Foster + Partners has unveiled plans for an 80-story mixed-use tower that will rise 318-meters on a prominent site in downtown Toronto at One Bloor West. The city’s second tallest building, “The One” skyscraper aims to “pioneer a new model of vertical retail” with an expansive, 60-meter commercial base that will anchor dense housing.
Foster + Partners has been chosen ahead of David Chipperfield Architects, Mossessian & Partners and Mangera Yvars Architects to design the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar centerpiece - the Lusail Stadium. The British practice will now move forward with its competition-winning scheme (first proposed in 2010) with the help of stadium experts ARUP and Populous.
“It is an honor to design this centerpiece stadium – we are delighted to have won the international competition. This is an exciting step forward in stadium design – it will be the first to break the mould of the free standing suburban concept, and instead anticipates the grid of this future city, of which it will be an integral part,” said Norman Foster, founder of Foster + Partners.
Foster + Partners have broken ground on Taiwan’s new National Museum of Marine Science and Technology in Keelung. To be the largest aquarium in northern Taiwan, the museum will face Badouzi harbor, while staying connected to the waterfront and nearby fishing village.
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Architects’ Journal has released the shortlist of their annual Women in Architecture awards, naming 17 established and emerging practitioners who have raised the profile of women architects “in a sector where women still face an alarming degree of discrimination.” In honor of their selection, the nominees have shared their advice for aspiring female architects.
See who was shortlisted and find out what they believe takes for women to succeed in the profession of architecture, after the break.
If you were a Greek tourist in the 1st century BCE you would likely have had something in your hand that would be quite familiar here in the 21st century. A guide book. The most popular guide book of the Hellenic world listed seven wonders of the world that should be visited by any Greek traveler.
Of those seven wonders, six no longer exist. The Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus were lost to natural causes, the Temple of Artemis and Statue of Zues destroyed by human hands, and no one knows what happened to the Hanging Gardens. The remaining wonder is the Great Pyramid of Giza. This colossal Egyptian structure is so grand a work that even today, 4,500 years after its construction, it is still considered by some to be the most impressive civil engineering project in history, beating out feats like the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The pyramid isn’t just an ancient wonder. Just as the Great Pyramid has managed to survive into modern times, so has our love affair with the simple but powerful angled shape. Modern architects and engineers continue to build pyramids. These modern pyramids may not be stone tombs to ancient pharaohs, but are no less stunning for all that. Read on after the break for six examples.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the topping out of New York City's Hearst Tower, Lord Foster returned in order to narrate a short film shedding new light on the building with the aid of camera drones. The 46 storey building - which is integrated into a 6 storey base brick structure designed by Joseph Urban in 1928 - was "one of the most sustainable buildings of its time." Now, ten years later, this footage captures spectacular new views of the main atrium.
The 2015 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship has launched and is inviting applications from schools of architecture around the world. A £6,000 grant will be awarded to one student by a panel of judges which will include Lord Foster and the current President of the RIBA, Stephen Hodder. First established in 2006, the scholarship is now in its eighth year and is designed to fund international research on a topic related to the survival of our towns and cities in a location of the student’s choice.
The current state of architectural design incorporates many contemporary ideas of what defines unique geometry. With the advent of strong computer software at the early 21st century, an expected level of experimentation has overtaken our profession and our academic realms to explore purposeful architecture through various techniques, delivering meaningful buildings that each exhibit a message of cultural relevancy.
These new movements are not distinct stylistic trends, but modes of approaching concept design. They often combine with each other, or with stylistic movements, to create complete designs. Outlined within this essay are five movements, each with varying degrees of success creating purposeful buildings: Diagramism, Neo-Brutalism, Revitism, Scriptism, and Subdivisionism.
A global survey conducted by BD has deemed Foster + Partners to be world’s “most admired architect" for the ninth consecutive year. The London-based practice, led by Norman Foster, is the 16th largest practice in the world. Foster + Partners’ ranking was undeniable, as the survey revealed a significant seven percent lead over runner-up contender, Herzog & de Meuron.
“To be voted most admired practice by our peers is a great honor,” said Norman Foster. “It is a huge tribute to our talented and hard-working teams with their myriad skills and disciplines, both in our many studios around the world and our base in London, all working towards the common goal of bringing innovative design solutions to create a better built environment.”
See who else topped the list as the world’s “most admired,” after the break.
Global construction company Skanska is teaming up with Foster + Partners and the engineers at Loughborough University (LU) to create the world’s first commercial 3D concrete printing robot. The company has signed an agreement with LU, who has been working on the project since 2007, to partake in an 18-month initiative with a consortium of partners focused on developing a robot capable of printing complex structural components with concrete.
A video about LU's research on 3D concrete printing and Foster + Partner's involvement, after the break.
Berlin-based editor Max Tholl of The European Magazine has shared with us his interview with Norman Foster on the role of architecture in today’s society.
The European: Lord Foster, architects design buildings that will characterize cities for decades or even centuries to come. How difficult is it to design buildings for an unknown future?
Foster: Flexibility is a key consideration. We design with an awareness that circumstances will change – that a building’s context will evolve; it may be used in different ways and will need to incorporate new technologies that we cannot yet predict.
The complete interview, after the break.
The City of Cardiff has unveiled plans by Foster + Partners to redesign the city's Central Square, close to the Millennium Stadium, adding over a million square feet of office, retail and residential buildings organized around a new civic square. Explaining that it is "the key gateway to Cardiff" for many visitors, City Council leader Phil Bale said that Central Square's "role in providing a positive image for Cardiff and Wales cannot be underestimated," adding that Foster + Partners' design is "reflective of the City’s ambition to be amongst the most ‘liveable’ cities in the world."
More on the plan after the break
Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster have been tapped to design two luxury hotels for the Jumeirah Group's newest properties in China: Jumeirah Wuhan and Jumeirah Nanjing. Both properties will be adjacent to existing business districts and will provide luxury suites, specialty restaurants, executive club lounges, business centers, spas and more.
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The Battersea Power Station Development Company has revealed new images of the buildings on "Electric Boulevard," designed by Foster + Partners and Gehry Partners. As phase three in the development of the Grade-II* power station and its surroundings, the buildings will form the primary entrance to the site, connecting the planned Battersea Underground station with the power station and forming one of London's most distinguished high streets.
The released images show both the exterior and interior features of Foster's "Battersea Roof Gardens" Building (formerly called "The Skyline") and Gehry's "Prospect Place" and "Flower" buildings. Read on after the break to see all the images.
According to the Architects' Journal, Foster + Partners has been selected to design all 46 stations of the new $12 billion metro system in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - a commission that could earn the practice up to £100 million ($160 million) in fees. Planned for a 2020 completion date and a 2022 opening, the metro project aims to remove 30% of Jeddah's traffic within the next 20 years, a significant goal as until now public transport has not been popular: currently just one or two percent of commuters in the city use public transport.
ADP Ingénierie (ADPI), part of the French airport authority Aéroports de Paris (ADP), has won the competition to design Terminal 1 at Beijing's new Daxing Airport, beating both Foster + Partners, and a team composed of the China Civil Aviation Construction Group Corporation (CACC) and the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design. The design competition for the 700,000 square meter airport was announced in July 2011, with Beijing New Airport Construction Headquarters (BNAH) putting the submissions through "a long and rigorous selection process," according to ADP.
Foster lost out on the competition despite having designed Terminal 3 at Beijing's main airport, which at the time of completion in 2008 was the largest airport terminal in the world. However owing to the rapid rise in use of air transport in China that airport is already running at full capacity, necessitating the creation of another airport at Daxing, 60 kilometres south of Beijing.
There's no doubt about it - cycling in cities is a big deal these days. But, while cycle lanes and bike-sharing schemes are all well and good for our cities, the cycling revolution hasn't yet brought us many examples of beautifully designed infrastructure to gawp at. This article, originally printed on The Dirt as "Do Elevated Cycletracks Solve Problems or Just Create More?" discusses two seemingly similar examples of high profile cycling infrastructure, examining why one is a success and the other a non-starter.
This year, two designs – one proposed and one built – for elevated cycletracks, which create bicycle highways above street level, have gained considerable media attention. They highlight questions at the heart of urban design: Should cities blend or separate transportation options? How can cities best mitigate the hazards created when cars, bikes, mass transit, and pedestrians mix? How can cities create low-cost transportation networks in increasingly dense urban cores?
Yesterday, a consortium led by Foster + Partners and Fernando Romero of FR-EE were announced as the winners of the competition for the design of Mexico City's new international airport. Designed in conjunction with a masterplan developed by Arup, the airport will initially include three runways, but is designed to expand to up to six runways by 2062, all served by the single terminal building.
One of the world's largest airport terminals at 555,000 square meters, the building is enclosed by a single, continuous lightweight gridshell, the largest of this type of structure ever built with spans reaching up to 170 meters.
By utilizing a single airport terminal, passengers will not need to travel on internal train services or underground tunnels, and the design of the building ensures shorter walking distances and few changes of level, all making for a more relaxing experience for users.
The building is designed to be the world's most sustainable airport, with the single lightweight shell using far less material than a cluster of buildings, and cooling and ventilation strategies that require little to no mechanical assistance for most of the year.
.jpg?1412679206 "Gehry Partners' \"Flower Building\". Image Courtesy of Battersea Power Station")
.jpg?1412679411 "Electric Boulevard with Foster + Partners' \"Battersea Roof Gardens\" on the left and Gehry Partners' \"Prospect Place\" on the right. Image Courtesy of Battersea Power Station")
.jpg?1412679200 "Residents' Lounge in Gehry Partners' \"Flower\" Building. Image Courtesy of Battersea Power Station")