The Latvian city of Riga, the largest between the three Baltic states, is undergoing a cultural and urban renaissance. The city's pedestrian-only Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with several museums, cultural centers, and restaurants, attracting thousands of new visitors every year.
London-based architecture firm AI Studio have received planning approval for the development of a mixed-use tower in the Latvian capital, featuring retail stores, offices, restaurants, and public spaces.
Douglas and King Architects master plan to reinvigorate Shoreditch takes on a complex dual challenge. Broadly, there is the challenge at the core of any masterplanning project: creating a set of elements that flow together seamlessly with one another and their overall context. But more specifically, the project grapples with a tight triangular site and an already-lively urban context.
MVRDV have released details of their proposed mixed-use complex, designed to redevelop a post-industrial site in Kiel, Germany. The 65,000-square-meter proposal will adopt a flexible design system as opposed to a fixed, unchangeable plan, thus allowing the scheme to adapt to future demands as the design development progresses.
Labeled the “KoolKiel,” MVRDV’s scheme will occupy an existing large, single-story building previously used to store chains of ships, and for the printing of Germany’s famous Werner comics in the 1980s. The site’s current use as a hub for media and creative industries, and its resulting charismatic identity, has strongly influenced the MVRDV scheme, with the retention of the existing structure and lively, playful exterior spaces.
_KPF_(2).jpg?1545383310)
Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) has unveiled the design of their landmark Azrieli Tower in Tel Aviv. The 340-meter-tall elliptical building, Tel Aviv’s tallest, seeks to establish a dynamic new identity in a cluster of perfectly square, circular and triangular towers.
Designed in collaboration with MZA and Azrieli Group, the KPF scheme takes for the form of a spiraling scroll, with the outer layer of the spiral wrapping around an existing retail base. As the motif ascends, the façade wraps around the shaft of the new tower, narrowing to shape optimum office floorplates. At the top, the smaller floorplates will accommodate residential and hotel programs.
LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) has revealed their runner-up proposal in an international competition to design Forest City, a new development located on reclaimed land just off the coast of Singapore in Malaysia.
Initiated by Chinese developer Country Garden, the competition sought urban design schemes that would improve the efficiency of the land use while enhancing the quality of space and environment through the landmark of a “forest city.” The competition was won by Sasaki Associates last year.
Located on four man-made islands in Iskandar Malaysia, “Forest City” is set to be South-East Asia’s largest, mixed use green development. Designed by Sasaki Associates, the master plan has an estimated investment of S$58.3 billion (US$40.9 billion) and is expected to bring around 220,000 jobs to the area. Located near the economic centers of Southeast Asia, the new Forest City is ideally placed to become a hub of commerce and culture. Designed to encourage live/work culture, it is composed of “financial institutions, high-tech research and development facilities, headquarter offices, and a variety of creative industries that establish an innovative and sustainable employment base for the region,” write the architects. Read more after the break.
