Beautiful sites with stunning views along the waterfront of major cities often go unused due to the industrial remains of a past economy based on shipping and manufacturing. The move away from these economic sectors and the potential of these sites has contributed to a move to adapt these spaces into public amenities. While some cities' approach has been to demolish and start from scratch completely, the thirteen-year transformation of the Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City's waterfront included keeping some of its industrial character. In their upcoming book "Brooklyn Bridge Park," Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates discuss their design process, including using the existing materiality and structures along the piers to embed the site's history in the park.
Construction on OMA’s first project in Bangladesh, the Dhaka Tower, has just started. Reaching a height of 150 meters and spanning 180,000 sqm in office space, the project is set to stand as one of the tallest buildings in the country. This scheme marks a significant milestone in the urban landscape of Bangladesh, designed by OMA in collaboration with local real-estate developer Shanta Holdings.
Heatherwick Studio has unveiled a new project to transform an old desalinization plant into the centerpiece of a new cultural district on the waterfront of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The industrial structure is set to be reconfigured to become The Museum, large complex offering production spaces, studios, and ateliers for artists and makers. Its program also includes exhibition spaces that can accommodate large-scale commissions to help visitors to learn and feel inspired by the next generation of artists.
Aedas Global, in collaboration with GDAD, revealed the design of a 230 meters tall mixed-use complex comprising of two twin towers and a plaza. The development, located at the base of the Baiyun Mountain range in Guangzhou, China, contains industrial, commercial, and publicly available areas while also including large urban green spaces and panoramic views of the mountains. The massing of the project is inspired and informed by the local topography, with sight-seeing corridors opening up toward the surrounding scenery.
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Courtesy of BIG – Image by Ping-Pong Visualization
BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group supports APM Terminals and Maersk in reimagining the shipping industry's future with a master plan for the AqabaPort Terminal in Jordan, expected by 2040. Considered one of the most strategic ports in the country and an important gateway to the Levant region, the 3 square kilometers plan will merge different strategic approaches at the regional scale, starting from the terminal refurbishment, expansion of the logistics functions, and connecting to the broader port's community and natural environment.
Grimshaw Architects has revealed the design for a 16-soundstage studio production campus for the independent company East End Studios. Located on a 15-acre former industrial site in the Arts District in Los Angeles, the campus will provide creative workplace buildings and production support spaces connected via a series of outdoor terraces and walkways. The project responds to its location and context by moving away from the traditional studio layout and instead opting to create a “vertical campus”. This composition creates a more open public relationship with the downtown neighborhood while ensuring that all campus facilities are well connected.
The former Berlin-Tegel Airport is set to be redeveloped. The master plan includes the Schumacher Quartier, a new residential district with 200 hectares of landscaped area, and a research and industrial park for urban technologies, Berlin TXL – the Urban Tech Republic. Besides creating a space for industry, business, and science, the innovation park aims to research and test urban technologies. The park will focus on major themes in the development of cities: the efficient use of energy, sustainable construction, eco-friendly mobility, recycling, networked control of systems, clean water, and the application of new materials.
In this powerful new visual from Spirit of Space, we are introduced to Ricardo Bofill’s headquarters ‘The Factory’ or La Fábrica, Taller de Arquitectura. Once a disused and decaying cement factory from the turn of the century, with 30 silos, machine room, and galleries, it is now a significant transformative project, satisfying the Architect's longing for space via adaptive reuse.
A haven in the urban sprawl, engulfed by a floury of palm, olive, and eucalyptus trees. Spirit of Space visits the former hive of activity, now a tranquil mid-city refuge, an immense contrast to the industrial grime that used to reside here. Through moving pictures and multi-sensory experiences it explores the Brutalist form; a concrete shell… a skeleton intertwined with nature itself.
The built environment we inhabit can be hostile, both on an individual architectural scale and in a wider urban context. Homeless people, for instance, are dissuaded from resting on public benches by the menacing presence of spikes and other forms of exclusionary design. From a global lens, we see the impact that borders have amidst anti-immigration hostility, imposingly exemplified by the Melilla border fence on the Morocco-Spain border. This “hostility” can be found in a large number of settlements around the world, settlements that have been formed as a result of organic migration or settlements predicated on control – like company towns.
The progressive departure of factories from cities, often due to environmental regulations, noise ordinances, or the price of real estate, has left many urban manufacturing facilities abandoned and out of use. As these urban factories are left empty, many adventurous developers are taking advantage of the plentiful space, light, and flexible functions that they offer, leading to a residential revitalization in many of the world's defunct manufacturing facilities.
2017 Rudy Bruner Award Medalists (Photo Credits on RBA Website)
The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) is an urban design award that seeks to promote innovative thinking about the built environment and advance conversation about making cities better. The award discovers and celebrates urban places in the United States that are distinguished by quality design along with their social and economic contributions to American cities.
RKW Architektur + strove to represent today’s creative industry through transparent loft spaces in the design of office buildings named Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. KAAN’s facades for the buildings maintain the architectural identity while being their own distinctive elements.
Beat Box: 30 apartments in 48 containers to transform the Danish neighborhood of Musicon, adjacent to the famous Roskilde Festival area. Designed by Arkitema Architects and constructed by Container Living, Beat Box is an integral part of Roskilde’s goal to revamp Musicon over the next 15 years by adding 1,000 jobs and 1,000 homes.
In 1855 the German machinery manufacturer Carl Schlickeysen issued the patent he had recently created, the "Universal Patent Brickmaking machine", the first machine created to manufacture bricks by extrusión as an industrial process.
SCHLICKEYSEN is a modular furniture system based on two types of modular metal supports and standard-sized ceramic curved vaults. All kinds of settings can be configured from the combination of these three elements; picnic tables, continuous benches, grandstands, topographies, and many more typologies can be achieved by just stacking the metal supports and using the ceramic vaults as a horizontal supporting surface.
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.jpg?1645655249 "Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill")
_%C2%A9_Richard_Powers.jpg?1645655222 "La Fábrica, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Image © Richard Powers")
.jpg?1645655255 "Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill")
