Mixed Use: The Latest Architecture and News

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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Construction broke ground last month for ‘The Exchange’ tower in Vancouver, Canada's first LEED Platinum heritage conversion and Harry Gugger Studio’s first North American building. The 31-floor office building resolves the strict urban regulations imposed on high-rise construction downtown and addresses the historical context by preserving and integrating the façade of the city's historic Stock Exchange building.

J. Mayer H. has been crowned as winner of an invited competition to design a 19-story medical services and residential high-rise in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. The “sculptural” tower, which is defined by the horizontal “cloud-shaped” aluminum strips that cloak its facade, is designed to “provide a natural atmosphere” enhanced by planted terraces and balconies overlooking the adjacent landscape of the Rheinaue and views of Duesseldorf.

Richard Meier & Partners has unveiled the “Reforma Towers,” a 40-story, mixed use development planned for Mexico City’s historic Paseo de la Reforma. Comprised of two high-rise towers, clad in Meier’s signature white concrete, the new development will bring high end office, hotel, and retail space, as well as restaurants and a fitness center to the city’s distinguished Boulevard upon completion in 2015.

Vienna-based Delugan Meissl Associated Architects (DMAA) has been announced as winner of a competition to design a mixed-use, cultural complex in Munich. Dubbed Hanns Seidel Platz, the 40,500-square-meter scheme will provide a 160-unit “living tower,” office space, a civic center, concert hall and large public plaza for the district of Neuperlach.

This winning concept was developed in collaboration with the architecture firm Wimmer un Partner. It is expected for completion in 2019.