Sperone Westwater celebrates the opening of its new gallery on the Bowery in New York with an inaugural exhibition by Argentinean artist, Guillermo Kuitca. Nearly 35 years after its conception, Sperone Westwater continues to exhibit an international roster of prominent artists working in a wide variety of media. Its new building, designed by Foster + Partners, doubles the exhibition area and pioneers an innovative approach to vertical movement within a gallery setting.

Responding to the compact 25 by 100 foot site, one of the features of the project is a 12 by 20 foot moving gallery, which connects the upper four exhibition floors and allows visitors to move gradually between levels. It is a prominent feature along the Bowery, visible from the street, its gentle pace contrasting with the fast-moving traffic. At any given floor, the exhibition space can be extended by parking the moving room as required, with an additional elevator and stairs providing alternative access. Read the rest of this entry »

French architect Nicolas Laisne unveiled a mixed-use tower for Rotterdam’s harbor. The building draws inspiration from the industrial area and seeks to become a gateway to the city. Laisne proposes a tower that invites the community to enjoy the waterfront and also serve as symbol to Rotterdam.

The lower levels are used as transportation and commercial hub while the upper floors are offices and recreational areas. An interesting feature of the proposal is the integration of sky gardens conceived as cantilevered platforms equipped with parks, swimming pools, running tracks, sports fields, and restaurants. Read the rest of this entry »

The recently completed 21 storey UNStudio Tower forms part of the Mahler 4 urban complex, a cluster of six buildings located in the heart of the South Axis in Amsterdam. The South Axis connects Schiphol Airport to the major business areas of Amsterdam South.

The Mahler 4 urban complex houses 38.000 m2 of residential spaces, 162.000 m2 of office space and 30.000 m2 of street level retail, cafes, restaurants and a sports centre. The six towers in the Mahler 4 complex range in height from 85 to 100 meters, with each building carrying the name of its designing firm. The Mahler 4 complex has been nominated for the FGH Real Estate Prize 2010.

At a height of 82.5 meters, the UNStudio Tower contains 20 floors of office space and a ground floor with mezzanine. The Royal Bank of Scotland currently occupies 9 floors of the building and the South entrance with commercial space on the Gustav Mahlerlaan. Read the rest of this entry »

UNStudio’s Youturn Pavilion is one of six ‘terrieros’ created for the 29th Art Biennale in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Located at the heart of the biennale, the pavilion operates primarily as a venue; a nodal point within the biennale’s context which provides a forum for communication by diverse means and on different scales. Programmatically the pavilion invites the public to meet, orientate and observe. It provokes interaction between both participants and visitors to the biennale, creating a place for display, discussion, and debate. The UNStudio Pavilion places itself between artwork, installation and architecture; operating as both a form and a functional structure performing as an activator of events.

Ben van Berkel: “It is a wonderful quality in architecture today; that it can perform on so many levels and that there is cultural acceptance again for this richness of meanings and readings. Architecture can have its cultural expression in a similar way to how art is perceived or interpreted. The metaphorical interpretation of spaces can be similar to the reading of a piece of art, so the mechanics and the approach can be similar, but the outcomes are of course different.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hong Kong-based designer Michael Young has been commissioned to develop building project strategies for Wanchai Cultural District. The first concept PSi Tower has been developed as an office complex with luxury apartments for business users and executives overlooking Kowloon district. Conceptually the project, based visually on the essence of ancient Chinese building techniques, has been carried forward into the 21st Century with its multi facetted surfaces that change according to weather and light conditions.

The 5-hectare site will include a ground level internal atrium for public art and pedestrian use, containing outdoor restaurants with outdoor seating. The upper central interior section also boasts a native plantation that encloses an outdoor theatre area. Read the rest of this entry »

Taking lead from the hilly terrain, a series of deliberate terracing and ramps are employed to usher the landscape into the heart of the villas designed by Zaha Hadid Architects in Singapore. The groundscape weaves the site into the building and in doing so, affords an intimate interaction between the garden and the home. The form of the villas is designed to meld with the dynamism of the topography and coalesce into the landscape. Compositionally, there are two adjacent and overlapping volumes in each villa, forming the basis of the division of social and familial programs yet allowing these programs to progress fluently into one another. With a singular and fl uent stroke, a dramatic cantilever extends the topography into the sky; as well as reducing sun exposure at the western façade. The cantilever doubles as a rooftop terrace, wherein one can soak in an elevated and unobstructed view of the botanical gardens. The roof then drapes supplely down on its sides, touching the ground, embracing and sheltering the spaces within. Read the rest of this entry »

Nakheel Tower
Dubai, UAE.  2020
200+ floors
1400 m (4593 ft)

Pingan International Finance Center Tower 1
Shenzhen, China.  2014
115 floors
646 m (2119 ft)

Shanghai Tower
Shanghai, China.  2014
128 floors
632 m (2074 ft)

Chicago Spire
Chicago, USA.  2014
150 floors
610 m (2000 ft)

Goldin Finance 117
Tianjin, China.  2014
117 floors
597 m (1959 ft)

Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel
Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  2011
85 floors
591 m (1939 ft)

Doha Convention Center Tower
Doha, Qatar.  2013
112 floors
551 m (1808 ft)

World Trade Center One
New York, USA.  2013
105 floors
541 m (1776 ft)

Pentominium
Dubai, UAE. 2013
112 floors
516m (1692 ft)

Burj Al Alam
Dubai, UAE. 2013
108 floors
510 m (1674 ft)

The Zeppelin Park and Tower is a proposal by French architects Fabrice Quemeneur and Etienne Rouverand to bring back to life the golden era of Zeppelins as means of transportation. Highly used during the first half of the 20^th century for commercial and military purposes, the blimps rapidly disappeared after the Hinderburg disaster in Lakehurst. Airplanes become the norm of transportation.

The main concept behind this proposal is to create Zeppelin Towers in major global cities. These skyscrapers would embrace their full potential of becoming modern transportation nodes and reduce green house gases emissions linked to airplanes. The towers’ plinth is fully equipped with commercial and recreational areas for the city. Read the rest of this entry »

New York architects Axis Mundi have re-imagined the Whitney Downtown Museum with a self-initiated proposal that is raw and provocative, and as bold in spirit as the original Breuer building on Madison Avenue.

In the early 1960’s, when Marcel Breuer received the commission for the Whitney, he asked “What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan? Surely it should work, it should fulfill its requirements, but what is its relationship to the New York landscape? What does it express, what is its architectural message?” He stated “It is easier to say first what it should not look like. It should not look like a business or office building, nor should it look like a place of light entertainment. Its form and its material should have identity and weight. It should be an independent and self-relying unit, exposed to history, and at the same time it should transform the vitality of the street into the sincerity and profundity of art.” Read the rest of this entry »

In Petaling Jaya, west of Kuala Lumpur, a great urban development designed by Studio Nicoletti Associati is underway for the establishment of a new urban centre. As a landmark for this area, the developer wanted to host his onsite offices and sales showroom in an ‘iconic pavilion’ that would reflect the spirit and the architectural style of the whole development.

Natural water droplets were the inspiration for ‘The Pod’ pavilion structure creating a dynamic spherical form resulting in a primitive building archetype with a modern twist. The round and soft shape of The Pod is formed as a series of elliptical sections of variable widths and heights.

Slithers of window bring natural daylight into the spaces below. Internally the pavilion is divided into two parts: one zone dedicated to the office area and the other containing the main showroom. The building appears to be sliced diagonally into a series of ribbons which wrap up and over the building creating an animated space within, forming a layered protective shell. Read the rest of this entry »