters) and encompass more than 1.8 million-square-feet of residential and hotel space.

Defined by three vertical elements, the tower is shaped to maximize resident views of the city and river below. 

ADEPT has won a competition to design a new city gate in the German city of Flensburg along Bahnhofstrasse - a central urban axis leading to the city’s main station. Designed as a “small piece of the city,” the winning proposal adapts itself to the existing typology by combining different types of “facade expressions” that creates a “playful synergy between new and old.”

“The proposal gives us a unique chance to transform and influence our future city at a very high level of quality and creativity - Bahnhofstrasse can really become a real and vibrant piece of city,” says the client.