NBWW BLOG…

The company’s plan would add 128 new rooms to the existing 176-room beachfront hotel. by: Observer Staff Ocean Properties Hotels Resorts & Affiliates has filed more detailed plans with Sarasota officials to revamp and expand its Sandcastle Hotel on Lido Key Beach. The company’s plan would add 128 new rooms to the existing 176-room beachfront hotel, along with 20,000 square feet of meeting and restaurant space. Plans call for the existing 64-year-old hotel to be razed and replaced with a pair of towers, rising nine and 10 floors, respectively. Ocean Properties also is seeking to rezone the six-acre property and eliminate a pair of existing driveways, according to a site plan that has been filed. The company, which bought the former Helmsley hotel in February 2014 for $27.4 million,...

Emma Tucker Researchers at software brand Adobe have developed a prototype tool that allows users to mix colours on screen as if they were working in real paint. The tool is based on research into the ways artists work in traditional media – and the shortcomings they experience with digital counterparts. The Adobe Research team set out to create a user interface that could replicate the variations of a physical palette, with the ability to mix colours and compare combinations of shades. “Choosing and composing colours is a critical part of any painting process,” the Adobe Research team of Maria Shugrina, Jingwan Lu and Stephen Diverdi wrote in a paper on the subject. “We conducted a pilot study that found artists interact with their palette several times a minute,...

Emma Tucker A Kickstarter campaign is raising money to rerelease a set of influential manuals that offer precise guides to designing for human comfort. The Humanscale books – originals of which are now out of print and highly sought after – were first published in 1974, with successive editions following in the early 1980s. They collate the ergonomic reference charts and data selectors created by American industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss and his studio, Henry Dreyfuss Associates (HDA) – an essential reference for designers and architects of the time. The charts lay out the measurements of the human body, and how it relates to its surrounding space. They are intended as guides to designing everything from seating and wheelchairs to vehicles and helmets, and represent men, women and...

“Brick by Brick”, an exhibition of works by LEGO® Certified Professional Adam Reed Tucker, is on view at Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. The exhibition features a collection of more than a dozen giant LEGO®-built structures of engineering feats, including a 60-foot-long Golden Gate Bridge, the International Space Station, St. Louis Gateway Arch, Hoover Dam, and the Roman Colosseum among others by Tucker. It also features futuristic LEGO structures, constructed by global architecture firms in response the issues that Detroit will face in the future including rising populations, climate change, water scarcity and more. Participating firms include SOM of Chicago, Adjaye Associates of London, Kengo Kuma and Associates of Tokyo, and others. Tucker is one of 14 LEGO® Certified...

Parkline MiamiCentral is being built with a robotic parking garage that makes use of car elevators, accessible only by valet, according to the architect. (from NBWW) The projects includes 816 rental apartment units in twin towers, with 30 and 33 floors above the MiamiCentral project. Residents will have live directly above 180,000 square feet of retail space, including a food hall. Publix will be located less than a block away at 3 MiamiCentral. To commute to work, residents will be able to take Metromover, Metrorail, Tri-Rail or Brightline trains – all of which are inside or attached to the complex. The first phase of the project also includes 300,000 square feet of office, so some residents will be able to live and work without leaving MiamiCentral. architect’s description:  ...

Veronica Brezina   It looks like a futuristic high-speed tube train is gaining steam, according to SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk’s Twitter account where he wrote: “Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.” The SpaceX CEO and founder suggested the Hyperloop could create a 29-minute D.C.-to-New York trip from city center to city center, South Florida Business Journal’s sister paper the Washington Business Journal reported. Further, the approval for it to connect to the East Coast could be a stepping stone for Hyperloop One’s tube train eventually to come to Florida. Read the Full Story HERE >>>> Source: Elon Musk’s Hyperloop bullet train may come to East Coast – South Florida...

Calum Lindsay A plan to build self-sufficient floating cities outside of national borders features in the latest movie from our Dezeen x MINI Living video series. The Seasteading Institute is a non-profit organisation founded by political economic theorist Patri Friedman and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel. The organisation aims to build “start-up countries” at sea, known as “seasteads”, that offer greater freedom for innovation in science, technology and politics. According to its website, the institute’s goal is to develop “open spaces for experimenting with new societies” in order to “allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for how to live together”. The company claims that building floating cities will...

Fly through Coconut Grove by Josh Baumgard Completed last summer, Grove at Grand Bay has altered the skyline in Coconut Grove for the better with its unique twisting 20-story towers along South Bayshore Drive. The Bjarke Ingels Group-designed buildings were the first residential towers built in the Grove in over a decade and were sold out upon completion last summer. Local architects, NBWW (Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Assoc.), were the Architects of Record on the project. See the video here >>>> Source: Dezeen Drone video showcases the new Grove at Grand Bay in Coconut Grove – Curbed Miami

With improved fire safety and proven superior energy performance, tall timber is growing in popularity, but can construction codes keep up? By Ian Spula Mass timber has been on the move in Europe and Canada for some time, where the intersection of energy savings and renewable resources propels the industry forward. Though the technology has found a market in places like Bergen, Norway; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Stockholm, perhaps the greatest expression of confidence in engineered timber to date is the new 18-story dormitory at the University of British Columbia—the tallest mass timber structure in the world. And yet, mass timber projects are scarce in the United States. While there has been considerable growth in the domestic production of mass timber products like...

Developer: Lincoln Property Company & Brightline Architect of Record: NBWW Design Architect: SOM Developed by Lincoln Property Company & Brightline, ParkLine (Overbuild OB2 and OB3) are two residential high rise buildings designed to be atop of MiamiCentral Brightline passenger train station. With an approximate area of 1,065,000 square feet, the combined number of dwelling units between OB2 with 30 stories, and OB3 with 33 stories, is 816 dwelling units. The amenities deck, a podium shared by the two towers, is equipped with two pools, a running track, outdoor and indoor exercise areas, grill areas, pet park, yoga lawn, landscape areas and other miscellaneous uses. The towers are independently accessed from ground level lobbies. Passenger elevators bypass the train station...

By Jordan Greenblatt The Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) is returning for its ninth edition. The nation’s largest film festival dedicated to the subject of design, architecture, and urbanism is touring around the world in cities near and far with an extensive program of films, events, and panel discussions. The ninth annual festival will be passing through Seoul, South Korea (July 27-October 29), New Orleans (August 24-27), Montana (September 23-24), Chicago (September 26-27), and ending at its home base at New York City’s Cinépolis Chelsea (November 1-5). A full schedule of the 2017 program is yet to be released, but below is a sneak peek at a few feature films that will be presented, followed by the tour dates and locations of ADFF. Read the Full Story HERE...

Amanda Kolson Hurley In her new book, Sarah Williams Goldhagen presents scientific evidence for why some buildings delight us and others—too many of them—disappoint. Sarah Williams Goldhagen was the architecture critic for The New Republic for many years, a role she combined with teaching at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and elsewhere. She is an expert on the work of Louis Kahn, one of the 20th century’s greatest architects, known for the weighty, mystical Modernism of buildings like the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, and the Bangladeshi parliament in Dhaka. Several years ago, Goldhagen became interested in new research on how our brains register the environments around us. Dipping into writing from several fields—psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and...