Patrick is ArchDaily's News Editor. Prior to this position, he was an editorial intern for ArchDaily while working full time as an assistant for a watercolor artist. Patrick holds a B. Arch degree from Penn State University and has spent time studying under architect Paolo Soleri. He is currently based in New York City.
Loose or corroded joints have been identified as the likely culprit of the collapse of a mezzanine floor at Jarkarta’s Indonesia Stock Exchange on Monday that resulted in injuries to more than 70 people.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Company, a preliminary report released by the Indonesian Ministry of Public Works based on interviews with building management and analysis of CCTV footage found that the structure had possibly failed as a result of weak shear joints from “loose or corroded bolts.”
This scenario could have caused the mezzanine to be vulnerable to high weight concentrations, such as occurred Monday when nearly 100 visiting university students were gathered on the platform.
The 100-meter-tall air purification tower in Xi’an, China – believed to be the world’s largest air purifier. Image via South China Morning Post
A 100-meter-tall air purification tower in Xi’an, China – believed to be the world’s largest air purifier – has significantly improved city air quality, results from its preliminary run suggest.
According to researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the tower has managed to produce more than 10 million cubic metres (353 million cubic feet) of clean air per day since it was launched a few months ago. In the 10-square-kilometer (3.86-square-mile) observed area of the city, smog ratings have been reduced to moderate levels even on severely polluted days, an improvement over the city’s previous hazardous conditions.
Architecture lovers and amateur archaeologists take note – or rather, get ready to take notes.
Japanese model making company Triad has released a new series of notepads called the Omoshiro Block (loosely translated to “fun block”) that slowly reveal intricate architectural sites as they are used. Appearing at first as a regular square of paper note cards, each block is specifically laser cut to produce a 3-dimensional model of some of Japan’s most recognizable buildings, such as Kyoto’s Kiyomizudera Temple, Tokyo’s Asakusa Temple and Tokyo Tower.
While the exterior of Philip Johnson’s iconic AT&T awaits its fate in an upcoming New York City landmarks designation hearing, demolition of its granite-clad interior lobby has already begun.
Citing the fact that the lobby had already been altered in the 1990s – including the removal of the “Golden Boy” statue – when the building switched tenants from AT&T to the Sony Corporation, the Landmarks Preservation Commission decided last month that the interiors were not deserving of landmark status.
Lord Norman Foster speaking at the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust’s annual lecture in Manchester last year. Image Courtesy of Royal Fine Art Commission Trust
Lord Norman Foster has been named the next President of the UK’s Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, an independent charity aimed at promoting “visual awareness and public appreciation of high-quality design” within the United Kingdom.
Chaired by one of architecture’s foremost patrons, Lord Peter Palumbo, the organization was established in 1987 as a complement to the Royal Fine Art Commission (since absorbed into the UK Design Council), the Government’s advisor on matters affecting public amenity and aesthetics in England and Wales.
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and Aedas have unveiled the design of a new boundary crossing that will serve as an important transportation exchange point within the Pearl River Delta, linking Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. Already under construction, the project is expected to be completed in 2019.
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced the six recipients of their 2018 Richard Rogers Fellowship program. Inspired by Lord Richard Rogers’ “commitment to cross-disciplinary investigation and engagement,” the Fellowship established last year to support individuals “whose research will be enhanced by access to London’s extraordinary institutions, libraries, practices, professionals, and other unique resources.”
The six winners will be given the opportunity to live and research at the Wimbledon House in London, which was designed by Rogers for his parents in the late 1960s. In 2015, Rogers gifted the home to Harvard for Fellowship use. This year’s winners will receive a three-month residency as well as travel expenses to London and $10,000 cash.
View from City Hall. Image Courtesy of City of London
The City of London has released new visualizations showing how its fast-changing skyline will look by 2026, as 13 schemes are currently under construction or due to begin construction in London’s Financial District.
Originally conceived as as 22-story hotel and residential tower, the project has now been shortened to 12 stories (130 feet) to meet restrictions imposed by the city’s Downtown Community Plan, which calls for “aggressively slow growth” and a “lower scale downtown” of mainly 4-5 story tall buildings.
Exterior View. Image Courtesy of Adjaye Associates
Plans for Adjaye Associates’ new home for the Studio Museum in Harlem are moving forward, as permits for the project have been filed with the city.
Replacing the museum’s current home, an existing century-old building repurposed in the 1980s by architect J. Max Bond Jr, the new building at 144 West 125th Street will rise 122 feet to become a new stand-out on the historic 125th Street Corridor.
Google has unveiled plans for a new campus in the Moffett Park area of Sunnyvale, California that will be located just a few miles from its long-awaited ‘Googleplex’ headquarters in Mountain View. And just like the company’s Mountain View and London campuses in the works, the building has been designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).
Located at 100 and 200 W. Caribbean Drive, the complex will consist of two terracing buildings containing over 1 million square feet of office space and room for up to 4,500 employees.
French studio JAGG has been selected as the winners of The Great Mine competition, which sought ideas for the transformation of the Garonne River in Bègles, France, through the intervention of two waterfront sites.
The final designs for one of 2018’s most awaited projects have been revealed, as SLA has released plans for the 170,000-square-foot (16,000-square-meter) park and ski slope that will cap the BIG-designed Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy Plant in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Plans have been revealed for the “largest wooden building in the world” to be located just outside Eindhoven in the town of Veldhoven, The Netherlands. Known as the Dutch Mountains, the complex was conceived via a multi-disciplinary partnership made up of tech companies, service providers, architects and developers, and would contain a hi-tech, mixed-use program for residents and visitors.
Just a few months after the opening of Apple’s first town square concept retail store, the Foster + Partners-designed glass-box structure is facing the wrath of its first Chicago winter – and it doesn’t appear to be handling it so smoothly.
As reported by the Verge and 9to5Mac, nearly all of the store’s riverfront outdoor space has been roped off due to the presence of large and potentially dangerous icicles that have formed on the edge of the building’s MacBook-shaped roof. Signs reading “watch for falling snow and ice” now surround the store and at the entrance on Pioneer Court.
Rising 150 meters from Dubai’s Zabeel Park, the “World’s Largest Picture Frame” has officially opened in the UAE. Known as the Dubai Frame, the structure is the latest in the city’s line of eye-catching megaprojects, offering up panoramic views of the skyline while framing views of iconic buildings such as the Burj Khalifa for visitors and residents all across the city.
Designed using 3D parametric software, the pavilion is formed from 20 timber trusses that spiral in toward a central point the reaches toward the sky. Starting on the ground, the triangular trusses span large enough distances to create a series of spiraling paths toward the center of the structure, where a giant 3D-printed mandala will be displayed. The spaces in between the truss members will also be large enough to serve as alcoves.
Located in the small village of Jukkasjärvi 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, Sweden’s ICEHOTEL is the world’s largest ice structure, constructed each year from over 4000 tonnes of ice and snow.
With winter now officially underway in the Northern Hemisphere, the 2017-2018 version of the ICEHOTEL is now open. In addition to a new permanent section of the hotel kept cool year round by solar energy, for this year’s iteration, the hotel invited 36 artists from 17 countries to design the structure’s main spaces and guest rooms, including new surreal “art suites” that truly transport visitors into a otherworldly winter wonderland.