Master Plan: The Latest Architecture and News

Daniel Libeskind and inLodz21 Institution are designing Nexus21, an urban revitalization project of 21 structures that vary between residential and commercial buildings to urban spaces. The new cultural hub is located in particular neighborhoods to promote the creativity and innovation that lies in the city, such as architecture, textiles, fashion, and film, which are all part of its heritage. The master plan will also work on the spaces in between the revived structures, creating a vibrant nexus between the old and the new, while adding value to the historic neighborhoods of Łódź, Poland.

Global architecture firm Perkins&Will, in collaboration with ARUP, Grimshaw Architects, EPS , AIM Consulting, and the City of Sacramento, have transformed the city's historic train station into a self-reliant and regenerative transportation hub, making it one of the most sustainable public areas in California. The design team worked alongside the local community to create a people-centric 31-acre master plan that reflects what the community envisions for a public train station and gateway to the city of Sacramento.

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Snøhetta has unveiled a new Central Campus Building for Ford Motor Company, part of the transformation of its Research & Engineering (R&E) Campus in Dearborn, Michigan. As the result of a 3-year research and planning process, the project was created in collaboration with IBI Group as the Architect of Record, Ghafari as the Engineer of Record, and Arup leading sustainability and engineering.

WXY Studio has partnered with the Downtown Davenport Partnership (DDP) to develop Davenport 30: A Resilient City, a new master plan that aims to provide a sustainable and inclusive city that reconnects its citizens to the surrounding neighborhoods. The award-winning architecture and urban design studio’s proposal focuses on revitalizing the city’s urban fabric and turning it into an innovative hub for businesses, entertainment, and leisure, all while prioritizing the citizens’ health.

After MAD’s Wormhole Library, the city of Haikou revealed a pavilion by Sou Fujimoto Architects. Scheduled for the end of spring, the ribbon-like white pavilion with an accessible roof will be one of the first public waterfront interventions to be completed in the spring of 2021. Shaping the future of Haikou city and Hainan Free Trade Port, the master plan of 16 permanent destinations re-imagines the future of coastal living.

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Foster + Partners has revealed its latest project for Qatar, a 1.1 million-square-meter landmark development consisting of four high-rise buildings. Part of a larger masterplan also designed by the architects, to be completed ahead of the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar, Lusail Towers is envisioned as a “catalyst for a new central business district in the city”.

Going out twice per month, our curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture submitted by our readers highlights inventive conceptual approaches and designs. Showcasing projects from all over the world, this article puts together several programs, from houses to master plans. Moreover, it presents winning proposals from international competitions, buildings in progress, and creative concepts.

In the housing category, the roundup features an underground bunker-like house plan in Ukraine, a suspended glass structure cabin in Portugal, a complex of residential units in France, and a site-less, style-inclusive reinterpretation of the vertical housing block. In addition, a playful commercial building in Iran, a WWI memorial in Serbia, and an extension for the Glasgow School of Art join the selection, with their imaginative architecture and out of the box ideas.

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Alison Brooks Architects has created a landmark structure in the emerging area of Kings Cross in London, part of its Central Masterplan. The proposed mixed-use urban block containing 158 dwellings will reinforce the neighborhood’s “unique sense of place and celebrate its emerging and historic contexts”.

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Foster + Partners has just unveiled its winning design scheme for a new urban destination in China, the Guangming Hub located on the high-speed rail connecting Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. In fact, the Transport Oriented Development proposal generates a “smart city that supports the flow of people and goods with robust infrastructure, effective transport networks, reliable public services, and lush greenery”.

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Creating new standards for a more connected and livable city, Henning Larsen has designed a New Masterplan for Wolfsburg, Germany. The new prototype for urbanism across the European continent diffuses new energy in the city center. Selected to design the project in a competition in 2019 that included competitors UNStudio and Bjarke Ingels Group, Henning Larsen’s proposal for phase 1 is expected to reach completion by 2023.

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MVRDV has revealed the first images of Chengdu Sky Valley, the firm’s competition entry for the Future Science and Technology City in Southwest China. Fusing technology with nature, urban with rural, and modernity with tradition, the proposal introduces “a liveable city into the Linpan Landscape”. Located in one of China’s emerging cities, the project balances the competing needs of the area, through a computational workflow developed by in-house tech taskforce MVRDV NEXT.

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Establishing strong connections between urban and nature, tradition and innovation, and economy and culture, SOM has designed a master plan for the Central Area of Guangming District, Shenzhen, China. A new benchmark of ecologically integrated development, the project will lead the next generation of urban growth in the Greater Bay Area.

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Regeneration specialist U+I submitted plans for Morden Wharf in June 2020, comprising 1,500 new homes, employment spaces, and a landscaped park along 275m of the River Thames. Located on Greenwich Peninsula in London, the mixed-use scheme designed by OMA includes more than six acres of the high-quality public realm, 12 high quality, and tenure-blind residential buildings, as well as commercial, retail, and community spaces.

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Shigeru Ban, Pritzker Prize-winner, and Ole Scheeren, RIBA silver medalist, were appointed for the Hangzhou Wangjiang New Town master plan. Creating new art and cultural destination in the historical city, the project in collaboration with New World Development and K11 Group seeks to build a landmark that meets the needs of the new generation.

MVRDV and The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology) revealed “Le Grand Puzzle”, a book that holds ambitious ideas for Marseille, in the south of France. In fact, the study, made from 2018 to the start of 2020, “proposes a methodology, an agenda, and an analysis to portray today’s Marseille”.

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The Seoul Compact City has held 3 different international design competitions, in 3 different neighborhoods in Seoul, South Korea, hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and organized by Seoul Housing Corporation (SH Corporation). Aiming to create complex urban spaces in each of the interventions of the three-dimensional project, the contest selected visionary winning teams for each thematic, focusing on the introduction of public housing units and the enhancement of the infrastructure.

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