Edgar Street Towers Reconnect Lower Manhattan / IwamotoScott

IwamotoScott‘s design for the Edgar Street Towers in Lower Manhattan responds to its urban context and establishes a historical vision for a new hybrid of architecture, infrastructure and public space. The towers would reconnect Greenwich and Washington streets, acting as an east-west public way aligned with the primary north Manhattan street grid which is directly on the 5th Avenue axis. Double entrance lobbies located on the sides of the passageway open to the public. Twisting upwards, the passageway soars and pinches at the middle to allow for larger floor plates, settling at a civic space and rooftop sky lobby.

An interplay of scale and function serves the local neighborhood while also contributing to the public realm in lower Manhattan. The towers’ grand scale and form reflects its synonymous identity among other civic, cultural, and commercial landmarks found on 5th Avenue. The programmatic mixture marries certain spaces for living, working, art, performance, retail, and a branch public library through light arrangements at different orientations. A central atrium, or sky void, organizes the majority of the tower, channeling daylight from above via an integrated light-transmitting fiber optic array. The atrium also houses bio-filtration terrariums which act as the building’s lungs to occupy hollow spaces within the floors, providing clean air for its residents and public. The light-flow is reversed at night, as the fiber optic array is lit from integrated solar charged battery packs. A seamless design, The Edgar Street Towers blend right into Lower Manhattan’s grid of civic landmarks, enhancing public life through connection and engagement.

The Acupuncture Tower Redefines the Kaohsiung Port in Taiwan

Graduate students at the I.A. Lab of Taiwan University proposed a new urban masterplan and skyscraper for the port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The “Harbor Capital” is the second largest city of the country and the 6th largest port in the world and since 2009 the most densely populated area of Taiwan.

The so-called Acupuncture Tower designed by Kulthida Songkittipakdee, Jen Hung, Tien Wu, andCheng Pan was inspired on the “memory” of the site’s landscape. Its form derives from the analysis of the different forces (wind, ocean, soil) that activate the region. The tower blends to the existing urban fabric through delicate structures that peel off from the main core and integrate to five different areas of the city providing infrastructure and recreational spaces.

The Acupuncture Tower is also a green project that desalinates ocean water, harvests wind and solar energies, and would recycle the majority of the port’s waste. The façade is also covered with algae membranes that in contact with sunlight and oxygen produce bio-fuel.

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Port of Kaohsiung Passenger Transportation District / Maxthreads Architects

With a view to create a quality environment in which to serve passengers and clients, the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications of Taiwan R.O.C. has formulated a plan for the “Port of Kaohsiung Passenger Transportation District” and the construction of the “Port and Cruise Service Center”. The aim of the competition is to improve the passenger service facilities and the surrounding environment, providing the visitors with more convenient and comfortable facilities. Furthermore, the plan will help promote international exchange and boost international as well as domestic tourism.

Designed by Maxthreads Architectural Design, the project’s task is to create a international gateway not only for the port and cruise service center as the entry and exit point, but also for local public leisure activities. The intimate interconnected relationship created between port and cruise service center and general public by revisiting port operational event is the key element of urban integration.

The proposal attempts to fuse adjacent international, local tourists, public transportation, education, and culture events together. Such as the next by love river riverside walk, Kaohsiung Maritime cultural popular music center, Kaohsiung national library and Singuang ferry wharf to its waterfront. It’s conceptual imperative is to cultivate in depth the transiting experience within the city and to serve as an extraordinary public destination. According to its formal and functional characteristics, the building’s main role is to represent an anchor at the city’s waterfront gateway and to establish itself as a significant circulation axis in the future.

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Benetton Group Headquarters in Tehran, Iran / AquiliAlberg

AquiliAlberg’s design proposal for the new Benetton Group Headquarters in Tehran, Iran is rooted in its tradition, repeating a process already seen and tested in the historical monuments of the city, where a two-dimensional symbol evolves into a three-dimensional volume. The main idea of the project is the integration and transformation of three identical volumes that rotate and scale to create a single entity. This dynamic pattern creates a morphological evolution in time with and upward momentum that reveals its rotation as a design consequence of interacting with the urban fabric, spatial experience, and program. The project is a mixed-use development with residential apartments located on the higher levels, offices in the middle, and commercial areas at ground level.

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A skyscraper as a Stairway to Heaven, ascending from Cairo’s slums

Egyptian architects and engineers Gehan Ahmed Nagy Radwan, Sameh Morsj Gad El-Rab Morsiand Ahmed Magdy Ali are heavy on idealism and light on literal plans for their design Stairway to Heaven, a skyscraper design that blends reality and dreams to create a new utopian dimension.

Located within the slums of Cairo, the Egyptians’ entry couples the smiling faces of children and women with a futuristic tower plan that stacks spheres and rectangular living units high into the sky. The opposite shapes are symbolic of the different purposes the structure serves: dream bubbles foster idealism, living cells house real life, and a “main core of hyper cubes” fuses the two, as would a time machine, say the architects, in a way that opens a “fourth dimension” to residents. A new reality is what is truly created when blending dreams of the future with the roots of your past, issues of identity and community considerations.

The tower is meant to be replicated many times over throughout the slums, redefining life for all stuck in Cairo’s impoverished neighborhoods. Dreams the architects envision residents realizing include those connected to education, health, work, entertainment, and freedom.

The buildings will recycle waste, making good resources from the bad, and will feature foliage such as tall palms interspersed amongst the residential units, even at high altitudes.

The masses of spheres and cubes in contrasting white and orange are visually stimulating, but the value of the entry perhaps best lies within its message. At a time so important in Egyptian history, a vision for a place that brings freedom, health and opportunity to residents most in need is a beautiful one indeed.

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Dalian International Conference Center / Coop Himmelb(l)au Architects

The project designed by Vienna-based architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has both to reflect the promising modern future of Dalian and its tradition as an important port, trade, industry and tourism city.

The formal language of our project is not pictographic, but associative; it will combine and merge the rational structure and organization of its modern conference center typology with the floating spaces of traditional Asian architecture as well as with a design reminescent of the soft surfaces generated by the forces of the sea.

A public zone at ground level allows for differentiating accessibility for the different groups of users, with the shopping and exhibition facilities directly connected to the conference center providing dramatic sight axis within the building. The actual performance and conference spaces are situated at +15 m above the entrance hall. The grand theater, with a capacity of 1,600 seats and a stage tower, directly opposite of a flexible conference hall for 2,500 seats, is positioned at the core in the center of the building.

With this arrangement the main stage can be used for the classical theater auditorium as well as for the flexible multipurpose hall. The main auditorium is additionally equipped with backstage areas like in traditional theaters and opera houses. This scheme is appropriate to broaden the range of options for the use of this space: from convention, musical, theater even up to classical opera, with very little additional investment. The main auditorium has the option to get equipped with a flexible floor providing all possible utilization from banquet to parliamentary seating.

The smaller conference spaces are arranged like pearls around this core, providing very short connections between the different areas, thus saving time while changing between the different units. Most conference rooms and the circulation areas have direct daylight from above.

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New Taipei City Museum of Art / OODA Architecture

It’s another in a series of cutting-edge projects designed for the blooming Asian market. The competition for the Taipei City Museum of Art has drawn a large number proposals, including the one by Porto-based OODA Architecture, which received a merit award. The aim of the competition was to provide a new landmark for the urban center.

The proposed concept is based on two hypercubes; a 90 degree angled cube suspended within a larger contorted volumetric box. The main museum is located within the cube, and above the Children Museum of Art. The latter is positioned below the open public space and sheltered by the main building. The Museum of Art itself flows on a continuous ramp between the outer skin and the hyper core cube inside, all the way to the top. The galleries are located along the ramp, which spirals upwards, around the art resource center. The administrative units are situated at the top.

Structurally, continuous steel frames run from corner to corner and support the entire object. The double skin system provides a double curvature of the façade, suitable for facilitating mechanisms for harvesting rainwater and sunpower. Optimal ventilation is achieved by inserting atrium spaces within the volume.

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