Open Form Architecture Blog

Vi­deo by Brooklyn Di­gi­tal Foundry

Here again, we ea­sily dis­tin­guish REX’s ope­ra­tion to comb, con­so­li­date, and iden­tify a set of pro­gram­ma­tic clus­ters de­sig­ned with dif­fe­rent pur­po­ses: a 5,000 m² con­tem­po­rary art cen­tre; 3,400 m² of stu­dios, glass shop, and ga­llery for the Uni­ver­sity of Louisville’s Mas­ter of Fine Arts pro­gram; a 250-room Wes­tin Ho­tel; 98 lu­xury con­do­mi­niums; 117 lofts; 25,000 m² of of­fice space on 13 floors; 1,860 m² of res­tau­rants and shops; un­der­ground par­king ga­rage for 800 cars.

The fi­nal re­sult is a 214-meter-tall, 62-story skysc­ra­per, dis­pla­ying another dis­tinc­tive and ico­nic fi­gure which par­ti­ci­pa­tes in what Koolhaas desc­ri­bes as: “an archi­pe­lago of ci­ties in the city”. One might see a co­llec­tion of tra­di­tio­nal skysc­ra­pers pla­ced on top of each other above a tra­di­tio­nal ur­ban pat­tern, but in rea­lity, even if the Mu­seum Plaza doesn’t re­vise the su­per­po­si­tion of floors in the ty­pi­cal Ame­ri­can high-rise –in the same way as the Seattle Li­brary– this pro­ject is a beau­ti­ful and in­ven­tive va­ria­tion on the clas­sic skysc­ra­per; a new vi­sion of skysc­ra­per. The Mu­seum Plaza will doubt­less re­de­fine the Loui­siana sky­line and cer­tainly change the way archi­tects, ur­ba­nists, and en­gi­neers shall think about tomorrow’s new high-rises and the pro­cess of urbanization.