Archinect - News

OMA completes new Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Center

2020-09-28T15:16:00-04:00

The city of Toulouse in Southern France recently completed MEETT, its brand new Exhibition and Convention Center designed by OMA / Chris van Duijn.

Combining a convention center, exhibition halls, a multi-function event hall, a parking structure for 3,000 cars, and a transportation hub with a new tram station, bus stop, and cycling facility, the enormous complex measures 155,000 square meters (over 1.6 million square feet), making it the third largest of its kind in France, outside of Paris.

Photograph by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of OMA.

"The masterplan of MEETT has been conceived as an active strip — ‘une bande active’ — forming a physical border between urban development and countryside, with the ambition of becoming the central spine for an integrated development of the city and the countryside," explains OMA's project description. "The program of the exhibition and convention centre is organized into three parallel bands: an [....

How is Philadelphia's convention center adapting to the pandemic age?

2020-08-04T14:12:00-04:00

Conventions and trade shows are now wrestling with the same challenges facing schools, religious groups, and professional sports. Whenever large numbers of people gather indoors, in tightly enclosed spaces with mechanical air circulation, odds are that spikes in coronavirus infections will follow.

Inga Saffron, architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, probes some of the existential questions facing large urban convention centers, massive facilities that have had their spatial and economic potentials deeply challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Saffron reports on efforts to upgrade and retrofit the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia for the pandemic age as digital and alternative forms of professional and academic gatherings begin to take root in response to the need for social distancing.

Africa-themed water park coming to central Texas

2019-06-06T13:24:00-04:00

A year ago, Kalahari Resorts and Conventions broke ground on what they billed as "America's largest indoor water park" in Round Rock, Texas.

A new convention center, hotel, and indoor water park complex slated for Round Rock, Texas, a suburb of Austin, is reportedly designed to be an "authentically African-themed all-under-one-roof experience."

Kalahari Resorts, the group behind the effort, bills the forthcoming complex as "state-of-the-art facilities and vacation-style activities [that] go way beyond your expectations." According to a project website, the new 300,000-square-foot convention center complex will feature 975 hotel rooms, a full service spa and salon, as well as "America's largest indoor waterpark," among other amenities. A Marrakesh-themed market hall and South African-themed buffet will be included among the center's dining options while a coffee shop specializing in a Rwanda-grown coffee will roast handpicked coffee beans on-site.

Kalahari Resorts already operates convention centers in the Wisconsin Dells, in Sandusky, Ohio, and in Pocono Mountain, Pennsylvania. Construction on the Texas location is well...

Nearly three decades old, Eisenman's (still laser-less) Greater Columbus Convention Center revisited

2019-01-09T14:35:00-05:00

With full theatrical trappings—nu-age Philip Glass music, smoke machines, mood lighting--the Eisenman team unveiled to the crowd a scale model of the building, which produced a light show to rival a Laser Floyd spectacular. These dozen red-hued Death Star beams [...] were to be placed on the building and neighboring structures, flashing, blinking, sweeping across downtown like some insane city-scale laser security system. Three years later, it was opened. Sans lasers.

Nathan Eddy, architecture documentary director and most recently a driving force to save Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s AT&T Building in New York, pens a delightful review of Peter Eisenman's 1990 competition-winning proposal for the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio.

"Forget the Bilbao Effect—today’s clients demand the Instagram Effect, with architects all but forced to include social media experiences into their designs," writes Eddy. "In 2018, a quarter century feels like forever ago, and Eisenman’s building, with its peculiar colors, slanted walls and cocky posturing, is still somehow both out of and ahead of its time, a futuristic anachronism."

Studio Fuksas designs the New Rome/EUR Convention Centre, the largest building built in Rome in over 50 years

2017-03-21T12:19:00-04:00

EUR, a business district in Rome developed in the 1930’s under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, is filled with the heroic modernism, otherwise known as Rationalism, of the Fascist era. Now the area will host a new building designed to echo the stark geometry of its context. The €239 million New Rome/EUR Convention Centre, which is designed by Studio Fuksas, is the largest building built in the Eternal City in over 50 years, and is expected to bring in €300-400 million per year to the city.

Within the main, large rectangular structure, “The Cloud” comprises an organic shape that will contain an auditorium. Adjacent to the main space is “The Blade”, a tall tower housing a new hotel.

From the architects:

Located south of the city’s core, in the business district of EUR, the complex follows the simple orthogonal lines of the surrounding 1930s rationalist architecture.

The spaces surrounding the centre will serve as two public squares. Integral to the new complex and the neighbourhood,...

This could be the Los Angeles Convention Center of the (near) future

2015-06-25T13:42:00-04:00

On Tuesday, the City of Los Angeles announced that the team of Populous and HMC Architects had been selected to design the $350 million expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center, beating out other proposals from teams lead by Gensler and AC Martin.

LA Mayor Eric Garceitti's office recently also released a set of renderings of the recommended new design by Populous & HMC Architects.

All images via Mayor Eric Garcetti's Facebook.

Nashville's Music City Center hopes to make a lasting note

2013-05-21T13:54:00-04:00

This morning, city officials in Nashville cut the ribbon on the largest public building project in its history -- a new convention hall called the Music City Center. But Nashville isn't just the latest city to open a convention center. These mammoth buildings are opening or getting facelifts coast-to-coast. And standing out now takes more than a huge exhibition space and easy access.

BIG & Design Partners Propose Miami Beach Square as Massive Convention Center Redevelopment

2013-05-14T19:09:00-04:00

BIG together with West 8, Fentress Architects, John Portman & Associates (JPA), Revuelta Architecture International and developers Portman-CMC have unveiled the urban planning proposal Miami Beach Square, the centerpiece of a 52-acre Miami Beach Convention Center District development. Portman-CMC is one of two development teams currently in the race for the project.

UPDATE: OMA Wins Miami Beach Convention Center Competition

Los Angeles NFL stadium and Convention Center project would boost tax revenue, studies find

2011-07-21T12:32:00-04:00

Construction of a $1-billion NFL stadium and a new wing of the Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles would dramatically increase the number of convention bookings while generating $22 million annually for the city, according to the findings of two reports commissioned by the project's developer.

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