The Center for Arts and Innovation has just selected Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano to design its new creative campus. The campus is situated in the heart of downtown Boca Raton in Florida and aims to become a global hub for creative excellence. Ultimately, The Center is on a mission to transform Boca Raton into an internationally recognized destination for culture, arts, innovation, and technology.
Skyscrapers are iconic symbols of modern urbanization and technological advancements all over North America. In fact, these structures are a sign of economic prosperity, urban density, and the capabilities of humanity’s ambition. In major cities across the continent, they shape the skyline and give identity to these metropolises. Cities like New York City, Toronto, and Florida utilize these cutting-edge designs to showcase power beyond their physical stature.
In general, skyscrapers are characterized by their remarkable height and pioneering engineering capabilities. They use advanced materials such as steel, glass, and concrete and serve as multifunctional spaces, ranging from housing to hotels and offices. Architects all around the world continually push the boundaries of architectural creativity, design, sustainability, and functionality while crafting these buildings. The structures allow architects to maximize land use in new ways, tackling densely populated urban areas.
As repositories of knowledge and catalysts for innovation, museums represent an architectural typology filled with opportunities. They act as an intermediary between the general public and artists, historians, and researchers, creating the medium for the display of cultures and creativity while also striving to make knowledge accessible to all. Through careful curation and exhibition design, they provide a platform for education and research, fostering an understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures, histories, and ideas. For architects, they also present an opportunity to conceive spaces aligned with the exhibits on display to create an immersive experience for the visitors.
This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by the ArchDaily community that showcase art, technology, and innovation through the program of museums and cultural centers. Featuring projects from emerging and established architectural offices such as Hariri Pontarini Architects, Beyer Blinder Belle, Studio Saheb, RAMSA, and Ho Khue Architects, the selection includes a variety of scales and programs, from a museum dedicated to the commemoration of the Holocaust to a private sportscar museum in Austria or an intricately-shaped art gallery in Vietnam.
Master plans, or large-scale urban planning projects, are one of the main tools for shaping and structuring land use and development to ensure that the built environment is coherent and functional. The interventions vary in scope and approach. While some projects are extending the buildable area by creating floating neighborhoods off the coast of Florida, others are reusing the existing spaces and heritage to reimagine the future of their communities.
This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights large-scale urban design projects submitted by the ArchDaily community Offices such as Aedas, LDA Design, Proctor & Matthews Architects, WTA Architecture + Design Studio are showcasing designs that create or reimagine entire neighborhoods, whether on land or on water, in cities all over the world, from Ukraine to Malawi, India or the Philippines.
New York’s Museum of Sex announces its expansion to Miami in spring 2023 with a 3000-square-meters museum designed by the international studio Snøhetta. The converted warehouse will feature three extensive exhibition galleries, retail space, and a bar to preserve, present, and celebrate the cultural significance of human sexuality in one of the most vibrant and diverse arts communities in the USA. The inaugural program will include work by Hajime Sorayama and Super Funland: Journey into the Erotic Carnival, the museum’s main immersive experience.
Community development proposals in Disney World come from back days. One of Walt Disney's last visionary projects was the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), a center for American enterprise and urban living. Disney advocated that the problems of cities were the most critical issues facing society and planned a city that could develop in a controlled manner, contrary to the urban expansion in the USA during the first half of the last century. After Disney died in 1966, the "EPCOT" concept was abandoned as the company was uncertain about the feasibility of operating a city. Fifty- five years later, after a thorough search, Walt Disney World chose The Michaels Organization for its experience in building and managing attainable housing communities.
Architecture and design practice Brooks + Scarpa has announced that the new Ramos Collaboratory Building for the University of Florida’s School of Design Construction and Planning has broken ground. This extension will add nearly 50,000 square feet (4,600 square meters) of educational spaces to the existing college, which is also undergoing significant remodeling. The new building will include reconfigurable, multi-functional spaces where the students, faculty, and staff can collaborate both formally and informally. The building is anticipated to be completed in early 2025.
New York-based architecture studio ODA has revealed the design of its newest project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The 47-story tower is located south of the New River in the Rio Vista neighborhood. The program comprises 830 residential units, studios with two bedrooms, while also offering ample space for amenities and commercial use, measuring 13,000 square feet. At ground level, the project incorporates a large corner plaza. By placing functions for the public at the lower levels, the project aims to activate the walkways and public spaces, thus adding to the life of the neighborhood.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
The passage of the Biden Administration’s climate change package, the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” has predictably split along partisan lines, with Republicans characterizing the bill as an act of reckless government spending, certain to raise taxes and fuel further inflation. But does this act really represent reckless spending? The legislation authorizes $430 billion in spending, the bulk of which—more than $300 billion—is earmarked for tax credits; other spending, and initiatives aimed at stimulating the clean energy economy; and reducing carbon emissions. (The bill also allows Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies for certain expensive drugs.) The bill is funded in part by a 15% minimum tax on large corporations and an excise tax on companies that repurchase shares of their own stock. Given the scope of the problem, and the escalating future costs of climate inaction, this legislation is an exceedingly modest, but very necessary, first step.
Beneath the Spaceship Earth geodesic sphere and the display of world cultures that symbolize Disney World’s EPCOT lies the buried vision for a utopian city. The original EPCOT - a community built around innovation - was one of Walt Disney’s last visionary projects. Bothered by haphazard urban sprawl, Disney had bold ideas for an urban fabric that would drive progress in the USA. The “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” was Walt Disney’s antidote to the decay of American cities.
Arcquitectonica unveiled the design of One Brickell City Centre, an approximately 1,000-foot (approximately 300 meters) office tower planned to become the tallest commercial tower in Florida. Located in Miami’s financial district on Brickell Avenue, the office building represents the second phase of Brickell City Centre, a 4.9-million-square-foot (450,000 square meters) mixed‐use development that opened in 2016. One Brickell City Centre is developed by Swire Properties Inc. and Related Companies. Construction it set to begin in 2023.
The Vero Beach Museum of Art (VBMA) in Florida has announced the appointment of Allied Works Architecture to lead the expansion and renovation project. The selection process took over nine months and it entailed a line-up of 13 national architectural firms and an eventual short-list. The winning design team will be led by Allied Works founder Brad Cloepfil and Principals Chelsea Grassinger and Gabe Smith. The expansion and renovation process is expected to be completed by 2026.
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, affluent Parisians flocked to second homes on France’s Atlantic coast as a nationwide lockdown came down on the country. In June 2020, as the lockdown was eased in England, residents headed to seaside towns like Bournemouth to soak in sunny weather. The former scenario reflects the widening gap between France’s wealthy and the poor, whilst the latter is a reflection of the democratizing power of public-access beaches.
In both situations, what is sought out is the ecological calmness usually found on beaches. Globally, however, there’s an unsettling phenomenon, where intertwined with climate change and policy decisions, beaches are increasingly becoming private, inaccessible spaces.
New York-based architecture studio ODA has revealed the design of Ombelle, a duo of residential towers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The two 43-story buildings will accommodate 1,100 rental units, completed with amenities and retail spaces. At the base of the building, an urban plaza connects the development to its neighboring area and Flanger Village. The Ombelle complex is ODA's second large-scale residential project in Fort Lauderdale. The first one, the Kushner tower, is located in the same district.
Led by Partner Jason Long, OMA have unveiled the design of a 17-storey residential tower in Miami’s Mid Beach neighborhood. Dubbed The Perigon, the project is designed as a series of towers rotated to orient views away from neighbors and towards the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay. The towers are merged and lifted 45-feet above the flood line to form a singular structure that offers panoramic views and liberates the ground-plane.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by established firms. From river-side commercial centers to mixed-use towers, this article explores commercial and residential functions designed by global architecture offices that are either conceptual, have won first-prize in design competitions, or are currently being realized.
Featuring a pedestrian bridge by Grimshaw Architects in France, and a finance-district skyscraper dubbed as the "Lighthouse of the 21st Century" by Ronald Lu & Partners, this roundup explores how established architecture firms have designed buildings that cater to the spatial and environmental needs of their users and respective functions. This round up also includes designs from SOM, IMPLMNT, Gensler, and Aedas, among other notable architects.
ODA New York has revealed the design of "300 West Broward Blvd", its new residential tower in Fort Lauderdale, South of Florida. The 38-storey tower, which marks the firm's first project in that region, will serve as an urban gateway in the heart of the city, bringing together a diverse mixed-use program across 10 floors, topped by an all-inclusive residential program that will become an new landmark to the area's growing skyline.
