A continuous public path stretches from street level to the penthouses and allows people to bike all the way from the ground floor to the top, moving alongside townhouses with gardens, winding through the urban perimeter block. Two sloping green roofs totaling , m are strategically placed to reduce the urban heat island effect as well as providing the visual identity to the project and tying it back to the adjacent farmlands towards the south.
Located along Independence Avenue SW from th to th street, the roughly -acre site includes the Castle, the Arts and Industries Building, the Freer Gallery, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – all individually listed or eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places – and the mostly subterranean Quadrangle Building which is home to the National Museum of African Art, the Sackler Gallery of Art and the S. Dillon Ripley Center.
Through the Artemis program a collaboration with commercial and international partners to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before NASA has signaled that the Moon will be the first off-Earth site for sustainable surface exploration. ICON, a developer of advanced construction technologies such as robotics, software, and building materials, was awarded a government Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract, including funding from NASA, to begin research and development of a space-based construction system that could support future exploration of the Moon. From landing pads to habitats, this collective effort between BIG, ICON, SEArch+, and NASA is driven by the belief that humanity can and should become a spacefaring civilization.
The site is bound by four key traffic corridors, the character of which informs the public space programming around the Philharmonic. Along the Western side, Bubenská passes the site and continues across the Vltava on the Hlávkův Bridge. Here, several modes of mobility are accommodated within the public realm. Along the North, the tram line runs adjacent to the new neighborhood development. As a car-free zone, this corridor becomes an important pedestrian and soft mobility connection to the surrounding neighborhoods. The new ecological corridor extending down from Stromovka Royal Game Reserve passes by the Eastern side of the site, creating a lush green buffer between the Philharmonic and the train line.
In , BIG participated in an open design competition for a new Water Culture House in Odense, Denmarks third largest city. The traditional method of designing swimming pools often starts with the creation of a container box from which a hole is excavated to form the water basin. For the creation of a ‘aqua center it seemed more appropriate to look holistically at the pool program.