The hyperreal renderings predicting New York City’s skyline in 2018 are coming to life as the city’s wealth physically manifests into the next generation of skyscrapers. Just like millennials and their ability to kill whole industries singlehandedly, we are still fixated on the supertalls: how tall, how expensive, how record-breaking? Obsession with this typology centers around their excessive, bourgeois nature, but – at least among architects – rarely has much regard for the processes which enable the phenomenon.
The ‘Super Tall and Skinny’ NYC Tower 111 W 57 by SHoP Architects is forging ahead as seen in this photographic construction update by Paul Clemence from Archi-Photo. In the photos, the glass and terracotta facade seems largely complete, casting beams of light into New York's notoriously valley-like streets. SHoP's ultra-thin residential tower, which is set for completion this year, will rise above the Empire State Building and even One World Trade Center, taking a bird's eye view over the entirety of the city skyline.
Tegucigalpa New Embassy Compound. Image Courtesy of SHoP Architects
SHoP Architects have revealed new renderings of their design for a New Embassy Compound (NEC) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In 2013, SHoP was among the firms selected by the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Overseas Building Operations (OBO) to realize facilities that will meet its operational needs while embodying and communicating the spirit and highest values of the United States.
Twin brothers Chris and Bill Sharples are two of the founding partners of SHoP Architects, a New York-based firm established 20 years ago to bring together diverse expertise in designing buildings and environments that improve the quality of public life.
The firm’s style is difficult to define, but a connective thread throughout SHoP’s portfolio is a design philosophy rooted in constraints. From digital models to next-generation fabrication and delivery techniques, technology is at the center of the firm’s movement toward an iterative approach that, as Chris Sharples says, “is beginning to blur the line between architecture and manufacturing.”
SHoP Architects' super-slender tower at 111 West 57th Street has reached supertall height, but the tower has begun missing pieces of its façade. As New York YIMBY revealed, sales have already started for the Manhattan skyscraper as new photographs show missing fragments of the terracotta façade. Located in Billionaire's Row just south of Central Park, the supertall is being created by JDS Development and Property Markets Group. The project aims to become an iconic terracotta skyscraper in Midtown as it passes its third setback.
Community Performing Arts Center. Image Courtesy of SHoP Architects
The New York practice SHoP Architects has been selected to design the Upper Harbor Terminal Community Performing Arts Center (CPAC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sited on the Mississippi River waterfront, the center will be designed for First Avenue Productions as a year-round epicenter for live music and entertainment. SHoP's design aims to engage the community and its context to embrace the musical and cultural legacy of North Minneapolis.
Neighboring Grand Central Station, Company’s office building at 335 Madison Avenue has one of the most coveted locations in midtown Manhattan. Charged with completely renovating the building’s atrium and office floors, the local New York firm SHoP Architects has unveiled a set of interior renders that show their plans for the commuter-friendly office space.
Artfully dancing together to the beat of their own drum, the familiar look of the New York skyline has now been broken up by an eye-catching pair of skyscrapers on the banks of the East River. The dual copper-clad residential towers are reminiscent of a couple dancing, leaning back slightly and linked together by a bridge with a metallic reflecting finish half-way up the tower. The glass for the 100-meter-high skybridge for this extraordinary project was created by the Swiss specialists Glas Trösch which developed a complex, double-insulating glass with an internally laminated, metallic web to give a glossy finish.
When we think of public housing architecture in the United States, we often think of boxes: big, brick buildings without much aesthetic character. But the implications of standardized, florescent-lit high-rises can be far more than aesthetic for the people who live there. Geographer Rashad Shabazz, for one, recalls in his book Spatializing Blackness how the housing project in Chicago where he grew up—replete with chain link fencing, video surveillance, and metal detectors—felt more like a prison than a home. Accounts of isolation, confinement, and poor maintenance are echoed by public housing residents nationwide.
SHoP Architects has been selected as lead master planners and designers of the campus for Fulbright UniversityVietnam (FUV) to be located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The new university, announced in 2016 by President Obama on his visit to the country, is Vietnam’s first independent, non-profit institution of higher education. The university was established with the goal of offering innovative teaching programs and impactful research that will serve the country’s continued development and finding solutions to the large problems facing Vietnam and the world.
For nearly 100 years, the JL Hudson's Department Store in downtown Detroit stood as a mecca of shopping – the 25-story structure at one point holding the record for world’s tallest retail building. Then in 1983, following a downturn of the Detroit economy, the department store was closed. Its implosion followed in 1998. In the years since, the important site has laid mainly vacant, save for an underground parking structure inserted into the store’s former underground retail levels. But now, plans have been revealed to return the site to its former glory.
Announced yesterday by Detroit-based development group Bedrock, the site is set to receive a brand new 1.2 million-square-foot development designed by SHoP Architects and consisting of a nine-story retail podium and a 52-story, 734-foot tower that would claim the title of Detroit’s tallest building.
Eleven of the United States’ most prestigious architects have been selected by developers Hoffman-Madison Waterfront (HMW), to commence Phase 2 of The Wharf, a $2 billion neighborhood situated on the southwest waterfront of Washington D.C. The development is adjacent to the National Mall, spanning 24 acres of land and 50 acres of water.
“We have selected a diverse group of locally, nationally, and internationally renowned designers, knowing they will bring their talent and expertise to The Wharf, building a waterfront neighborhood that is an integral part of the city,” said Shawn Seaman, principal and Senior VP of Development at PN Hoffman.
https://www.archdaily.com/804824/eleven-practices-to-complete-2-dollars-billion-waterfront-development-in-washington-dcOsman Bari
Quicken Loans Arena, home of the current NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers, is set to receive a $140 million transformation. Designed by SHoP and Rossetti, the project will consist of significant upgrades to address the arena’s structural and operational deficiencies and improve the overall fan experience.
The AEC industry is notoriously slow to adopt new technologies. Cumbersome organizational structures and high financial stakes make it difficult for AEC professionals to experiment. Due to the limited role of architects in the project development process, innovative design solutions and experimentation with new manufacturing techniques are still confined to academic circles and research institutions.
However, some architecture firms are utilizing their high profiles, international success and the influx of talented, young designers to establish in-house research divisions and incubators that support the development of new ideas in the AEC industry. The following five companies are consistent in pushing the envelope and helping architecture adopt some of the latest technologies:
https://www.archdaily.com/798252/these-are-the-worlds-most-innovative-architecture-firmsLidija Grozdanic for Archipreneur.com
A new video by JDS Development Group, Building Knowhow: Skybridge, begins with an anecdote of a day when the firemen showed up at the site. “We got a call – the buildings are falling down!” the chief fireman told Michael Jones, director of JDS. Jones responded with a chuckle, "they're supposed to be like that!"
Located on the East Side of Manhattan, the American Copper Buildings, designed by New York-based SHoP Architects, test the boundaries of engineering. In an informative video, JDS Development Group documents the building of a skybridge between the towers, outlining their detail-oriented, step-by-step approach. Located 300 feet in the air, it is New York's first major skybridge in 80 years.
SHoP Architects has just broken ground on their first project in Mexico, a mixed-use development in Tijuana. The complex, which will be know as BAJALTA, explores new ideas about open-space and mixed-use developments, yielding a better quality of life for residents and visitors.
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.jpg?1527852711 "The Navy Green development in Brooklyn was a key case study in the report. Here, the supportive housing from that development, designed by Architecture in Formation and Curtis + Ginsburg. Image © Tom Powel Imaging")
.jpg?1527852699 "The Tetris Apartments in Ljubljana, by OFIS Arhitekti, were identified by the report as a case study for their massing. Image Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti")
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