FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium, one of the world’s greatest football venues, is to be extensively remodelled. Following an international competition, Foster + Partners have been selected as the architects for this renewal of the stadium, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. 

The stadium, already the largest in Europe, will be enlarged to accommodate over 106,000 fans, together with extensive new facilities including hospitality and public areas. A new roof will also be created to shelter the fans. The stadium will be enclosed by a brightly coloured mosaic outer skin that wraps around the building and continues over a new roof. The multi-coloured enclosure comprises overlapping translucent tiles in the club colours. The myriad of tiles can be seen as symbolising the loyalty and devotion of FC Barcelona’s fans worldwide. 

The remodelled stadium retains the essential elements of the original Camp Nou, designed by architects Francesc Mitjans-Miró, García Barbon and Soteras Mauri, which was inaugurated in 1957. 

On match nights, the stadium will glow, providing a new architectural icon for the city. In the same way that FC Barcelona is ‘more than a club’, the new Camp Nou will be much more than a stadium.




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Asymptote’s design for the PGCC complex is centered on the idea of creating a new and powerful image for the city of Penang and the new initatives associated with the development of the Northern Corridor of Malaysia. The design achieves its elegance and stature through the simultaneous embrace of natural landscapes and contemporary urbanism. The PGCC will become a vital new precinct that complements and enhances the unique characteristics that typify Penang as a remarkable island metropolis. The design of the iconic towers in particular draws inspiration from not only the lushness and drama of the surrounding mountains and seascapes, but also from the rich and diverse cultural heritage that makes up the Malaysian nation and Penang in particular. The forms of the two towers are comprised of both horizontal and vertical elements: sculpted horizontal components move across the plinth, rise up and transform into articulated vertical structures. Set against the backdrop of the nature reserve of Penang Hill, the twisting, glass façades of the towers “perform” various surface effects—reflecting, refracting and distorting views of Penang, the surrounding landscape and the seascape beyond. The vast, cascading plinth, which functions as a public plaza with multiple gathering spaces, are venues for the performing arts center, convention center and various facilities for residential, office and urban life.





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The Foster + Partners and URS team has won an international competition to build the first private spaceport in the world - The New Mexico Spaceport Authority Building. The sinuous shape of the building in the landscape and its interior spaces seek to capture the drama and mystery of space flight itself, articulating the thrill of space travel for the first space tourists. Making a minimal impact on the environment, the scheme will be the first facility of its kind and a model for the future. The Spaceport lies low within the desert-like landscape of the site in New Mexico. The astronauts’ areas and visitor spaces are fully integrated with the rest of the building to convey the thrill of space travel. The more sensitive zones - such as the control room - are visible, but have limited access. Visitors and astronauts enter the building via a deep channel cut into the landscape. The retaining walls form an exhibition space that documents the history of the region and its settlers, alongside a history of space exploration. The strong linear axis continues on a galleried level to the ‘superhangar’ - which houses the spacecraft and the simulation room – through to the terminal building. Designed to have minimal embodied carbon and few additional energy requirements, the scheme has been designed to achieve the prestigious LEED Platinum accreditation. The low-lying form is dug into the landscape to exploit the thermal mass, which buffers the building from the extremes of the New Mexico climate as well as catching the westerly winds for ventilation. Natural light enters via skylights, with a glazed façade reserved for the terminal building, establishing a platform for the coveted views onto the runway.




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Work has recently completed on a £6.9 million, mixed tenure residential scheme on Barking Road, Canning Town, which combines the latest high-quality design and materials technology with more traditional techniques. Architects and urban designers, Stock Woolstencroft, designed the scheme for One Housing Group, and it is the first part of a multi-phase project. The building is designed as three distinct cubic structures: one as a transparent form, one as a gold ‘box’ and one as a ‘cast’ box. A protected London plane tree became a key design driver, helping to separate out and distinguish the cubic forms and contrasting finishes. The striking modern design brings together a palette of rich materials, including glass and aluminium panels finished in deep bronze, silver and gold. The first and second layers use progressive alpolic rain screen cladding, whilst rendered block work is used on the third. Balconies are set within, whilst a staggered frame gives an identity. The result is a highly individualistic, essentially twenty-first century design, which demonstrates a successful combination of high quality urban housing and contemporary, dynamic architecture. The scheme, on a former unused petrol station site, dovetails with the Canning Town and Custom House Masterplan and is a precursor to the area’s wider regeneration, making a strong statement about its future vibrancy and success. The exciting, innovative development brings forward a truly unique mixture of social and intermediate rent, New Build HomeBuy and private units, all within one building. Additionally, the development of a new, active commercial frontage will contribute to the vitality and diversity of the area and complement regeneration plans for the market area and shopping parade.





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A major new performing venue is planned for the French capital. The Philharmonic Society of Paris, with the associated support from the State and the Town of Paris will construct this stunning 2400 seat concert hall in the Park Villette in Paris. Mainly devoted to the reception of great symphonic formations, the Philharmonic society of Paris will present other forms of musical expression, in particular calling upon wiring for sound, the such jazz or the musics of the world. Located at the north-eastern entry of the capital in a district in change, registered in a park with cultural, visible vocation since the periphery of Paris, this equipment will be been useful by a innovating architecture. On the acoustic level, the concert hall will meet the international standards most demanding. It will dissociate strictly frontal models and will privilege an envelopment of the scene by the public in order to reinforce the feeling of intimacy between the interpreters and their audience. True house of the orchestras, carrying a teaching and cultural project extremely, the Philharmonic society of Paris will accomodate several musical formations in permanent or temporary residence. The equipment will develop on a surface of approximately 20 000 square meters useful. It will include/understand, in addition to the large concert hall, its hearths and its spaces of repetition, of the administrative buildings for several orchestras, an educational pole, spaces of exposure, a restaurant, as well as the infrastructures necessary to logistics and the technical equipment and a car park. Specimen on the control of the environmental stakes, construction will fall under a step of recognized certification. The delivery is envisaged in 2012.




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The town of Yusuhara in Kochi Prefecture, known for its urban development using “Japanese Cedar”, has a new starting point for its community with the “Kino-machi Hall” (Town Hall), the largest scaled “Wooden” town hall in Japan. Considering the snowing weather conditions, a large atrium is inserted, and an indoor plaza was created to connote facilities necessary by town members in everyday life such as bank, the Agricultural Cooperative Society, and the Chamber of Commerce. This atrium also functions as a space for traditional performances and festivals. Local Japanese cedar has been used fully to the regulations, which made possible to create a double lattice girder structure with an 18 meter long span. While making possible to visualize how cedar structural parts sustain the structure, this building aims to build an architecture capable of making people reconfirm the excellence of Japanese wooden structures. The indoor plaza and exterior plaza, separated by a large sliding door used for hangars, becomes one only space which is used during spring festivals.





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While Nestlé’s chocolate Factory in Mexico City (located in Paseo Tollocan near Toluca) was in need of an inner pathway for visitors to witness the production of their favorite chocolates, a group of experts put together by rojkind arquitectos and Traqs suggested bigger plans for the company. 

Why not create the first chocolate museum in Mexico and have a 300-meter long façade along the motorway as the new image of the factory. So the first phase took shape and required a 634m2 space that could accommodate the main entrance for the children to have the most pleasant experience and to start the voyage into the chocolate factory as soon as they enter this playful yet striking space, the reception area, the theater that would serve as preparation for the Nestle experience, the store or museum shop, and the passage to the tunnel inside the old existing factory.

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The design marks a new generation of Marni store designs and a direct shift in emphasis on product with the ever increasing collection of accessories. Like a modern temple this boutique plays with texture and light on a large sale with the use of hard materials for the walls and floor such as concrete and stone. Interlaced and scattered within the polished floor areas are a series of random stone and marble colours that play an important role to define various areas of the store. The shuttered concrete walls are injected with a series of bespoke display case of varying finishes (leather, plastic, fibreglass) for the display of shoes, lingerie, bags and accessories. These units have their own integral lighting and serve as a rich contrast with the concrete floor and walls. Certain areas of the walls are covered with brightly coloured high gloss fabric upholstery to create varying themes throughout the shop. The fluid stainless steel rails carry the ready-to-wear collections and glide up the grand concrete staircase to a curvaceous and separate shoe display room. A large stainless steel cloud hovers over this space and provides the lighting for the elliptical shoe display cases upholstered in Marni’s own leather. This area is carpeted with a large circular rug where a unique rotating circular display sits with perimeter leather pod seating. The fitting rooms have their own personal stainless steel rails and leather rugs on the floor. Upstairs one encounters a line of floating mannequins where the clothes shimmer and move with the use of fan units below them. Along the windows towards the front a long stainless steel rail continues the display of the ready-to-wear collection and opposite houses a display wall of many randomly placed cases for the display of jewellery and smaller accessories. The play of daylight and stone materials within this shop together with signature bespoke furniture pieces give this new Marni store a truly new adventure that should not be missed.




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Goettsch Partners has been commissioned by Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. to design a new 1,000-foot-tall mixed-use building in Guangzhou, China. The project totals 1,878,000 square feet and features a 180-key Park Hyatt hotel, 430,000 square feet of offices, 65,000 square feet of retail, 24 condominiums, 174 serviced apartments, and underground parking for 700 cars. The 66-storey building is located in the Zhujiang development, planned as Guangzhou’s new city center, near the Pearl River. The tight, two-acre site sits over a transit station at the intersection of two subway lines, with neighboring buildings that include the Grand Hyatt Guangzhou, also designed by Goettsch Partners; the city’s new opera house; the new Guangdong Museum; and what will be China’s tallest twin towers at more than 1,300 feet. The Park Hyatt tower is designed as a single volume that pinches in at the corners in relation to the changing programmatic functions stacked within. The field of staggered vertical strips on the façade stretches and compresses like tendons in response to the varying floor-to-floor heights required for each distinct function. The approximately $150 million project is currently in the schematic design phase and is expected to be completed in 2010.




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The Social Condenser project is located at the base of the Superstition Mountain Range in the town of Superior, Arizona which was founded in 1882 and has strong ties to mining of copper, silver and gold. The project is a renovation and expansion of an existing two-story block building and addition of an exterior dining terrace. The lower level is developed into kitchen, mechanical and storage spaces and the upper level is designed as an open gathering space. The south-facing wall of the upper level of the existing building is removed to expose the volume within. The remaining form is rendered to closely match the shadow tones of the surrounding hills and acts as both backdrop and anchor for the new addition. The project was informed by the concept of the “ public house”. The project is envisioned to be the living room of the community; a place to congregate, socialize, view work of provincial artists and enjoy the breathtaking landscape vistas that envelop the region. The project utilizes a reduced palette of cool-toned materials. Expanded aluminum panels, with fine openings, sheaths the street wall and entry canopy and draws the visitor to the stair tower that subtlety rotates to orient the visitor to the adjacent parcel and the new main entry door. The tower is wrapped in the same aluminum material and conceals an open expanse of grey glass behind it. Upon entry, the visitor is greeted by the expansive view of the creek and identifies that the twist of the floor plan geometry now aligns the building with the axis of the wooden footbridge and the creek. The visitor then continues the spiraling journey around the open common space, through a large operable glass wall panel out to the dining terrace prow with a sweeping view of the full extent of the creek in the foreground and Apache Leap rock formation in the distant hills.




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White Noise / White Light was one of 9 temporary interactive urban installations commissioned and installed for the Athens 2004 Olympics at base of the Acropolis as part of the Catch the Light Program. The project inserted a luminous interactive sound and landscape within the plaza to create a constantly choreographed field in flux. Semi-flexible fiber-optic strands responded to the movement of pedestrians through the field, emitting white light and white noise. Activated by the passersby, the fiber optics transmit light from white LEDs while the speakers below the raised deck emit white noise. Just as white light is made of the full spectrum of light, white noise contains every frequency within the range of hearing in equal amounts. This field of white noise creates a unique sound-scape in the city and masks out the noises from the immediate context, forming a place of sonic refuge within the bustling city. Each stalk unit contains its own passive infrared sensor and microprocessor. If motion is detected, the white LED illumination grows brighter while the white noise increases in volume. Once motion is no longer detected, the microprocessor smoothly decreases the light and fades the sound to silence. The movement of pedestrians creates an afterglow effect in the form of a flickering wake of white light and white noise, trailing and tracing visitors as they cross the field. Depending on the time of day, number of people, and trajectories of movement, the project is constantly being choreographed by the cumulative interaction of the public. The field becomes an unpredictable aggregation of movement, light and sound.




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Following the lineage of the Schindler house as an experiment in modern living in close relation to nature, our proposal "Fake Plastic Trees" is an attempt to investigate the formal, spatial and atmospheric potential of a vertically sustainable garden in synch with the most advanced technology for plant growth. The garden is composed of a branching circuitry network made of plastic PVC tubes. These tubes circulate and distribute water with a nutrient solution that nurtures aerial vegetation of different kinds. The section of the tubes diminishes as the trajectories they describe move up and away from the ground. The flow of water is induced by water pumps from several reservoirs located in the ground. Water is distributed directly to the plants base by pumping up from the reservoirs or indirectly down by dripping from the upper branches and then moistening down. Depending on the section of tubes, their capacity to carry more or less water, different scale of plants can grow from and within them. The artificiality of plants growing directly on water, the modulation and scaling of them as they detach from the ground, the dynamism of the branching and choreographed vegetation and its likely wind induced oscillation, and the occasional forms of animal life negotiating temporary shelter within the garden, amounts to an advanced living ecosystem that both challenges and amplifies the assumed relations between the architecture of The Schindler House and its surrounding “natural” environment.




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Based on a radical geometric contextualism, our concept for the 8746 Sunset Blvd attempts to produce an architecture of subtle sensations by inducing a physical and optical dynamism that both challenge and enhance the movement of the body. The formal logic of the facade is the outcome of a productive negotiation between geometric operations governed by the column grid of the existing building and driven by spatial conditions allowed by the singularity of the adjacent context. The spatial performance of the store is based on the bending effect of two reciprocally ruled surfaces: the façade that bends inside up and the pliant stair that bends outside down, create a magnetic field that gravitates towards the interior. The bent façade operates as a responsive skin that by means of local inflections senses the dynamics of pedestrian activity on the sidewalk and nearby strip. The interior bent surface fluidly shreds into steps allowing the emergence of a differential hybrid that operates as a stair and display system at the same time.




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Construction has begun on a new Foster + Partners project in Jordan. 'Living Wall' is a 150,000 sq m mixed-use complex at the heart of Amman, close to the new Al-Abdali city centre. The site, an extraordinary carved-out rock shelf, its geology and history have been the inspiration for the scheme’s unique concept. Set against a sheer 30m backdrop, the project presents physical challenges that are not unlike those faced at ancient Jordanian sites such as Petra, where the buildings were carved out of the rock itself. A rough-hewn podium has been inserted with strong, vertical cuts into a line of natural rock. Grouped together on this podium will be a set of six inter-connected, sculpted towers.They include a boutique hotel, a variety of residential units, and offices. The podium on which they sit contains shopping and leisure activities. The deep spaces between the towers house a variety of sheltered public spaces, including a sunken amphitheatre and a large, sheltered piazza. The towers have double-skin façades with screens whose horizontal lines again recall delicate rock strata. The screens’ function is to stimulate air circulation and to provide shading, and these become denser where the potential heat gain is greater. The spaces behind the screens provide balconies and terraces where people can enjoy outdoor space – thus helping to animate the complex as a 'Living Wall'. With transparency both at the higher levels and at the base of the towers, views across the city are unimpeded; there is a strong sense of place and, with so much permeability and connectivity, both laterally and vertically, the scheme also creates a vivid sense of community.




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Erick van Egeraat has won the international competition for the National Library in the Republic of Tatarstan's capital, Kazan. The new National Library has a gross floor area of 81.000 m2 and is situated at the Tukay square on the South-Eastern edge of the city centre. Besides offering all traditional facilities of a state library, Erick van Egeraat wants to "invite citizens to explore and experience knowledge. The building provides a home to all modern ways of accessing information, but its flexible setup allows for future forms of working with knowledge, too." Erick van Egeraat designed the building as a covered extension of the city centre. A multi-functional, 18 metre-high atrium serves as a portal between the library and the city. "The building becomes part of the public domain, a portal between the city and the library, a place where the collective and cultural qualities of downtown spaces are combined." The entrance space can be meeting point, boulevard, gallery, living room, garden and educational facility at the same time. Embedded into a hill, the building continues the shape of the landscape and offers a park on top of the building. By linking the existing Hermitage Park, the new library park and the National Library to the adjacent Tukay square, Erick van Egeraat transforms the area into a vibrant hub of Kazan city life. Consequently, Erick van Egeraat proposes to extend the proposed site and allow for the development of the Headquarters of the National Bank, for high-quality offices, luxury apartments and retail. The project is a cornerstone in the urban redevelopment of Kazan and sets an example for other urban regeneration schemes throughout the Russian Federation.





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Thom Faulders has created an exterior building skin for a new four storey multi-family dwelling unit with photography studios in Tokyo, Japan designed by Hajime Masubuchi of Studio M. Located in the Kitamagome Ota-ku district, the site was previously occupied by the owner’s family with a residence uniquely wrapped by a layer of dense vegetation. Since the entire site is to be razed to accommodate construction for the new larger development, the design invents an architectural system that performs with similar attributes to the demolished green strip and creates an atmospheric space of activity. Conceived as a thin interstitial environment, the articulated densities of the new open-celled meshwork are layered in response to the inner workings of the building’s program. AirSpace Tokyo is a zone where the artificial blends with nature: sunlight is refracted along its metallic surfaces; rainwater is channeled away from exterior walkways via capillary action; and interior views are shielded behind its variegated and foliage-like cover. The complex pattern for Airspace Tokyo is developed in collaboration with Proces2 Design in San Francisco using parametric software. The dual-layered skins are constructed of an aluminum and plastic composite material often used for large billboards. 





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The two buildings are organised around a central square next to the existing cultural centre. In opposition to that centre, they appear as smooth volumes, covered with an articulated and semitransparent skin of pivoting mesh panels - open buildings, clearly readable for every visitor. The building of the administrative centre tries to push the concept of durability as far as possible. Modular open-plan offices on concrete floor slabs, without beams and without false ceilings, maximise the flexibility and allow free positioning of partition walls. All technical equipment is recessed in access floors. The same type of construction will be used for the library (phase 2, completion 2007 - 2008). Pluvial water from the roof is stored in concrete tanks in the basement, from where it is recycled for toilet flushing, as fire fighting water, and as a source of cooling in the summer. Hot water is provided by solar panels in the glass shed roof of the central atrium. Auxiliary electric power is generated by photovoltaic cells. A fine tuned system of free cooling and night cooling allows affordable thermal comfort in the summer combined with very low power consumption.




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This building is located in a 10 mts. wide plot, in a typically urban block in Buenos Aires. The 12 two-storey residential units are split in two compact blocks bridged by a lightweight steel tower which connects them. This structure contains the lift shaft, the main stair and the connecting bridges. Due to the fact that the street was so narrow, the building was recessed to gain privacy from its neighbours, but recomposes the street front with a light frame. This steel grid with wooden deck floors attached to the building façades act both as the apartment expansion terraces and as louvers that guarantee filtered natural light and heat control. During the night the building interacts, turned on as a light box, with the steel frame making it look like a Chinese shadow puppet. Both blocks float over the ground floor, resting on eight concrete columns and gaining lightness and visuals from the street entrance through the rear yard, which was kept like a small garden.





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Takei-Nabeshima-Architects (TNA) architects have designed a striking mini-tower on spec for a planned community in the town of Karuizawa, some 185 miles northwest of the Japanese capital. The Ring House is wrapped in rings of glass and wood and has an uninterrupted 360-degree view of the forest. In an area that was dark, on uneven land and with no neightbours this plot of land was originally unmarkable. But TNA Architects were undeterred by the conditions and set about designing the house. TNA designed rings around the facade so that areas of private space and utilities could be met. The height of each ring was decided by the function concealed behind it. The glass between the rings allow you to look straight into the forest, so the whole house appears to dissolve into the forest. Built on Owners' Hill, a resort in the Karuizawa forest near Tokyo, Ring House occupies one of the hundred or so plots set aside for city dwellers to build weekend retreats.




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