Ed is an Architectural Design Management Consultant, as well as, a Graphic and Web Designer. Ed combines all of these services to form the firm edESTESdesign which provides a wide variety of design and multimedia solutions for your business.
The Bradfield Development Authority has revealed the next major milestone in the creation of Australia’s first new city in more than a century, unveiling the master plan and concept design for Bradfield City’s First Land Release, known as Superlot 1.
by Clémence Carayol
Designed by Hassell and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in collaboration with cultural design partners Djinjama and COLA Studio, the ambitious reference design establishes a new benchmark for sustainable, inclusive and future-focused urban development.
The precinct will serve as the physical and symbolic gateway to Bradfield City, setting the tone for its evolution as Western Sydney’s new urban heart.
“We set out to create a precinct where nature and urban life are intertwined, ensuring Bradfield City feels welcoming, sustainable and uniquely of its place,” says Kevin Lloyd, Principal, Hassell.
Delivered by the NSW Government alongside developer and investor Plenary, the First Land Release is envisioned as a vibrant, 24/7 mixed-use precinct that will catalyse investment, innovation and community life.
More than 1,400 new homes will be delivered, including 10 per cent dedicated to affordable housing, alongside commercial, retail and community spaces.
The precinct is strategically positioned within minutes of the new Metro station and the expansive Central Park, reinforcing Bradfield City’s role as a highly connected metropolitan centre.
At the core of the master plan is an ambition to create a place where transport connectivity, urban density and deep respect for Country coexist.
This vision is expressed through the ‘Green Loop’, a 15-metre-wide landscape spine that weaves Moore Gully’s natural systems through the built environment. Shaped by extensive First Nations engagement and informed by Country through cultural design partner Djinjama, the landscape and architecture feel intrinsically connected to place from the outset.
Anchoring the Green Loop is the Community Gathering Space, an intergenerational hub housed within a striking timber pavilion. Its woven canopy of interlocking timber reflects the Aboriginal principle of “Enoughness”, taking only what is needed, offering a sustainable prototype for learning, gathering and connection that exists in harmony with the loop’s water and biodiversity systems.
The precinct’s design prioritises permeability and movement. A fine-grained network of active streets and mid-block pathways promotes walkability, safety and vibrant street life. At ground level, public spaces, retail, lobbies and shared amenities activate street frontages, encouraging daily interaction and participation in community life.
As an economic and cultural anchor for the new city, the First Land Release will integrate a major education campus, a hotel and commercial office spaces, strategically clustered near the Metro to foster a thriving innovation hub.
A diverse housing mix — including student accommodation, affordable housing and market-rate apartments — ensures a truly intergenerational community from day one.
Bradfield City’s First Land Release represents a confident new model for city-making: one that celebrates Country, champions sustainability and innovation, and places community at its core, setting a powerful precedent for Sydney’s newest city.
“To design a new city is both a rare opportunity and a profound responsibility. Bradfield City is a chance to shape a vision with Country and community, embedding resilience, sustainability, and innovation into every layer of the city,” says Michael Powell, Senior Associate Principal, SOM.
Images: Bradfield City First Land Release / supplied
Free automated network near ATL airport called “one of the region’s most innovative transit projects”
Another autonomous vehicle test project is officially en route, this time on the southern fringes of ITP Atlanta.
ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts officials broke ground last week on a long-planned Automated Transit Network Demonstration Pilot program, marking what project leaders called a major milestone for “one of the region’s most innovative transit projects.”
The pilot project calls for a free, public, on-demand ATN network that will stretch for ½ mile along a dedicated guideway, linking the ATL SkyTrain at the Georgia International Convention Center to the Gateway Center Arena.
The project will use technology from Glydways, a California-based self-driving vehicle developer.
Example of a Glydways vehicle bound for the 1/2-mile route on the southside. Glydways/ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts
The possibility of autonomous shuttles, buses, or pods zipping around near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has been explored for years. That push echoes alternative-transportation projects underway elsewhere in the metro, such as Cumberland’s forthcoming CAM Network and the Beltline-supported Beep project in Southwest Atlanta.
Near the airport, the goal of the ATN Demonstration Pilot is to showcase the capacity, scalability, and capabilities of such a system in real-world environments, according to project officials.
Gerald McDowell, AACIDs executive director, said in an announcement the pilot will provide “an innovative mobility solution for the future of transportation in our region.” Chris Riley, Glydways chief commercial officer, said the project “will demonstrate how our technology can be scaled and replicated in other communities, creating safe, cost-effective transit options across the country, and globally.”
The 1/2-mile pilot project is scheduled to open for public use in December.
Plans for the pilot Glydways route in relation to Georgia International Convention Center.Courtesy of ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts
Expansion beyond the initial route will hinge on a feasibility study led by MARTA that’s currently underway. Analysts will be closely monitoring the pilot project’s performance, scalability, and system capacity to determine if expansion to other south metro points of interest is feasible, per AACIDs leadership.
AACIDs, a self-taxing district of commercial property owners, comprises the Airport West CID and the Airport South CID and covers a 15.7-mile area across Fulton and Clayton Counties and several cities, including portions of Atlanta, East Point, Hapeville, South Fulton, College Park, and Forest Park.
A rendering illustrating Glydways functionality at the convention center stop on ITP Atlanta’s southside.Courtesy of ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts
A future alternative transit connection between the airport’s domestic and international terminals could also be in the works, AACIDs officials have said.
The logic goes that the service could help solve a primary complaint from international passengers—that connecting to MARTA from the international terminal is too difficult, or what Glydways officials have called a “missing link.”
IN THE SUMMER of 1955, Walt Disney had a problem. He was a few weeks off opening his most audacious venture yet and he had a decision to make: should he install flushing toilets or drinking fountains?
His plumbers had gone on strike and there was not enough time to do both. It was the last thing he needed. He was heavily in debt and had decided to stake not just his reputation but his personal fortune on building an amusement park, something which was normally free to enter.
But he needn’t have worried. By combining technical wizardry with the magic of the big screen, Disney had hit upon perhaps his most consequential innovation yet and one which would transform his dwindling kingdom into a global empire.
At the end of WWII, Walt Disney was in a bind. His movie studio had made it through the war making propaganda films, but he was now heavily in debt and it was beginning to seem like the glory days of Disney were in the past. But the man behind the world’s most famous mouse wasn’t done yet.
Above: Walt Disney in 1935.
A chance visit to a railroad fair in Chicago in 1948 sparked an interest in fairground rides. Amusement parks and fairs were nothing new at the time, but for Disney they lacked a certain magic. Usually they were designed around rides, with some attention given to scene setting and decoration, but nothing resembling a creative vision.
Disney wanted to create something new. A place with rides and attractions, but more than that, it would tell a story. It would project an image of an idyllic world, one of innocence and wholesomeness, where children could let their imaginations run free.
Above: An illustration of the original Disneyland layout.
To get his idea off the ground, Disney called in art director Herb Ryman and over the course of a frantic weekend in September 1953 they developed the initial concept for Disneyland. What they created was something radically different to anything that had come before.
The first major difference came in the layout. While researching other parks, Disney found one of their weaknesses was they often lacked a coherent plan, making them confusing to navigate.
If he were to create the happiest place on earth, it would have to be simple to get around and to do that, Disney had to meticulously design the flow of people as well as the attractions. That began at the entrance.
At the time, amusement parks in the US were typically free to enter and as such had multiple entrances. Disneyland however would have just one. By restricting the access to the park in this way, Disney was able to create a tightly curated experience from the moment guests stepped foot in his park.
Visitors would be greeted by an embankment, on which sat a station for a miniature railway, that ran the perimeter of the park. This would also conceal the park’s first illusion, the embankment doubling up as a physical barrier to prevent the sights and sounds of the outside world getting in.
From there, they would enter the park via a tunnel, which Disney called the “stage curtains”. A small plaque marking the point at which guests left the real world and entered the world of Disney’s imagination.
Above: The plaque welcoming visitors to Disneyland.
First stop after entering was Main Street USA, an idealised version of the American high street, heavily based on Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Missouri. From there, the park would make use of eye-catching visual elements, which Disney would coin as “weenies”, to pull people around the park.
The grandest of these would of course be a fantasy castle, which would draw visitors towards a central plaza: the hub from which every land, ride and attraction would radiate out. As well as making navigation easier, it would create a point at which people could meet and rest.
Branching off from this were a series of themed areas. Other parks had often included novelty buildings to give a sense of the exotic, but these would be standalone features, rather than part of a coherent theme. What Disney planned was total immersion. Just like the park itself, each land would be visually cut off from anything that might spoil the illusion.
Above: Visitors to Disneyland were drawn towards a central plaza which other attractions radiated away from.
With the concept sketches complete, Disney sent his brother Roy off to New York to raise the money for the build. But how do you turn something this new and unique into a reality? Disney had no experience building anything on this scale, let alone anything that broke with so much precedent.
He figured: relying purely on imagination would get him nowhere, but engineering on its own wasn’t entertaining. He needed people who could combine artistic creativity and practical skills to create something unique. What he needed was an imagineer.
Fortunately, Hollywood was full of them. He turned to set designers and artists in his own company, but also from a powerful rival. 20th Century Fox had a backlot four times the size of Disneyland and was filled with scenic artists used to building everything from city streets to steamboats. It was from here that Disney filled the ranks of his new army of imagineers.
The design process started with a pitch, which was then worked up into storyboards and further on into models of increasing sizes. The whole process was fluid, with constant revisions and alterations made throughout, including on some of the park’s biggest structures.
Above: Neuschwanstein Castle, in southern Germany.
Neuschwanstein Castle, in southern Germany was used as the inspiration for the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle, which lies at the head of the park. It has a gatehouse, turrets and palace, all of which provided the reference for Disney’s version.
On the front of the palace, it also has a balcony, which leads from the spectacular Singer’s Hall. This detail was initially included in the plans but in a sign of how fluid the development was, it was changed purely by chance.
During the design phase, imagineers had taken the model apart for cleaning, only to quickly reassemble it when Walt Disney came to visit. In the rush, they put the palace back on the wrong way round. Disney noticed the mistake but preferred the way it looked and ordered it to be built as the model stood. The balcony still lives on today, but on the back of the castle.
This level of improvisation didn’t stop at the design stage. The Jungle Cruise has become one of the most popular rides of Disneyland and has since been replicated at other Disney parks. Designing a ride like this today requires months of planning and design work by huge teams of people.
Back in 1954 though, the ride’s layout was solely down to one man, legendary art director Harper Goff. With a bulldozer driver looking on, Goff took a stick and walked around the ride’s plot, drawing a line in the soil. Once completed, he drew a parallel line a few metres away.
The bulldozer followed, piling up the excavated soil on the embankments and the layout of the Jungle Cruise was complete.
Now this might all sound a bit “free jazz” but there was a lot at stake. If Disney didn’t pull this off, he stood to lose everything. As Disney’s ambitions for the park grew, so did the bill to pay for it all. By the time construction began, he had taken out USD$17M in loans: over USD$600M today.
He’d even put his own personal fortune on the line, selling properties and cashing in his life insurance to raise funds.
Above: The entrance to Disneyland.
In 1954, he had financing in place but with such a huge amount of money at stake, he needed the park to start earning as soon as possible. And that meant, opening in time for the lucrative vacation season the following summer.
On 16 July, 1954, a year and a day before the grand opening, Disneyland broke ground. To supplement his crack squad of imagineers, Disney brought in two crucial figures to oversee the construction: Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood and Joe Fowler.
Wood was a savvy businessman with a keen eye for organisation. It was he who had found the site Disneyland was to be built on: 160 acres of orange and walnut groves in Anaheim, California. At the time Anaheim was a rural farming town, but its flat land was perfect for building on and and access to the recently completed freeway meant downtown Los Angeles was just 30 minutes away.
Wood had previously worked at General Dynamics, training teams of people to build aeroplanes and soon set about organising the thousands of daily people on site.
Fowler, meanwhile, was a retired admiral and veteran of both world wars. He had spent the last few decades overseeing the construction of warships for the navy. Initially, he’d been drafted in to oversee the construction of the Mark Twain steamboat. But his ability to wrangle logistics made him invaluable for the wider construction effort of the park.
Fowler’s initial assessment of the plans were bleak. Of the 20 attractions planned to be ready for opening day, only six were likely to be ready, 11 were doubtful and three would definitely not be ready.
Together, Fowler and Wood adopted a strategy that prioritised the important storytelling aspects of the park while finding ways to cut corners and find efficiencies elsewhere. Their aim wasn’t perfection, instead they raced to get everything “good enough for opening day”, with a view to continue work afterwards.
But among the cost saving and improvisation were some truly impressive innovations. Main Street USA is designed to welcome visitors into a quaint, wholesome vision of Americana.
But it doesn’t take long to spot the movie magic at work here. Only the ground floor of each building is occupied, because the upper floors are too small. That’s because this whole street uses forced perspective.
Above: Main Street USA in Disneyland.
The technique has long been used in Hollywood, where sets are built at distorted angles to create the illusion of depth, or height in a studio.
Building a lifesize American high street was beyond even Disney’s means, but shrinking everything would just make the street look small. Instead, the buildings were constructed to a range of sizes, with ground floors built at a near 1:1 scale and the first and second floors built at increasingly smaller scales.
By decreasing the height of the building the higher it gets, our eyes are tricked into thinking they are further away and we assume it’s taller than it is.
The most effective use of forced perspective however, is on the iconic sleeping beauty castle. The tallest tip of the castle rises 23-metres off the ground making it slightly taller than the White House. So big, but not a towering fortress.
To make it appear bigger, like Main Street, each storey is built at a slightly smaller scale. But that effect is enhanced by introducing so many disconnected elements, all of a different height. Because there are no consistent storeys, our brain has less of a reference for how tall it should be, making the castle appear taller.
On July 17, 1955, after a year of frantic construction the moment of truth had arrived: the opening day of Disneyland. Everything had been building up to this moment. Thousands of guests were invited and a live TV broadcast was scheduled. But the opening was blighted by a series of disasters.
The park was swamped with people after thousands of counterfeit tickets were sold. Just as Joe Fowler had predicted, many of the rides weren’t finished and most of those that were ended up breaking down.
Above: Sleeping Beauty Castle.
A gas leak near the Sleeping Beauty Castle nearly burned it to the ground and the Mark Twain almost sank with the amount of people boarding it.
As for the striking plumbers: Walt had opted to finish the toilets on time, rather than drinking fountains, leading people to accuse him of a cynical ploy to buy drinks instead of providing free water.
But ultimately, none of that mattered. Just as his first cartoons had done nearly 30 years earlier, Disneyland had captured the public imagination. Work on the park went on and over the following years rides were continuously improved. Despite the princely entrance fee of USD $1 for adults and USD¢50 for children, within two months of opening, 1 million people had visited the park.
Disneyland had become so iconic, on a trip to America in 1959, President of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, publicly expressed his and his wife’s disappointment that they were barred from visiting.
For his part, Disney was never completely satisfied with Disneyland and with the lessons he had learned, quickly turned his attention to building a bigger, better version of his park in Florida. Walt Disney died before he could ever see the completion of his next creation, but Disneyworld would prove to be one of the biggest and most sophisticated theme parks ever built.
70 years on, the rough edges of opening day are long forgotten. What endures is the blueprint Walt created: a place built with the tools of Hollywood, the discipline of engineering and an imagination all of his own. Disneyland didn’t just revive his studio, it rewrote the playbook for how we design experiences, cities and entire worlds.
Additional footage and images courtesy of Disney, Orange County Archives, City of Anaheim Public Library, Library of Congress, ABC.
Members of the advisory council Commission of Fine Arts unanimously voted to approve designs for the White House ballroom expansion, releasing new renderings of the controversial project.
With this unanimous vote, the project will move forward for further discussion on 5 March by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which “adopts, approves, or provides advice” on projects in the greater Washington DC area.
The CFA vote advances the project towards a 5 March meeting
The East Wing Modernization project includes replacing the former East Wing of the White House with a two-storey building and an expanded colonnade that would attach it to the Executive Residence, which sits at the centre of the White House complex.
The second storey will contain a 22,000 square foot ballroom (2,043 square metres), which was commissioned by President Trump as a space to host visiting dignitaries.
The CFA is made up of seven members appointed by the US president.
Established in 1910, the CFA reviews “matters of design and aesthetics” within the Washington DC area, and acts as an advisory board, but does not have approval in terms of the actual realisation of the White House expansion.
A large colonnade lines one side of the ballroom design
As a whole, the White House is largely exempt from the National Historic Preservation Act, which mandates review for projects on federal buildings, allowing for Trump’s expedited approval process for the project.
Drawings of the East Wing were effectively leaked recently by the NCPC ahead of the 5 March meeting. Although roughly similar, the PDF presented today included more detailed sections and floor plans than seen before.
By Henry Queen – Staff Reporter, Atlanta Business Chronicle
Populous is setting up shop in Atlanta after 30 years of local projects dating back to the 1996 Olympic Games.
The global design firm recently debuted here with five employees but could rapidly grow, said Jonathan Mallie, managing director of the Americas at Populous. The office is at 505 North Angier Ave. NE, where the Industrious at Old Fourth Ward coworking space is located.
Industry veterans Rob Svedberg and Lee Pollock were recruited from TVS and Jacobs, respectively, to lead the office.
“We’ve always had an eye on the Southeast,” Maillie told Atlanta Business Chronicle in a phone interview. “But for one reason or another, we never opened an office in the Southeast despite the number of projects we had. Taking a look at the amount of work, Atlanta makes the most sense in the world. You’re talking about an international hub; an incredible, vibrant city; and a place that we’re extremely excited to be a part of.”
The company’s portfolio of work includes Truist Park; Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion; Nashville, Tennessee’s Geodis Park soccer stadium; and the renovation of Synovus Park, the new home of the Atlanta Braves’ minor-league affiliate in Columbus. Then known as HOK Sport, the company was also instrumental in planning out the venues and temporary infrastructure for the ’96 Olympics.
Ongoing stadium projects in the Southeast are Mobile Arena in Alabama and the University of South Carolina’s Williams-Brice Stadium, which is benefiting from approximately $350 million in upgrades.
Kansas City, Missouri-based Populous is also active at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport through its subsidiary Fentress Studios, which it acquired for an undisclosed sum in June 2025. That Denver-based architecture firm is working to create a more efficient lobby and security checkpoint at the north terminal.
Airports are similar to stadiums, Maillie said, in that they draw large crowds of people and are ripe for improving the customer experience.
The people that Populous recruited to head the Atlanta office are notable. Svedberg was involved in the initial design work at LaGrange Cricket Stadium, the 10,500-seat project that broke ground late last year. Other projects of his include the expansion of New York City’s Javits Center, Mumbai’s Jio World Centre, Nashville’s new Nissan Stadium and the rooftop expansion of the Colorado Convention Center in Downtown Denver.
Pollock brings 30 years of design experience, with projects located in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.
Other team members include Jonathan Bartlett, Matt Friesen and Meredith Mejia.
Just last month, Populous opened an office in Austin, Texas. Headcount at its Los Angeles office, meanwhile, grew about tenfold since its opening, Maille said.
“We have every intention of growing the Atlanta office,” Maille said. “It can move quickly if things are going well.”
Populous has 35 offices across the world, employing more than 1,600 people.
Last year, the firm relocated its Kansas City headquarters in the Country Club Plaza area to Downtown’s 1400KC building, also home to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City.
Populous also recently launched a new real estate service focused on designing mixed-use districts around sports, entertainment and civic venues. Atlanta is a hotbed for that activity, as evidenced by The Battery Atlanta surrounding Truist Park and Centennial Yards rising in the shadows of Downtown’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena.
“We refer to them as experiential districts that are developing around venues,” Maillie said. “And those venues could be sports facilities, they could be purely concert venues. They could be airports, or they could be convention centers. [It’s] almost a movement right now.”
The internationally renowned A’ Design Award invites designers, architects, and visionaries from all disciplines to submit their best works for the 2026 competition. With the deadline on February 28 and results announcement on May 1, the international platform is a fantastic opportunity for the creative community to receive global recognition.
From expansive countryside villas to high-density apartment complexes and forward-thinking senior residences, a curated selection of past winners in residential architecture continues to inspire new ways of living. Whether as a professional firm or an emerging talent, follow the footsteps of these award-winning projects byentering your own design here.
banner and above: Valencia House by Lucas Padovani image credit: Fran Parente
In the previous edition, the A’ Design Award saw a surge of projects that redefined the boundaries of domestic space. Recent winners like the Ripple House by Sam Alawie and the Park Wellstate Nishiazabu Senior Residence demonstrate a shift toward architecture that balances aesthetic luxury with functional social impact.
While the residential sector is a major highlight, the competition provides a structural framework for all creative fields. The program offers a vast array of categories, including the Good Industrial Design Award, Good Architecture Design Award, Good Product Design Award, Good Communication Design Award, and Good Fashion Design Award. For those working at the intersection of disciplines, further categories can be exploredhere.
Fuma House by Masakatsu Matsuyama image credit: Toshihisa Ishii
CONSTRUCTING SUCCESS WITH CAREER-BOOSTING BENEFITS
Winning an A’ Design Award is a catalyst for professional growth, offering much more than a physical trophy. The perks include international exhibitions, a spot in the exclusive hardbound yearbook, and features in top-tier design publications, including designboom. Laureates also gain inclusion in the World Design Rankings, project translations into over 100 languages, and extensive PR services, ensuring their architectural visions reach a global audience of developers and peers.
To maintain the highest level of excellence, each entry is evaluated by the Grand Jury Panel. For the 2025–2026 cycle, the panel consists of 318 design professionals, academics, and industry experts. This rigorous peer-review process ensures a fair and objective evaluation, allowing the most innovative and impactful designs to stand out and be celebrated at the annual gala-night.
Yokohama Chigasakihigashi Housing by Kei Tamai image credit: Principal Home Co.
Only a few large developments are still in the works along 14th Street, a corridor that defined DC’s development boom a decade ago.
Today, UrbanTurf takes a look at the projects planned, delayed or under construction along and adjacent to the 14th Street Corridor. If we missed a big one along this route, shoot us an email at editor(at)urbanturf.com.
After securing all necessary approvals, Eastbanc and Jamestown listed the development site that sits at the Metro station at 13th and U Streets NW (map) for sale last year. The project, which was pitched back in 2022, never got started due to high construction costs.
The approved proposal included a 10-story building with 117-143 new residential units, retail, and 55-67 hotel rooms. There are also plans for 36 stacked duplex units along a “mews” greenspace in the public alley perpendicular to U Street.
Apartments, A Plaza + Dave Chapelle
There hasn’t been much movement of late on plans to redevelop DC’s Reeves Center at 14th and U Streets NW.
In 2023, MRP Realty, Capri Investment Group and CSG Urban Partners were chosen to redevelop the building into 108,000 square feet of new Class A office space for the NAACP and DC agencies, a 24,000 square foot plaza, 322 mixed-income apartments, and a 116-key hotel. The retail space will include a restaurant from Top Chef participant Carla Hall and a comedy club from Dave Chapelle.
A 17,000 public plaza would be named for Frederick Douglass, and the project will provide space for The Alvin Ailey School, the Viva School of Dance and the Washington Jazz Arts Institute. Michael Marshall Design is the project architect.
14 Church
A large new condo development is coming to a block in Logan Circle that helped start the development boom along 14th Street NW over 20 years ago.
Holladay Corporation is set to deliver 14 Church, a 65-unit project at 1455-1457 Church Street NW (map), at the end of 2026. The six-story building, designed by Eric Colbert and Associates, will incorporate the façades of the two existing structures on the site along with the adjacent empty lots. The development will deliver a mix of one- and two-bedroom condos and building amenities include a roof deck, a bike room and underground parking.
Curving surfaces that draw you from room to room, soft light, layered glass, walls in white and carpets in gray: perhaps SANAA projects ought to be understood not so much as separate creations than as the far-flung fragments of a single ethereal world. From this view, it seems fitting that the newest such fragment, a museum-cum-library in the Taiwanese city of Taichung, feels remarkably familiar—a continuation, in form, material, and concept, of much that has come before. Almost everything here is recognizable, from the formal conceit, an intersecting array of eight boxy, steel-framed volumes (see the firm’s 2022 addition to the Art Gallery of New South Wales), to the facades, many glazed, all wrapped in silvery aluminum mesh (see the 2008 New Museum in New York City), not to mention the winding ramps and staircases that jump from floor to floor, pavilion to pavilion (see the 2010 Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, among other projects). As a whole, the building takes its place in a longer series of projects that explore the mixing of the rational and irrational—the former represented by the rigor of a precise architectural vocabulary, the latter by the freedom accorded by the informal composition of elements.
In Taichung, this exploration unfolds against a specific urban context—emptiness. Initially designed as part of a 2013 competition held by the city, the building is an early element in the redevelopment of the former Shuinan military airport in western Taichung; today, it stands at the edge of a 165-acre park at the center of the new district, facing out toward vacant parcels of land that the city government is now in the process of selling to developers. Doubtless one of the city’s aims in undertaking the project, and in hiring a Pritzker Prize–winning architect, was to establish the area, bounded to the north by highways and to the west by an aircraft factory, as an attractive place of culture. The plan is by no means unrealistic. Just a few miles south, the Toyo Ito–designed National Taichung Theater (2016) anchors Taichung’s 7th Redevelopment Zone, a newly built district of gleaming offices, department stores, and luxury high-rises.
The majority of the volumes are lifted up on pilotis, opening up the building’s ground level to serve as a set of shaded, subtly graded plazas linking the park behind to the future neighborhood in front. Interspersed are entrances to various programmatic spaces—an escalator up to the main library lobby, a direct entrance to a children’s library, a twisting ramp to the museum galleries—and a set of round, one-story structures housing a shop, café, information booths, and a spiral stair down to underground spaces including an auditorium and a parking garage. Both the library and museum entries are accessed from an area that is enclosed in mesh; this space can be locked when the two institutions are closed, but the remainder of the ground floor will remain open 24 hours a day.
The building is officially called the Taichung Green Museumbrary—a portmanteau that sounds better in Chinese than English—and indeed its most distinctive programmatic element is that it co-locates the main branch of the Taichung Public Library system with the newly founded Taichung Art Museum. (Taichung has long been home to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, but until now did not have a municipal art museum.) In keeping with the possibilities suggested by this combination, SANAA, working with architect of record Ricky Liu & Associates, has not limited either museum or library to a single volume. Instead, galleries and reading rooms are each distributed across different volumes, and visitors move freely across the complex: there is almost always more than one way to get from point A to point B. On two of the building’s six floors, floating walkways link the library and museum, enabling you to cross between them midway through a visit. The uppermost walkway, on the fifth floor, brings you outdoors into a mesh-enclosed box crisscrossed by ramps and dubbed the “culture forest,” an expansive space that does not yet, but ought to, have places to sit and relax.
For Sejima, the library and museum offer “two different ways of learning,” and placing both together raises the possibility of the programs’ shaping each other—from exhibitions in which books could be borrowed or library functions incorporating artworks to broader ways of “expanding our thinking and imagination.” At present, there is not much evidence of this happening. The museum and library remain separate: the reading rooms and galleries, as currently programmed, don’t stray from the modes of operation and organization that we have all learned to expect from these institutions.
For now, more immediate concerns dominate. At the complex’s fanfare-filled opening in December, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-Yen voiced the hope that the Museumbrary “makes the world see Taichung, and places Taichung on the world’s stage”—a comment in which one can detect both familiar civic boosterism and a Taiwan-specific desire for the international recognition that the island has long been denied in the realm of politics. Not surprisingly, the galleries, all vast, flexible boxes designed before the museum was founded, seem best suited to sensational, Instagram-friendly installations of the sort associated with the global art circuit; and the initial set of exhibitions, which brings together a dizzying array of work from around the world with a vaguely environmental theme, only furthers this impression. The scale of the galleries was a “big challenge,” says museum director Nicole Yi-Hsin Lai, and some of the loveliest works on display, including a set of paintings of the transformed landscape of central Taiwan by the artist Hung Tien-Yu, feel minuscule by comparison.
I preferred the library reading rooms, with their curtain-filtered windows, intimate nooks, and snaking SANAA–designed tables and benches. These are spaces that reward wandering: an unexpected staircase transports you to a hidden terrace, a small exhibition teaches you about the history of encyclopedias. It’s all impeccably stylish. Meeting areas are encased in curving walls of acrylic. The soft hum of air-conditioning emerges from registers embedded in the bookshelves. Yet, as with so much of SANAA’s work, the effect is gentle, tranquil, rather than precious. Somehow, these architects again and again manage to create uncommon, daring, ultra-designed things that are nonetheless comfortable and unpretentious. There is something important about this that is not easy to put a finger on. I suspect that it relates to a certain attitude toward form-making. SANAA rose to prominence during the era of starchitecture and its formal acrobatics, and now Sejima and Nishizawa too are sought out by clients around the world looking to build signature buildings—hence the commission in Taichung. And yet, even as the shimmering, diaphanous Museumbrary fulfills the demands imposed upon it—that it attract the attention of foreign media, establish the legitimacy of a new district, and so on—it does so without the self-importance common with starchitecture; that is, without naively presenting itself as radical either in its formal inventiveness or its capacity to engender cultural change.
Perhaps this is where the understated frankness of Sejima and Nishizawa’s work comes from: an acceptance of the limits of what form can do. Where they find agency to intervene in the world of their own accord is neither in big, brash gestures nor in obsessively resolved details. Instead, it is in subtle, calibrated moves—in providing ample space for chance encounters and discoveries in the reading rooms, in treating the ground level as an unrestricted public space, in holding open the possibility for institutional boundaries to one day be blurred.
Image courtesy SANAA
Image courtesy SANAA
Image courtesy SANAA
Credits
Architect: SANAA — Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa; principals; Takayuki Hasegawa, Takashige Yamashita, Takayuki Furuya, Asano Yagi, Kota Fukuhara, Amira Ho, design team
A map of Albania will be outlined by the pixelated facade of Downtown One, a skyscraper formed of stacked blocks with large rectangular windows. At 140 metres, it will be the country’s tallest building.
At 388 metres, China Merchants Bank Headquarters in Shenzhen will qualify as a supertall skyscraper.
The building by Foster + Partners has a distinctive geometric exterior formed with tessellated steel and glass panels that draw on traditional Chinese paper folding.
Another banking headquarters on the list is this 170-metre-tall skyscraper, which Zaha Hadid Architects is completing in Iraq.
Located on the banks of the Tigris in Baghdad, it will have a twisting exoskeleton raised on a large podium that spans an entire city block. According to the studio, its design is intended to “mimic the light reflecting from waves” of the adjacent river.
One of the most significant skyscrapers set to open in the US this year is Waterline.
Designed by KPF, the staggered tower rises to a height of 312 metres, making it the tallest building in the state of Texas and Austin’s first official supertall skyscraper.
It is one of several landmark buildings KPF is completing this year, also including 520 Fifth Avenue – a 304-metre supertall skyscraper in New York, close to the Chrysler Building.
Canada’s tallest building is also expected to reach completion this year. The 351-metre-tall building will have a slightly sloping facade with balconies on one side that emulate vents.
Its architect, Hariri Pontarini Architects, said its design “reflects light in different ways and results in a distinctive silhouette that shifts depending on the angle you view it from”.
Located close to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, this supertall skyscraper by developer Binghatti will be car company Mercedes-Benz‘s first branded residential property.
It will peak at 341 metres, becoming one of the city’s tallest buildings, and feature facades imprinted with the Mercedes-Benz’s three-pointed-star logo across its sinuous form.
This skinny supertall skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan will have full-floor residences and an observation deck at its 305-metre-high summit.
It is being constructed on the site of two vacant structures, which have been demolished, and incorporates a 12-storey limestone building within its base.
Africa’s tallest tower is slated for completion in the Ivorian city of Abidjan in 2026.
Designed by Lebanese-Ivorian architect Pierre Fakhoury for developer PFO Africa, the tower will have a chamfered exterior that reaches a height of 421 metres. It will be primarily occupied by offices.
Render courtesy of SOM
Sany Irootech Headquarters, China, by SOM
SOM has several projects set to open in 2026, but one of the most interesting is this pair of skyscrapers in Guangzhou. The tallest of the two towers will reach 204 metres.
They will be unified by their exposed diagrid structure and the podium on which they will be raised, which shelters a public plaza with shops and dining areas.
SOUTHEAST ASIA is in the midst of one of the most expensive races on the planet.
Well over a hundred million people visited the region last year and that number is climbing rapidly. Several countries are vying to become the mega-port for the region which means billions of dollars are being invested into building some of the biggest airports we’ve ever seen.
But Vietnam’s Long Thanh might just be the most ambitious gamble of them all.
It’s costing an eye-watering $16 billion USD and spans across an enormous 5,000 hectares of land – that’s more than four times the size of London Heathrow. But why is Vietnam building such a massive airport and at such an extortionate cost, will it pay off
Above: Once complete, Long Thanh Airport will be one of the biggest travel facilities in the world.
Southeast Asia is in demand
Over the next twenty years, Boeing predicts air traffic to Southeast Asia is going to more than triple and while we all know someone who’s backpacked to the region, the numbers go way beyond westerners looking to expand their horizons.
China’s growing middle class and an increasing number of tourists travelling from emerging markets like India means Southeast Asia has experienced a rapid surge in holidaymakers.
But while America has Denver and Europe has Heathrow, the race is on to become Southeast Asia’s next mega-port.
There’s some stiff competition, none more so than Changi in Singapore which has a huge head-start.
It’s already the largest airport in the region welcoming 60 million visitors a year and is regularly referred to as the best airport in the world but seemingly, that’s not enough.
$10 billion is being plunged into building a swanky new terminal: T5. Once complete in the mid-2030s, overall capacity could hit a staggering 150 million.
Above: Changi in Singapore is often referred to as the best airport in the world.
In a bid to keep up, Malaysia’s looking to expand its Kuala Lumpur International to welcome 150 million people each year.
Over in Thailand the nation’s key air hub, Suvarnabhumi is going through a redevelopment to up capacity to 120 million and the Philippines is building New Manila International, a whole new $14 billion airport that could welcome 100 million people every year.
However, while we could easily focus our attention on any of these airports individually, it’s Long Thanh in Vietnam that has caught our attention.
It’s going to be a colossus. Once complete, it won’t just be the biggest airport in the region but one of the largest anywhere on the planet and for a meaty $16 billion dollars, you’d hope so.
Above: Long Thanh Airport will feature four terminals and four 4,000 metre long runways. Image: ADP Ingénierie
Vietnam’s Long Thanh gamble
There are two key reasons Vietnam is building Long Thanh and the first is to do with Tan Son Nhat Airport, 40 kilometres away.
40 million people travel through its terminals every year and while it’s nowhere near the 100 million figure being talked about for Long Thanh, it’s enough to cause a problem.
Tan Son Nhat is oversubscribed and because of its location, there’s no room to expand. Just like Chicago O’Hare or London City Airport, this airport is built right in the middle of a city.
Tan Son Nhat is in the bustling Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s most populous city and it’s surrounded by urban development, leaving the airport hemmed in.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s tourism industry is booming. The country’s experiencing a near 30% increase in international visitors and so now is the perfect time to expand infrastructure.
Above: Tan Son Nhat Airport is oversubscribed and can’t expand due to its location. Image: Mkckim
Long Thanh may be the solution but this is a whole lot more than just an overflow facility. The plan is to make it the hub of international travel in Southeast Asia.
Once complete, it’ll feature four beautiful, lotus inspired terminals – Vietnam’s national flower – and they’ll be serviced by four gigantic runways, with each measuring 4,000 metres.
The development is being broken up into three phases. Long Thanh is being constructed on a forested area and so during phase one the early focus was clearing and site levelling before any actual building.
In late 2018, it was reported nearly 2,000 vehicles and machines were on site carrying out extensive earthworks including digging, filling and rolling across the entire span of the airport boundaries – a truly monumental effort.
Once the site was deemed ready, the path was laid for construction on the first of the terminals, runways and a control tower.
That first terminal itself spans 373,000m², spread across four floors. The structure and its attached wings are comprised of a steel frame, supported by reinforced concrete columns and beams.
Then above is a spectacular clear span design roof stretching 82 metres. A clear span roof is a ceiling not supported by masses of internal columns and posts, used to create open and breathable spaces on the ground.
The roof is made up of thousands of tonnes of steel, combining to create five layers. Each layer joins with the next to insulate, waterproof and increase the durability of this crucial element and when you look out from the terminal, you can see concrete has already been poured for the first 4,000 metre long runway.
Above: Long Thanh Airport’s first terminal features four floors spread across 373,000m².
Beyond that, to organise the entire site once operational, a 123 metre tall control tower, shaped like a lotus bud is being raised. But if you want to get in to see all of this, you’ll have to navigate the 8,668 metre boundary wall, constructed to lock off the Long Thanh Airport site.
By the end of phase one, the airport will be ready to welcome 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo per year.
Another two terminals and a further runway will be constructed in phase two but it’s the final phase where Long Thanh makes the leap to becoming a world leader.
With the construction of a fourth and final terminal and two more 4,000 metre runways, Long Thanh will become one of the world’s biggest airports.
Capacity will jump to a whopping 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of cargo per year, rivalling the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield Jackson in Atlanta.
A new road network and two rail lines will then connect the site to Ho Chi Minh.
A turbulent journey
As with any major infrastructure project the construction of Long Thanh hasn’t come without its problems and perhaps the most impactful faced so far is dust.
The clouds emanating from Long Thanh are brutal. The site sits on red basalt soil and when it’s disturbed, it sends dramatic plumes of colourful dust skywards.
They’ve spread far and wide, carried by the wind and on the wheels of the thousands of vehicles coming to and from the site and so residential areas up to seven kilometres away have been covered.
As a result, people have been experiencing breathing problems, with some residents saying the coughing is worse than at the height of the pandemic.
It’s not just the health implications either – crops have been caked in dust and if they can’t photosynthesise, they can’t grow and so quickly die off. As you can imagine, the government is being slated for a lack of preparedness.
When action was finally taken, it was already far too late. Reservoirs were built by the site to water down the ground and speed limits were imposed on vehicles to limit the spread of dust but that didn’t completely fix the issue and a lot of the damage had been done.
But even before work had begun, people were concerned about one thing in particular: the cost. There’s no denying the terminals will be visually remarkable but they don’t come cheap.
To realise the lotus themed design, the structure has to feature a serious number of curves but curved architecture is a lot more expensive to produce than right angles.
Rounded shapes are very technical and work intensive to engineer – beyond the fiddly geometric calculations, certain materials just don’t like to bend. Concrete becomes more brittle in a rounded shape and when it comes to steel, the thicker it is, the harder it is to manipulate because of its density.
You also tend to waste more material when building curves – so all in all, it’s a lot of work for a costly payoff.
Above: The Long Thanh Airport terminals are inspired by Vietnam’s national flower, a lotus. Image: Arup
While Vietnam might now be one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia, when the airport was proposed in 2006, it was in a very different landscape. The nation was near the beginning of its journey to economic growth.
Trade was increasing and poverty was in decline but residents worried the long-term debts loaded onto the government through loans for Long Thanh could set the nation back.
Today, while Vietnam is continuing its financial evolution, there are still concerns over the massive price-tag attached to this airport.
Does Vietnam need Long Thanh Airport?
In the first quarter of 2025, the country recorded the sixth-highest growth in international arrivals worldwide – that’s a massive 30% rise from the same period in 2024 and ranks Vietnam as top-dog in the Asia-Pacific area.
When you couple that with Boeing’s prediction for a tripling of air traffic to the region, it’s clear there’s travel demand.
The glaring problem is that there are already some big airports in the region that are expanding from a position of strength and while it would be naive to suggest Long Thanh is being built based on anything but meticulous market research, it does feel like a gamble.
However, the people of Vietnam can take comfort in the expansion approach. Long Thanh is being developed in stages, allowing the government to monitor capacity and passenger demand with each phase of work and after all, every great airport started somewhere.
So who’s going to win the race to become Southeast Asia’s next mega-airport?
The safe money would say Changi. It’s already the region’s kingpin and will likely finish its redevelopment long before Long Thanh ever reaches its full potential but given what we know about Southeast Asia’s rapid growth, who’s to say the region could only host one successful mega-hub?
It could go on to become renowned as the world’s centre of aviation and while Long Thanh may not win the race to become its forerunner, don’t discount its potential to become one of the world’s next airport giants.
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