Singapore has emerged as a global design center. As a city-state and island country in Southeast Asia, the Lion City is home to a new class of high-rise buildings, gardens and iconic landmarks. While the design world is familiar with structures like the Safdie's Jewel Changi Airport or OMA's Interlace, Singapore has also built a range of new public and civic buildings alongside extensive land reclamation projects.
The winning proposal for redesigning Thessaloniki’s ConfEx fairground features a series of pavilions with large overhanging roofs that float within a park, creating the infrastructure for international events while providing locals with a robust public space. Designed by Sauerbruch Hutton, together with Gustafson Porter + Bowman as landscape architects and Elena Stavropoulou, the project builds on the existing network of landmarks creating a new hybrid landscape that caters to the Northern Greek city’s goal of becoming the region’s primary business and tourist attraction.
On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago had roughly 200 inhabitants. Four years later, in 1837, it was upgraded to The City of Chicago – an interesting fact given that there are still 19 incorporated towns in Illinois. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed 300 people, destroyed about 3.3 square miles (9 km2), and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. However, by that time Chicago had become the world’s fastest-growing city and its population had risen over 300,000 inhabitants. The fire meant these ambitious citizens had to start again.
With admirable strength, the city was reborn from the ashes and some of Chicago’s best architecture was constructed immediately after. Structures like the Rookery Building (1888, Frank Lloyd Wright), the Auditorium Building (1889, Louis Sullivan) and the Monadnock Building (1893, Burnham & Root, Holabird & Roche) are a few examples of the high standards the city was aiming for.
OMA / Reinier de Graaf and Buro Happold have unveiled their design for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha, Qatar. The project explores the "potential of modularity, prefabrication, and automation in relation to the rapid changes in medical science" on a 1.3 million-sqm plot with low cost, cross-shaped modular units that are prefabricated on site. In addition to the prefabrication of the units, a local high-tech farm will supply food and medical plants for medicine production, and a solar farm will allow the district to function autonomously.
The first quadrant of OMA’s Berlin KaDeWe department store transformation opened its doors to the public, revealing a new approach to retail design in the age of online shopping and shifting consumer behaviour. The masterplan divides the historic building, the largest department store in continental Europe, into four smaller, easily accessible and navigable sectors. The completed quadrant features a six-storey void containing a series of escalators and simultaneously acting as circulation, retail and event space.
OMA/Jason Long’s 11th Street Bridge Park has reached new major milestones in its design and capital campaign after a series of design refinements. The design team has further improved the program areas across the bridge park, and has shifted the locations of the amphitheater and main gathering space, extending its capacity up to 250 people. Finishes and landscape designs have also been refined, whereas the pedestrian pathways, terraces, centers and public plazas have remained unchanged.
OMA New York has designed a new 145-meter pedestrian bridge over the Apatlaco River in Jojutla de Juárez, Mexico, as part of a larger reconstruction effort by Infonavit (National Workers’ Housing Fund Institute) following the 2017 earthquakes.
Led by Iyad Alsaka, Adrianne Fisher, and Wael Sleiman, OMA’s latest project, the Prestige Liberty Towers, breaks ground in Mumbai, India. Expected to be completed in 2025, the mixed-used complex is the firm’s first venture in India, located in the historic textile mills at the heart of the city.
OMA’s mixed-use development for Morden Wharf has just been granted planning consent from the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Planning Committee. The scheme created for developer U+I is located on a 2.4-hectare brownfield site, with an industrial past, on London’s Greenwich Peninsula facing the historic Greenwich and the millennial O2 Arena.
OMA / Shohei Shigematsu has completed its Audrey Irmas Pavilion at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the firm’s first commission from a religious institution and first cultural building in California. Expected to open in January 2022, “the new 55,000 square foot Pavilion is a response to the Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s vision for its campus to create a much-needed space to convene”.
OMA / David Gianotten has revealed the design for a five-story office building in Amsterdam, replacing a 1980s bank headquarters. Located on one of the city’s main avenues among high-end offices, housing and luxury hotels, the architecture of the new project is shaped by the characteristics of its surroundings. Featuring interlocking glass volumes towards the boulevard and brick-clad facades towards the residential area, Apollolaan 171 creates a dialogue with both the green avenue of Amsterdam’s south district and the neighbouring 20th-century Berlage architecture.
Among the most renowned and well-established offices in the world, OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, founded in the 1970s by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis, is definitely part of the pantheon of the most famous. Curiously, although it receives large commissions and has already built several emblematic works in different countries, the office is often associated with an approach that is less focused on architectural design, going beyond the strict limits of the disciplinary field and encompassing other areas of practice.
OMA's research and publication branch AMO has taken over the fences of the United Nations Headquarters in New York for a public exhibition showcasing a follow-up of the 2020 Countryside, The Future project. Curated by Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, director of AMO, Countryside at the United Nations, invites reflection and public discussion on the topics of agricultural innovation, ecological change and food production in anticipation of the UN Food Systems Summit taking place in September 2021.
Three years after OMA was selected by the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency (JCRA) to design a new museum in Journal Square, the city’s downtown hub, it was revealed this morning that the building would be home to none other than the Pompidou Center’s first North American satellite: The Centre Pompidou × Jersey City.
Recent years have seen an increased acknowledgement of the collective endeavour that is architecture and a better valuing of the different professions that participate in the design process. Within every extraordinary building, structural engineering plays an essential role in delivering the architectural vision. The article highlights the past and present contributions of engineering to the built environment, personalities that have stood in the shadow of architects delivering their design intent, and the collaboration between engineers and architects today.
OMA New York / Jason Long has revealed the design for The Terminal, a new performance venue serving as a cultural anchor for POST Houston, the office's redevelopment of the historic Barbara Jordan Post Office in downtown Houston. Integrated within the eastern wing of the mixed-use design, the 5,000 capacity music venue makes use of industrial materials and lighting effects to create a performative space on and off the stage.
Situated at the northern part of Brooklyn where Newton Creek and the East River intersect, OMA New York / Jason Long's Greenpoint Landing residential towers have reached their latest phase of development; The North Tower is currently at 300 ft. and the South Tower is at 400 ft. The buildings are expected to provide 745 units of mixed-income housing, and will expand an acre beyond the existing esplanade, creating a new section of public waterfront that overlooks the Manhattan skyline.
Designers have created civic institutions, governmental centers, public plazas, and many other spaces as testaments to individual and shared values. As spaces for gathering and exchange are necessary elements to urban life, architecture can also act as a vehicle to encourage understanding. Advocating knowledge while empowering the public, libraries celebrate ideas, curiosity and empathy.
_OMA.jpg?1558539068 "Knoll Celebrates Bauhaus. © OMA / Photography by Fred Ernst")
