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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

SHoP Featured Twice in List of NYC’s Most Iconic Towers

Two recent SHoP supertalls, The Brooklyn Tower and 111 West 57th Street, take their place alongside the Empire State, Chrysler, Metropolitan Life, Seagram and Woolworth buildings in this curated list of timeless New York City classics.

Facade Installation Nears Completion at FIT

Facade installation is nearing completion on Fashion Institute of Technology‘s ten-story New Academic Building at 220 West 28th Street in Chelsea, Manhattan. Designed by SHoP Architects, the 110,000-square-foot structure is engineered to LEED Gold standards and will yield classrooms, administrative offices, review and exhibition spaces, and a student quad illuminated by skylights.

Youtube HQ Underway In San Bruno

SHoP Architects has done several projects for Google, including the conceptual Charleston East plan and collaboration with the Downtown West master plan. The firm writes, “the YouTube Headquarters is designed to be an anti-icon, a building that puts people first.”