Norman Foster is shunted off San Fran project, images reveal a new mixed-use district in Turkey and a fantasy island gets underway in China in today's global news...
TURKEY
RMJM Architects have announced their $1 billion mixed-use complex for the Atasehir district (pictured above), a growing business and residential area in Istanbul. The building will become the country's first LEED-certified mixed-use development when it is completed in 2011. Custom-built by VARYAP, the 60-storey tower will include 1,500 residential units, a five-star hotel, offices and conference facilities with landscaped public areas and parking facilities. It will also include a number of green features, such as rainwater collection sites, wind turbine technology, cooling water pools that enhance the external landscape and a co-generation plant that will produce electricity for the development.
UNITED KINGDOM
Ten new companies have been shortlisted for the Chelsea Barracks residential project, after the original design by Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners was dropped in June. The Prince of Wales is reported to have encouraged the design's cancellation and has asked classicist Quinlan Terry to draw up an alternative. According to Westminster Council's planning brief, the $2 billion Chelsea Barracks scheme is set to include 50 per cent affordable housing, public open space and a sustainable design.The new shortlist includes designs by Dixon Jones, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Terry Farrell and Partners and Robert A.M. Sterm Architects and others.
UNITED STATES
Norman Foster will reportedly no longer be involved in the $121 million refurbishment of 50 UN Plaza, a six-storey, 32,000 sqm Beaux-Arts building in San Francisco. Foster's selection provoked controversy among US companies, as the project had only been made possible by a multi-billion dollar federal stimulus fund intended to kick-start the American construction industry. Martin Bovill from Hornberger & Worstell, a San Francisco architectural company, said: "You'd think that it would make sense to keep the money here rather than send it overseas. It's not like you're in Timbuktu. You have very well-qualified firms in the city with experience in San Francisco historic preservation."
CHINA
DeStefano and Partners has developed the Yinzhou Fantasy Island Master Plan, a new retail hub in Ningbo, China, by extending an existing canal system. The development will feature entertainment, retail and cultural venues supported by mixed-use neighbourhoods to the north, east and west. A mall for family shopping, entertainment and recreation will be at the centre of Fantasy Island and it will also include a hotel, luxury apartments and a cultural centre. The Fantasy Island proposal aims to achieve a hybridisation of cultural space and ecological functionality by systematically integrating the canals, wetlands and parks.
SCOTLAND
The Gillespie, Kidd and Coia buildings could be demolished and replaced with an Archial designed mixed-use development. The Grade-A listed student hostel blocks at the former St Andrew's Campus are "not economically viable to repair" said Muse Developments, who want to build 120 homes, a car home and commercial space on the plot on the outskirts of Glasgow. Jon Wright, senior caseworker at the Twentieth Century Society, slammed the plans. "It is our belief that these buildings are eminently reusable and what an application should be doing is seeking to sympathetically restore them, not demolish and rebuild," he said.
