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Supersize It« Back to Super-size Design

Technology, demand, and daring are driving the push for big buildings.

March 16, 2014

Twenty years ago, Rem Koolhaas published a fat doorstop of a book, S, M, L, XL, which included his manifesto on Bigness: “Bigness is ultimate architecture,” he wrote. “Only Bigness instigates the regime of complexity that mobilizes the full intelligence of architecture and its related fields.”

Seona Reid Building, The Glasgow School of Art

Conversation with Mackintosh: An addition to a Scottish landmark engages the old architecture with design strategies that sometimes complement and sometimes contrast with the original building.

Hugh Pearman

March 16, 2014

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Building directly opposite Charles Rennie Mackintosh's famed Glasgow School of Art, as Steven Holl has done, is simultaneously a plum job and the commission from hell.

Shenzhen Bao International Airport Terminal 3

Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport Terminal 3 by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas

Shenzhen, China

Clifford A. Pearson

March 16, 2014

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Treating an enormous airport in Shenzhen, China, as a cinematic experience, a Rome-based firm designs a series of architectural scenes in which light and space play leading roles.

The Interlace

Stack the Decks: Architect Ole Scheeren hypothesized that dense urban residential living didn't have to occur in an isolating skyscraper—and he was right.

Laura Raskin

March 16, 2014

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Ole Scheeren is no stranger to megaprojects. As a former partner and director at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), he led the design and construction of the 5.1 million-square-foot CCTV Headquarters in Beijing and was the lead designer of the MahaNakhon Tower in Bangkok, which, when completed in 2016, will be the tallest in the city at 77 stories and 1,030 feet.

De Rotterdam

Bringing XL Back Home: Having completed huge projects in Asia, Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture apply their strategies for building extra-large to the small city in which they are based.

Hugh Pearman

March 16, 2014

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When I went to Rotterdam to see the largest single building in The Netherlands, the eponymous De Rotterdam by OMA, it reminded me of something. But I couldn't put my finger on it.

Pearl River Tower

Towering Ambition: The architects and engineers behind an office building in rapidly expanding Guangzhou put super green before supertall.

Joann Gonchar, FAIA

March 16, 2014

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In the realm of supertall skyscrapers, the recently completed Pearl River Tower (PRT) in Guangzhou, China, isn't that tall.

Colonel James Nesmith Readiness Center

Marching Orders: THA Architects embraces a barnlike vernacular for the Colonel James Nesmith Readiness Center.

James Gauer

March 16, 2014

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The military does not leap to mind as the most likely patron of distinguished design. But the Colonel James Nesmith Readiness Center, a new facility for the 162nd Engineer Company of the Oregon National Guard, in Dallas, Oregon, could change that thinking.

The Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility

From Trash to Treasure: The Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, designed by Selldorf Architects, speaks volumes about the future of waste management in urban environments.

Jennifer Krichels

March 16, 2014

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The Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, designed by Selldorf Architects, speaks volumes about the future of waste management in urban environments.

United States Consulate General, Guangzhou

Diplomatic Position: In the midst of the visual hubbub of China's third-largest city, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill creates an understated ensemble of buildings for the U.S. Consulate General.

Clare Jacobson

March 16, 2014

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Diplomatic Position: In the midst of the visual hubbub of China's third-largest city, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill creates an understated ensemble of buildings for the U.S. Consulate General. The U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, makes only the quietest of claims within the city's noisy new business district. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), its seven low-rise buildings—offices, screening facilities, a warehouse, and a residence for Marines—dot a 7.4-acre site in the burgeoning Pearl River New Town. Zaha Hadid's opera house lies catercorner to it, and Wilkinson Eyre's supertall IFC Guangzhou and KPF's soon-to-be-supertaller CTF Guangzhou are close by.

Snapshot: Spaceport America

Anna Fixsen

March 16, 2014

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On a barren patch of desert in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto basin, just 50 miles west of the site where scientists detonated the first nuclear weapon, Foster + Partners took on an extraordinary task: to construct the world’s first private hangar facility for spaceflight.

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 ICC CEU

Upon course completion, participants will possess a deeper understanding of glass railings to help ensure that safety, aesthetic, and performance objectives are achieved.

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 ICC CEU

Explore how propane-powered systems and whole-home generators can improve energy resilience, reduce electrical loads, and lower long-term residential costs.