With its climate-defying indoor ski slopes and outdoor golf courses, the United Arab Emirates might seem the least likely place to tout environmentally sensitive design. Last year, the World Wildlife Fund ranked the Emirates first among the world’s 71 most populous nations in consumption: roughly 30 acres of land and water are needed to sustain the needs of each citizen per year, compared to the average of just 4.5 acres in other nations. The U.A.E. also gets poor marks for its high levels of carbon emissions and its reliance on fossil fuels, half which are used to power, light, and
Five design teams presented their proposals for the development of Manhattan’s Hudson Rail Yards yesterday evening before a crowd of more than 1,000 people packed into Cooper Union’s Great Hall. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which owns the 26-acre chunk of prime real estate—stretching from 30th Street to 33rd Street, between 10th Avenue and 12th Avenue—invited development proposals last July in advance of its plan to sell the property.
Les Halles, known as the “stomach of Paris” during its days as the French capital’s wholesale food market and more recently an un-loved 1970s transit hub and 1980s shopping mall, is poised for a makeover. Last month the Conseil de Paris approved plans for a glowing shell-like structure, designed by architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, that will contain cultural facilities. Photos: ' Arnaud Rinuccini, Courtesy Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti Berger and Anziutti’s scheme for an undulating, canopy-shaped building replaces above-ground elements of Forum des Halles, a 15-acre shopping complex that extends five levels below ground. A 10-acre rectangular
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Herzog & de Meuron has unveiled its design for the Miami Art Museum and, as The Miami Herald wrote on November 30, this new $220 million waterfront structure “looks unlike any building in Miami—or any other place.” The paper added that the “dreamlike composition, inspired in part by the houses of Stiltsville in Biscayne Bay, resembles nothing so much as a giant sandwich,
The design for the New Museum, which the Tokyo-based firm Sejima + Nishizawa/Sanaa first revealed in 2003 for New York City’s only all-contemporary art institution, layers six off-kilter white boxes above a formerly grungy block on the Lower East Side.
German architect Heike Hanada’s resume doesn’t boast much built work but for a gallery in Nagoya, Japan, a garden in Weimar, Germany, and a residence for a Japanese musician. Earlier this month, the 43-year-old designer broke pattern by winning the competition to expand Sweden’s Stockholm Public Library, originally designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund. Images: Courtesy the Swedish Association of Architects German architect Heike Hanada’s scheme entitled “Delphiniuim” has won the competition to expand the 80-year-old Stockholm Public Library, originally designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund, in Sweden. She has proposed adding a 10-story tower and a new entry to the north
During the 18th century, spice attracted both traders and pirates to Penang, an island harbor for ships on the Strait of Malacca in Malaysia. Now, government officials are hoping that 21st-century vanguard architecture and luxurious beachfront resorts will once again draw international visitors to the island—this time, investors and tourists. To aid in the effort, municipal authorities have tapped Asymptote Architecture to design a $7 billion, 256-acre mixed-use complex called Penang Global City Center (PGCC). Images: Courtesy Asymptote'Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture The sinuous towers of Penang Global City Center, designed by Asymptote, will rise from a stage-like plinth.
The first conflict at yesterday’s New York City Planning Commission hearing on Columbia University’s 17-acre Manhattanville expansion plan, a scheme designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), was not over a building but a chair. “Twelve urban planners, and none of them can plan a seating arrangement,” said Harlem resident Nellie Hester Bailey as she took a seat reserved for Columbia staff in the Commission’s cramped 50-seat auditorium. A two-hour meeting ensued, during which community members, who are upset about the university’s plan to displace 5,000 residents and use eminent domain in aid of building
With $158 million to spend, many an art museum might opt to build a new wing or two. Not so the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which reopened last weekend with Michael Graves’ long-awaited renovation. The project reclad some of the DIA’s exteriors, rethought the way art is displayed and labeled in its existing galleries, and made interior circulation much clearer and easier. Images: ' John Gallagher (top); Courtesy Detroit Institute of Arts (bottom two). Michael Graves re-clad the exterior and reconfigured the interior of a 1960s-era addition to the Detroit Institute of Arts, opened in 1927. Although construction crews
Arquitectonica’s Las Vegas gamble is finally paying off big with two new projects on the Strip. The Miami-based firm’s $3 billion, 2,998-room Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino is currently under construction on Las Vegas Boulevard, next to the Bellagio. Developed by New York City-based Ian Bruce Eichner, it calls for two, 600-foot-tall twisting blue glass towers perched atop a four-level, 100-foot-tall podium. These 52-story, prism-shaped high-rises are wrapped in fretted balconies; they will contain hotel and condo-hotel units managed by Grand Hyatt. A glass-clad low-rise structure will contain 265,000 square feet of shops and restaurants topped by a five-acre sandy beach and pool.
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