Plans Unveiled for Foster + Partners-designed Einstein Museum
(Foster+Partners)
Foster + Partners has released concept renderings for the proposed Albert Einstein Museum in Jerusalem. Part of Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus Campus, the museum will serve as a motivational learning center that reflects Einstein’s scientific and cultural impact on the world. The design concept is open and airy and emphasizes light at every bend, including an amphitheater covered in mirrors to illuminate the space. The idea behind the Museum is to “shine a light” on Einstein’s accomplishments.
Porsche Design Group Breaks Ground on Miami Condo Tower With a Car Elevator
Rendering of car elevator and the tower base. (Porsche Design Group)
The architectural climate of Miami has been red hot recently, with dozens of towers being built by some of the world’s leading architects—including all-stars Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Bjarke Ingels, and Herzog & de Meuron. And with the city’s reputation for high-design parking garages, it’s no secret that the Magic City has a soft spot for the automobile. Now, a new designer very familiar with the road aims to break into the Miami sky. The Wall Street Journal reported that Porsche Design Group broke ground in April on a 60-story luxury residential tower, which will feature an automobile elevator allowing each tenant to park their luxury vehicle right beside their living room.
Unveiled> Farshid Moussavi Designs a Wavy Apartment Tower in Montpellier
Jardins de la Lironde, Lot 2 (Courtesy Fashid Moussavi Architecture)
London-based Farshid Moussavi Architecture has won a competition to design a residential tower in Montpellier, France. The so-called “Lot 2″ project will be the first of 12 new buildings in the Jardins de la Lironde brownfield development in the city’s Port Marianne district, with construction set to begin in 2014.
Unveiled> Bjarke Ingels Designs an Entire City Covered in Green Roofs Near Paris
EuropaCity (Courtesy BIG)
The Bjarke Ingels Group, along with Tess, Transsolar, Base, Transitec, and Michel Forgue, have revealed their winning design for EuropaCity, a 200-acre urban cultural and commercial destination located between Paris and Roissy. Combining the forms of a dense European city with an open landscape, EuropaCity is set to be a retail, cultural, and leisure city of unprecedented scale. Modeled on the European urban experience and equipped with cutting edge green technologies, the development will serve as a retail and cultural hub for the region as well as a laboratory and showcase for sustainable design.
Unveiled> One Thousand Museum, Zaha Hadid’s First Skyscraper in the West
Zaha Hadid’s 1000 Museum Tower in Miami. (Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects; Via Curbed Miami)
Miami’s real estate market is climbing yet again after a few years of tense halts in new projects following the 2007 recession. Among the towers set to rise in the Magic City’s downtown is a residential high-rise designed by Pritzker prize-winner Zaha Hadid, who is also designing a dramatic parking structure in the city. Expectations of the new structure are soaring, and a set of renderings of the tower have recently been released. Developed by local hotshots Gregg Covin and Louis Birdman, the One Thousand Museum luxury condominium will be built amid a row of existing condo towers along Biscayne Boulevard just across from what will soon be Museum Park.
Frank Gehry Unveils Mixed-Use Tower For Santa Monica
Frank Gehry’s 22-story tower for Santa Monica. (Courtesy Gehry Partners)
OMA and Robert A.M. Stern are not the only starchitects zeroing in on Santa Monica. Frank Gehry is designing a 22-story, 244-foot-tall tower on a 1.9 acre site on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Plans for the project were submitted to the city yesterday, according to the Santa Monica Planning Department. The tower, located just a block from the beach and around the corner from the 3rd Street Promenade, would house a 125-room hotel, 22 condos, and two stories of retail and restaurants. A 36,000-square-foot art museum, incorporating two landmarked structures, would also be built just north of the tower.
Google Keeping Up With the Silicon Valley Joneses, Unveils New Campus Design by NBBJ
Rendering of Google’s planned Bay View campus, by NBBJ. (Courtesy NBBJ)
Last week we reported on Gensler’s planned triangular Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara, the latest addition to the architectural arms race that is Silicon Valley. (We’re seeing zoomy new headquarters for Apple, Samsung, HP, Nvidia, etc, etc.) Now there’s yet another. Google’s new project adjacent to its “Googleplex” in Mountain View, has unveiled their new designs by NBBJ. The new campus, which is being called Bay View, is comprised of nine crimped, predominantly-four-story buildings. Each building will be connected by a bridge; a connectivity that has become a staple of NBBJ’s office work around the world, including its new headquarters for Samsung nearby. The competition to out-campus the competition seems to be heating up. Who’s next?
Gensler Triangulates a New Santa Clara Headquarters for Nvidia
Rendering of Nvidia planned Silicon Valley headquarters in Santa Clara. (Courtesy Gensler)
Silicon Valley definitely has the architecture bug. We’ve recently seen remarkable new designs put forth by Foster + Partners for Apple and NBBJ for Samsung. Now Gensler has released ambitious new designs for tech company Nvidia, located in Santa Clara. The 24-acre complex’s two 500,000-square-foot buildings are each shaped like triangles, a configuration that Gensler principal Hao Ko explains facilitates collaboration by allowing connections to each side of the building to be the shortest. (The triangle, he adds, is also “the fundamental primitive that defines all shapes in the digital realm.”) Undulating roofs will be made up of smaller triangle pieces, breaking down the overall mass and allowing for ample skylighting, in the in-between spaces. Construction is set to begin this summer, with completion in 2015. Apple’s circle now has geometric competition. Who’s next?
Thomas Leeser Designs a Hotel for Brooklyn’s BAM Cultural District
Even though Brooklyn has morphed into a hub of cultural activity, there has been a notable shortage of hotels to serve the spike in visitors, especially in south Brooklyn. But this will soon change. The New York Post reported that a new 200-room hotel, designed by Thomas Leeser, is in the works for the Brooklyn Downtown Cultural District, which recently saw plans for new towers by TEN Arquitectos.
The hotel, with asymmetrical splits in the facade, will replace a five-story building at 95 Rockwell Place, and include a basement performance space, a rooftop bar, a banquet hall, and a restaurant that looks onto an outdoor arts plaza. It will be in a prime location—right next to The Theater for a New Audience and close to a 32-story mixed-use complex from Two Trees and a 50,000-square-feet cultural space that will be occupied by BAM, 651 ARTS, and the Brooklyn Public Library.
Developer Second Development Services (SDS) predicts they will break ground next fall and complete construction within two years.
Cable-Stayed Replacement For Desmond Bridge Unveiled In Long Beach
Existing Desmond Bridge. (Port of Long Beach)
If you have ever seen the film To Live and Die in L.A. then you know the Gerald Desmond Bridge. It has a starring role in the opening sequence, when Treasury agent Richard Chance (played by William Peterson) bungee jumps off of it. You probably haven’t bungeed off it yourself, but If you’ve ever driven across it, you might get why it needs replacing. The original bridge, according to the project website, “is nearing the end of its intended lifespan.” In fact, the old bridge, while considered safe, is a little scary. Netting has been suspended beneath it to catch pieces of falling concrete. Additionally, its approaches are too steep, it’s too narrow, and perhaps most importantly, the newest container ships can’t fit under it.
NBBJ Designing Samsung’s New Silicon Valley Campus
New courtyard at Samsung’s new San Jose Campus. (Courtesy NBBJ)
As Apple and Facebook have proven, corporate complexes are all the rage these days in Silicon Valley. Samsung (Apple’s phone nemesis) is the latest tech titan to add to the roster of architectural Bay Area campuses, rivaling Apple’s planned circular headquarters and Facebook’s Gehry-designed West Campus. The company plans to build a 1.1 million square foot sales and R&D headquarters on its current North San Jose site. Designed NBBJ, it will include a 10-story tower, an amenity pavilion, and a parking garage.
Bjarke Ingels Has Phoenix Pinned, Plants Giant Observation Tower Downtown
BIG’s proposed observation tower in Phoenix. (Courtesy BIG)
Phoenix-based developer Novawest wanted a new signature project for the city’s downtown, an observation tower from which to admire the far-off mountain ranges and dramatic Southwestern sunsets, so Bjarke Ingels proposed to scoop out the spiraled negative-space of New York’s Guggenheim Museum rotunda and plant it 420 feet above downtown Phoenix. Ingels’ “Pin,” a 70,000 square foot observation tower is elegant in its simple form, a ball on a stick, indeed evoking some far away Gulliver on a real-life version of Google maps finding his way to the Sun Belt. In another light, Phoenicians could ostensibly see a larger-than-life Chupa Chup or an upended mascara brush, but that’s the beauty of pure form, right?
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