There is less than a week to go until the Wallpaper* Design Awards and every day during the run-up to the awards ceremony we are presenting the shortlist for the ten International Judges' Awards, exclusively on Wallpaper.com. Day 6 sees the contenders for best new public building. All winners will be announced on the 11th of January.
Foster and Partners
Hearst Tower, New York City
Foster and Partners reinvented the New York skyscraper with this bravura design for the Hearst Media Group. The Hearst Tower sits atop William Randolph Hearst’s original 1928 art deco HQ. At 597ft tall, with giant glass triangles contained within a steel frame, the striking urban silhouette is unlike any tower before or since, a low-energy design with one of the city’s most spectacular lobbies.
www.hearstcorp.com/tower, www.fosterandpartners.com
Jean Nouvel
Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis
Perhaps Jean Nouvel’s most successful project for a decade,
the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis stands on the banks of the Mississippi. Its three performance spaces are contained within
the ‘twilight blue’ steel-clad collection of geometric shapes, crowned by three LED signs and signalled by the 178ft-long cantilevered Endless Bridge, jutting out towards the river.
www.guthrietheater.org, www.jeannouvel.com
Renzo Piano
Morgan Library extension, New York City
Working with New York firm Beyer Blinder Belle, the Renzo Piano Building Workshop masterfully inserted contemporary structures into a historic context. The expansion, which includes new underground space and three glass and steel pavilions around
a central court, adds an auditorium, a striking new entrance and
an exquisite reading room, doubling the library’s floor space.
www.themorgan.org, www.rpbw.com
Saunders & Wilhelmsen
Aurland Lookout, Norway
Few public buildings have created such a splash with so little. Saunders and Wilhelmsen, now practising independently, built on the steep hillside 600m above the Sogn og Fjordane. Jutting out 30m and appearing as a single curve of wood, the platform’s pièce de résistance is its glass wall at the end, effectively dissolving the lookout from beneath your feet.
www.saunders.no, www.tommie-wilhelmsen.no
Zaha Hadid
Phaeno Museum, Wolfsburg
The Phaeno Museum in Wolfsburg is an unashamedly attention-seeking structure; a new science museum designed to draw visitors to this industrial German city. Hadid has gone all-out for drama
and dynamism. Her concrete structure makes the weighty material appear on the point of lift-off, and the main body of the building seems to hover, alien-like, above its nondescript surroundings.
www.phaeno.com, www.zaha-hadid.com
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