At street level the floors are shifted backwards and forwards to create green terraces and canopies facing the park. In the middle of the silhouette, where the tower turns residential, the floor plates slide out in a spiraling movement, creating terraces and outdoor space for residents. In its upper section the tower returns to a simple stack of optimized floor plates, completing its twist to rejoin the orientation of the floors below. These inhabitable movements bring human scale from street level into the skyline, embodying the unique character of Frankfurt.

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.

Umbracle in Catalan means something that provides shade. Rather than creating a building plus a pergola, BIG proposes to do both in one single move for the new building of Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST). By setting the building back at ground level, BIG creates a single, generous, sheltered public plaza at the foot of BIST. On the back, it gently retracts to preserve urban continuity.

When asked to design an apartment block next to a parking garage, BIG saw an opportunity to explore a new form of symbiotic urbanism. Rather than placing a traditional slab of apartments next to a block of cars, BIG proposed mixing the two and exploiting their differences as a strength rather than a weakness: cars need large floor plates and good proximity to the street, while houses want sunlight and views. As a result, the parking is turned into a podium for the building&#;s homes that form a stepping landscape of houses with gardens.

BIG converted the former s Transitlager warehouse with an &#;opposite twin&#;: both the old and the new are the same size, born out of the same structural grid, but assuming different massing, geometry, and scales of use. One is straight, the other zigzagged; one is singular, the other serial; one is open and flexible, the other bespoke; public contrasts private while vibrant urban spaces complement private gardens.