Real Madrid building $1 billion resort island in the United Arab Emirates

What Real Madrid Resort Island will look like. (Getty)

Have you ever dreamed of a place where the warm sun dries Iker Casillas’ tears before they reach his cheek, the Persian Gulf breeze blows through Xabi Alonso’s beard and Pepe stomps someone to death on the beach? Then welcome to Real Madrid Resort Island — a holiday resort on an artificial island in the United Arab Emirates scheduled to open in January 2015.

From Reuters:
A presentation at the Bernabeu on Thursday showed plans for sports facilities, a marina, luxury hotels and villas, an amusement park, a club museum and a 10,000-seat stadium with one side open to the sea.

“It is a decisive and strategic step that will strengthen our institution in the Middle East and Asia,” said Real president Florentino Perez.

[ Related: Photos of Read Madrid Resort Island ]

The 4.6 million-square-foot venture is in partnership with the government of the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah and is expected to attract a million visitors in its first year of operation. But since that’s a whole three years away, Jose Mourinho probably won’t be one of them.

Hopefully Barcelona will build its own island right next to Real Madrid’s, but make it so everything is miniature and inhabited by Ewoks.

Look at the tiny computerized people! I see Ozil! (Getty)

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Eisenhower Memorial architect says he’s open to design changes in response to family criticism

This image provided by Gehry Partners shows the Eisenhower Memorial Pedestrian Experience. Planners of a memorial honoring Dwight D. Eisenhower respond to criticism that the Frank Gehry design puts too much emphasis on Eisenhower’s rural Kansas roots and not enough on his achievements as a military hero and president. (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON – Famed architect Frank Gehry says he is open to design changes in a planned Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington to try to answer objections from Ike’s family.

A letter from Gehry was introduced as testimony in a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

Susan Eisenhower, the 34th president’s granddaughter, told the panel her family wants the memorial to be redesigned.

A hearing in Congress could pressure memorial planners to make changes. But the panel does not have a direct role in approving the design.

Final approval of Gehry’s concept from a commission that approves architecture in the nation’s capital has been delayed amid ongoing objections from the family. The family wants the project to focus more on Ike’s accomplishments and less on his rural Kansas roots.

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Signature Design by Gehry

Nowadays it seems like good architecture has to turn heads to be noticed, putting a burden on talented architects to provide flashy performance before thoughtful execution. And so it is a pleasure when one of the world’s most renowned, and scrutinized, architects, Frank Gehry, designs a quietly potent new kind of space as he has at the Pershing Square Signature Center on an Off-Broadway stretch of 42nd Street.

That there is little razzle-dazzle is just as well, because at the Signature the play’s the thing. And it always has been since founder and artistic director James Houghton established the company’s mission in 1991 to blast through the canons of living playwrights (Edward Albee, John Guare, Arthur Miller, August Wilson, among others) and to build audiences with affordable tickets (there are $20 seats for all productions).

The Signature’s new home exudes a workshop aesthetic and energy. The grand staircase is made of plywood, bolts and beams are visible throughout, the floors are all concrete, and sprayed-on stencils of playwright’s silhouettes decorate the sheetrock walls. It’s jazzy and mutable. That the lobby’s prime real estate is turned over to a vast open space ramping across two levels—with a bar, cafe tables, shop, window seats, couches and armchairs—sends an equally clear message that the audience is part of the production of that longest-running hit known as theater-going.

The three theaters—plus studio theater and rehearsal studio—all fall into the category of small Off-Broadway venues; the largest has 299 seats; the jewel-box and black-box theaters hold 199 seats each. Still it’s a big leap for the Signature from its former home base, where there were just 160 seats.

Along with the 100-seat theater now nearing completion on the roof of the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center and the 299-seat Theatre for a New Audience under construction within Brooklyn’s BAM Cultural District—both designed by New York architect Hugh Hardy—it is also a gain for New York’s theater scene, particularly that segment devoted to the city’s teeming population of newcomers, strivers and on-the-verge or comeback talents.

The Alice Griffin Jewel Box, where Athol Fugard’s “Blood Knot” is now playing, is the most charming and successful of the Signature’s three theaters in the way it matches a true quality of intimacy to the smallness of scale. The edges of the space curl around to embrace the seats that appear more clustered than in rows. It’s a sensation reinforced by a balcony braced with overlapping, irregularly shaped panels. Mr. Houghton has described them as torn pieces of paper, perhaps in reference to Mr. Gehry’s reputed method of crumpling scraps to model his architecture’s curves.

The infinitely flexible Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre—with enough metal scaffolding to strap on a herd of horse puppets and folding-chair seats flanking both sides of a patch of stage—feels just as a black box should, raw and ready for conversion. And the 299-seat End Stage Theater is Broadwayesque in its largesse, particularly the stage itself. For the current performance of Edward Albee’s “The Lady from Dubuque,” an entire ranchhouse appears to spread out, a suburban forest glimpsed beyond its windows. The rake of the auditorium seating is just as generous, and the stained-plywood walls cut into loosely rearranged jigsaw pieces shade pleasantly from honey hues at the back to dark mahogany at the stage’s edge, a playful spatial echo of the houselights dimming. Would that part of the careful rethinking of the theater experience had included allowing more leg room between rows: If you are more than 5 feet 10 inches tall, expect to feel cramped.

For years, the Signature bounced around, renting space from the Public Theater downtown or holing up in a black box on Bond Street and then on far, far West 42nd Street. In 2004, the company was selected to be part of a revitalizing cultural mecca promised for Ground Zero. Mr. Gehry would be the architect of a new $700 million performing arts center, and the Signature would share marquee space with the Joyce Theater. But by 2007, with the whole site mired in controversy, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. decided to cut costs and disinvite the Signature, a blessing in disguise.

As it happened, development rights for a large parcel between Dyer Avenue and Tenth Avenue on 42nd Street hinged on including a performing-arts element to make up for two Off-Broadway houses that had been razed to allow for a subway extension. The Signature stepped right in, and Mr. Gehry stuck with the company, though they now faced the far more complicated job of fitting the theaters and all adjacent support spaces between the structural columns of a 62-story tower. Working with H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture as architects of record guaranteed finely tuned theatrical spaces. Hugh Hardy is a practiced hand at New York theater-making, having designed the original Joyce Theater, BAM’s Harvey Theater and many others. Collaboration may well be all the rage in architecture right now, but it’s still rare to see such high-powered talents giving each other an assist, making the Signature all the more notable.

And so it’s hardly worth complaining that the cafe chairs make an awful screech when dragged on those concrete floors, and that there’s still a line to the ladies room at intermission when the audiences of two of the three theaters come out to stretch. A bit of hubbub is, in fact, very much on the program, and it’s right that the architecture should reflect on that rather than on itself.

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Update: Javits’ end promises new dawn for Manhattan’s West Side

Redeveloping the six-block-long property overlooking the Hudson will give a huge boost to efforts by the government and a growing number of developers to recreate the long-desolate far West Side of Manhattan.

Even Richard Kahan thinks it’s time to demolish the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center—and he built the facility 26 years ago, as head of the Convention Center Development Corp. Mr. Kahan also praises Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to transform the site into a mixed-use development modeled on Battery Park City—a project he also once led as the head of the BPC Authority.

“I don’t like seeing my buildings torn down, but a mixed-use project is the highest and best use for that site,” said Mr. Kahan.

Legions of real estate executives agree with him. They say that redeveloping the six-block-long property overlooking the Hudson will give a huge boost to efforts by the government and a growing number of developers to re-create the long-desolate far West Side of Manhattan. The governor’s vision of a mix of office buildings, apartment houses, museums and parkland for the 18-acre site would close a key gap. To the south below West 33rd Street is a fast-rising area along the hyper successful High Line and the ambitious Hudson Yards redevelopment. To the north across West 41st Street stands a bevy of newly constructed high-rise apartment towers.

“It’s a great location,” said Douglas Durst, chairman of the Durst Organization, a prominent family development firm. “I’m sure my family would be interested in it.”

New York history, however, is littered with big, bold plans that have gone nowhere, including plans for expanding Javits. The governor’s latest plans are particularly complicated. To move the project forward on the West Side, an immense new convention center must first be built in Queens, a task that carries its own challenges. Beyond that, crafting a new neighborhood on the Hudson will require billions of dollars, community consensus and a slew of government studies and approvals. And it comes as a time when financing for big projects has all but evaporated as developers from the neighboring Hudson Yards and Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn can attest.

Lots of Upsides

Still, the proposal has significant advantages. The governor has anointed it a top priority, so he will likely use his considerable power to see it through. In addition, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long set developing the far West Side and the city’s waterfront as goals of his administration. Meanwhile, the extension of the No. 7 subway line, slated to open in December 2013, will make it much easier to get there.

“There’s no reason this can’t be done,” said Mitchell Korbey, chair of the land use and environmental practice group at law firm Herrick Feinstein. “But projects like this take maybe 30 or 40 years.”

He said devising a detailed master plan that complements other initiatives in the area will be more important than building quickly. That means considering what Related Cos. and Oxford Properties Group are developing at Hudson Yards, a 26-acre site bounded by West 30th and West 33rd streets, on a platform over the rail yards west of Penn Station. Meanwhile, Brookfield Office Properties plans to build 5.2 million square feet of office space over the yards west of Ninth Avenue from West 31st to West 33rd streets. Hope also springs eternal that long-delayed plans to turn the stately post office across from Penn Station into a grand train depot named after the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan will materialize.

The developer with the most at stake is Related. It has several projects under way there. Late last year, Related and partner Oxford announced they would build the site’s first tower, a 51-story spire at West 30th Street that will be home for luxury leather-goods maker Coach. To build out the rest of the site, however, the developers must first erect a $1.6 billion platform over the tracks.

The timing of the Javits project could be critical for Hudson Yards. If it comes to fruition before Hudson Yards has lined up big tenants, Javits could pose a threat as a cheaper alternative, since it won’t require building a pricey platform. On the other hand, if the project takes too long, it could be an eyesore that drags down Hudson Yards’ value.

“We look forward to reviewing the details of the proposal, which is even further evidence of the potential of Manhattan’s West Side,” said a Related spokeswoman.

Source: Crain’s NY

“Tech” of the town – Cornell’s Roosevelt Island Campus Plan Unveiled in NYC

ISLE STYLE: An Escher-esque visualization of Cornell University’s bold new plan for a high-tech engineering campus on Roosevelt Island.

Proclaiming it a “defining moment” that will revolutionize the city’s economy, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday offered a first look at Cornell University’s gleaming-new graduate school for applied sciences that will be built on Roosevelt Island.

“It will transform our economy,” the mayor declared at a press conference just 72 hours after Stanford University stunned City Hall by announcing it was dropping out of the yearlong competition to attract a premier engineering school that will serve as one of his administration’s enduring legacies.

Bloomberg described the proposal submitted by Cornell and its partner, Israel’s Technion, as “far and away the boldest and most ambitious.”

“Their proposal called for the most students, about 2,000 a year, the most faculty, about 300, and the most building space, over 2 million square feet,” he said.

Cornell announced last week that it had received a $350 million gift, the largest in its history, from an anonymous donor for the project.

That deep-pocketed donor was revealed yesterday as Charles Feeney, a Cornell alum who made billions as the founder of the Duty Free Stores.

Seth Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corp., estimated that the number of engineering graduates here will increase by 85 percent once the campus is fully functional in 2037. Operations are scheduled to begin in leased space in September.

In addition to classrooms, labs and dorms, the $2 billion campus will includes “incubator space” for start-up companies and what was described as “spinout space” for commercial applications of research-and-development projects.

Cornell is also immediately establishing a $150 million fund for new tech ventures that agree to stay in the city for at least three years.

“History will write this was a game-changing time in New York City,” the mayor said at Cornell’s Upper East Side medical school.

Officials predicted that Cornell would eventually help generate 30,000 high-tech positions along with 20,000 construction jobs and 8,000 permanent jobs at the school.

The 11-acre school is to be built on land now occupied by Goldwater Hospital, whose patients are to be moved to the former North General Hospital Harlem.

People-powered

Cornell-Technion’s proposed graduate school for applied sciences

* Location: 11 acres on Roosevelt Island now occupied by Goldwater Hospital

* Total square feet: 2 million

* Completion date: 2037

* Permanent jobs: 8,000

* Temporary construction jobs: 20,000

* Jobs created from high-tech spinoffs, licenses and corporate growth: 30,000

SOURCE: NYC Mayor’s Office

High Line Landscape Architect Tapped to Build an Olympic Labyrinth for the London Games

Proposed S. Korean Towers Resemble Exploding World Trade Center

The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27^th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers in the process of collapsing following the 9/11 attacks.

The designers of the towers, Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, have responded to the controversy by quickly publishing an apology in English. “It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks,” the designers insist, “nor did we see the resemblance during the design process.”

They did not see the resemblance during the design process? The problem with this assertion – apart from its inherent implausibility – is that they have admitted the contrary in Dutch. Thus Jan Knikker of MVRDV told the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “I have to admit that we also thought of the 9/11 attacks.”

Moreover, given the context, the MVRDV architects could hardly have not thought of the 9/11 attacks. The residential towers, after all, are supposed to be built at the entrance to the so-called Yongsan Dream Hub: a complex of business towers that has been designed by none other than Daniel Libeskind, the designer of the original “master plan” for the reconstruction of Ground Zero. Indeed, as the below image from Studio Daniel Libeskind makes clear, Libeskind’s Yongsan Dreamhub “master plan” closely resembles his original “master plan” for lower Manhattan.

Source: The Weekly Standard

Studio Visit> Fernando Romero Enterprise

With an expansion into a New York office, FREE continues its evolutionary approach to contextual design.

Fernando Romero Enterprise (FREE) grew out of the architect’s Mexico-based Laboratory of Architecture (LAR) founded in 1999. Then last December FREE opened a second location in New York. “It’s a significant shift,” said practice director Armando Ramos, alluding to the firm’s increasingly multi-disciplinary approach to design as well as its U.S. presence. Romero, whose early career resume reads like a Who’s Who of architecture figures—Enrique Morales and Rem Koolhaas among them—has had a string of successes since starting his own practice in Mexico.

His interest in research and architecture act as a mirror for social, political and cultural currents, often informing books that feed into building projects. Although the concept building, a bridge-like museum with access from American soil and Mexican, stemming from his 2007 book, Hyperborders, never materialised in the Americas for complex political and land ownership reasons, it has manifested itself in a project in China that straddles a lake in a park.

The focus on context has remained a thread throughout other work. Indeed, rather than being tethered to an explicit ideology and signature style, FREE’s work is fluid with each building specific to its setting and circumstance. “It’s evolutionary and ideas are recycled,” said Sergio Rebelo director of design in the New York office. There may be no formal language, but the firm’s work is not directionless. The recently opened Museo Soumaya and Plaza Mariana in Mexico City, the plans for a network of hotel rooms in Brazil, and a masterplan for a cultural retreat in South Mexico are testament to this diversity. “I think for good or for bad we don’t have a dependency on a specific style,” said Romero. According to FREE director Armando Ramos, the firm’s dynamism derives in part from Romero’s experience working with European firms, including Alvaro Siza in Portugal and Jean Nouvel in Paris.

The office has not announced any U.S. projects yet, but there are allusions to a planned tower, and Romero is preparing an exhibition next year to showcase these plans along with the firm’s existing work to its new audience. Unlike FREE’s Mexico office that neighbors the Luis Barragán house, where Romero once put on an exhibition of interventions with the likes of Gilbert and George among others, the New York office nestles underneath the High Line in Chelsea, opposite Pace Gallery. Here, on the border of the area’s new, ongoing, and prospective developments along the Hudson, it’s a fitting location for a firm keen to make its mark in uncharted waters.

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HOK Selected for Porsche’s New U.S. Headquarters

HOK has been selected to design Porsche Cars North America’s new headquarters in Atlanta, following an intense design competition. This innovative development includes a contemporary workplace, a Technical Service and Training Center, and a Customer and Driver Experience Center with an integrated road handling track. The nearly 200,000-square-foot complex will accommodate up to 400 employees under one roof on a high-profile, 26-acre Aerotropolis site near the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The headquarters will provide Porsche a strong foundation for continued growth in its largest market worldwide.

“Our vision for our new U.S. corporate home is to create a bold and energizing environment where the physical elements are as memorable and moving as the Porsche driving and ownership experience,” said Detlev von Platen, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America. “HOK has perfectly interpreted this vision into a dynamic design that is as emotionally charged as Porsche automobiles.”

“Our design goal was to capture the essence of the Porsche brand and performance,” said Todd Bertsch, director of design at HOK in Atlanta. “We have designed a movement-filled building with the same high-energy feel and performance as Porsche automobiles. By integrating the track into the lower levels of the office building and weaving in subtle motorsport-related cues, we can immerse employees, dealers and customers in the Porsche experience.”

HOK’s design will create a single home for the Porsche North America family by bringing together office, training and driving functions while creating a unified brand experience. An interior “Main Street” and courtyard area showcasing the vehicles will function as the heart of the facility. From this courtyard space, customers and employees will be able to interact while watching the action on the track below.

“We’re delighted to work with a client like Porsche,” said Bertsch. “Its design philosophy and culture are very similar to HOK’s. We each emphasize integrity, simple elegance and high performance. We are approaching the design of Porsche’s North American headquarters much like they approach the design of their automobiles. We want to create a high-performing, low energy consuming building while emphasizing a superior customer experience.”

Reflecting Porsche’s commitment to the environment, HOK is designing a highly sustainable building and targeting a minimum of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification. Energy conservation measures include fine-tuning the building orientation and creating a highly efficient building envelope. The team will explore opportunities for natural ventilation and on-site energy generation and green roofs that reduce the heat island effect and filter rainwater before it returns to Atlanta’s water system.

Employees will enjoy a contemporary light-filled workplace that promotes collaboration and inspires creativity. Central café areas, team rooms and huddle spaces will support Porsche’s cooperative, transparent culture.

HOK’s integrated design services for the project include architecture, interior design, workplace strategy, sustainable design, high-performance building engineering, environmental graphics and landscape architecture.

Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA), based in Atlanta, Ga., is the exclusive U.S. importer of Porsche sports cars, the Cayenne SUV and Panamera sport sedan. Established in 1984, it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Porsche AG, which is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and employs approximately 220 people who provide parts, service, marketing and training for 196 dealers. They, in turn, work to provide Porsche customers with a best-in-class experience that is in keeping with the brand’s 63-year history and leadership in the advancement of vehicle performance, safety and efficiency. At the core of this success is Porsche’s proud racing heritage that boasts some 30,000 motorsport wins to date.

HOK is a global architectural firm that provides planning and design solutions for high performance, sustainable buildings and communities. Through its collaborative network of 25 offices worldwide, the firm delivers design excellence and innovation to clients globally. Founded in 1955, HOK’s expertise includes architecture, engineering, interiors, strategic facility planning, consulting, lighting, graphics, and construction services. In 2011, DesignIntelligence ranked HOK as the No. 1 role model for sustainable and high performance design.

HOK projects include the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia; the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida; King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia; and the New Doha International Airport in Qatar.

Source: PR WEB