The Audubon Aquarium and Insectarium will unveil its newly renovated and expanded building to the public on June 8, 2023, following a transformative $41 million building project.
An undertaking that included the relocation of their existing Insectarium from its previous home in the Customs House on Canal Street and the expansion and renovation of the Aquarium itself—two vital community offerings housed for the first time under one roof—the project represents Audubon’s first major renovation for the Aquarium since opening in 1990.
Images Courtesy of EskewDumezRipple/CambridgeSeven
Along with this new program, the scope included a crystalline-configured entry identifying the relocated main entry lobby and ticketing area, a new lobby grand stair and glass bridge, re-envisioning of the existing Mississippi River Gallery into a bayou experience, a refreshed Amazon Exhibit Gallery, introduction of a new Top-of-Gulf tank experience, two new gift shops, and the reversal of the exhibit flow experience throughout the aquarium exhibit spaces.
Images Courtesy of EskewDumezRipple/CambridgeSeven
The City of Vilnius has issued the building permit for Business Stadium Central designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Integrated within the Vilnius City Plan and the popular public square adjacent to the site, Business Stadium Central will be a new gathering place for the city.
Consisting of two low-rise towers of 8 and 9 storeys connected at street level by a courtyard atrium and two floors of public amenities, the centre’s 24,000 sq. m design also connects its two towers via a skybridge at level five. The curvature of the centre’s facades and its cantilevered balconies face towards the historic Gediminas Castle Tower in the heart of the city.
Fuqiang elementary school is designed to support new ways of learning to feed Shenzhen’s growing thirst for creative talent and innovation to feed its rapidly expanding economy.
To inspire curiosity and passion for exploration the school is designed around the idea of ‘hybrid space’. Space takes on the role of the ‘third teacher’ and functions as an integral part of student’s education. Different programs and activities are juxtaposed together in three dimensions to offer new connections across different levels. For example standard classrooms, special classrooms, and the athletic field are adjacent to one another to support cross-disciplinary interaction. Students in the library on the first floor can look down into performances in the theater and activities in the gym in the basement level.
This week the doors of the Jonas’ residential building opened in Amsterdam. Jonas’ is a remarkable building, located beside the port of IJburg, containing 273 apartments and a range of public and shared amenities. Forming a sustainable and inviting heart for the neighbourhood, the building enhances social cohesion in the still relatively new urban district. In addition, Jonas’ has achieved the highest attainable sustainability rating: BREEAM Outstanding. This is a unique achievement for a residential building in the Netherlands.
Situated in the Nanyou district in central Nanshan area, the Zhongtai Residential Development consists of a 5-storey podium and above it a 33-storey residential building providing 238 units. On account of the site’s lack of pleasant greenery, the design’s primary objective is to inject vitality and improve the urban interface.
‘The premise is to create an urban oasis, so the project will be a locus of calm and respite in the fast-growing city,’ explains Cary Lau, Aedas Global Design Principal.
The DESMAN (Hangzhou) Headquarters is located in the Binjiang IoT (Internet of Things) Town, a cradle for high-tech industries in Zhejiang, Hangzhou. Covered with advanced transport network and infrastructure, top-notch enterprises have also set up their headquarters in the area to enjoy the collaborative environment and aggregation of talents.
Aedas designs a world-class headquarters for DESMAN in the high-tech zone. The headquarters connects the major public green axis, overlooking the Smart Gate to the north and the landscape park to the south.
This commission encompassed two separate commissions. The first one was to develop a two story mixed used building on a 48 feet wide by 150 feet deep “party” lot. The second challenge consisted on the design of a new typology of hospitality: a cannabis lounge for the recreational consumption of Marihuana.
The project is facing Boulder’s Downtown Historic District, a Landmark area built around 1880 where most of the lots are 25 feet wide with brick party walls. After World War II plenty of these buildings were modernized with metal and precast facade panels.
K11 Musea “Taste Chamber” took inspiration from Tropical Havana. The concept of Havana Cuba heritage offers an idea on appreciating culture and experiencing the cheerful gastronomy destination.
MVRDV has presented its design for the extensive renovation of the Theater Koblenz, comprising an interior renovation and redesign of significant parts of the theatre’s backstage elements. Working within the boundaries of the existing building, the project carefully balances the many complexities of the brief: heritage preservation is considered alongside necessary technical upgrades and a roof renovation. In addition, the façade of the operations building on Clemensstraße will be redesigned to give this backstage entrance a modern, expressive appearance that announces it as an integral part of the theatre complex while clearly distinguishing it from the theatre’s historic visitor entrance. With the renovation preserving a large part of the building for further use, and using bio-based materials as much as possible, the carbon emissions for the Theater Koblenz will be lower than for a comparable renovation.
Architecturally, earthships form part of the discipline of adaptive reuse. They embrace a style of architecture developed in the late 20th century, which aims to utilise both natural and upcycled materials to create passive, sustainable, and often off-grid dwellings. Here, with Luigi Rosselli Architects’ Earth-Ship, that concept of adaptive reuse and connection to the environment is extended with the revitalisation of an existing home whose original design was akin to that of a drilling platform, hovering above, and entirely disconnected from its craggy and precipitous surroundings.
Luigi Rosselli has never much been a fan of ‘pole houses’, constructed with the intention of admiring the view from above while denying contact and symbiosis with the natural habitat the house occupies. As such, the aim with Earthship was to bring the existing two storeys of the house down to earth by adding a further two storeys below them to create a direct link to the garden.