Planning is underway on a new building that will be the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Cultural District. The project charts new territory for New York City both in sustainable design and its designated mixture of occupants; it also marks a step forward for the city’s long-stalled plans for the area. The development firm Full Spectrum of New York, together with architects studioMDA and Behnisch Architects, is developing the $85 million project and expects to break ground in early 2009. Images courtesy studioMDA / Behnisch Architects, renderings by ESKQ In a new tower for the Brooklyn Academy
The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which is scheduled to open this month, will only be accessible to visitors who undergo extensive security checks. The State Department has tried to deflect attention from the compound, but Internet users got an unexpected peak at it when images were posted online this spring. After a blogger discovered this rendering of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Berger Devine Yaeger's Web site, The Associated Press, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and other news agencies published it. Berger Devine Yaeger (BDY), of Kansas City, Missouri, and Sorg Associates, based in Washington, D.C., designed the embassy
In the mid-1940s, long before the phrases “carbon footprint” and “green building” were coined, R. Buckminster Fuller urged people to lessen their environmental impact by taking up residence in aluminum-and-fiberglass geodesic domes. Construction of these shelters avoided the destruction of trees, and the domes required less energy to cool and heat compared to traditional rectangular buildings.
As NASA prepares to retire the space shuttle by the end of the decade, just in time for completion of the International Space Station, the tourism industry is planning to take its own giant leap into the void.
By itself, the image is not necessarily striking: a battered boxcar being hoisted into place at a construction site. Its power lies in knowing its history. The car, an exhibit at the new Museum of Memory and Tolerance, which opens next year in Mexico City, once transported Jews and other people destined for Nazi death camps in Poland during the Holocaust.
The Gulf Opportunity Zone Act boosted a preservation tax credit to 26 percent, up from 20 percent. Although this incentive expires next year, it has spurred the repair of older buildings—and new developments are under way, too.
Is the Whitney Museum of American Art’s apparent construction curse site-specific? Neighbors of the institution’s Brutalist home on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side have rejected three ambitious proposals in 21 years to expand Marcel Breuer’s 1966 building. Now they’re chiding the institution for construction work that it has failed to do—even as plans for a new branch elsewhere show signs of moving ahead.
Virtual architecture is on the verge of leaping from the computer screen into real life. Engineers and architects from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a building made of water: a Digital Water Pavilion to be erected next summer at the 2008 World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain. Sponsored by the City of Zaragoza, the 5,000-square-foot, rectangular building will contain displays about the future of Zaragoza and its new technology-oriented Digital Mile district.
Paris is one of the world’s cultural capitals, but a key offering is missing from its menu: a state-of-the-art symphony hall. That’s about to change. Earlier this month Jean Nouvel was selected as the winner of an international competition to design the Philharmonie de Paris, a music complex that will be the future home of the Orchestre de Paris. Images courtesy: Ateliers Jean Nouvel Slated to open in 2012, the new complex will be located in the Parc de la Villette. In addition to providing a contemporary performance space, the Philharmonie de Paris will be the city’s first full-fledged professional