Is the Whitney Museum of American Art’s apparent construction curse site-specific? Neighbors of the institution’s Brutalist home on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side have rejected three ambitious proposals in 21 years to expand Marcel Breuer’s 1966 building. Now they’re chiding the institution for construction work that it has failed to do—even as plans for a new branch elsewhere show signs of moving ahead.
Underwater living is no longer a Jules Vernes fantasy. Crescent-Hydropolis Resorts is constructing Hydropolis: a 1.1-million-square-foot hotel located 20 feet below the surface of the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Dubai.
Nadel-designed skyscraper to blossom in Saudi desert Second time’s the charm for Nadel Architects. The Los Angeles–based firm placed second to Norman Foster in a competition to design Al Faisaliah Tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 14 years ago. Now the same client, the philanthropic King Faisal Foundation, has commissioned Nadel to design a 2.3 million-square-foot mixed-use building on 10 acres adjacent to Al Faisaliah. Images: Courtesy Nadel Architects Like its predecessor, the new building features a retail plinth; the two will be connected to form a mega-mall. While Nadel’s project will showcase major evolutions in retail design since Foster’s project
Three architect-developer teams presented their plans for a massive downtown redevelopment scheme in San Francisco last week and the public now has until September 17 to comment on them. The designers are vying in a competition for the Landmark Transbay Transit Center and Tower: a 1-million-square-foot, multimodal transit hub and adjacent skyscraper on a roughly 12-acre site within a 40-acre downtown redevelopment district. Images Courtesy Transbay Joint Powers Authority Proposal by the team of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners—formerly the Richard Rogers Partnership—and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners (top). Proposal by the team of Skidmore Owings & Merrill and
Virtual architecture is on the verge of leaping from the computer screen into real life. Engineers and architects from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a building made of water: a Digital Water Pavilion to be erected next summer at the 2008 World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain. Sponsored by the City of Zaragoza, the 5,000-square-foot, rectangular building will contain displays about the future of Zaragoza and its new technology-oriented Digital Mile district.
The British architect Will Alsop doesn’t do quiet buildings, so it’s fitting that his latest North American project will be an icon for an equally bold development project: a plan to build one of the largest film studios on the continent in Toronto. Images Courtesy ALSOP/Quadrangle A view of the main entry at Will Alsop’s Filmport tower in Toronto (top). The rear elevation of Alsop’s Filmport tower features a curving facade screen (above). Unveiled last week, Alsop’s design calls for a cantilevered 280,000-square-foot building that will function as a gateway to the new Filmport complex, now being constructed in the
Congress is considering a non-architect for the nation’s most visible architecture post, the Architect of the Capitol, and that’s riling the American Institute of Architects.
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