Latest news with #urbanDesign
Arabian Business
7 days ago
- Business
- Arabian Business
Mandarin Oriental to open Dubai hotel and branded residences in Wasl Tower by October 2025
Mandarin Oriental is expanding its footprint in Dubai with the launch of its second property, Mandarin Oriental Downtown, Dubai, set to open in October 2025. Located within Wasl Tower, a striking new addition to the Sheikh Zayed Road skyline, the hotel will feature 259 rooms and suites and 224 private residences. A rooftop helipad will provide seamless VIP arrivals. The tower itself is set to become a design landmark, boasting the region's tallest ceramic façade and a distinctive twisting form. Mandarin Oriental Downtown, Dubai Its innovative architectural fins are engineered to optimise airflow for natural cooling, and advanced energy-efficient technologies will set a new benchmark for sustainable urban design in Dubai. Guests will be able to indulge in The Spa at Mandarin Oriental Downtown, Dubai, a two-floor wellness sanctuary blending ancient healing practices with cutting-edge treatments. The holistic approach will be anchored by four pillars: Nourishment In-room wellness Beauty Intelligent movement The hotel will also offer ten dining concepts and bars, spanning French, Chinese, Greek, and Italian cuisine, alongside vibrant nightlife venues designed to make the hotel a gastronomic destination in its own right. With its unique blend of sophisticated design, exceptional service, sustainable innovation, and culinary excellence, Mandarin Oriental Downtown, is set to redefine luxury hospitality in the city. The property will also unveil Dubai's first-ever Mandarin Oriental branded residences, available for lease. Combining the comforts of a private home with the hotel's legendary service and world-class facilities.
Fast Company
30-06-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Urban design job listings are up 102%. This might be why
Fast Compan y's new analysis of job listings across several design disciplines puts a number on it: job postings for urban designers are up 102% compared to the previous year. This boom may reflect the increasing relevance of the kind of work urban designers do, which is to create functioning communities and regions. Spanning architecture, city planning, landscape architecture, and urban development, urban design takes in the whole picture of a city and looks for ways that interventions at all scales can improve the system. 'It's really a field of integration,' says Tyler Patrick, chair of the planning and urban design department at Sasaki, a large multidisciplinary design firm. Patrick says that Sasaki has been hiring more and more urban designers every year, and including their input on nearly every project. 'It's a field that continues to add a lot of value.'
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Solar power: Kangaroo Point Bridge leads winners as Queensland architecture awards put spotlight on sustainability
The newest bridge spanning the Brisbane River – the longest cable-stayed pedestrian bridge in the country – has taken out top honours in the 2025 Australian Institute of Architects Queensland awards. A week after Sydney's new network of city metro stations collected architecture's most prestigious prize in New South Wales, Brisbane's Kangaroo Point Bridge was lauded at Friday night's award ceremony as another example of the significant value of state governments investing in architecture to realise major infrastructure projects that raise the bar beyond the realm of mere functionality. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email The Blight Rayner Architecture-designed bridge, in collaboration with Dissing + Weitling Concept, was awarded the Queensland Architecture Medallion, with judges hailing the project as a transformative urban infrastructure endeavour that enhanced Brisbane's connectivity and public realm. The 460-metre bridge linking Kangaroo Point to the CBD, completed in December last year, also collected the Karl Langer award for urban design and an award for sustainable architecture. Designed for pedestrian, cycle and e-scooter use, the bridge is solar powered and shaded along its entire length. It has seated resting nooks that double as viewing areas and integrated cafes and bars. 'Kangaroo Point is a case study for urban design excellence in Brisbane, demonstrating how investment in key public infrastructure can enhance mobility and liveability in rapidly growing cities,' the judges' citation said. Another major infrastructure project that collected multiple awards was Caboolture Hospital's new clinical services building, part of a $399.5m redevelopment by the state government. The Jacobs-designed facility, housing new emergency, intensive care, rehabilitation and palliative care units, won the FDG Stanley award for public architecture, the social impact prize and a commendation for interior design. Jacobs' incorporation of First Nations artworks and its particular attention to creating a welcoming, dignified and non-intimidating atmosphere in the palliative care unit gave the building a 'deeply human' quality, the judges said. 'It sends a clear message to the Caboolture community: You matter.' Two other design project collected multiple awards: Matso's Sunshine Coast Brewery, designed by Five Mile Radius and Knight Wilson Architects, won the award for commercial architecture, the EmAGN project award and a sustainability commendation, while James Cook University's new Engineering & Innovation Place, designed by KIRK, i4 Architecture and Charles Wright Architects, was recognised in the educational architecture, sustainable design and interior architecture categories. One of Australia's most decorated living architects, Glenn Murcutt, was recognised for his co-design with Brian Steenyk of a modestly proportioned three-bedroom home on a sloping site in the Brisbane hinterland. With its steel and timber construction and its large northern sliding doors opening out to treetop views and distant mountains, Gold Creek was described by judges as 'a masterful tribute to the architectural philosophy of Glenn Murcutt, embracing his principles of climate responsiveness, material honesty and environmental harmony'. Also in the residential category, Brisbane architect John Ellway won the Elina Mottram award for architectural renovation with his Niwa House, Niwa being the Japanese word for garden or courtyard. Despite its inner city location, Ellway has created the illusion of a manicured Japanese garden segueing into the interiors of the reimagined timber cottage, which had been virtually untouched for more than a century. 'The journey through the house honours its historic bones while gradually revealing a series of terraced spaces that lead, like a cinematic sequence, to a framed, almost 'wide-screen' view of the garden,' the judges said. In the residential award for multiple housing, three terraces designed for three sisters and their extended families, built on Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) took out top honours. Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The Blok Modular design, in collaboration with Vokes and Peters, was praised for its careful response to a fragile coastal environment and a creative response to Australia's notorious 'missing middle' in the housing market. The Fortitude Music Hall project gives the impression the judges may have mis-categorised the finished product, placing it in the commercial architecture category instead of heritage. Yet the 3,000-seat 'gritty art deco' inspired auditorium in Brunswick Street Mall is brand new. Brisbane architect firm Arkhefield, accepting a brief that read 'high end grunge or just a bit above, but not a hotel' and 'retro New York, rock chic but not rock and roll' paid homage to the original Festival Hall, which opened in 1910 and closed its doors for good in 2003 It is a 'metronome for artistic expression in Brisbane', the judges concluded. New sports and educational facilities in Queensland schools and universities attracted a number of design awards. In addition to the multi-award winning James Cook University engineering building, the St Marcellin Centre at Marist College Ashgrove (Phorm Architecture + Design), St Aidan's Anglican Girls Sports Performance Centre (also Blight Rayner, which won the Queensland medallion for the Kangaroo Point Bridge) and a new soundshell at the University of Queensland, were all recognised. The Stephen de Jersey-designed sports precinct for Townsville's Cathedral School won a award for education architecture, praised for its capacity to turn practical needs into an inspiring piece or architecture. The solar energy harvested from the roof of the new facility services the air conditioning in nearby classrooms and the bore water collected irrigates the school's playing fields. The pavilion is configured to block harsh eastern and western sun and capture prevailing breezes from the north and south. 'Rather than overpowering its setting, the structure enhaces it, setting a new standard for thoughtful economical design in the region,' the judges said.
Fast Company
02-06-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
As Trump boosts fossil fuels, Cleveland's mayor is making climate action personal. It's working
In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Justin Bibb was living in a tight, one-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. He couldn't open his windows because his home was an old office building converted to residential units—not exactly conducive to physical and mental well-being in the middle of a global crisis. So he sought refuge elsewhere: a large green space, down near the lakefront, where he could stroll. 'Unfortunately,' Bibb said, 'that's not the case for many of our residents in the city of Cleveland.' A native of Cleveland, Bibb was elected the 58th mayor of the city in 2021. Immediately after taking office, he took inspiration from the '15-minute city' concept of urban design, an idea that envisions people reaching their daily necessities—work, grocery stores, pharmacies—within 15 minutes by walking, biking, or taking public transit. That reduces dependence on cars, and also slashes carbon emissions and air pollution. In Cleveland, Bibb's goal is to put all residents within a 10-minute walk of a green space by the year 2045, by converting abandoned lots to parks and other efforts. Cleveland is far from alone in its quest to adapt to a warming climate. As American cities have grown in size and population and gotten hotter, they—not the federal government—have become crucibles for climate action: Cities are electrifying their public transportation, forcing builders to make structures more energy efficient, and encouraging rooftop solar. Together with ambitious state governments, hundreds of cities large and small are pursuing climate action plans—documents that lay out how they will reduce emissions and adapt to extreme weather—with or without support from the feds. Cleveland's plan, for instance, calls for all its commercial and residential buildings to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. For local leaders, climate action has grown all the more urgent since the Trump administration has been boosting fossil fuels and threatening to sue states to roll back environmental regulations. Last month, Republicans in the House passed a budget bill that would end nearly all the clean energy tax credits from the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. 'Because Donald Trump is in the White House again, it's going to be up to mayors and governors to really enact and sustain the momentum around addressing climate change at the local level,' said Bibb, who formerly chaired Climate Mayors, a bipartisan group of nearly 350 mayors. City leaders can move much faster than federal agencies, and are more in-tune with what their people actually want, experts said. 'They're on the ground and they're hearing from their residents every day, so they have a really good sense of what the priorities are,' said Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors fighting climate change. 'You see climate action really grounded in the types of things that are going to help people.' Shifting from a reliance on fossil fuels to clean energy isn't just about reducing a city's carbon emissions, but about creating jobs and saving money—a tangible argument that mayors can make to their people. Bibb said a pilot program in Cleveland that helped low- to moderate-income households get access to free solar panels ended up reducing their utility bills by 60%. The biggest concern for Americans right now isn't climate change, Bibb added. 'It's the cost of living, and so we have to marry these two things together,' he said. 'I think mayors are in a very unique position to do that.' To further reduce costs and emissions, cities like Seattle and Washington, D.C. are scrambling to better insulate structures, especially affordable housing, by installing double-paned windows and better insulation. In Boston last year, the city government started an Equitable Emissions Investment Fund, which awards money for projects that make buildings more efficient or add solar panels to their roofs. 'We are in a climate where energy efficiency remains the number one thing that we can do,' said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, commissioner of the environment and Green New Deal director in the Boston government. 'And there are so many other comfort and health benefits from being in an efficient, all-electric environment.' To that end, cities are deploying loads of heat pumps, hyper-efficient appliances that warm and cool a space. New York City, for instance, is spending $70 million to install 30,000 of the appliances in its public housing. The ultimate goal is to have as many heat pumps as possible running in energy-efficient homes—along with replacing gas stoves with induction ranges—and drawing electricity from renewables. Metropolises like Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are creating new green spaces, which reduce urban temperatures and soak up rainwater to prevent flooding. A park is a prime example of 'multisolving': one intervention that fixes a bunch of problems at once. Another is deploying electric vehicle chargers in underserved neighborhoods, as Cleveland is doing, and making their use free for residents. This encourages the adoption of those vehicles, which reduces carbon emissions and air pollution. That, in turn, improves public health in those neighborhoods, which tend to have a higher burden of pollution than richer areas. Elizabeth Sawin, director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, said that these efforts will be more important than ever as the Trump administration cuts funding for health programs. 'If health care for poor children is going to be depleted—with, say, Medicaid under threat—cities can't totally fix that,' Sawin said. 'But if they can get cleaner air in cities, they can at least have fewer kids who are struggling from asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses.' All this work—building parks, installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings—creates jobs, both within a city and in surrounding rural areas. Construction workers commute in, while urban farms tap rural growers for their expertise. And as a city gets more of its power from renewables, it can benefit counties far away: The largest solar facility east of the Mississippi River just came online in downstate Illinois, providing so much electricity to Chicago that the city's 400 municipal buildings now run entirely on renewable power. 'The economic benefits and the jobs aren't just necessarily accruing to the cities—which might be seen as big blue cities,' Johnson said. 'They're buying their electric school buses from factories in West Virginia, and they're building solar and wind projects in rural areas.' So cities aren't just preparing themselves for a warmer future, but helping accelerate a transition to renewables and spreading economic benefits across the American landscape. 'We as elected officials have to do a better job of articulating how this important part of public policy is connected to the everyday lived experience,' Bibb said. 'Unfortunately, my party has done a bad job of that. But I think as mayors, we are well positioned to make that case at the local level.'
BBC News
01-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Tulips bollards in Westminster to 'protect cyclists and bring joy'
Colourful tulip-shaped bollards have sprung up in central London in a bid to separate traffic from cyclists while adding a splash of bollards made from recycled plastic have been installed to line bike lanes in Sussex Gardens, by the poppies at the Tower of London and the sunflower field scene in the Tour de France, it is hoped they will be more visible to drivers."The idea was to protect cyclists, but also to try and bring joy to the street," said Luke Tozer, director at Pitman Tozer Architects, which helped create the wands. "We road tested it, we had trucks run over it, we had cyclists hitting into them, to check that they would survive in the urban environment." Designer Alex Douglas said: "I started on this back in 2022, so it's really nice to finally see it on the streets."A ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by the newly appointed Lord Mayor of Westminster, Paul Dimoldenberg, the BBC's Jeremy Vine and social media sensation Sigrid, the deaf cat who explores London by bike, and her owner Travis Nelson.
