SOMrecently revealed its design for the West Palm Beach hub of All Aboard Florida’s passenger rail line. The terminal will be one of three (Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach) that connects more than 235 miles of rail lines crossing the state of Florida. With the Sunshine State close to becoming the third biggest in the union in terms of population, these stations will serve as a welcome travel alternative to crowded highways. The Miami station alone is expected to serve about 12 million visitors. The stations will also host retail outlets and restaurants, making them cultural landmarks within their respective cities.
Hawkins\Brown have revealed plans for a £30 million revamp of Wates House in London, home to the Bartlett School of Architecture. The alterations will retain the structure of the 1970s building, opening up the facade to reveal the building's internal activities to the street, as well as adding a new entrance and converting some of the ground floor into an exhibition space. The project strikes a balance between the requirements of working within one of London's conservation areas, and retrofitting an outdated 1970s building to meet the needs of a constantly changing program.
Read on after the break for more project images and info
A marketplace is typical for most Turkish city districts. They provide a point of cohesion for the community, acting as an economic hub, a landmark, and an impromptu park. In the rapidly developing Sultangazi district of Istanbul, however, such a public place has yet to be seen. To remedy this, Suyabatmaz Demirel Architects have recently proposed a combination market hall and car park for the middle of this populous residential area.
Repurposing antiquated buildings is on the rise in China, and this proposal by Tianhua Architecture Design Companyserves as a prime example. Planned for a site in the Hexi district of Tianjin, the Shanghai-based practice will soon transform a 1917 textile mill into a contemporary art gallery and private museum.
The architects, who have adapted their design to emphasize the gridded layout and high ceilings of the existing structure, plan to insert a garden courtyard deep into the building’s core. This will not only counterpoint the structure’s industrialized aesthetic, but will provide natural light deep into the interior while preserving the exiting cruciform layout.
schmidt hammer lassen architectshas unveiled a new cultural hub for Ningbo’s Labour Union. Planned to serve both the city and the union’s nearly three million members, the “Home of Staff” will unite two stepped complexes of support, health, education, culture and leisure facilities with a half a kilometer long central park.
Danish architecture firm ADEPT has won first place in a competition to add three new buildings to the Danish Armed Forces Complex in Aalborg, Denmark. In keeping with the Armed Forces’ Green Establishments initiative, a project that encourages the lowering of energy use and CO2 emissions, the new barracks will be a visible model of sustainability.
Construction has commenced on MAD’s Chaoyang Park Plaza within one of Beijing’s largest public parks and central business district. A continuation of Ma Yansong’s “Shan-Shui City” concept, which aims reintroduce nature into the urban realm, the mixed-use complex reinterprets natural formations illustrated in traditional Chinese paintings as contemporary “city landscapes.”
“Like the tall mountain cliffs and river landscapes of China, a pair of asymmetrical towers creates a dramatic skyline in front of the park,” described MAD. “Ridges and valleys define the shape of the exterior glass facade, as if the natural forces of erosion wore down the tower into a few thin lines.”
Koichi Takada Architects(KTA)has released details on Australia’s biggest urban renewal project: Green Square. Shaped by the pedestrian and traffic flows that surround the building, the mixed-use, multi-residential complex is expected to serve as the gateway of Sydney’s Green Square Town Centre by its completion in 2016.
Jersey City’s Journal Square will soon reach new heights, as Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) and Handel Architectshave broken ground on what will be the tallest building in New Jersey: Journal Squared. The transit-oriented urban renewal project will be completed in three phases; the first, which will add 540 residential units to the area, is planned for completion in mid-2016. Once the 2.3 million square foot project is complete, three metal panel clad towers will dominated the skyline, ultimately totaling in 1,840 units and reaching up to 70 stories.
The Hague government officials have named KAAN Architecten’s design for the Facilicom Consortium PPS B30 as winner of the PPP contract for the Bezuidenhoutseweg 30 project. Originally built in 1917 for the Department of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries, KAAN is expected to transform the existing National Heritage Site facilities into a vibrant and open “modern day think tank” for the Dutch government.
Urban Architecture (UA Studio 7) and Aedas' winning proposal for the Hongqiao Central Business District has broke ground at Shanghai’s domestic Hongqiao Airport, mainland China's fourth busiest airport. The 18.4 hectare office and retail center, masterplanned by UA, has been divided into two parts: UA Studio 7 will design the office district, “a flower with eight leaves,” while Aedas designs the shopping, hotel, and conference center along a "bow curve" of pedestrian flow.
According to UA, the winning scheme's success was "due to a highly energy-efficient architecture proposal combined with an urban plan that allows for pedestrian-friendly spaces."
Construction broke ground last month for ‘The Exchange’ tower in Vancouver, Canada's first LEED Platinum heritage conversion and Harry Gugger Studio’s first North American building. The 31-floor office building resolves the strict urban regulations imposed on high-rise construction downtown and addresses the historical context by preserving and integrating the façade of the city's historic Stock Exchange building.
BIG has released plans, alongside collaborators HKS and Michael Diggiss Architects, of a luxury, mid-rise condominium at the Albany Bahamas resort. Located on the south coast of New Providence Island, “The Honeycomb” will offer 34, 3,000 to 8,000 square foot apartments, each complete with a private outdoor pool and summer kitchen integrated into the structure’s hexagonal-shaped facade.
NBBJ has unveiled a 250-meter-high, two-tower campus that will become Tencent’s main headquarters at the Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park upon completion in 2016. As the world’s third-largest internet corporation, and 2013’s most innovative Chinese company according to FastCo, Tencent hopes the new campus will serve as a vibrant workplace for an expanding workforce of 12,000 employees.
schmidt hammer lassen architects has been announced as the winners of a competition to design a large new central library in Ningbo, one of China's oldest cities with a population of seven million. The building will house the library's significant collection of over two million historic and ancient books, and will aim to double the library's daily visitors to around 8000 per day. Situated on the edge of a new ecological wetland area, the proposal will also form a new cultural hub within the city. As the latest in schmidt hammer lassen's long list of libraries (including the Royal Library in Copenhagen) with eight completed and four currently under construction, Ningbo's will be the practice's first in China.
A team led by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has been announced as winners of a competition to design the Vendsyssel Theatre and Experience Centre in Hjørring, Denmark. Once complete in 2016, the 4,200 square meter building will act as a new and vibrant cultural hub within the city.
View from Station. Image Courtesy of Henning Larsen Architects
Henning Larsen Architects has won a competition to design a new city hall for Kiruna in northern Sweden. The design, which has already been named Krystallen (The Crystal), is intended to "become the city's natural gathering point, where the traditions of democracy will be united with a vision about a dynamic meeting place for politics as well as social and cultural events". Comprising of two buildings, the outermost circular in form and the innermost "shaped like a crystal", the design has been "inspired by the enormous concentration of iron ore" that can be found beneath the site, the discovery of which led to the founding of Sweden's northernmost city.
