In London, the Aquatic Centre designed by Zaha Hadid for the 2012 Olympics is making headlines. Apparently, the jury that selected the project (RECORD, February 2005) was concerned from the very beginning about construction costs and future use, yet still awarded the commission to Hadid, a Pritzker Prize winner, reports The Guardian. The jury—which was jointly chaired by architect Richard Rogers and Patrick Carter, former chairman of the English Sports Council—thought Hadid’s design faced “clear and technical organizational issues” and was not as well developed as five competing proposals, according to reports that the UK-based newspaper received via the Freedom
When the New York Times Building opened in late 2007, critics marveled at the 3-inch-diameter ceramic rods covering the façade of the 52-story skyscraper—the first glass tower with a sunscreen to be built in the United States.
FXFOWLE can add a bridge to the list of structures it currently is developing in Dubai. The firm's exuberant design for the Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Crossing was the winner of an international competition sponsored by the emirate's Roads and Transport Authority. When completed, likely in 2012, the one-mile-long, 673-foot-tall structure will be the longest and tallest spanning arch bridge in the world.
Image courtesy ZAS Architects ZAS Architects Inc., a 50-person firm in Toronto, recently won a commission from Nakheel, one of Dubai’s largest developers, to design a $1.25 billion waterfront complex that will encompass 7.2 million square feet. Many of the world’s A-list architects have descended upon Dubai, as its desert sands are parted for ever more extravagant developments. But lesser known firms are showing up there as well. ZAS Architects Inc., a 50-person firm in Toronto, recently won a commission from Nakheel, one of the emirate’s largest developers, to design a $1.25 billion waterfront complex that will encompass 7.2 million
Abu Dhabi, much like its neighbor to the northeast, Dubai, has been expanding at breakneck speed. Now its airport is set to grow significantly larger with a new facility: the 5.9-million-square-foot Midfield Terminal Complex designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects. “It’s one of the projects, along with a handful of others, that the country is using to symbolize its emerging place in the world in the 21st century,” explains KPF president Lee Polisano.
A tower Daniel Libeskind designed for the center of Milan might not get built because Italy’s prime minister thinks it exudes a “sense of impotence,” reports The Independent. Silvio Berlusconi, speaking to an Italian newspaper, expressed his displeasure with the proposed skyscraper, which appears to lean forward, and threatened to withdraw planning permission for the project. An angry Libeskind fired back in an interview with the same newspaper, comparing Berlusconi’s remarks to Fascist ideology and accusing him of “hating foreigners.” “In Fascist Italy, everything that was not ‘straight’ was considered ‘perverse art,’” Libeskind was quoted as saying. “My tower is
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a new annual design competition created to honor the late architect-inventor-ecologist who would have celebrated his 113th birthday this Saturday, has a winner. John Todd, a Cape Cod-based scientist and environmental planner who met Bucky nearly 30 years ago, has taken home the blue ribbon for his “Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia,” an economic plan that calls for cleaning up and replanting 1.5 million acres of land from Ohio to Alabama that coal producers have strip-mined. The Buckminster Fuller Institute, a Brooklyn-based research group, sponsored the contest and announced the
Earlier this year, during an urban development forum at a university in Belfast, Ireland, the New York-based architect Daniel Libeskind ruffled feathers when he admonished fellow architects not to accept commissions from China and other so-called repressive regimes. “I think architects should take a more moral stance,” he proclaimed. The Polish-born architect’s speech incited backlash from colleagues and charges of hypocrisy—some pointed to his Hong Kong project, the now-under-construction Creative Media Centre—but his remarks incited a question that can leave some architects feeling squeamish: Is it ethical to accept commissions from authoritarian governments with poor human rights records? Photo '
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