Columbia University continues to encounter hurdles in its plans to build a new 17-acre campus in Manhattanville, a scheme created by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Skidmore Owings & Merrill. Roughly 400 people turned out a public hearing last week to support plan 197-A, a modest community-backed alternative to the school’s proposal. Named for a clause in New York City’s charter that authorizes communities to create and submit their own development plans to the City Council, and developed over the past three years with the help of experts at the Pratt Institute, the 197-A plan is intended to integrate
Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), Foster + Partners, and Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) have been retained as architects for a multi-billion-dollar-project to redevelop New York City’s Pennsylvania Station district, parties close to the deal confirmed on Friday. Image ' William Low A view of the original Pennsylvania Station, from author/illustrator William Low's 2007 book Old Penn Station. Click here to read an article about the book Old Penn Station. Bud Perrone, a spokesperson for the project’s developers, a joint venture of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, acknowledged that the three architecture firms are involved. Another source involved in
Anything But Stilted Agence Search, a Paris-based architecture office, has designed a new $16 million headquarters for the Human Sciences Institute: a venture established by the French government and Paris-Nord University to promote research into the arts, culture, health, and society. The 72,000-square-foot building is an exploration of cantilevers and levitation. Images: Agence Search Agence Search designed the new Human Sciences Institute building, in Paris. The 72,000-square-foot building is an exploration of cantilevers and levitation. Overlapping wooden panels and angled windows will visually break up the building’s east and west facades. Located on a remediated brownfield site in Paris’s La
Morphosis's 'Dragon' Takes Flight in Shanghai Santa Monica-based Morphosis is designing in China for the first time: a new headquarters for Giant Group Pharmaceuticals. The 180,000-square-foot building’s narrow, winding form will twist around canals and a man-made lake on eight-acre site that was once farmland in the outskirts of Shanghai. Firm principal Tim Christ says that its shape resembles that of a dragon, which is the nickname that his Chinese clients have given the project. Images: Courtesy Morphosis Morphosis designed a new headquarters for Giant Group Pharmaceuticals in Shanghai. Firm principal Tim Christ says that the building’s shape resembles that
OMA's Beijing Office Designs Residential Tower for Singapore Three years after establishing its Beijing office, the Rotterdam-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has announced the first project spearheaded entirely by this branch: Singapore Scotts Tower, a 36-story, 68-unit condominium tower for the Far East Organization, Singapore’s largest private development company. Image: Courtesy OMA OMA’s Beijing office has designed Singapore Scotts Tower, a 36-story, 68-unit condominium building in Singapore. By eliminating most of the lower floors, OMA created a residential tower where essentially only top floors exist. Designed by partner Ole Scheeren and associate Eric Chang—both veterans of OMA’s Prada projects—the
Harlem has seen a flurry of residential and retail developments in recent years. Now the northern Manhattan neighborhood is slated to get its first major office building in three decades'a striking glass tower designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects (SHCA). Named the Harlem Park, the 340-foot-tall, 21-story building will be the neighborhood's tallest. Photo: Courtesy Crystal CG Renders Swanke Hayden Connell Architects have designed a 340-foot-tall office tower that will rise at the corner of Park Avenue and 125th Street—the first major new office building in Harlem since 1973 An illuminated volume at the building’s southwest corner acts like a
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 Rafael Viñoly’s “Walkie-Talkie,” a proposed 500-foot-tall skyscraper that the group English Heritage labeled London’s “ugliest and most oppressive” building, received the go ahead from government regulators this week, The Financial Times reported on July 11. A public inquiry was launched last winter in response to concerns that the cell-phone-shaped building might spoil views of the Tower of London and other landmarks. Construction could
In retrospect, the anointing of Renzo Piano to design an addition to the Kimbell Art Museum seems almost preordained. He worked in Louis I. Kahn’s Philadelphia office during the 1960s and already had three critically acclaimed art museums in Texas: the Nasher, Menil Collection, and Cy Twombly Gallery. Photo: Courtesy the Kimbell Art Museum The existing Kimbell Art Museum, in Fort Worth, designed by Louis I. Kahn, dates to 1972. The museum has hired Renzo Piano, who worked for Kahn, to design a new building across the street. Piano called the commission, which was announced in April, “an awesome challenge,
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