The Tomorrow Building is a four-story, 40,000 square foot building in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee that was originally built as a hotel in 1888. After a $9.5 million transformation, it houses 39 furnished micro-unit apartments, shared social and work spaces, and four locally owned retailers. The building’s developer is part of an incubator for early-stage companies, which has found that the co-living concept has helped with retaining employees.
This adaptive use transformed a two-story, 48,000-square-foot commercial building and ornate movie theater lobby into 23 loft apartments, four neighborhood-serving retailers, and a large banquet facility that fills the former lobby. The structure is the most prominent building along the Seneca Street corridor in south Buffalo, New York. The renovation was completed by a local developer and financed by a local bank, together with historic tax credits, local tax incentives, and grants.
The Newton is an 18,599-square-foot (1,727 sq m) mixed-use retail, dining, office, and events building in Uptown Phoenix, Arizona, housing an independent bookstore with a beer, wine, and coffee bar; a home and garden store; a chef-led restaurant; a small office; and spaces for meetings and events. The Newton hosts hundreds of events each year, whether sponsored by its tenants or booked by the public. It was built within a renovated restaurant/banquet facility whose mid-century modern architecture and old-fashioned cuisine made it a local landmark for 40 years.
AF Bornot Dye Works is a loft apartment and retail project that involved the adaptive use and restoration of three timber and concrete factory buildings north of Center City Philadelphia. The three four-story buildings include 17 rental residences on the upper levels and 13,210 square feet of retail space across two lower levels. The developer, MMPartners, built upon 15 years of experience renovating and building scores of residential and retail properties in the nearby Brewerytown neighborhood. The $10.7 million development was funded with a conventional loan, federal and state historic tax credits, a city incentive loan, partner equity, and a $375,000 mezzanine loan from an online crowdfunding platform.
Located in the city of Jeonju, about 200 kilometers south of Seoul, South Korea, Jonju Hanok Village is a neighborhood started in the 1910s that grew significantly in the 1930s as an area of affluence. A hanok–also known as a giwajib, or tile-roofed house–with a courtyard was significantly more expensive to build than the then […]
The Liberty Hotel/Yawkey Center project seamlessly blends two uses not commonly associated with each other—a hotel and hospital—on a three-acre (1.2-ha) shared site. In addition to the unconventional partnering, the development includes an adaptive use of the Charles Street Jail, a historic landmark at the northern base of Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. Ultimately, a common planning vision between the developer and the owner united the disparate functions, resulting in a $150 million, 300-room luxury hotel and 440,000-square-foot (40,877-m2) state-of-the-art medical outpatient facility.
As the Industrial Revolution reached Germany in the mid-19th century, urban centers began building central waterworks. Usage increased and water towers followed to maintain water pressure throughout the system. Water towers symbolized progress, and as highly visible landmarks—frequently built on hilltops because they were gravity powered—they were often designed as architectural icons. The wasserturm (water tower) in the Sternschanzen Park, a kilometer (0.62 mi) northwest of Hamburg’s city center, is a prime example. One of only three remaining in Hamburg, which once had 43, this water tower—an octagonal brick edifice 60 meters (197 ft) tall and 25 meters (82 ft) in diameter—was particularly handsome. The tower has been transformed into a 226-room hotel with an additional 1,681 sq m (18,094 sq ft) of commercial and restaurant space.
Kashiwa, a city with a land area of 115 square kilometers (44 sq mi) and a population of just over 400,000, is in Chiba Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo in Japan’s Kanto region. Though home to companies in food processing and other industries, as well as a professional soccer team, it is now best known as the home of Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City. Currently being developed on 273 hectares (675 ac) in northwestern Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City was launched in 2005 with the opening of Kashiwa-no-ha Campus Station on the Tsukuba Express train line. The land is divided into 299 parcels, to be subdivided further into blocks with interconnecting streets and pathways. Initial development is taking place in parcels 147, 148, 149, 150, and 151. This 42-hectare (104 ac) group of parcels extends outward from Kashiwa-no-ha Campus Station and encompasses the University of Tokyo Kashiwa Campus, Chiba University Kashiwa-no-ha Campus, Kashiwa-no-ha Park, and industrial areas.
Accessible from Tokyo in less than an hour by train, Kashiwa-no-ha is an area rich in natural beauty as well as the home of a concentration of academic and research institutions. Creation of the grand design for the project was from the beginning a collaborative endeavor, with Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa, the University of Tokyo, and Chiba University involved in the planning and deliberation.
Les Docks Village is a new lifestyle and urban retail center, located in the waterfront district of Marseille, that was developed by Constructa Urban Systems for owner JP Morgan Asset Management. The project involved the rehabilitation of the 15,000 square meters on the ground floor of Les Docks, an 80,000-square-meter office building originally built as a warehouse in 1857. The new design for the lower-level Les Docks Village retail area provides light, transparency, nature, and new color around 60 shops and restaurants arranged around four courtyards connected by an interior passageway that runs through this very long building. The upper floors were restored in an earlier renovation, and this ground-level redevelopment opened the building to the public with a festive and convivial atmosphere.
St. Joseph’s Campus in Oakland, California, offers 146 new apartments affordable to seniors and families with low incomes, on a multigenerational campus comprising three rehabilitated historic buildings, one new building, and amenities like gardens, community and art rooms, and social services. The campus was built in one of the costliest housing markets in the United States, and the deal was assembled during the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, at a time when housing construction had come to a near-standstill.
The design sensitively creates environments that cater both to independent seniors who have aged out of their homes, as well as to large families seeking safe and clean housing. The campus rejuvenated a beloved local landmark, respecting the neighborhood’s history while adding substantial new housing density on a site near transit, shops, schools, and services.
Cynthia Parker, president and CEO of developer BRIDGE Housing, calls St. Joseph’s an “intergenerational campus that allows people to live, work, and play here . . . a vibrant place for many generations to come.”