Mixed Use: The Latest Architecture and News

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Developer Ivanhoé Cambridge has confirmed plans for a major, multi-phased office and transit development in the heart of Toronto’s financial core, just east of Union Station. Designed by London-based Wilkinson Eyre, following an international competition, the two-tower development will rise on both sides of the railway tracks and connect via an elevated public park. The South tower will include a major new GO Bus Terminal serving Union Station and will be topped with commercial retail.

More on the development, after the break.

BIG has unveiled plans for Bassin 7 (BSN7), a new civic-minded, mixed-use neighborhood in Denmark’s second largest city. The phased development will “breathe life into the harbor front,” placing importance on the public realm by organizing the site’s seven residential buildings with a series of recreational and cultural activities, including a beach zone, swimming pools, theater and cafe, along a public promenade.

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Details have been released on Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ first project in the Middle East: Maryah Plaza. The four-tower, one billion dollar scheme will be built on Abu Dhabi’s 114 hectare Al Maryah Island, which is slated to become the emirate’s central business district.

Amazon has confirmed plans to move more than 5,000 of its London employees into a Foster + Partners-designed office building planned for Shoreditch High Street. On hold since January 2012, the £290 million mixed-use scheme will compete with Amazon’s Farringdon office to serve as the online retailer’s new UK headquarters.

Sydney's historic George Street is about to receive a major facelift with the soon-to-be built 333 George Street, an 18 storey mixed use office and retail tower. Designed by Grimshaw Architects and executive architects Crone Partners for Australian property developer Charter Hall, the minimal glass and steel tower will contrast the historic structures on Sydney's well-preserved original high street, with a 15 storey 12,500 square metre contemporary office tower tower atop a three storey 2,100 square metre retail podium.

Read on after the break for more on Sydney's newest tower.

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The Tianjin University Research Institute of Architectural Design and Urban Planning (AATU) recently won an international competition to design a hub for Chinese food-processing and stock-breeding company Luoniushan in Sanya, Hainan. With expectations to break ground this year, the 42-hectare multi-functional park will house the company's new headquarters as well as warehouses, serviced apartments, a tourism and exhibition center, and more. For more images and information, continue after the break.

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Herreros Arquitectos just sent us their recent project for a mixed-use building in Casablanca, Morocco. Resulting from a series of urban, spatial, formal and sustainable variables, the project--which includes housing, commercial and athletic spaces--is characterized by a permeable facade that directly responds to the climate. The repeated decorative element is a reinterpretation of a traditional geometric code that is common to the region.

The project was featured in the Moroccan Pavilion in the 2014 Venice Biennale. Find the images and product description, after the break.

Frank Gehry and Developer David Mirvish have revealed the latest design iteration in their embattled plan to build a set of mixed-use skyscrapers in Toronto. The new design reduces the number of towers, from three to two, however the remaining towers are taller than before, with one at 82 stories and one at 92.

The buildings will house apartments, a new art gallery and space for OCAD University as previously planned, but the decision to use two towers instead of three means that three of the five existing buildings can be retained - including the Princess of Wales Theatre, and two designated heritage warehouses - sidestepping some of the criticisms of the previous scheme.

Read on after the break for Frank Gehry's take on the design

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GRAFT and Kleihues+Kleihues has teamed up with Genossenschaft für urbane Kreativität (Cooperative for urban Creativity) to realize a complex of five towers centered around working and living in Berlin, Germany. Titled “Eckwerk,” the new complex is set to rise within the confines of an existing viaduct, whose shape and materiality served as the project’s main source of inspiration.

Construction has commenced on MAD’s Chaoyang Park Plaza within one of Beijing’s largest public parks and central business district. A continuation of Ma Yansong’s “Shan-Shui City” concept, which aims reintroduce nature into the urban realm, the mixed-use complex reinterprets natural formations illustrated in traditional Chinese paintings as contemporary “city landscapes.”

“Like the tall mountain cliffs and river landscapes of China, a pair of asymmetrical towers creates a dramatic skyline in front of the park,” described MAD. “Ridges and valleys define the shape of the exterior glass facade, as if the natural forces of erosion wore down the tower into a few thin lines.” 

Sector 66 of Gurgaon, India will be the site of Maison Edouard François’ newest project: a massive luxury complex crowned by three stainless steel-clad skyscrapers. Given over entirely to opulence, Guragon 66 will house a hotel, a multiplex cinema, and an apartment complex. Yet its most defining feature may be its shopping mall, which covers most of the ground floor. This glass-canopied commercial center will host internationally known brands, such as Fendi and Chanel, in independent marble buildings within the main structure.

These shopping "embassies" will be grouped along the mall axis in a manner resembling a traditional European neighborhood. At the same time, the roofs of the shops will be utilized as restaurant space, and will be connected to each other by elevated footbridges. This is intended to create a unique, multi-level promenade which the architects describe as "an exterior landscape that is air-conditioned and unified beneath the glass canopy of the mall."

Chad Kellogg and Matt Bowles of AMLGM have envisioned a new residential tower typology for New York that can connect and transform unused space surrounding various transportation hubs into a dense, mixed-use housing tower.

The proposal, dubbed Urban Alloy, which won first in Metropolis’ Living Cities Residential Tower Competition and received honorable mention in Evolo Skyscrapers 2014, is capable of responding to a number of unique spacial and environmental situations, providing a new way for the city to grow "organically" and provide adequate housing for the expanding population.

Read on for the architect's description...

Koichi Takada Architects (KTA) has released details on Australia’s biggest urban renewal project: Green Square. Shaped by the pedestrian and traffic flows that surround the building, the mixed-use, multi-residential complex is expected to serve as the gateway of Sydney’s Green Square Town Centre by its completion in 2016.

HENN has been selected to design a 160-meter, mixed-use tower for a new Central Business District in the eastern China metropolis of Wenzhou. Located in close proximity to the Ou Jiang river, on the district’s southern edge, the Wenzhou Tower hopes to serve as the gateway to the new city development.

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The construction of Hudson Yards, the biggest private real estate development in the history of the United States and currently the largest development in New York City since the Rockefeller Center, is gaining momentum. The vast infrastructural project in the heart of the city is set to enclose an active rail yard with an expansive platform, paving the way for 28 acres (and 17 million square feet) of commercial and residential space. Housing over 100 commercial units, 5000 residences, 14 acres of open public space, an enormous school and luxury hotel all on top of a working train depot, the project will directly connect to a new subway station and meet with the High Line.

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