A new 125,000-square-foot science complex to be built outside Cairo will combine research, learning and museum facilities in a future-focused structure designed by competition-winning architects.

Architects Weston Williamson+Partners beat Zaha Hadid Architects to secure the role of lead designer on this forward-thinking Science City complex. Their plans include a planetarium, observation tower, workshop rooms and conference facilities in addition to spaces dedicated to scientific research and development.

The competition brief called for a future-oriented, state-of-the-art interactive science museum for the new century, and “a set of buildings and spaces that must be inspiring on the outside and motivating and exciting on the inside to visitors and employees alike” – it attracted nearly 500 submissions from architects around the world.

The circular footprint is filled with umbrella-shaped protrusions serving to define spaces and paths while providing shelter from the Egyptian heat. While currently located in a semi-remote location, the design is intended to form part of a larger regional master plan for redefining and expanding Egypt’s capital city.

Of their victory, the architects said: “We are proud to have won. Needless to say that Egypt has a unique cultural heritage, but we were also attracted by the ambition of the project, clearly expressed through the brief. We look forward to developing the design and creating something worthy for Egypt’s future generations.”

The BOK Tower in Tulsa, Oklahoma, looks uncannily like the vanished Twin Towers of the New York City skyline and this is neither accidental nor coincidental. This skyscraper was constructed just a few years after its distant cousins in NYC, was designed by the same architect as the World Trade Center buildings, and explicitly intended to be a replica.

Indeed, it looks nearly identical, from its sleek vertical facade slits right down to its bi-level lobby, marble walls, hanging textiles and other interior design elements. It is a close copy in nearly every significant way, except … it is just half the size.

It all started with CEO John Williams, who was so impressed by the Twin Towers in New York that he hired the same architect, Minoru Yamasaki, to build four quarter-scale replicas of the towers in Tulsa. This quatruple-tower schemed faced a cost issue: four sets of elevators for four quarter-sized structures.

As the story goes, Williams then took the architectural model, grabbed one of the towers, put it on top of another, and decided to go with one half-height copy instead. The result is in essence a one-quarter copy: the building is half the height of one twinned tower, or a fourth of the combined height (image below by Caleb Long).

Initially called One Williams Center, the single quarter-footprint, half-as-high replica stands 667 feet tall and was the tallest building not just in Tulsa but in all of the Plains States when it was built. It was completed in 1976, just three years after the World Trade Center towers in New York.

One might be left wondering, however: why does the tower not get more recognition as a close relation of two iconic, beloved and now-fallen buildings in the Big Apple? For one thing, it is a rather minimalist Modernist skyscraper, much like many others found in cities around the United States (and the world) from the mid-Century period.

Perhaps most importantly, though, it lacks the most defining characteristic of its cousins, an essential quality, as noted by French philosopher Baudrillard, of ‘double-ness’ that truly defined the Twin Towers. In many ways, that characteristic of ‘being twinned’ is what made them internationally iconic, standing out against more decorative (but singular) structures in the skyline.

Today, One World Trade Center stands as a symbol of unity, looking almost like two intersected towers rotated around a central axis then fused. This single structure manages, in a way, to capture the twinned aspect of the former towers, now memorialized on the pavement below.

Designed to dispel fears surrounding Muslim culture, practices and traditions, a new wide-open skyscraper design for New York City invites people of all faiths to enter, through both programmatic functions and a clear facade.

The schematic proposal by local firm Buro Koray Duman was commissioned by the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), aiming to promote progressive change and social justice. The Society hopes to show another side of Islam to the city and the world.

The idea is, in part, to highlight cultural aspects of Islam as apart from the strictly religious (and particularly: radicalized) associations, distinguishing between peoples and religions.

The building is structured to be as welcoming and open as possible, consisting of horizontal floors stacked to fit a vertical urban landscape.

From Dezeen: “His studio’s schematic design for the centre features a 100,000-square-foot (9,290 square metres) building that takes its cue from historic Islamic cultural complexes, called kulliyes.”

“In these complexes, which are laid out horizontally, low-slung buildings with varying functions are organised around a centrally placed mosque.”

A central volume contains an auditorium, library, prayer room, restaurant and offices, connected by walkways that span public and private spaces around the perimeter.

This design may or may not be realized; the idea of building Islam-centered architecture near the site of the 9/11 attacks has been contentious for well over a decade.

Supporters hope, however, that structure (conceptual or actual) can show another dimension to even the wariest members of the public, at least opening the door to interfaith and intercultural dialogue.

Aiming to turn Cupertino into the green center of Silicon Valley, this expansive green roof design rolls over 30 acres of central urban real estate, capping a massive mixed-use redevelopment project. The resulting street-crossing expanse is set to include miles of walking trails, vineyards, orchards, playgrounds and an amphitheater.

Developers from Sand Hill Property Company assembled the constituent real estate, including a partially abandoned Vallco Shopping Malls, from separate owners.

Their proposal to create nearly 1,000 apartments and over a million square feet of office space was developed in part by architect Rafael Viñoly with the assistance of OLIN Landscape Architects.

In the buildings below, a cinema, gym, shopping center and ice rink are slated for construction, revitalizing the downtown area and integrating with outdoor elements above.

“The Hills at Vallco features an unprecedented 30-acre community park and nature preserve, which will not only be the largest community park in Cupertino, but also the largest green roof in the world” according to the developers behind the scheme.

The plan has been pitched to the city as a way to secure its position as a hub for technology and innovation in California. The project is currently entering a public review phase. Critics note that feasibility may be an issue, citing the architect’s record with a London skyscraper known for blowing over pedestrians and lighting cars on fire.

A long-standing design proposal from Foster + Partners has been scrapped by developers in favor of a new scheme from BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) that presents a different face to viewers depending on their approach or view within the city, rejecting conventional skyscraper typology and cultivating visual transitions between neighborhoods on all sides.

As the last project slated to be built on the World Trade Center site, the would-be 2 WTC skyscraper is a critical piece of the Lower Manhattan landscape, but its future tenants wanted something that stood apart from the more straightforward tall buildings associated with finance and Wall Street.

The prior scheme, shown above, featured four connected verticals, each terminating in an angled plane at the top, essentially a tower with slots centrally located along each face. The new scheme, endorsed by occupants including 21st Century Fox and News Corp and shown below, intentionally shies away from the skyscraper aesthetic and creates space for greenery on a series of platforms created by recessed sections of structure.

Its facade shows off a slim and modest structure when viewed from the memorial site on one side below but creates a stacked-box effect when seen from adjacent lower-rise parts of the city above like Tribeca: “From Tribeca, it will appear like a vertical village of singular buildings each tailored to their individual activities stacked on top of each other, forming parks and plazas in the sky.”

By keeping larger boxes at the base and similar overall square footage (nearly 3,000,000 square feet), the building also is designed to accommodate sizable studio spaces for the aforementioned media companies. Lower levels will be occupied by these giants while upper floors will be rented out to smaller commercial clients. Set alongside One, Three and Four World Trade Center, this structure will stand apart, its broken-down scale visually bridging the gap between the southern tip of the island and the rest of the city to the north.