Kohn Pedersen Fox has revealed its design for Lotte Super Tower 123 in Seoul, South Korea. Image: Courtesy KPF. Extra Large Image

Minneapolis · 2009.1026
Los Angeles, California-based AECOM, an international firm providing professional technical and management support services, has acquired Ellerbe Becket, a 100-year-old architecture, interiors, and engineering firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ellerbe Becket contributes 450 professionals in seven offices in the United States and the Middle East.

Miami · 2009.1022
Herzog & de Meuron has revealed its design for the new Miami Art Museum building in downtown Miami, Florida. The Basel, Switzerland-based architects designed the building to achieve LEED Silver certification.

The three-story, 120,000-square-foot (11,000-square-meter) building will include 32,000 square feet (3,000 square meters) of gallery space, plus a library, auditorium, classrooms, workshop space, and a cafe and store. The museum will stand upon an elevated platform and below a canopy, both of which will extend far beyond the museum's walls, creating a shaded veranda and plazas. Transparency on the first and third levels of the galleries will reveal the activities within.

Scheduled to open in 2013, the museum will anchor a new 29-acre (12-hectare) park overlooking Biscayne Bay. The park will also house the future home of the Miami Science Museum designed by Nicholas Grimshaw.

Seoul · 2009.1021
Kohn Pedersen Fox has completed the conceptual design for Lotte Super Tower 123 (rendered above), a 123-story mixed-use tower in Seoul, South Korea. The 555-meter- (1,821-foot-) tall building is currently on track to be the second-tallest building in the world, after the Burj Dubai. LEED Silver certification is targeted.

The overall form of the tower will be a slender tapered cone, with an exterior of light-toned glass accented by a filigree of metal. Located near the Han River, the building will house retail on its first six floors, offices on floors 7 thru 60, 25 floors of residential, and a high-end hotel on floors 86 to 119, topped by a four-story civic realm including an observation deck.

Excavation is nearly complete for the project. Completion is slated for 2014. The architectural team is led by KPF design principal James von Klemperer. The owner and developer of the project is Lotte Group of South Korea.

Washington, D.C. · 2009.1020
Todd W. Taylor, RCDD, NTS, OSP, has joined the special systems design group of architecture and engineering firm RTKL Associates Inc. as a principal specializing in healthcare. Based in the firm's Washington, D.C., office, Taylor will be involved in the design and installation of structured cabling systems to support low voltage systems in hospitals across the United States and in the Middle East.

Taylor has more than 25 years of information technology experience, and spent the last eight years focusing on the healthcare industry. He joins RTKL from Nashville, Tennessee-based Smith Seckman Reid, where he he served as technology director.

Warsaw · 2009.1016
The new British Embassy in Warsaw has officially opened. Designed by London firm Tony Fretton Architects, whose Fuglsang Kunstmuseum was shortlisted for the 2009 Stirling Prize, the 4,300-square-meter (46,300-square-foot) building is set in its own grounds, facing onto a park in an area of the city devoted to embassies.

The glass elevations function as the outer skin of a double facade, which provides substantial thermal insulation in winter. The outer layer is delineated by pale bronze aluminum mullions and mirror glass. Behind this is a facade of windows set between solid piers and spandrels in a modulated composition of a similar palette. At the top of the cavity formed by the inner and outer skins, mechanical louvers can be opened to cool the building in summer.

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