Public Facilities: The Latest Architecture and News

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The United States’ diplomatic presence in Cuba is housed in a severe, early-1950s office building perched on the shoreline over Havana Bay. Walled off from the city and pulled back from the street, the building has the uneasy presence of a haunted castle – shunned and maligned by its neighbors, but subjected to the unending scrutiny of suspicious eyes and intrigued gossip of the locals. With its regimented orthogonalities and the unmistakably foreign imprint of modernist efficiencies, both the embassy's architecture and the optimistic political spirit it embodies seem to belong to another era, a cooperative past no longer conceivable in the wake of a half century of underhanded diplomacy, calumnious propaganda, and failed attempts to restore relations between the embattled countries.

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“The River,” SANAA’s first US commission since winning the 2010 Pritzker Prize, is currently underway in Connecticut. Designed by the Japanese practice in collaboration with OLIN, the meandering and almost transparent building will be built on a 75-acre preserve as a multi-use platform for events and initiatives put on by the community of New Canaan and non-profit Grace Farms Foundation.

“We are thrilled that Grace Farms will begin welcoming the public in autumn 2015,” Sharon Prince, president of the Grace Farms Foundation stated. 

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Tengbom is preparing to break ground on their competition-winning proposal “Kotten” (The Pinecone) in the Fontin area of Kungälv municipality. Following the destruction of the old trail centre in a fire in 2013, Kungälv municipality arranged an architectural competition for a new, modern trail centre in the Fontin area.

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The Danish Building & Property Agency has selected Arkitema Architects to design a new office building to house four government agencies: Banedanmark, The Danish Transport Authority, The Danish Road Directorate and the Danish Energy Agency. The 43,000 square metre office building is named "Nexus," a word which "comes from Latin and means linkage, centre and connection," according to Glenn Elmbæk, partner at Arkitema Architects. "And that is exactly what we want to create for The Danish Building & Property Agency - a connection between people in their work lives, between knowledge and between the four government agencies."

More on the design after the break

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Bureau Architecture Méditerranée has unveiled the design for the new Parliament of Algeria, a complex including buildings for the People's National Assembly, the National Council (Senate), the Chamber (Congress), and a residence for legislators. The buildings are organized around a large public plaza, "a symbolic gathering place for the free people who give the republic its legitimacy and authority," on a site that connects the historic and modern parts of the city.

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