The Broadcasting Place is a mixed-use development near the center of the city of Leeds. Conceived as a partnership between public and private, for the group Downing and Leeds Metropolitan University, which delivers approximately 10,200 m2 of new offices and teaching spaces along with 240 student residences in an iconic building of 23 floors. A new Baptist Church completes the package at its northern end.
The buildings are designed as solid forms of a landscape that is drawn on the rich heritage of the Yorkshire Geological and sculpture. The lower buildings reach a height of three contiguous block of flats, adjacent to the buildings of five floors. Tallest buildings ranging from 8 floors to six floors before reaching the highest point in complex with 23 floors. The strong roof surface was reflected in the mass of buildings that have a triangular shaped corners and projections sculptures. Through these solid forms, the windows were designed as the flow of water cascading over a rock formation. This design seeks to be reinforced by the choice of cor-ten steel as a solid material, sculptural and temporal, built as a front generated by a display of rain. Read the rest of this entry »
The headquarters of the Department of Health Basque ruled was designed by architectural firm coll Barreu. The structure was completed in 2008, is one of the most outstanding examples of progressive architecture in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
Today’s urban scene of the week (er, scene of the month?) brings us to 567 Exchange Street, an alluringly spare, rustic loft building at the banks of Buffalo’s most historic and longest-enduring rail line, the Buffalo & Attica, first built in 1843 and later subsumed into the New York Central rail empire that connected the city to New York, Chicago, and the vast reaches of the continent beyond.
The four-story structure was not constructed at this site in 1900 for no reason. The Buffalo Lounge Co., for which the building was erected, chose this precise location because of the geography of the Hydraulics at the intersection of several rail lines, including the Erie and New York Central. The Buffalo Lounge Co. was directly linked to both lines via a rail bed that once existed behind the building. Read the rest of this entry »
Mayor Byron Brown today unveiled an effort to overhaul Buffalo’s antiquated zoning code, an initiative that may prove particularly relevant to future development efforts in the Hydraulics. Brian Reilly, the Mayor’s Commissioner of Economic Development, announced the City’s plans in an editorial in today’s Buffalo News. Read the rest of this entry »
TheHydraulics.com will feature an “urban scene of the week” of Hydraulics sights and scenes on a roughly weekly basis – weekly, meaning “whenever the inspiration and the camera intersect.”
This week, the highlight is the fence pier of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building, built in 1904 and demolished in 1950, with the exception of this one lone artifact. The fence pier, on Swan Street, is all that remains of Wright’s masterpiece, what was considered by architecture critic Henry-Russel Hitchcock to be “the most important building ever demolished in the 20th century.” Read the rest of this entry »
