A bright white “side-scraper” stretches three-tenths of a mile along the eastern edge of downtown Los Angeles, sandwiched between railroad yards and the river on one side and the city’s burgeoning loft district on the other. This structure is One Santa Fe, whose 510,000 square feet of space includes 438 apartments (88 of which are affordable units), as well as 78,620 square feet of retail and office space. The development, located on a narrow parking lot leased from a transit authority, was built using $165 million in public and private housing and commercial financing. Surrounding One Santa Fe’s internal pedestrian promenade is an eclectic mix of retailers, including both local convenience businesses and regional specialty shops that complement the neighborhood’s artistic and creative energy.
Once a sleepy residential and industrial area in Shanghai, China, the Jinqiao precinct of the Pudong New District has gained new life through the development of the mixed-use Life Hub center. The new lifestyle center integrates culture and public art into its six hectares (14.8 acres) of land. The development centers around 98,000 square meters (1,054,863 sf) of retail space and includes 16,000 square meters (172,223 sf) of office space along with 34,515 square meters (371,516 sf) of open space. The open space largely serves as an exhibition area for public art produced by local artists who teamed with the developers to bring a strong sense of place to the Life Hub @ Jinqiao through art.
Amsterdam’s city council had long dreamed of bringing the city center back to the waterfront of the IJ, a broad river dividing the city into two parts. Although the original city center had been located along the southern bank of the IJ, development in the early 20th century separated the city’s urban core from the water and, until recently, this area was an active harbor inaccessible to the public. After years of planning that began in the 1980s, the city is now redeveloping a long strip of land on the south side of the IJ with an urban master plan that calls for a mix of housing, offices, public buildings, and other civic related functions. The Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ (Music Hall on the IJ) is playing a fundamental role in this revitalization effort.
Set on a seven-acre (three ha) campus directly across from city hall, the public arts complex contains galleries and other exhibit spaces, four theaters, studios, classrooms, and administrative offices, as well as a large outdoor plaza and passageway. The project celebrates the essence of the Southwest while offering comprehensive performance and visual arts programming and education and creating an economic development engine for downtown Mesa.
The district now known as Bras Basah.Bugis, located northeast of Singapore’s city center, was once an area characterized by low real estate values and deteriorating physical conditions. In 1989, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore, the national planning authority, in partnership with private developers, embarked on a two-decade redevelopment effort to transform the area into the city-state’s arts, culture, learning, and entertainment district. Today, the 95-hectare (235-ac) district is home to a synergistic educational and arts cluster— three national museums, seven arts housing facilities, three arts schools, 105 private commercial schools, a city university, and a new National Library—as well as a vibrant mixed-use core, including 266,700 square meters (2.87 million sf) of office space, 141,300 square meters (1.52 million sf) of retail space, and more than 1,100 residential units.
Completed in April 2006, the 400,000-square-foot (37,161-m2) Overture Center for the Arts project includes Overture Hall, a new world-class performance-arts facility; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, an expanded art museum; and a variety of renovated performance and visual arts spaces. Set on an urban infill site just one block from the Wisconsin state capitol building, the center was made possible by a gift of $210 million—one of the largest gifts for an arts center in the United States—from W. Jerome Frautschi, a retired local businessman.
