Great devastations always come with them the opportunities for fresh starts. As the first blossoms of spring breathe in life to the different shades of white that characterize winter - so a new and good building can reinvigorate hope after the despair that disasters leave in their...
What used to be the world's tallest towers may have been overthrown by other super skyscrapers since 2004 but the Petronas Towers still stand as the tallest twins in the sky. They form the central element of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, Malaysia and are...
A 75-metre cantilever is the defining feature of the CCTV headquarters designed by OMA with lead architect Rem Koolhaas wanting a skyscraper that beats the conventional tall square buildings competing for height in the city of Beijing. Rem Koolhaas and his architecture firm, OMA, must...
Jean Nouvel’s beliefs in integrating the tower with a vertical landscape continues to take shape as seen in this mixed-use tower completed in April 2015 in Nicosia, Cyprus. The 67 meter high building is one of the tallest buildings around the place with its significance...
There was a time when books were high up the ranks insofar as pastime favourites were concerned. Long before the invention of the television and radio, people would turn to books to be woven into the lives of fictional characters. But then came the advent of the...
Admittedly, my opinions of the Northwest Corner building at first were not exactly the best; this is not what I would expect from Rafael Moneo who is well known for his handling with such aplomb of the brick and stone materials that he won the...
From afar it may appear like just another cylindrical tower, something like Nairobi's Hilton Hotel in Kenya or Manfred Hermer's Ponte City Apartments in Johannesburg, South Africa. However, Toyo Ito's Tower of Winds in Yokohama, Japan is more than just a cylindrical form. It is...
In the current world of global architectural production, Istanbul has continued to struggle to create and present the work of contemporary architecture. In a city that continues to evolve and redevelop every other day, locals have become conscious of the buildings that come up within...
Often, an architect's design mettle is proven in small scale projects. Whilst massive projects may be complex programmatically, it is modest projects that showcase an architect's eye for detail and refinement. Saint Benedict Chapel by Atelier Peter Zumthor in Sumvitg, Switzerland best puts on display...
Marketing a museum has got to be one of the most difficult things to do. However, Libeskind’s designs and Gehry’s audaciousness coupled with Calatrava’s willingness to push architectural technology to limits never thought before can be a good incentive for thousands of people to visit...
When you are China with a population of over 1.5 billion people, you are destined to make large construction projects a way of life. In Beijing, the current city population is 20 million, served by five main railway stations located in the south, east, north,...
Shigeru Ban’s work with traditional materials and the timber structures continues in this Nine Bridges Country Club-clubhouse in South Korea, unveiled in 2009. The 20,000 square-metre facility is only a two-hour drive away from Seoul and consists of 3 buildings; the main atrium clubhouse for...
Located on Jerusalem's Mount of Remembrance (HaZikaron) is the distillation of Israel's Holocaust history. Yad Vashem was established in 1953 with the task of documenting the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust and perpetuating the memory of Holocaust victims for future generations. 2005...
Looking at the MIT Simmons Hall, it reminds me of how every city’s skyline around the world looks almost magical at night. It’s a wicked view depicting the shades of light and darkness plastered on a mass of work as if to depict opaqueness and...
520 Park Avenue is a 52-story tower coming up in New York City expected to feature the Indiana Limestone cladding all through its facades. The high-rise building designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) is expected to come to realization in 2017 and will feature...
Ken Yeang is one of the most renowned environmentally conscious architects today. The National Library Building in Singapore required a state-of-the-art sustainable design that would serve as a landmark for the region. The requirements from the client needed a facility that would also act as...
In 2009, the real estate market in North America was at the home stretch of crumbling from a financial crisis. A small private equity firm known as CIM and based in Los Angeles came in at this time with a lot of money to spend....
Built for a wine cooperative in a small village in the Ribera del Duero area, Peñafiel, Spain, Bodegas Protos is a winery designed from the concept of the wine-making process. The building was designed to follow the journey of the grapes from harvesting to the...
The KingKey (KK) 100 skyscraper is a result of an initiative to transform the Caiwuwei Village from a low-rise dull residential community to a thriving high-density urban place. Located on a 3.6 hectare site, it’s one among 6 other towers that complete the project by...
Since the 13th Century, Western paintings had single vanishing points that would fixate the perspectives of works of art. Chinese artists on the other hand have long resisted the idea of having a single vanishing point on their art works. With the knowledge of the...
Studio Fuksas unveiled their first airport design in 2013, a new Terminal that will facilitate the travels of 43 million passengers every year. The Terminal dubbed Terminal 3 at the Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China will more than double the capacity of...
There are projects that come once in the lifetime of an architect, even great architects - twice or thrice if one’s really lucky. One such project is the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Safdie Architects was approached by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation to develop a competitive...
In a speculative development by insurance firm Aviva, a tower was required to be built in La Défense district in Paris. The competition carried out in 2008 saw Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) winning with their design proposal of a pleated glass curtain wall tower that...
Every country around the world has development goals that are set to be achieved over a certain period of time, mostly very long-term. Tulsa County in Oklahoma, United States has development goals dubbed Vision 2025. Most of the goals revolve around development of the county...
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights designed by architect Antoine Predock is an expensive revelation of architecture’s impacts on boosting human rights around the world. The architect said this is his favorite and most important building so far. You can easily tell why. It’s like...
The Yongsan International Business District (YIBD) Project R6 is a massive exploration of how far you can go when pulling building layers in opposing directions. The project is a single skyscraper of the YIBD master-plan developed by architect Daniel Libeskind and scheduled to feature several other towers...
An interesting fold and twist to the London School of Economics campus, is the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre by O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects. It entails polygonal marvels and exploits the richness of red brick on its facade. London is a city of bricks. The street...
Modernism has for a long time had a simple mantra: a house is a machine for living in. But with the world moving into a consciousness for sustainability, there is a growing need for architects to explore the derivatives of their concepts. To counter this,...
Concrete and light. Tadao Ando's principal focus on simplicity and minimalist aesthetics in the Church of the Light is silencing. The church is located in a typical Japanese suburb, a cram of tradition and modernism on the outskirts of Osaka. Its load bearing walls are...
This glass and steel edifice and sculptural spirals that look like a hyper-modern gallery space or a building from a science-fiction film is, in fact, the MyZeil Shopping Mall, the work of celebrated architect Massimiliano Fuksas in Frankfurt, Germany. Its spectacular steel and glass façade,...