Soho Properties’ CEO Sharif El-Gamal commissioned French architect Jean Nouvel to design the Islam Museum on a site the company purchased on 49-51 Park Place for $10.7 million, Archinect reports.
According to Curbed New York, industry professionals had previously expressed doubt that El-Gamal would find it easy to find people to collaborate with, especially that a “certain faction of people remains vocally opposed to the idea of a Muslim anything being built in Lower Manhattan.”
Nouvel, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect educated at Paris’ École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, has had extensive experience designing using cues from Islamic World art, such as the critically acclaimed Arab World Institute in Paris and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Related Stories
| Oct 5, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Silver Winner: 220 Water Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.
The recent rehabilitation of 220 Water Street transforms it from a vacant manufacturing facility to a 134-unit luxury apartment building in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood.
| Oct 5, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Silver Winner: Residences at the John Marshall, Richmond, Va.
In April 2010, the Building Team of Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio, Stanley D. Lindsey & Associates, Leppard Johnson & Associates, and Choate Interior Construction restored the 16-story, 310,537-sf building into the Residences at the John Marshall, a new mixed-use facility offering apartments, street-level retail, a catering kitchen, and two restored ballrooms.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Silver Winner: Allen Theatre at PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland, Ohio
The $30 million project resulted in three new theatres in the existing 81,500-sf space and a 44,000-sf contiguous addition: the Allen Theatre, the Second Stage, and the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Gold Winner: Wake Forest Biotech Place, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Reconstruction centered on Building 91.1, a historic (1937) five-story former machine shop, with its distinctive façade of glass blocks, many of which were damaged. The Building Team repointed, relocated, or replaced 65,869 glass blocks.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Gold Winner: Rice Fergus Miller Office & Studio, Bremerton, Wash.
Rice Fergus Miller bought a vacant and derelict Sears Auto and converted the 30,000 gsf space into the most energy-efficient commercial building in the Pacific Northwest on a construction budget of around $100/sf.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Award Platinum Winner: Building 1500, Naval Air Station Pensacola Pensacola, Fla.
The Building Team, led by local firms Caldwell Associates Architects and Greenhut Construction, had to tackle several difficult problems to make the historic building meet current Defense Department standards having to do with anti-terrorism, force protection, blast-proofing, and progressive collapse.
| Oct 4, 2012
2012 Reconstruction Awards Platinum Winner: City Hall, New York, N.Y.
New York's City Hall last received a major renovation nearly a century ago. Four years ago, a Building Team led by construction manager Hill International took on the monumental task of restoring City Hall for another couple of hundred years of active service.
| Oct 4, 2012
BD+C's 29th Annual Reconstruction Awards
Presenting 11 projects that represent the best efforts of distinguished Building Teams in historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and renovation and addition projects.
| Oct 4, 2012
Electronic power tool builds project transparency
As building projects have grown in scope and complexity, so, too, has the task of document management. A new online tool is helping Building Teams meet that demand.
| Oct 4, 2012
HMC Architects in service to the community
HMC employees give back to their communities through toy drives and fundraising efforts like CANstruction, which benefits local food banks.