Contractors are nearing the end of a six-year-long journey to renovate and revitalize the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., with a new facade and updated building systems.
Although terra cotta tiles have been used in buildings around the world for centuries, the team behind the new Orange County Museum of Art outside of Los Angeles upped the ante of what’s possible.
Four years after the team broke ground on the 12,000-sq-ft Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in lower Manhattan to replace its beloved predecessor destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it was not clear if work would finish.
Faced with limited space and the advanced deterioration of a more than 50-year-old church and student center that stood next to the Oklahoma State University campus, the St. John University Parish decided to demolish the existing space to make way for a new facility.
Planning began in 2016 on this $155-million renovation, with construction kicking off in October 2019. The 133,000-sq-ft space blends contemporary design with elements of the original 1937 Art Deco structure, which will serve as an entrance to the museum.
This building’s two-wing design reflects the classic planes it houses. The central fuselage area contains a freestanding cross-laminated-timber staircase in the form of a doubly curved spiral.
This project introduced a modular construction approach that accelerated the construction timeline and set a precedent for the owner’s future projects.
As an anchor and long-term tenant at the 80-acre Orchard Park mixed-use development, the new 15,000-sq-ft Meridian Library features a modern farmhouse aesthetic to reflect the city’s agricultural history as well as supplementary modern planar forms supporting the development’s overall design theme.