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The Architect's Newspaper

Uber HQ Wins 2023 Vitruvian Award for Innovation

On September 19, architects, engineers, manufacturers, and, above all, facades geeks, gathered in the basement of the Center for Architecture to attend the awards ceremony for the 2023 Vitruvian Awards. Hosted annually by the Facade Tectonics Institute (FTI), the Vitruvian Awards “seeks to recognize unprecedented innovation and achievements in the field of facade design and delivery,” according to the FTI website.

The RIBA Journal

SHoP Goes ‘Mega’ for World’s Tallest Hybrid Timber Tower

The tower’s superstructure, developed in collaboration with local practice BVN and structural engineer Eckersley O’Callaghan and TTW, comprises a steel and concrete ‘mega frame’ supporting a series of ‘mega floors’ positioned every four storeys. A steel and glass exoskeleton façade wraps around the outside. The mega floors each support a giant freestanding three-floor timber insertion constructed in cross-laminated timber (CLT). The mega floors divide the tower vertically into separate ‘neighbourhoods’ incorporating a mix of indoor and outdoor spaces, including planted terraces.

Fair Supply

New Video Describes SHoP/Fair Supply Partnership

In a video produced by Fair Supply, Chris Sharples and Steven Garcia discuss how SHoP is employing Fair Supply data to transform their supply chain decision making, including the importance of using technology to track and embed information related to material sourcing, labor risks, and carbon data directly into architectural models.

NYPA

Brockport Pedestrian Bridge Construction Begins

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) and New York State Canal Corporation today announced the commencement of construction of a new pedestrian bridge over the Erie Canal in the Village of Brockport, Monroe County. The crossing is the first new large-scale infrastructure project under New York State’s Reimagine the Canals initiative and will connect the SUNY Brockport campus to the Empire State Trail.

Bloomberg

Downtown Brooklyn Gets the Gotham City Treatment

The Brooklyn Tower is steeped in nostalgic imagery but only possible to construct via the latest technologies, from wind modeling to extra-strength concrete to five-axis CNC milling. Even its stepped profile is 21st century: Rather than being stacked in diminishing layers like wedding cake, the hexagonal tiers twist, stepping back in a spiral, so that no one side reads as the front. “The texture on the façade is not just decorative, it’s performative,” says Pasquarelli, genially leading an August tour of the Sky Park, an open story at the 66th floor also intended to create turbulence, and thus lessen the impact of wind on the tower. Rather than being a blank mechanical floor, the open space around the elevator core on 66 will also be fitted out with a basketball court, a dog run, and a playground.

Dezeen

Brooklyn Tower Named World’s Best Skyscraper

To mark World Skyscraper Day today, Dezeen readers have voted the Brooklyn Tower by SHoP Architects as the best skyscraper from the past year. After over 1,000 votes, the Brooklyn Tower in New York City was the clear winner, with over 30 per cent of people picking it from the poll. Designed by SHoP Architects, the 325-metre-high supertall skyscraper is now the tallest building in Brooklyn. The distinctive 93-storey tower is clad in blackened stainless steel panels with bronze and copper pilasters.

State.gov

Department of State Begins Construction on New U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa

The embassy design draws inspiration from the diverse environmental mosaic of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Department is committed to implementing rigorous energy-saving and sustainability strategies to minimize the environmental impact of construction, optimize building performance, and enhance sustainability and resilience. SHoP Architects of New York, New York, is the design architect, and B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham, Alabama, is the design-build contractor, with Page of Washington, D.C., as the architect of record.

CTBUH

Atlassian HQ Wins Award of Excellence

SHoP’s trendsetting design for the Atlassian Headquarters in Sydney has been honored with an Award of Excellence in the Future Projects category from the prestigious Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The award recognizes the manner in which the tower posits a series of semi-autonomous office neighborhoods centered around planted and naturally ventilated “mid-doors” spaces, as well as the tower’s unique standing as the world’s tallest hybrid mass timber construction.

New York Magazine

Justin Davidson Reviews The Brooklyn Tower

The new supertall gets its palette and sleekness from Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, its ornamental élan from Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building. But there’s a more immediate influence…the Dime Savings Bank, which sits at the Brooklyn Tower’s feet. The bank, a designated landmark inside and out, contains so much gratuitous sumptuousness that, in its heyday, it made saving a dime seem as elevated as anointing a king. The interior is still searching for a use, but even sitting graciously vacant, it’s sprouted a connected companion that translates one century’s sense of glamour for the next. Rarely has a fine old building’s airspace been used to such sympathetic effect.

Newsday

Camera Obscura Reopens!

Designed as part of the Mitchell Park project in 2003 by Manhattan-based SHoP Architects, the camera obscura is one of about 50 remaining in the world and five nationwide, village officials estimate. “I call it the Victorian IMAX theater. It really creates a very vivid, three dimensional experience,” said SHoP founding principal William Sharples. Mitchell Park was the first project for the firm, which also designed the Barclays Center and redesigned Nassau Coliseum. Sharples said designing the camera obscura was a “cutting-edge moment” since it was built using digital, 3D modeling rather than traditional blueprints. Instead, 1,487 wood and metal parts were fabricated off site and put together using visual instructions akin to putting together Legos or a model airplane.

Tayo Aina Films

Inside the Botswana Innovation Hub

This is Botswana’s $60 million dollar innovation hub and it has one of the most fascinating building designs I have ever seen anywhere in the world.