The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) released renderings today of their forthcoming MahaNakhon tower and plaza in Bangkok, Thailand, with design led by OMA partner Ole Scheeren, head of the firm’s Beijing office. The 1.6 million-square-foot, $515 million complex plans to include 200 apartments, a 150-room “Bangkok Edition” hotel operated by Marriott Group International with hotelier Ian Schrager, and mixed-use public and commercial space. Construction begins later this year with an intended completion in late 2012.
Designed by Japanese firm SANAA with structural engineering by Japan-based SAPS and UK-based ARUP, this year’s structure promises to be a departure from years past, if only because SANAA, according to the partners Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, “started out trying not to make ‘architecture.’”
The University of Arkansas recently opened to the public its archive of work by Fay Jones, the noted Arkansas architect who combined the architectural traditions of the Southeastern United States with a Wrightian sensibility, producing such masterpieces as Thorncrown Chapel (1980). The collection spans Jones’ professional and academic career, between the founding of his studio in 1954 and his retirement in 1998.
Designed by architect Gottfried Norman, a Swede-turned-Atlantan who designed expensive homes for wealthy Southerners during the post-Civil War “New South” period, the Queen Anne-style house was built for Edward Peters, financier and president of the Atlanta Railway Company. It stayed in the family until the death of Peters’ daughter-in-law, Lucille, in 1970.
Gordon Wildermuth was a young partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, working in Saudi Arabia to build the Hajj Terminal at the King Abdul Aziz International Airport. Today, when he describes that “incredibly stressful time,” the conversation soon turns to the communications infrastructure that existed then.
The winners of the tenth edition of the National Design Awards were announced April 30 by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The recipients were selected from nominations submitted by a nationwide committee of more than 2,500 designers, educators, and others with links to design professions. Winners will be honored at a gala in New York on October 22.
In comparison to the building boom that was the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Vancouver Games have had little architectural fanfare: Most of the venues are existing stadiums, either left alone or slightly renovated. Even accounting for the lesser requirements of a Winter Games, the Olympics won’t leave much of an architectural stamp on their host city. Images courtesy Vancouver Convention Centre A 6-acre green roof tops a 338,000-square-foot addition to the Vancouver Convention Centre. Related Links: "Laneway Housing" Gets Green Light in Vancouver Olympic Village Aims High on Sustainability Scale Amid Gentrification, Vancouver Seeks Balance Bing Thom Designs New
The ideas competition, featured in a January 21 story in RECORD, drew 75 entries from around the world. The brief, which asked entrants to “rethink the relationship between transit systems, public space, and urban redevelopment,” was inspired by both the federal stimulus program and Measure R—a half-cent sales tax increase in Los Angeles County that promises to provide $40 billion for transit-related projects in the next 30 years.
