Archinect - News

Skanska and BIG complete curving terracotta-colored tower in Houston

2024-02-21T11:43:00-05:00

A team led by Skanska and Bjarke Ingels Group has completed a major new office tower in Houston, Texas. Named 1550 on the Green, the 28-story tower is part of a three-block master plan by Skanska, designed by BIG, with interiors by Michael Hsu.

Image credit: Skanska USA Commercial Development, Inc.

The 375,000-square-foot tower is primarily devoted to office accommodation, with ground floor space dedicated to hospitality. Other amenities in the scheme, per the project’s official website, include a 7,000-square-foot fitness center and a 9,400-square-foot tenant-exclusive rooftop event space.

Image credit: Skanska USA Commercial Development, Inc.

Externally, the tower adopts a multi-tiered, curved structure overlooking Discovery Green park. “Vines that will eventually creep along the terracotta-colored tower are meant to help the building blend into the surrounding park,” the Houston Chronicle writes about the tower. “The building's curve allows even tenants on lower levels to view Disc...

New photos of Kinzo-designed interiors in Foster + Partners' record-setting MOL Headquarters

2023-10-11T13:36:00-04:00

Archinect has received new photos of Foster + Partners' now in-use MOL Group corporate headquarters tower in Budapest following a public opening that took place in the Hungarian capital earlier this spring. The building's interiors were designed by Berlin-based architecture studio Kinzo Architekten.

The tower was inaugurated in December and is the tallest structure in Hungary, topping out at 469 feet and 28 floors. It joins F+P’s Varso Tower design in Poland, now the EU’s tallest building, as two record-setting constructions that were completed last year. The firm says it is part of their focus to design office spaces that meet contemporary demands from workers and environmental advocates.

Image: © HGEsch

In terms of sustainability, the low and zero-carbon technology offerings include a 900-panel rooftop photovoltaic array, ground source heat pumps, greywater recycling, and a state-of-the-art rainwater harvesting system. Heating and cooling provided by a radiant panel system work to ...

HP makes design engineering post-Covid easier with tools for flexible and efficient workflow

2021-07-31T15:25:00-04:00

This post is brought to you in partnership with HP

In some ways, the work world will never be the same. Here are the tools that make a flexible and efficient workflow possible.

The pandemic has accelerated the process of digital transformation across all industries including the product design and manufacturing sectors. As part of this transformation, design engineers are now creating products and systems that align with artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and advanced robotic process automation.

At the same time, the design process itself has also evolved. Workflows are now being automated to unprecedented levels. To stay competitive and allow for efficient workflows on every project, design engineers must ensure their physical processes are faster and more flexible than ever before. Chief among these physical processes is printing.

What’s needed now is a printer that seamlessly integrates with the design process. This is why HP recently released its new HP DesignJet...

What color are your office walls? How color and lighting shapes mood and productivity in the office

2019-01-10T15:27:00-05:00

The office is where the general public will spend 1/3 of their life. Unless you've jumped on the "working remotely" craze, many work in office buildings/complexes that haven't changed since 1999. The common color palette of an office is usually a mixture of neutral tones like beige and subdued grays. Although, with the appearance of trending communal workspaces and open floor office concepts, the general public still identifies office settings to resemble sets seen in The Office or Office Space. However, an office's color palette and lighting may be more important than you think. Architects and designers are designing offices that not only look better but interact with the senses to evoke happier and more productive staff.

Office Space (1999) Image © Twentieth Century Fox

Cubical Hallway Image © Great Beyond

Now don't get me wrong, many companies have given their office spaces a facelift over the years by implementing an assortment of "trending" office interior upgrades. Glass wall di...

knowhow shop design offers a new approach to office construction

2018-10-15T15:24:00-04:00

In the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, architects Kagan Taylor and Justin Rice of knowhow shop have designed and built a new office for their design studio in their backyard. Named ‘Lighthouse’, the project is a micro-building that is a place for work and also a physical example of the studio’s thinking and practice

Diverting from traditional construction processes, the founders of knowhow shop, focus on the possibility of constructing an office testing their skills as craftsmen while challenging their understanding of spatial perception.

Image © Stephen Schauer

The office's unique shape and construction materials were custom designed by the founders themselves. A project, whose intricacies add to the stylistic beauty of the structure, "could not have been easily done by a contractor" claims the studio. Each facet of the structure used mitered SIPs and shop fabricated materials to accomplish the craft like aesthetic. Its overall form exhibits clear use of aperture to allow for natural light to enter the space.

Image © Stephen Schauer

Appropriately named Lighthouse, this custom micro-office reflects several elements of importance to the knowhow shop team. "Lighthouse is an office for our business, a showcase of our craft, and an example of the huge potential within rethinking the way we design a...

White Collar Factory; AHMM’s Office of the Future

2017-09-06T06:30:00-04:00

Overlooking Silicon Roundabout in London's tech city is the newest and most progressive project of AHMM. Over the past 20 years, they have worked with developer giant, Derwent, in researching the ideal office environment, and White Collar Factory is the result of 8 years of this partnership. Not only did the team build on their experience and research over the past decades, but they went as far as to set up a 325sqm ‘slice’ of the White Collar Factory on site in 2013 in order to test their model for a year. The results of which informed the final designs of the main building, and encouraged buy-in from this early stage.

Photo by Tim Soar

Photo by Jasper Fry

The White Collar Factory complex comprises of six buildings, making over 27,000 sqm set around a new area of public realm. This development will be home to offices, workshops, apartments, and restaurants, to list just a few. The configuration of these volumes (a 22,900sqm new tower, and five 4-5 storey buildings) allows a public ...

London’s Walkie Talkie Tower, previously titled "UK's worst building of the year", sells for a record $1.7 billion

2017-07-27T12:46:00-04:00

The price, a record for a single U.K. office property, is remarkable given that the building will face ongoing maintenance costs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts including Tim Leckie wrote in a client note. LKK, which sells Chinese herbal medicines, paid a 13 percent premium to book value for the property even as Land Securities’s shares trade at a 26 percent discount, he said.

Land Securities Group Plc and Canary Wharf Group Plc agreed to sell the Rafael Viñoly-designed Walkie Talkie for 1.28 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) to Hong Kong-based LKK Health Products Group, founded in 1992 by the Lee Kum Kee family, whose primary business sells a variety of condiments.

Asian investors have poured into London’s office market in the year since the Brexit vote, capitalizing on the weak pound to buy towers for record-high prices. Hong Kong real estate developer C C Land Holdings paid 1.15 billion pounds for the Cheesegrater tower in May.

Factory and Office Headquarter Annex by SUBdV Architecture

2017-06-30T14:53:00-04:00

Designed by a Brazilian architecture firm SUBdV Architecture, this Factory and Office Annex in São Paulo, fuses high-tech architectural design strategies with local low-tech construction methodologies.

The façade system references the traditional Brazilian ‘cobogo’ shading screen, which controls the filtration of indirect sunlight through the operable windows on the south and west facades, while also creating a thermal mass which prevents the penetration of hot air in the interior spaces.

Photos by Rodrigo Chust

Generated through parametric scripts, the various geometric configurations of blocks produce different sized openings and differently-angled light reflection planes, allowing for the optimal combination of both shading and illumination.

The building's double-height ground floor contains a material storage facility, first and second floors are dedicated to administrative office space for the factory and a showroom of the factory's products.

De...

New Harwyn Alucobond Office Pods Continue To Revolutionize Modular Design

2016-11-07T09:00:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by Alucobond®

The Harwyn Office Pod is a portable home office born from founder Jason Fremder’s need for a demarcation between home life and profession life.

Fremder explains the idea for the pod was born simultaneously with the birth of his first daughter “my home office was no longer a quiet sanctuary…one sunny afternoon, when working in the backseat of my 4WD in the driveway at home, the idea for Harwyn struck me like a bolt of lighting.”

The award-winning Harwyn office pods have taken the design world by storm offering beautifully designed prefabricated modular spaces. The small team at Harwyn is dedicated to innovative design working with the “100 to 1 concept ratio” which, as the designers explain, “…for every 100 great ideas we put to paper, one will emerge as exceptional to make its way from sketchpad to design.”

Today the brand, and designs, have evolved as well as the company’s clientele. In a recent installation for a residential dwelling in Austr...

Apple reportedly grabbing a little piece of San Francisco real estate

2015-07-31T18:35:00-04:00

[Apple Inc.] reached an agreement to rent about 76,000 square feet of office space in the South of Market neighborhood’s 235 Second St. [...] the area has some of the highest monthly asking rents in the city at about $66 a square foot. [...] Apple and Facebook have been notable holdouts as Silicon Valley giants like Google and Linkedin gradually expanded their footprints in San Francisco.

More news from Apple and San Francisco:

Uber HQ headed to San Francisco's Mission Bay

2015-05-28T12:29:00-04:00

The heart of the campus, designed by SHoP Architects and interior designer Studio O+A, is a multistory “commons” — a glassed-in network of circulation and gathering spaces fronting Third Street. [...] Uber said that the design of the Mission Bay office would mark a departure from the open office plans that have become so trendy in recent years. Instead, the Uber workstations will be arranged in a series of work areas, each with access to shared support and collaborative work zones.

SelgasCano creates a stunning members-only workspace for ‘creative nomads’

2014-12-16T14:04:00-05:00

It is to serve this world that Second Home has come into being, a former carpet factory off Brick Lane in east London within whose seductive interiors a fragment of Superstudio’s techno-nomadism has, possibly, come to pass. [...] The architects are José Selgas and Lucía Cano [...] who have just been announced as the designers of next year’s Serpentine pavilion. They bring to this, their first UK project, lightness and grace as well as invention, and an awareness of when to stop.

Related on Archinect:

Office Rents Cut at One World Trade Due to Tenant Shortage

2014-05-28T13:39:00-04:00

The owners of the tallest tower at the World Trade Center are cutting office rents just months before it opens because of slow leasing activity. Only one private tenant has signed a lease at One World Trade Center in nearly three years: a one-floor deal with advertising firm Kids Creative that was signed last week. The 3.1-million-square-foot skyscraper, formerly named the Freedom Tower, is 55% leased.

RIBA selects Theis and Khan to design its new London administration center

2013-12-02T20:28:00-05:00

Since our last update on this competition, Theis and Khan was recently selected to design RIBA's new administration center at 76 Portland Place, London, W1. Theis and Khan has won previous RIBA awards and was shortlisted in the RIBA Stirling Prize and Manser Medal in 2011.

Previously: Six teams shortlisted for design of RIBA’s new administration center in London

MVRDV’s Transformation of Disused Dijon Mustard Laboratory Completed

2012-07-13T14:58:00-04:00

Rotterdam's MVRDV has completed the transformation of a disused mustard laboratory in Dijon, France (previously on Bustler) into an innovative call center with an education center, incubator and social program.

Previously in the Archinect News: MVRDV to Transform Dijon Mustard Lab into Call Center

Henning Larsen Architects Wins New Office Building for Nordea Bank

2012-04-26T15:50:00-04:00

Henning Larsen Architects and a team consisting of Signal Architects and SLA Landscape Architects have won the competition for Nordea Bank’s new office building of 40,000 m2 in Ørestad North, Copenhagen, next to the premises of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and the Concert Hall – Koncerthuset. The building will comprise Scandinavia’s largest trading floor of 5,500 m2 with a view of the green area of Amager Fælled.

Mecanoo / Royal Haskoning to Design New Eurojust HQ in The Hague

2012-03-22T15:58:00-04:00

The Mecanoo / Royal Haskoning joint design team is the winner for the realization of the new The Hague headquarters of Eurojust, an agency of the European Union handling the judicial co-operation of cross-border criminal matters. The jury [...] announced the winner this week.

Google's Newest Office Looks Like A Space Station With Foosball Tables

2011-12-19T12:25:02-05:00

Designed by PENSON, Google Engineering's new London offices are a giddy exercise in science fiction set decoration, replete with smooth white surfaces and bold solid colors. I'll admit that as I paged through the publicity images, it was a little hard to take them seriously.

New Ways of Designing the Modern Workspace

2011-08-05T20:08:31-04:00

At the end of his life, Robert Propst, creator of the cubicle system, called his invention “monolithic insanity,” yet we seem unable to tread down any other path. Longstanding calls for the Redesign of the Cubicle continue...

MVRDV to Transform Dijon Mustard Lab into Call Center

2011-05-02T13:50:00-04:00

The French city of Dijon and Teletech International have chosen Rotterdam architects MVRDV to transform a disused Dijon Mustard laboratory completed in 2004 into an innovative call center with an education center, incubator and social program. Completion of the 6,000m2 refurbishment is planned for 2012.