Building Trends at Work

The TWA Hotel, New York, New York

Our annual look at the top new designs and concepts begins with Beyer Blinder Belle and Lubrano Ciavarra Architects TWA Hotel at JFK airport.

In 1962 Eero Saarinen designed the landmark TWA Flight Center at New York's JFK airport. The original airport terminal was designed and built in the early days of commercial air travel and came to symbolize the burgeoning mode of transportation and it's technological wonders. Saarinen worked to capture the miracle of flight in it's fluid design and wing-like roof. His idea was to build a monument of both the airline and of aviation itself.

Over fifty years later, the architects at Beyer Blinder Belle and Lubrano Ciavarra have restored the terminal and repurposed it as a first-class hotel, complete with restaurants, bars and retail outlets. Composed of two wings, the hotel reflects the original design and contains 512 guest rooms.

Building Trends at Home

Adaptive Reuse

Conventional construction techniques and materials are turned on their ears when there's a surplus of something unusual and practical. Shipping containers are plentiful in the United States because it's actually cheaper to make new ones than to ship empty ones across the world. So strong reinforced stackable structures of standard sizes have become available for construction of temporary and permanent structures at a fraction of the cost of new traditional materials.

Here's a look at some uses of shipping containers in housing. The first is a true luxury home located in Dallas, Texas. The home, called PV14 is made of 14 shipping containers that have been outfitted with modern amenities and high-end design touches. The design and layout disguises the origins of the materials , but may mitigate some of the cost advantages of more basic use of shipping container architecture.

An apartment building in Washington, D.C., looks a little more like Adaptive Reuse – the conversion of abandoned spaces and materials into something living and useful has become an important trend that lives beyond gutting old factories to make loft apartments. Check out this Youtube video on a project in Buffalo .

Third Places

Building Trends for "Third Places": Community-minded people spend most of their waking hours at work and most of their sleeping hours at home. In between is the need for a “third place” where leisure, social interaction and community growth take place.

Throughout the 20th century a great deal of effort went into closed off suburban design where community was replaced by automatic garage doors, privacy fences and buttoned up homes with central air conditioning and color TV to provide all the comforts and entertainment formerly found among the community.

The movement towards new urbanism has changed all that. A third place can be a business such as a coffee house, bar or book store. It can also be a public park or promenade. Any informal public gathering space counts as a third place and the same good architectural principles apply to third spaces as you would find in more formal settings.

Medium.com takes a look at the origin of “Third Places”, why they matter and why, even in today’s digital age, humans seek in-person interaction and fellowship within purpose-built spaces.

Industry: Going Green

Since at least the 1970s, environmental awareness has been a part of every large-scale building project. But never before has a trend towards green factories been advanced as a cost-savings venture rather than an added expense.

As humans, we've been exploiting the earth for her natural resources for centuries and until recently, it's seemed as if those resources were unlimited. However we're finding that essential resources, energy resources, and pollution are impacting every aspect of our daily lives.

The growth and development of our communities has a large impact on our natural environment. The manufacturing, design, construction and operation of the buildings in which we live and work are responsible for the consumption of many of our natural resources.

Thankfully, an increasing number of architects, engineers and builders are realizing our need to reduce our carbon footprint and dependence upon natural resources, which is evident from the momentum "green" construction is having globally.