Located at the center of Istanbul’s business and hotel district, Akaretler Row Houses were originally built in 1875 by Sarkis Balyan by the order of Sultan Abdülaziz, as an annex to the magnificent Domalbahçe Palace (residence of the Ottoman emperors). The first housing compound project for the Ottoman Empire, the houses represented one of the early cultural steps toward Westernization within the empire in the first quarter of the 19th century. This change is most evident in the neoclassical facade, lacking the influence of the previous baroque and rococo styles. The mixed-use project includes 34 businesses occupying 14,399 square meters (154,990 sf) of office space, 19,436 square meters (209,207 sf) of high-end shops and restaurants, 23 single-family housing units, 21 multifamily housing units, and a 134-room upscale hotel.
The Crowne Plaza Changi Airport is a nine-story, international upscale hotel with direct access to the new Terminal 3 at Changi Airport. Until the Crown Plaza’s development, Changi Airport, Asia’s fifth-busiest aviation hub, was without a stand-alone hotel—overnight travelers were limited to transit hotels and nap rooms. Today, the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport offers travelers 320 guest rooms, 950 square meters (10,226 sf) of banquet and meeting space, and 2,575 square meters (27,717 sf) of restaurant and entertainment space in a lush, tropical setting atop a tangle of access roads and parking.
In 2006, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore awarded a 0.6-hectare (1.5-ac) site between Terminal 1 and the newly constructed Terminal 3 at the Changi Airport to L.C. Development. The Singapore-based developer, along with partner LaSalle Investment Management and hotel operator InterContinental Hotels Group, beat out four other bidders for the right to lease the parcel from the airport authority. The owners pay a base rent of SGD 250,000 (US$173,000) annually plus a percentage of revenue. The land lease runs through 2083.
Using one-half the energy and one-third the potable water of a comparable building, the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum Heifer International World Headquarters reflects the sustainable mission of its owner and developer, Heifer International—a nonprofit group dedicated to alleviating hunger and creating self-sustaining communities worldwide. The 94,000-square-foot (8,733-m2) corporate headquarters consolidates the organization’s operations—previously scattered in multiple buildings around Little Rock—in a single structure on a 25-acre lot located adjacent to the Clinton Presidential Library, a pedestrian entertainment district, and a 60-acre (24.3-ha) greenbelt. Arkansas’s largest brownfield reclamation, Heifer International World Headquarters has served as a catalyst for the continued redevelopment of Little Rock’s underused warehouse district.
The product of a public/private partnership between Kansas City, the state of Missouri, and the Cordish Company, the Kansas City Power & Light District is a large-scale mixed-use development comprising 1 million square feet (92,902 m2) of office space and 600,000 square feet (55,742 m2) of commercial space, situated on nine city blocks in downtown Kansas City. The once-blighted downtown core, resistant to development for over four decades, now includes a diverse mix of civic, cultural, and commercial anchors: Kansas City Live!, a one-block open-air plaza ringed by entertainment venues; the Sprint Center, an arena seating 18,000; the world headquarters of H&R Block; Cosentino’s Downtown Gourmet, the first grocery store in downtown Kansas City in over 50 years; two renovations of historic theaters; and a 213-room rehabilitated hotel. The US$875 million mixed-use district—named after the 1930s-era art deco Power & Light Building, Kansas City’s landmark skyscraper—has transformed the south loop area, stoked resurgence in downtown activity and residential development, and become a source of community pride for city residents.
The Hilton Tower is a landmark 48-story, 46,452-square-meter (500,000- sf) skyscraper on a 0.5-hectare (1.2-ac) site in the Manchester city center. Completed in 2006 by the Beetham Organization, it was designed by Ian Simpson Architects, and with a height of 169 meters (554 ft), it is one of the United Kingdom’s tallest mixed-use buildings and the tallest structure in Manchester by a significant margin. In a relatively new concept for the country, a 279-bed Hilton hotel occupies the first 23 stories, culminating in the stunning Sky Bar, which offers uninterrupted views of the city and the surrounding countryside. Above that, 219 luxury apartments occupy the upper stories from level 25 to the triplex penthouse on level 47, which is the home of architect Ian Simpson—a clear demonstration of pride and affection for the project. Two basement levels provide resident car parking. A second phase of the development includes a 5,574-square-meter (60,000-sf) office development.
Mountain Dwellings is the second of three projects built by Hoepfner and Danish Oil Company and designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) alongside the Metro in Oerestad, a new neighborhood planned for 40,000 inhabitants on the south side of Copenhagen and close to Copenhagen Airport. This community serves as a bridge to older housing […]
According to an old Austrian tradition, judicial complexes (justizzentren) are always a combination of a courthouse and a prison. According to this principle, the Leoben Judicial Complex has a court building comprising a district court, a regional court, and a public prosecution service unit. The attached prison complex has separate areas for 200 men, women, […]
When the shipping industry of Zhongshan—a southern Chinese city of 2 million inhabitants—failed a decade ago, city officials sought to convert the dilapidated site into an urban attraction. The solution was the Zhongshan Shipyard Park, an extensive remediation project converting a wrecked brownfield development into a public park and nature area. The 11-hectare (27-ac) swath […]
Situated in downtown Philadelphia, Comcast Center is a glass-encased, 58-story office tower that occupies a long-underused parcel—formerly an enclosed surface parking lot—in the heart of the central business district. The high-performance office building contains 1.25 million square feet (116,500 m2) of Class A office space and 35,507 square feet (3,299 m2) of retail space. It features a dramatic eight-story winter garden with one of the largest LED video walls in the world; a half-acre (0.2-ha) public plaza with a seasonal café; and an upgraded extension of the underground connection to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s Suburban Station, the city’s busiest commuter transit stop. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold building, the tallest point of the Philadelphia skyline, is 99 percent leased and home to the corporate headquarters of the Comcast Corporation.
The Elmpark Green Urban Quarter set out to create a new type of urban environment in Ireland, integrating an energy-balanced piece of urban landscape into the existing natural surroundings. Radora Developments led this innovative €400 million (US$560 million) project by purchasing a large parcel of land on the outskirts of Dublin owned by the Sisters of Charity, whose convent remains next to the site, and creating a large-scale, high-density, mixed-use development with the latest sustainable technologies.
