Winners of the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper Competition Announced
Polar Umbrella won first prize in the eVolo Skyscraper Competition. (Courtesy eVolo)
The winners of eVolo magazine’s 7th Skyscraper Competition have been announced! This year the publication, which has hosted the prestigious competition since 2006, received 625 submissions from 83 different countries, but only 3 of the most thought-provoking projects were selected as the winners. From floating (on-water and in-midair) skyscrapers to morphing structures, each of these futuristic designs not only resembles something out of a sci-fi film, but more importantly, radically defies our understanding of vertical architecture, creatively explores new technologies, and proposes solutions for a more sustainable urban future.
Twin 50-Story Towers Will Join Jersey City Skyline
Renderings by Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman + Associates Architects (Courtesy of Ironstate Development)
After a nearly five-year delay, a $350 million mixed-use development in Jersey City is slated to break ground in the next few months. The Real Deal reports that the Jersey City Municipal Council and Planning Board approved plans back in December. Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman + Associates Architects will design the two 50-story towers at 70 and 90 Columbus Street. The 1.2 million-square-foot development, a joint venture by Ironstate Development and Panepinto Properties, will consist of a 150-room hotel and approximately 1,000 rental apartments in addition to retail space.
Wolf Point’s Phase One is a Go Along the Chicago River
Wolf Point on the Chicago River. (Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli)
After a few administrative hurdles and several packed community meetings that aired downtown residents’ concerns, Chicago’s Wolf Point is poised to turn perhaps the most prominently underdeveloped piece of land in Chicago into a billion-dollar suite of skyscrapers along the Chicago River.
SOM’s Roger Duffy Adds Another Skyscraper to Manhattan’s 57th Street
Rendering of 250 East 57th Street by SOM’s Roger Duffy.
A proposed 57-story residential tower designed by SOM’s Roger Duffy at the corner of Manhattan’s East 57th Street and 2nd Avenue is seeing new life after laying low through the recession. The Observer reported today that the 250 East 57th project, announced in 2006, will begin construction this year now that developer World Wide Group has filed new construction papers with the city and began clearing the site.
AN previously reported how the project is a partnership with the New York City School Construction Authority to extract the air-rights value beneath the city’s school properties. In this case, developers of 250 East 57th paid the Department of Education $325 million for a site lease and agreed to rebuild P.S. 59 adjacent to the tower’s site, including roof terraces and a large astroturf play area. Roger Duffy told AN at the time, “A lot of school sites in New York remain underdeveloped in terms of FAR (floor-area ratio).” The school opened in September 2012.
Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill’s First Manhattan Skyscraper Among the City’s Tallest
Extells new tower will be built on 57th Street east of Broadway. (Courtesy Google)
Extell Development made waves as when they announced their 1,004-foot-tall skyscraper One57 by Christian de Portzamparc on Midtown Manhattan’s 57th Street (which made headlines most recently for crane troubles during Hurricane Sandy), but their next project a few blocks down the street looks to climb even higher. Developers announced in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture will design an 88-story, 1,550-foot-tall tower on West 57th Street just east of Broadway, an area quickly becoming known for skinny skyscraper proposals.
Zaha Hadid to Design Residential Tower in Downtown Miami
Zaha Hadid to design tower at 1000 Biscayne Boulevard. (Courtesy Bing Maps / Jason Schmidt)
New York said no, but Miami says yes. After losing out to Norman Foster to design a tower in Midtown Manhattan, Zaha Hadid has been asked to design her first skyscraper in the Western hemisphere in downtown Miami, the Miami Herald reported. No design has been released, but the new residential tower will be located at 1000 Biscayne Boulevard on the site of a BP gas station on the city’s waterfront Museum Park, seen in red above. The site is part of a row of condo towers along the boulevard known as the “Biscayne Wall.” Developers Gregg Covin and Louis Birdman aren’t releasing details, but told the Herald the project will be officially unveiled early next year.
As AN previously reported, Hadid is also building a new parking garage in Miami, which was approved for construction in November. Elsewhere in North American, Hadid is working on a dramatic house in San Diego and has been designing smaller-scale interiors and products. Also check out renderings of Hadid’s Manhattan proposal here.
World Trade Center Antenna Being Hoisted Into Place
Antenna segments lifted to the top of One World Trade. (Courtesy Governor Cuomo)
After a 1,500-nautical-mile voyage from Canada, half of the World Trade Center‘s antenna has arrived in New York, and, this morning, the first segments were hoisted 104 stories—over 1,300 feet above the streets of Lower Manhattan—for installation. During AN’s site tour in September, the “roots” of the antenna were clearly visible, ready to accept the structure. Building this antenna is no small effort, either. Like the scale of everything at the World Trade site, the structure is gigantic, measuring in at 408-feet tall, higher than most skyscrapers in the rest of the country. Once finished, the antenna will bring the building’s overall height to 1,776 feet.
There remains some contention on how to describe the antenna structure—as simply an antenna or, more poetically, a spire—and despite what seems a semantic argument, the results could have tall repercussions. The Port Authority and the Durst Organization—both who use the term spire—opted to remove an architectural cladding designed by SOM and artist Kenneth Snelson from the antenna earlier this year, trimming millions from the building’s price tag. Without that sculptural finish, however, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the organization charged with ranking building heights, could opt to exclude the antenna from the overall building height, where an integrated spire would count. That would mean One World Trade won’t clock in as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, or even the tallest in New York City.
New Views at Nouvel’s Tower Verre
(Courtesy Adamson Associates / Atelier Jean Nouvel)
Even after it was lopped off in 2009, Jean Nouvel’s Tower Verre, aka the MoMA Tower, still remains one of New York City’s tallest planned residential towers, sited adjacent to MoMA’s headquarters on West 53rd Street. After fights with the neighbors, Nouvel’s tower has been keeping a low profile, but Curbed (via NY YIMBY) has spotted a few new renderings of the tower at Adamson Associates Architects, the architects of record for the project. While the exterior changes are minor, fans of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s now empty American Folk Art Museum can breathe a sigh of relief, for now, as the small, bronze-clad structure remains standing in the rendered views. Also of interest are a couple new renderings of the building’s interior spaces.
Deborah Berke Designing 700 Residences in Lower Manhattan Art-Deco Skyscraper
Looking up at 70 Pine. (12th St David / Flickr)
Move over Woolworth Building. Another iconic Lower Manhattan skyscraper is slated for a residential conversion, this time by Deborah Berke Partners and architects of record Steven B. Jacobs Group. The 66-story art deco landmark at 70 Pine Street was built in 1932 as the Cities Service Company, and more recently served as the headquarters of American International Group (AIG), and now developer Rose Associates plans to transform the tower into 700 luxury apartments above a 300-room hotel.
Frankenstorm Snaps Crane at Portzamparc’s One 57
Partial crane collapse at Manhattan’s One 57 tower. (CBS News via Observer)
Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on New York and New Jersey, and the current 55 to 60 mile an hour wind gusts tearing through Central Park have already taken their toll on Manhattan’s starchitecture, partially collapsing the construction crane at Christian de Portzamparc’s supertall One57 tower on West 57th Street.
Tower by Dattner Architects to Elevate Downtown Brooklyn
New images of the Dattner-designed Hub tower. (Courtesy Dattner Architects)
Plans for the Hub, a 53-story tower planned for the ever-growing Downtown Brooklyn were released in February, but the Dattner-designed project comes into clearer focus when new views were revealed this month. Developed by the Steiner family, who is also building a 50-acre media hub/film studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the tower will house 720 apartments and 42,000 square feet of retail space and feature a large rooftop terrace and bike parking for each unit. Located at 333 Schermerhorn Street just blocks from the new Barclays Center, The Hub could measure up as Brooklyn’s tallest when it’s completed in 2014.
Long delayed, Herzog & de Meuron’s 830-foot-tall stacked tower planned for Tribeca in Manhattan is set to resume construction imminently after a three-year hiatus, reports the Tribeca Tribune. The 57-story residential building at the corner of Leonard and Church streets has been nicknamed the “Jenga Building” for its distinctive massing that varies on each floor. The tower is expected to be complete in the spring of 2016.
Advertise on The Architect's Newspaper.
Archives
Categories
Architecture
Design
East Coast
Midwest
National
Planning
Shft+Alt+Del
Sustainability
Transportation
West Coast
