2017

schmidt hammer lassen architects has broken ground on their first Chinese library. Selected through an international competition in 2013, the project will provide a new home for the Ningbo City Library's massive collection - the region's largest for historic and ancient books - on the edge of an ecological wetland area in the eastern port city of Ningbo.

"Given our great collaboration with the Local Design Institute and the client team, we are full of confidence that the Ningbo New Central Library will become a vibrant new public space for the citizens of Ningbo,” says Chris Hardie, partner and director of schmidt hammer lassen.

AECOM has designed a preliminary study for a mixed-use transportation development in Solana Beach, California, as part of a response for a RFP (Request for Proposal). Located near major roads and connected to railroads, the project proposal consists of a combination of retail stores and restaurants, providing transit users with leisure spaces on their travels, in addition to parking for the nearby AMTRAK train station.

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The Netherlands' City of Zaanstad has crowned MVRDV as winner of a competition to design a new "cultural cluster" in the heart of downtown. Neighboring the city's main train station, city hall and famous Inntel Hotel, the 7,500 square-meter project will be comprised of five cultural institutions stacked into a single cluster whose hollowed core is shaped after the historic Zaan house.

COOKFOX Architects has recently begun construction on The Neeson Cripps Academy, a high-tech and sustainable school to be built in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as a gift from Velcro Companies to the Cambodian Children’s Fund.

The school, named for Cambodian Children’s Fund founder Scott Neeson and former Velcro Companies Chairman Robert Cripps, will employ multiple sustainable building practices, including water and energy efficiency via natural lighting, integrated solar shading, low energy lighting, and low flow water fixtures. An energy recovery system will further work to improve air quality inside classrooms by filtering outdoor air into the interior of the building, and on-site photovoltaic cells will provide a portion of the school’s energy needs.

Association Bureau A2M, Jaspers-Eyers Architects and Bureau d’Architecture Greish's (BAG) proposal for an “eco-neighborhood” in Liège, Belgium, has been unanimously selected by a jury in a competition to design a mixed-use real-estate project. Dubbed “Paradis Express,” the design incorporates offices, housing and local shops and will occupy a 35,000m2 site located along a future esplanade across from Guillemins station, and next to the new Finance Tower. The competition was held by Fedimmo, in consultation with the city of Liège and the Walloon Region.

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Construction has commenced on Steven Holl Architects' Hunters Point Community Library in Queens, New York. Rising along the shoreline on the city's East River near a cluster of newly built high-rise condominiums, the 22,000 square-foot (6,705 meter) library aims to provide a community-centric public space and park to the increasingly privatized Long Island City waterfront.

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MVRDV has won a competition to transform an abandoned elevated highway next to Seoul's Central Station into a 938 meter-long skygarden. The ambitious project, dubbed the "Seoul Skygarden," aims to "build on the city's ambition to be greener, more attractive and more user-friendly," while acting as a catalyst for the surrounding neighborhoods. 254 species of trees, shrubs and flowers will take over the overpass, creating a unique "library of plants" organized according to the Korean alphabet. Even more, the skygarden will cut pedestrian commutes to the station by more than half, reducing the walk from 25 to 11 minutes.

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London-based Wilkinson Eyre Architects have revealed plans for a major refurbishment of three 'Siamese' gasholders in King's Cross. The development will see the historic structures restored and repurposed for multi-residential use, and create over 140 apartments. Dismantled in 2001 to allow construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the Grade II-listed structures are currently undergoing refurbishment by Shepley Engineers in South Yorkshire, after which they will be relocated from their original site as part of a larger masterplan for King's Cross.

Mecanoo and Ayesa have broke ground on its "Palace of Justice" courthouse in a residential area of Córdoba, Spain. The first-prize winning proposal of an international design competition in 2006, the project was significantly delayed by the area's economic instability. Slated for completion in 2017, the building aims to unify the neighborhood's mix of contemporary and historic influences while providing essential public services for the region.

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Servicing up to 10,000 cruise ship passengers a day, the New Keelung Harbor Service Building by Neil M. Denari Architects (NMDA) is set to become a bustling hive of activity in Taiwan's Port of Keelung. The project takes a two-phase approach that unites a public plaza and service base with a restaurant and the terminal proper, using an office building to mediate between the two.

Occupying 117,000-square-meters and with a construction budget of TWD $5 billion, the project is slated for completion by December 2017.

Read more about the project and view selected images after the break.

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Traditionally, hospital environments are internalized, cut off from the natural world, and structured around efficiency, despite its affect on patient health. Moving beyond this, Kengo Kuma & Associates have unveiled plans to replaced an aging medical center in Setagaya, Tokyo, with a “modest,” “actively open” hospital centered around a landscaped courtyard garden.

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Four years after winning a competition to rebuild 71 Via Boncompagni in the heart of Rome, MAD Architects has been awarded approval and will now enter the implementation phase of their first European project. This approval will allow the Chinese practice to transform an incongruous 1970s commercial courtyard building into a 145-unit residential complex that reutilizes the building’s “bookshelf” structure by stripping away its facade and inserting new living quarters, giving it an entirely new look and function.

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Moscow-based architectural studio Nefa Architects (Nefaresearch) have been chosen to redesign the Solntsevo metro station. Their project, which is designed to “create a solar spray effect” on the station’s subterranean platform, won an international competition whose winners were ultimately chosen by Moscow’s citizens.

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Henning Larsen Architects, in collaboration with an international team consisting of Tredje Natur, MOE and Railway Procurement Agency, has won Frederikssund municipality’s architecture competition to design a regional train station and new quarter in the future town of Vinge. While primarily serving to connect Vinge to the regional public transit system, the undulating, circular urban hub is designed to prevent the railway from dividing the town in two halves.

“The proposal best connects the train station, nature and town structure as one united whole,” lauded the selection committee regarding Henning Larsen’s winning scheme. 

Paris-based architecture and engineering firm Marc Mimram has been appointed to design a new TGV station in Montpellier, France. To be completed in late 2017, the station is intended to serve up to 3.5 million passengers a year by 2030, connecting with the existing Perpignan to Barcelona line, ultimately reducing the travel time between Paris and Barcelona.

The station's striking roof structure is composed of five 8 metre wide pleated shells, made from a fibre reinforced, ultra high performance concrete (UHPC). The high performance concrete combined with the pleated form allows the shells to be just 5-6 centimetres thick, with glass panes embedded directly into the concrete during casting.

Trahan Architects have collaborated with Christopher Counts Studio to design a 15-hectare, two-phase masterplan for a mixed-use convention center in Tbilisi, known as "Expo Georgia." Organized within a lush garden landscape, the masterplan’s first phase will see the completion of the convention center’s first half, which will be constructed in a sequence of repetitive gabled forms broken down as stepped, nine-meter modules.

More about the center and masterplan, after the break.