ARCH-ARQ: A Stunning Revival for Hamburg’s Old Port

Walking through HafenCity, it’s difficult to imagine the grungy shipbuilding yards and warehouses that once dominated the area. Today, the waterfront property stretching along the River Elbe is filled with offices, cafés, and condos, along with vibrant public spaces and tree-lined streets. The $10 billion master plan for HafenCity—billed as Europe’s largest inner-city development project—calls for transforming 388 acres into 10 distinct quarters. According to city officials, the district will increase Hamburg’s urban core by 40 percent, create an estimated 45,000 jobs, and offer housing for 12,000 residents of varying income levels. The public-private project is being developed by HafenCity Hamburg. With about 40 percent of the buildings finished or under construction, the harbor makeover is scheduled for completion by 2025, although financial woes have stalled several major projects.


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http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/12/HafenCity-Hamburg.asp

ARCH-ARQ: Murphy/Jahn and Lichtplanung create an unobtrusive lighting scheme for the University of Chicago's glass-domed reading room.

Minimalism was the rallying cry at the University of Chicago’s new Mansueto Research Library. Chicago-based architecture firm Murphy/Jahn buried the book stacks—enough for 3.5 million volumes—in a cavernous subterranean vault and enclosed the only above-grade level, which houses a reading room, circulation desk, and book care facility, in a glass-encased steel grid shell structure. While the fritted glazing allows ample quantities of controlled natural light to flood the library during the day, at night an electrical lighting scheme was required. German lighting design firm Lichtplanung had to devise a way to implement an artificial lighting scheme within the space that would not mar the pristine quality of the architecture. “The challenge was to have a very simple and minimalistic solution,” explained Michael Rhode of Lichtplanung. “Helmut Jahn loves light, but he does not like to see light fixtures.”

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http://www.archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5700

ARCH_ARQ: Kevin Roche Retrospective Opens in New York

He is frequently overshadowed by his former employer, Modernist giant Eero Saarinen, but at the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan, a new exhibition attempts to make a case that Kevin Roche is, in the words of chief curator Sarah Henry, “the quintessential architect of the post-industrial age.” With several dozen giant photographs, suspended from cables in a ground-floor gallery, and six architectural models, Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment shows the Pritzker-winning architect wrestling with America’s transition from a manufacturing to an information-based economy and culture in the late 20th century.

Born in 1922, Roche emigrated in 1948 from Ireland to the United States, where he took a lead role in Saarinen’s office. After Saarinen’s sudden death in 1961, Roche and his colleague John Dinkeloo (1918-1981) completed the firm’s remaining projects before founding their own practice, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, in 1966.

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http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/10/Kevin-Roche-Retrospective.asp