Herzog and Meuron design the new Miami Art Museum

MAM; just revealed the plans for the new museum designed by award winning Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.

Designed to achieve silver LEED certification for its environmental impact, the new 120,000-square-foot, three story building, is an imaginative structure that bridges urban spaces, climates and cultures.

Situated on the Biscayne Bay, the new MAM building, sensitive to the city’s need for public green space, is designed to extend the park into the museum site by means of a shaded outdoor terrace and verandas accessible to all visitors.

Tropical plants are integrated into the structural system of columns and platforms forming a dense, multi-dimensional sculpture garden and creating a natural extension of the transparent main structure.

The new museum will open to the public in 2013.

OMA designs sustainable City Hall in Rotterdam

Office for Metropolitan Architecture worked with Werner Sobek and engineers ABT and won a competition to design a new mixed used building at Rotterdam’s City Hall in the Netherlands.
Set for completion in 2014, the innovative and sustainable scheme for the city council includes municipal services, offices and residential units.
The new building will be made up of smaller box-shaped cells to generate maximum efficiency and versatility in construction and features a modular structure with repeated units gradually set back from the street as they rise into two irregular peaks. Units can be added or taken away as needed.
Besides this particular structure, the building has a climate regulated by warm air stored in summer and released in winter, and vice versa, and the use of hi-tech translucent insulation in the building’s glass façade, addressing the main requirement for this building: to be the most sustainable building in the Netherlands.
The highly insulated glazed building will also include green terraces for residential occupants on higher levels providing the possibility of an apartment with a garden in the heart of urban Rotterdam!
OMA partner Reinier de Graaf said: “Rather than posing as the city’s next superlative, the design for the Stadskantoor is partly a building, partly an urban condition – a skyline in its own right.”

More OMA in Future Architecture here

Populous - 2014 Winter Olympic Stadium, Sochi, Russia

Following their successful submission to design the 2012 Olympic Stadium for London, the Populous has yet again emerged the front-runner in a bid to design the main stadium for the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Based on sustainable architecture lines, the stadium will be wrapped in a shimmering crystalline skin and make use of advanced material technology, together with natural lighting and ventilation. Looking like a riverside pebble, the stadium will accommodate about 40,000 spectators. According to the senior principal of the Populous, John Barrow, “The main stadium design, in addition to the venue overlay plan we have prepared for the 2014 Games, delivers a wonderful vision for the winter Olympics, and a lasting sustainable legacy for Sochi. Its sweeping form responds to both its coastal location and mountainous backdrop, whilst its crystalline skin engages with its surroundings by day, and provides an iconic representation of the color and spectacle of the games when illuminated at night.”

UNstudio - Dalian Shide Football Stadium, China

Dutch architects UNStudio have won a closed competition to design a 38,500sq m, 40,000-seat football stadium in China for the most successful club in the Chinese super league: Dalian Shide fc..
Inspired by the design of a classic Chinese football made by layering colored bamboo, the new stadium features a double-layered, lattice-like roof a TV broadcasting center, administration areas, two full-sized training fields,VIP lounge, and facilities for players.
“A key feature of the Dalian stadium is the proximity of the spectators to the pitch, thereby ensuring the best views from the tribunes and creating a true sense of engagement,” said UN Studio founder Ben van Berkel.“As in theatre design, specific views and focal points are required. In the Dalian stadium, we envisioned the playing field as the stage. A two-tier seating system and curved outlines optimise the corners of the tribunes and allow the spectators to be as close as possible to the playing field.” said van Berkel.

Foster+Partners Spaceport, New Mexico

Future and Architecture… Any ideas? Well it looks like the future is here, for Foster + Partners and URS corporation, who designed the first spaceport in the world, in New Mexico. And in case you were wondering, yes construction has already begun!

The sinuous shape of the building in the landscape and its interior spaces seek to capture the drama and mystery of space flight itself, articulating the thrill of space travel for the first space tourists. Making a minimal impact on the environment, the scheme will be the first facility of its kind and a model for the future.
The spaceport will host commercial operations by private space travel companies, like Virgin Galactic.

Read more about Foster+Partners in Future Architecture:
Foster+Partners to connect North and South Korea
Masdar City - Foster + Partners