Santiago Calatrava does it again! Liège Train Station, Belgium

Calatrava’s Liège station began construction in 1996 and was designed to provide rail service for 36,000 people a day whilst introducing innovative design to the local area of Liège.

As a significant point of connection between not only local areas but European cities, the design for Liège-Guillemins Station aimed to create a symbol of the city’s renewal.
Calatrava designed a structure ‘without facades’ and focused on the roof as the key element within the design. It offers protection from the surrounding natural environment in the form of a glass and steel vaulted curve and stretches over five platforms.A series of pedestrian bridges and walkways at basement level provide access from one end of the station to the other.Santiago Calatrava said: “It was my goal to create a 21st century transportation facility that would not only unite Liège with the rest of Europe, but would also serve as a symbol of the city’s renewal. The project, as a whole, creates a new gateway into Liège and re-establishes a relationship with the city”.

Hamburg Philharmonic Concert Hall

So, what do you think of this building?
Well then, how about this one?
Yes, this is how the new Hamburg’s Philharmonic Orchestra Hall will look like, upon completion, in 2012.

Architects Herzog & de Meuron, designed the Elbie Hall, one of the largest urban construction projects under way in Europe, back in 2007. The design of the Philharmonic Hall will incorporate a pre-existing brick warehouse topped by a new crystalline tent-like structure that seems to float above the industrial base.
The Elbe Philharmonic Hall will become a cultural centerpiece for Hamburg and is destined to house one of the world's ten best concert halls, a 250 room five-star hotel, a wellness and conference zone, numerous restaurants and nightclubs and 47 owner-occupied apartments!

Sietch Nevada - A Futuristic Desert Oasis

In Frank Herbert’s famous1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel” and forecasts a dystopian world without water. Although this science fiction novel sounded alien back then, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest.

Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life.
Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, Matsys Designs, designed the Sietch as a dense, underground community.

A network of storage canals is covered with undulating residential and commercial structures. These canals connect the city with vast aquifers deep underground and provide transportation as well as agricultural irrigation.

The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice.
Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture.

OMA - Interlace Project, Singapore

Architects Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) have unveiled new images of a residential project for Singapore, comprising long low apartment blocks stacked in hexagonal configurations, a new residential typology which breaks away from the standard isolated, vertical apartment towers of singapore.

The large-scale complex takes a more expansive and interconnected approach to living through communal spaces which are integrated into its lush surrounding greenbelt.

Thirty-one apartment blocks, each standing at six-storeys tall and identical in length, are stacked in a hexagonal arrangement to form eight large open and permeable courtyards.

The stacked formations allow light and air to flow through the architecture and surrounding landscape. developed by capitaland and hotel properties limited, the interlace covers 170,000m2 of gross floor area and will house 1,040 apartment units of varying sizes.

For more info on this amazing project please visit OMA's website.

Foster+Partners to connect North and South Korea

What better way to start the new season than with one of the most visionary architectural firms in sustainable architecture, Foster+Partners.

This time, the Teatro Del Agua creators won an international competition with a startling green master-plan that will, within the next 15 years, connect North and South Korea.

Their proposal? The world's longest bridge!

An extraordinary, mixed use scheme, that will connect the two islands that up till today have no road connections whatsoever.

The entire 115 square mile area will be self sufficient and support a population able to grow sustainably from 35.000 to 320.000 residents and commuters.

Special zoning will be used to encourage green industry (manufacturing photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, new products and technology etc) while the south of the island will be mixed-use, combining community, cultural and residential buildings with green tech industry.

For more on this extraordinary project please visit the Foster+Partners website.