Zooming around with jet packs and living in
rocket-shaped buildings seemed our destiny during the space-age-obsessed
1950s and '60s. With civilian space travel now nearly a reality, how do
today's starry-eyed architects see the future?
MORE FROM TRAVEL + LEISURE
Well,
it turns out a survey of morphing city skylines reveals abstract
structures inspired by nature or cultural symbols and engineered to
reach higher, glow brighter, curve, and swoop.
These futuristic
buildings are not only visually arresting, they offer novel solutions to
the challenges that lie ahead, such as harvesting water from clouds and
creating high-rise rooftop forests. They also give us a glimpse of what
our future holds—for the moment, at least. If only someone could get to
work on those jet packs.
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| (Photo: Nic Lehoux) |
Tjuvholmen Icon Building, Oslo
Renzo
Piano designed this arts and culture center, which debuted in 2012
along a disused harbor southwest of Oslo’s city center. Bridges link
three buildings—a museum, office space, and culture center—across canals
formed from reclaimed land, and a sculpture park gently slopes toward
the sea.
The entire project is developed along a new promenade
that starts at Aker Brygge and ends on the sea at a floating dock,
providing unbroken visual contact with the water. It looks, from above,
like a docked spaceship, with a curved roof that dips down to meet the
parklands.
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| (Photo: Fernando Guerra I FG + SG) |
Palazzo Lombardia, Milan
Milan's
Garibaldi-Repubblica district got an infusion of 21st-century cool when
this ecofriendly curvilinear office tower was completed in 2011.
Designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the 525-foot-high building
connects light-filled office space with outdoor areas.
The
largest of the public spaces, Piazza Città di Lombardia, is covered by a
roof composed of transparent “pillows” made from ETFE film (a fluorine
based plastic), while other high tech/environmentally sensitive features
include green roofs, active climate walls—two layers of separated glass
containing rotating vertical blades to provide shade while maximizing
transparency—and a geothermal heating system.
(Photo: Mark Knight Photography)Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas
Opened
in December 2012, this 180,000-square-foot facility, designed by
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, is itself a feat of
scientific ingenuity. His firm Morphosis Architects set a goal of
creating an attractive urban environment that also adheres to green
principles.
Hence features like a 54-foot, continuous-flow
escalator contained in a glass-enclosed, tube-like structure that
extends outside the building—along with landscaping (courtesy of Talley
Associates) that includes a roofscape planted with drought-tolerant
species, an interactive water feature, and a “Leap Frog Forest” of
glowing amphibians.
(Photo: Hufton + Crow)Galaxy Soho Building, Beijing
Given
China’s
reputation for bold and speedy construction, it’s no surprise that 2012
marked the arrival of this cool new building in the capital city of
Beijing. Designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid—the first woman
to be awarded the Pritzker Prize—this 18-story office, retail, and
entertainment complex consists of four domed structures connected by
bridges and platforms, crafted from aluminum, stone, glass and stainless
steel. Inspired by nature, the flowing lines and organic forms create a
lusciously harmonious effect.
(Photo: Courtesy of Siemens AG, Munich/Berlin)
The Crystal, London
This
dynamic, low-rise glass building—touted as one of the world’s greenest
at its 2012 unveiling—hosts the largest exhibition on urban
sustainability. Set in the Royal Victoria Docks, the heart of London's
new Green Enterprise District, the building is inspired by crystalline
forms, a reference both to “a multi-faceted urban world” and the Crystal
Palace built for London's Great Exhibition in 1851, which showcased the
latest technology from the Industrial Revolution. The Crystal’s
present-day innovations include rainwater harvesting, black water
treatment, solar heating, and charging stations for electric cars.
(Photo: David Kukin)Burj Khalifa, Dubai
The
world’s tallest building opened in early 2010 and remains one of the
most talked-about structures. Why? Not only is the Burj Khalifa the
world’s tallest building (2,716.5 feet), it’s also the tallest
free-standing structure, with the highest number of stories, the highest
occupied floor, the highest outdoor observation deck, and an elevator
with the longest travel distance in the world.
Then there’s the
show-stopping architecture: a tower comprising three elements arranged
around a central core, inspired by the spider lily and courtesy of
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with consulting designer Adrian Smith. A
Y-shaped floor plan shows off views of the Persian Gulf, and when seen
from above, the building echoes the onion dome motif prevalent in
Islamic architecture.
(Photo: Iwan Baan)Ordos Museum, China
The
copper-toned metal exterior and undulating shape of the Ordos Museum
reflect the surrounding Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia. It’s the
brainchild of the Beijing-based architectural firm MAD, known for fluid
designs and imaginative urban solutions. The company intended the
large-scale museum as “the irregular nucleus” for Ordos, a newly
developed town that, as of 2011, already has its first architectural
icon.
(Photo: Courtesy of BIG/Glessner)
W57 Pyramid, New York City
Bjarke
Ingels, head architect at the Danish firm BIG, has taken on his first
North American project: W57 Pyramid, a 600-unit residential building
between 10th and 11th avenues. Changing according to the vantage point,
it appears as a kind of squashed pyramid from the West Side Highway
side, and as a slender spire from West 58th Street. The high-rise is
designed around an outdoor green space, and each apartment has natural
daylight. Or as Ingels puts it: “The building is conceived as a
crossbreed between the
Copenhagen
courtyard and the New York skyscraper—the communal intimacy of the
central urban oasis meets the efficiency, density, and panoramic views
of the tall tower in a new hybrid typology.”
Launch Date: 2015
(Photo: Courtesy of Ateliers Jean Nouvel & Artefactory)The National Museum of Qatar,
Doha
Qataris
have high hopes for their tiny nation-state’s future as a cultural
destination, with the National Museum of Qatar as its crown jewel. The
original museum opened in 1975 in a restored palace built by Sheikh
Abdullah bin Jassim Al-Thani; French architect Jean Nouvel is giving it a
makeover inspired by the surrounding desert rose (crystallized sand
that forms just below the desert surface). The series of buildings will
consist of intersecting discs resembling petals, all clad with glass
fiber-reinforced concrete panels, an effect both starkly geometric and
lyrical.
Launch Date: 2014
(Photo: Courtesy of MAURO TURIN ARCHITECTES)Wine Museum, Lavaux, Switzerland
For
sheer audacity, nothing beats these plans for a monument to the Lavaux
wine-making region. Swiss firm Mauro Turin Architectes envisions
cantilevering the museum from the side of a mountain overlooking the
historic vineyards (some of which date back to the 11th century)—a feat
of engineering those ancient vintners would surely never have imagined.
Visitors will walk along a glass and steel walkway jutting from a rock
in the mountainside, with glass sides creating unbroken views over the
vineyards and out to Lake Geneva.
(Photo: Panama City, FL via Shutterstock)
