4 International Civic-Minded Projects
Around the globe, civic-minded projects anticipate the day we can put social distancing behind us.
Firm: Moguang Studio
Project: Youth Activity Center, Beijing
Standout: The former clothing-factory complex—12 buildings comprising 68,000 square feet—maintains its original two-courtyard layout, emphasizing the structures’ interrelationships with elevated metal walkways, corridors, and small transitional squares that link activity and accommodations zones into a three-dimensional, continuous landscape experience.
Firm: Lehrer Architects
Project: Chandler Boulevard Bridge Home Village,
Los Angeles
Standout: In just 13 weeks, builders deployed 39 prefab shelters, each measuring 64 square feet, along an oddly shaped infill lot on the city’s Orange Line busway, converting land previously deemed unfit for development into a colorful, safe, and healthy temporary refuge en route to permanent housing for the city’s homeless.
Firm: Teeple Architects
Project: Stanley A. Milner
Library, Edmonton, Alberta
Standout: Visitors to the 230,000-square-foot main branch, built in 1967, were formerly greeted by dimly lit, low-ceilinged spaces that discouraged exploration, but now, since its renovation, experience a soaring atrium, abundant glazing, sightlines between reading and tech rooms, and a two-story interactive display that bring the facility into the 21st century.
Firm: Taller Ken
Project: Parque 02, San José, Costa Rica
Standout: Local and global
design students collaborated to transform a 1/2-acre of disused parkland into a cheery playground by installing grass-covered mounds planted with a forest of painted bamboo sticks, the latest in the annual design-build initiative by the firm, a Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise based in New York, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.
