Even without the spire that will make London’s Shard the tallest building in Western Europe, its recently topped-out core, reaching 72 floors above ground, already dominates the city. With the structural steelwork frame ending at level 40, concrete columns and post-tension floors will complete the rest of the 310-meter-tall building’s frame next to the River Thames. Photo courtesy of Mace Ltd. Set to rise 310 meters, the Shard has topped out its core, at 244 meters. Now looming 244 m over the London Bridge railroad hub, the Shard’s stump has become a temporarily unattractive city landmark. But from ground level,
In a move aimed at spurring U.S. exports of construction equipment and services to Brazil, the U.S. Export-Import Bank is providing a $1-billion line of credit for infrastructure projects in that country. A particular focus will be on public-works projects tied to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, both to be hosted by Rio de Janeiro. Rio expects to benefit from big spending for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. President Obama estimated the cost at $200 billion. Announced by Ex-Im Bank President and Chairman Fred P. Hochberg during President Obama’s March 19-21 trip to Brazil,
Part of the reason that professor André Sorensen, an urban geographer at the University of Toronto, chose Japanese city planning in the early 1990s as his academic niche is that the topic had barely been explored at the time, at least in English. “Japan was the second largest economy in the world, and there was almost nothing written about it,” says Sorensen, whose Ph.D. focused on Tokyo’s problematic sprawl and whose books have included 2004’s The Making of Urban Japan. Photo courtesy André Sorensen André Sorensen Related Links: Updated on Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai Reassessing Japanese Design Priorities Five Days
Ground was broken in February on Baha Mar, a 1,000-acre resort-casino at the city of Nassau on New Providence Island. When completed in 2014, it will encompass 3,500 rooms in six hotels and a number of condominium buildings. Grand Hyatt, Rosewood and Morgan hotels will be built simultaneously, along with restaurants and spas. Construction of a water park and golf course will begin in late 2012. Designed by RMJM and Michael Hong Architects, the complex also includes a 100,000-sq-ft casino and 200,000-sq-ft convention space. The estimated cost is $3.4 billion. Rendering courtesy of China Construction America Inc. The Baha Mar
Image courtesy Houses at Sagaponac Click on the slide show button to see the new designs proposed for the Houses at Sagaponac development. Houses at Sagaponac was a project for a robust economy. In 2001, the late Harry Brown Jr. recruited Richard Meier to help lure architects, many of them famous, to design 32 modern, high-end residences for a 72-acre plot of land in Sagaponac, a village in the town of Southampton, on Long Island. Brown was hoping to beat back the number of traditional, shingle-style mansions cropping up in the area. Related Links: The Sagaponac Effect: Modernist Subdivisions Multiply
Rendering by CO Architects Click on the slide show button to see more images of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. An intact, teeth-baring 33-foot-long Tyrannosaurus rex named Thomas is among the 20 dinosaur skeletons and 300 fossils that are moving into an upgraded space inside the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, located in Exposition Park. Designed by Los Angeles-based CO Architects, in collaboration with Brooklyn-based exhibition designer Evidence Design, the exhibition hall, at 14,000 square feet, is twice the size of the museum’s old dinosaur gallery. Never-before-displayed stars of the exhibition include a Triceratops and
Left section courtesy H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture H3 DiMenna Center On March 8, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) celebrated the opening of its new permanent home, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, designed by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture and acousticians Akustiks. Located on West 37th Street in the Hells Kitchen/Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan, the 20,000-plus-square-foot DiMenna Center shares space with the year-old Baryshnikov Arts Center in an existing building (2005), once home to two Off-Broadway theaters. 450 West 37th Street, home of The DiMenna Center for Classical Music In addition to serving as base of operations for OSL, the
Numerous structures are on course for completion in time for the London 2012 Summer Olympics, including a few that are uniquely shaped. Perhaps the strangest is a steelwork monument that will rise 114.5 meters, serving as an icon for the Olympic Park. Images courtesy Arup The ArcelorMittal Orbit will be ready to greet crowds at London’s 2012 Summer Olympics. The red steelwork being built just outside the main stadium’s entrance, so far around 40 m tall, is the diagrid stem of the fantastic 15,000-tonne sculpture known as the Orbit. The structure is the creation of U.K.-based artist Anish Kapoor and
RSS
