UPCOMING WORK BY BJARKE INGELS, REM KOOLHAAS, RENZO PIANO, AND MORE By Asad Syrkett Architectural Digest February 26, 2015 With spring just around the corner, we take a look at the residential towers, museums, and more that will heat up the design world in the next year. Architectural wunderkind Bjarke Ingels (a 2011 AD Innovator) is set to make his New York City debut in early 2016 with W57, an asymmetrical, torquing, pyramid-shaped residential tower on Manhattan s Far West Side designed by his firm BIG. The building, which centers on a courtyard, isn t twisting just for fun: Like much of BIG s work, the structure s clever form is meant to maximize access to light and air and capitalize on views.
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas s new building for Moscow s Garage a contemporary art museum founded by Russian socialite Dasha Zhukova will be the first completed in the country by Koolhaas s firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Adapted from an abandoned Soviet-era restaurant in Gorky Park, the Garage plan consists of a two-story rectilinear volume clad in translucent polycarbonate and built around the existing structure. Japanese Pritzker Prize winning duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of the marquee firm SANAA, are set to complete their first work since clinching architecture s highest prize in 2010. The project, slated to finish this fall, is the River, a center for education and community events commissioned by Grace Farms, a New Canaan, Connecticut,
foundation focused on faith and the arts. Snaking through a section of the 75-acre property, the River is part of the foundation's effort to expand its reach through cultural, athletic, and family-friendly events open the public. 2014 AD Innovator Ole Scheeren is having a moment. Several projects he led while a partner and director at Rem Koolhaas s megafirm OMA have opened to acclaim, and another is set to join their ranks later this year. MahaNakhon is a mixed-use complex in Bangkok that will encompass residences, a hotel, and retail spaces when completed. The striking design comprises a columnar tower rising 77 stories and featuring units with terraces that lend the structure an appearance of digital pixilation.
Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron isn t known for a fixed, discernable style, but its scheme for the Nouveau Stade Bordeaux in France is as classic an example of its rigorously modern, site-sensitive work as any. Set to accommodate some 42,000 soccer spectators, the stadium is covered by a rectangular, canopy-like roof supported by dozens of slender columns.
The spiraling Shanghai Tower, a 121-story high-rise in the city s financial district, is a design from international architecture firm Gensler, slated to accommodate offices, a luxury hotel, entertainment venues, and more. The building is also being considered for sustainability certifications from the China Green Building Committee and the U.S. Green Building Council. Another project by Rem Koolhaas s busy OMA, the Taipei Performing Arts Center will encompass three theaters (seating 2,000, 1,500, and 800 audience members) in the Taiwanese capital. Its quirky exterior which features the three performance-space volumes jutting from a central cubic structure hints at the venue s desire to shake things up in the local performing arts world, beginning with its daring new space.
Perhaps the most hotly anticipated building this year is Italian Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano s long-awaited downtown home for New York s Whitney Museum of American Art. Opening May 1 on a site at the southern end of the High Line park in Manhattan s Meatpacking District, the new 60,000-square-foot Whitney is clad in enameledsteel panels, a stark contrast to the institution s Brutalist 1960s-era edifice by iconic architect Marcel Breuer. http://www.architecturaldigest.com/architecture/innovators/2014/cutting-edge-architecture-2015- slideshow?title=1