The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, is set to reopen on September 10, 2024, after an extensive restoration and expansion led by Snøhetta in collaboration with Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture (APMA). This transformation introduces the new 42,000-square-foot Rhonda & Howard Hawks Pavilion, designed to significantly enhance Nebraska's largest art museum by adding new gallery spaces and reimagining the visitor experience.
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto will undergo an architectural transformation designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects. As one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada, the architects have transformed its ground floor and the Bloor Street entrance, introducing an interior plaza “pulsing with activity and artistic expression.” Dubbed OpenROM, this multifaceted endeavor aims to “open the museum up even more to the public,” revolutionizing the museum experience and making it more accessible for the 1.4 million annual visitors of the cultural institution.
On February 21st, 2024, American Hotelier MCR Hotels acquired the renowned BT Tower in London. The tower, a Grade II listed marvel, is nestled within London’s Fitzrovia, standing as a testament to the city’s heritage. Initially used as the British Telecommunications Tower and was known as the Post Office Tower, the BT Tower will be repurposed by Heatherwick Studio, with plans underway to breathe new life into this iconic structure.
The ArchDaily projects library is managed by our curators who constantly seek to populate our stream with the most interesting global works, showcasing evolving focuses and criteria. While we usually share our reader’s top 100 favorites, this year, we also decided to initiate our editor’s picks on the ArchDaily Instagram account, where our curators highlight some projects that include interesting themes and unique traits.
Cities across the US are struggling to fill their office spaces. Major cities like Washington DC, Boston, and San Francisco have increasingly vacant downtowns, while the urban centers of small Rust Belt cities struggle to survive altogether. This trend is consistent beyond the US, with over three-quarters of Europe’s office buildings at risk of obsolescence by the decade’s end. The cause of this, in most cases, is simple: an oversupply of offices and a shift towards remote work. These vacant buildings can trigger a negative domino effect of economic and social challenges for cities, and their surplus, coupled with a housing shortage, has sparked discussions among cities and architects about the impending necessity to transform offices into housing.
The Norwegian studio of Powerhouse, in collaboration with KIMA arkitektur, has won a design competition for the transformation and extension of one of the historical buildings located in the center of Landbrukskvartalet. Known as the Agricultural Quarter, a former farming and industrial site in central Oslo, the area is now scheduled to go through an urban revitalization process to be transformed into an active neighborhood based on the design philosophy of ‘new meets old’.
The Republic of Poland boasts diverse geographical territories and cultural tribes that span thousands of years. Its cities and towns reflect a whole spectrum of styles, from Romanesque architecture to Gothic Revival and postmodernist residential and commercial structures. In addition to its unique topography and rich urban fabric, the country houses 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One site, however, has stood out from the rest and given the country a royal status. Tucked beneath the Malinowka stream, just outside the southern city of Krakow, is one of the world's oldest and largest hand-chiseled underground mines that has been transformed into an expansive, all-inclusive complex. From a naturally-healing health center to a secluded church and an underground bungee jumping platform, this colossal adaptive reuse project is the Wieliczka Salt Mine.
Following an international competition, the team led by Dominique Perrault Architecture has been commissioned to reimagine and rehabilitate the Esplanade-Coupole area in École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)’s Campus in Switzerland. The winning project includes the addition of a new building and the renovation of the Coupole to increase its capacity, as well as improvements to the public spaces. The intervention reuses the former Esplanade underground car park, taking advantage of its central location within the campus and creating a new topography to seamlessly integrate the new additions into the dense fabric of the complex. The project, including the new additions and the renovation of existing structures, is set to be built between 2025 and 2028.
OMA / David Gianotten and Andreas Karavanas have won the competition to renovate the world’s oldest museum for Ancient Egyptian culture, the Museo Egizio founded in 1824 and housed in Collegio dei Nobili in Turin, Italy. The winning project aims to put in place a 2024 vision for the Museo Egizio, transforming the museum into a destination for scholars and a rediscovered public place for all.
In collaboration with, local architects Andrea Tabocchini Architecture, T-Studio, and historical consultant Professor Andrea Longhi, the proposal seeks to open the cultural space to all by creating a covered courtyard and a series of connected urban rooms within the existing settlement.
The Natural History Museum Of Lille in France will undertake a significant architectural transformation for its 200th anniversary. Snøhetta, selected to restore and modernize the complex, with a transdisciplinary team featuring the scenographer Adeline Rispal and the landscape architects of Taktyk, imagines a renovation that will support the city's ambition to combine urban renewal with the preservation of the city's historic architecture. Planned for completion in 2025 and with a total of 7,500 m², the restoration will accommodate flexible exhibition areas, more extensive storage, and gardens.
Olson Kundig has announced the opening of its new Bob Dylan Center, a warehouse-turned-museum that gives visitors exclusive access to the cultural treasures found in The Bob Dylan Archive®. Led by design principal Alan Maskin, the center showcases Bob Dylan's worldwide cultural significance, featuring a collection of more than 100,000 items spanning nearly 60 years of Dylan’s career, from handwritten manuscripts and correspondence, to films, videos, artwork, and original studio recordings.
Renovation projects are often perceived as being more limited and therefore less exciting. In this article, we present renovation projects with unexpected solutions that show that it is possible to be creative when adapting and reusing an existing space.
Renovation projects - also called retrofitting, refurbishing, remodeling - are becoming increasingly popular in the market and the practice of architecture, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adaptive reuse or the process of transforming an older building by reusing the structure and changing its original purpose, has gained relevance over the years especially because it allows a complete optimization of the performance of the existing built environment. In a piece, originally published on Metropolis, author Elissaveta Brandon explores how "architects and developers are transforming the staples of the South—located throughout a 120-mile region from Winston-Salem to Fayetteville—into infrastructure fit for today". Transforming historic mills into design hubs, and mixed-use complexes, the article highlights 3 examples from North Carolina.
Led by OUTCOMIST, an international design team including Diller Scofidio + Renfro, PLP Architecture, CRA - Carlo Ratti Associati, and Arup won the competition to revitalize the Porta Romana Railway Area, transforming the industrial site into a diverse green neighborhood in Milan. Rehabilitating a disused railway yard into a connective tissue that links the southeast area of the city to the center, the development will generate a rich biodiverse public space, including a large urban park.
Focusing on the different typologies of houses, this week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights conceptual projects submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From urban developments to tiny homes, this article explores the topic of residential architecture and presents approaches from all over the world.
Featuring a cabin amidst the verdant forested region of northern Iran, a development in Georgia that offers an 80% recreational space to 20% housing ratio, and a project in Paris that re-questions our urban reality, and rethinks traditional forms of housing, this roundup tackles a multitude of scales. In addition, it underlines a collection of beach houses in Greece, Italy, Argentina, and Latvia each responding to a different landscape and topography. Other ideas underlined include the renovation of existing developments in Moscow, a residential-led transformation of a former factory in Manchester, and a family of blocks grouped around an elevated communal garden in the Netherlands.
Foster + Partners is leading massive refurbishment works on a historic building in Madrid. The renovation project that will put in place an office building for Acciona, seeks to revitalize an abandoned old industrial building built in 1905, generating over 10,000 square-meters of new spaces.
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Construction has begun on MVRDV’s project for the Pyramid of Tirana in Albania, as of February 4th, 2021. Rehabilitating what was once a communist monument, the proposal transforms the brutalist structure into a new hub for Tirana's cultural life. Preserving the concrete shell, the intervention will open the atrium and the surroundings, while a small village of cafes, studios, workshops, and classrooms will permeate the site.
Miralles Tagliabue EMBT studio, led by Benedetta Tagliabue, has won an international competition to transform Century Square into a new green landmark in Shanghai, China. The first prize proposal, won against David Chipperfield Architects, offers to renovate the plaza located in one of the busiest commercial areas in the world, “re-naturalizing” the city center and introducing green spaces to improve the urban microclimate.
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