California, United States of America
Work has begun on the transformation of an aged printing plant into the $100 million home of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The announcement of work means the project definitely will happen - something that wasn't always a given, since the recession had scuttled earlier plans for a larger, all-new museum on the site.
Courtesy SF Gate
Hamburg, Germany
US practice Richard Meier & Partners has won a star-studded competition to design a mixed-use scheme in Hamburg. The firm beat Zaha Hadid Architects and Foster + Partners to create Engel & Völkers’ new seven-story block headquarters in the HafenCity district of the German town.
Courtesy Architects Journal
Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctic
A century after Captain Scott’s ill-starred expedition to the Antarctic, an extraordinary research station has become fully functional. Designed by British architects Hugh Broughton, engineering practice Aecom and Galliford Try, a construction group, the £25.8m Halley VI Antarctic research station had to be built over four successive summers because the time window where construction is possible lasts only about nine weeks.
Image - Anthony Dubber
Courtesy Financial Times
Kingdom City Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
A 5.3 million sq m area of land to the north of Jeddah is to be transformed into a buzzing new community. Jeddah Economic Company is heading the SR75billion ($19billion) development and it has now been revealed that the lead master planner on the scheme is Calthorpe Associates and the urban architects will be Godwin Austen Johnson. The 1000m-high Kingdom Tower will be the first construction phase of Kingdom City Jeddah and will cost an estimated SR4.6billion to realise.
Image - Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Courtesy World Architecture News
Alta, Norway
The Crown Princess of Norway has inaugurated the 47m-high Cathedral of the Northern Lights situated in the Norwegian town of Alta. Architects schmidt hammer lassen in cooperation with Link Arkitektur, have designed the cathedral not only as a observation platform for the natural phenomenon but so the lights are reflected off the building’s titanium clad façade.
Image - Adam Mørk
Courtesy Arch Daily
