The concrete frame of Minories residential building has finally reached topping out. The 16th floor of the building was poured in the second week of January. Eleven levels of precast stairs have been installed on site with the rest to follow in the next two weeks. Scaffolding will rise from February with the facade scheduled to commence installation in  May 2019.
The forward and backward stepping of the concrete frame allows for the maximum in development area while minimising overlooking and overshadowing of adjacent spaces.

Folkestone and Hythe Council planning committee voted in favour of a motion to grant ACME's reserved matters application for Plot B, a sub-phase of Phase 1, part of the consented mixed-use development in Folkestone seafront and harbour.
Plot B buildings will include 60 apartments ranging from 1 to 4 beds and a lower, sea-facing volume made up of 24 townhouses and duplexes. A communal garden on the podium roof will be directly accessible from the private gardens and from the bookend cores. The podium will house car and cycle parking, private storage units and communal plant space.
The main facade will be clad with crushed recycled glass aggregates, a contemporary take on the robust pebble dash finish, that will give the building a reflective quality in the changing light.

As part of the Lecture Series -Fusion Beton-, Friedrich Ludewig from ACME will speak on the 19th of December at Kassel University. The talk will focus on four recent projects located in Melbourne, Leeds, Leipzig and Chester, where ACME has tested how the plastic potential of concrete can be used in new and cost effective ways, using serial production and repetition to create spaces of textural and spatial complexity. 

ACME are at WAF. Friedrich Ludewig will be one of the judges for the WAF Superjury at the World Architecture Festival 2018. Last year ACME won the WAF Award for the best Commercial Project with Victoria Gate Leeds. We would be delighted to see you in Amsterdam on the 29th and 30th of November.

The Victoria Gate Carpark hosted Leeds Carpark Cycle Race, the first urban hill climb. 165 people of any age took part to the non-competitive race. Each sprint race consisted of two riders competing to climb the 12 level carpark, with each winner progressing to the next round. The charity race was fundraising for LandAid Yorkshire, working to end youth homelessness. Brief video of the action is here.

Catherine Hennessy will be one of the judges for the AJ Specification Awards. The Awards recognise completed projects that successfully combine products with design and fruitful collaborations between architects and product suppliers/manufacturers.
The judging panel includes James Davies from Paper House, Ana Moldavsky from Walters & Cohen and Andy McConachie from SimpsonHaugh.
The finalists will be announced in the November issue of AJ Specification and the awards ceremony will take place in Manchester in February 2019.

Our Oast House is getting closer to completion. Last week the scaffolding came down revealing the outer skin of the family home nestled among apple orchards in the Kent countryside. 
The highly energy-efficient house is a contemporary interpretation of traditional Kentish Oast houses.  However unlike the traditional form, the glazed clay roof tiles also form the vertical wall cladding, with a special hip tile dealing with the junction between the roof and the wall.  The tile glazing ranges from red through blue and yellow to give a gradation of colour from bottom to top.  A highly-insulated timber frame and panel system forms the structure, sitting on a blue engineering brick plinth. 
The five oasts are pulled apart to create openings to the garden, with triple-glazed windows and doors spanning the double-height volume. The triple-glazed windows have lead soaker reveals, and lead sills and heads.

The SAB concrete frame has reached level 4. The concrete will be activated with cast-in cooling pipes, visible on the formwork tables before the concrete is poured. The emerging two wings of the building are organized around four open staircases, allowing for a fully glazed perimeter with views into the Forum and streets beyond.

Friedrich Ludewig is one of the judges for the Rising Stars 2018 organised by RIBA Journal.
The awards seek to reward the most gifted young architects and designers of the year, looking for evidence of original thinking, leadership, collaboration and hard graft. Results will be announced in the November RIBA Journal.

Over the last years, Swansea Council has spent considerable resource redefining Swansea as a city of education, sustainable energy and digital technology. ACME have worked with the Council since 2015 on a new masterplan for the centre of Swansea.
The first phase of Swansea Central which is now under way will create new sight lines and pedestrian routes from the city centre to the beaches of Swansea Bay. The new bridge, a major new park and the Concert Arena are major public investments, complemented by residential uses and parking spaces in Phase 1. Future phases of Swansea Central will be able to grow and evolve around them.

SAB construction is continuing apace, with the ground floor finally emerging from scaffolding. The six meter tall level will include reception areas, a conference center, auditorium and restaurants. Recesses have been cast into the concrete where walls will be installed in the coming month. All concrete slabs will remain exposed in the final building, and all cooling and lighting has been cast into the concrete. 

SAB construction of the auditorium on concrete has commenced.  
The auditorium is positioned in the North-East corner and its steep rake rises from ground to first floor opening views from the 260 seats into the public space beyond. The double curvature of the seating bowl has required a high level of precision carpentry to achieve exposed concrete quality for the future foyer below.

ACME has received unanimous planning approval for a new timber pavilion in  Stratford. The building will act as a focal point for the central space of the International Quarter development. It will mark the transition from the dense urban fabric of the International Quarter to the more open landscape context of the river Lea, the Aquatics, the future East Bank and the Elizabeth Park.

We designed the adjacent Olympic Bridges over 12 years ago, very much with a future legacy in mind, and we’re delighted to be back all those years later to contribute to the legacy of the games and create a small building to anchor the public space of the International Quarter and provide a place for events, for celebrations and to pause and watch the world go by.

The pavilion will house a visitor centre with a cafe, restaurants over two floors and a public rooftop terrace with amazing views over the Bridge towards the park and London Stadium. The public realm will extend from the square to the roof, generating a number of lookout points and sitting places from which to enjoy the views.
We have been working with Lendlease for some time to develop innovative timber structures, and we are delighted that this pavilion will be the first timber structure developed with them to receive planning.

Our multi-storey car park in Leeds Victoria has been shortlisted as one of 10 projects for the World's coolest car park 2018. Voting is open until 8th of July.

Robina Market won the Queensland Architecture Awards for Commercial Building of the year 2018.  The award was created by the Australian Institute of Architects with the aim of promoting good architecture in Australia and internationally.

The judges singled out the contribution that Robina Market makes to unify Robina Town Centre, to open it to the outside and create a space embracing the surrounding open landscape, and to transform a previously utilitarian space into a new, unique destination for locals and tourists.

The awards ceremony will take place in November.

As part of the Negroni Talks series hosted at Ombra during the London Festival of Architecture, Friedrich Ludewig will be among the speakers of the talk 'Ending the architecture export' on the 25th of June.

The event organised by Fourthspace provides a ‘freespace’ for an open discussion around architecture and the role it plays in shifting the identity of places, spaces and groups.

Together with Paul Finch, Emilia Terragni and Vicky Richardson, Friedrich will discuss how the London design landscape will adapt post-Brexit and how we can make the best of unexpected circumstances.

We are currently working on a number of large scale projects involving commercial urban indoor farming. So before we unleash ACME Salad on everyone else, we thought we should try it on ourselves.
We have completed our first Vertical Hydroponic Urban Farm in our London office. Utilizing a brass shelving designed for this purpose, we have installed three different hydroponic systems; NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) channel systems for growing herbs such as Basil and Mint, DWC (Deep Water Cultivation) Systems for growing lettuces, and trays for growing Microgreens and Edible Flowers. The plants are grown under a variety of LED grow lights, timed to emit light throughout the day.
We are now growing 20 varieties of salads and herbs for our office lunches.At the same time, we are monitoring the energy and water usage to better understand efficiency and to evaluate quality of produce versus energy input.

On the 17th of June, ACME will take part in the London to Brighton bike ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation, the heart charity and the largest independent funder of cardiovascular research. Our team of eight talented archicyclists will ride 54 mile to raise money that will help to undertake pioneering research into many different heart conditions, their diagnosis and treatment. We are grateful for any support of the riders and the cause, all money raised will go directly to the British Heart Foundation.

www.justgiving.com/fundraising/acme

The first of our 280 spun concrete columns have arrived at our Leipzig Construction site. Some of the columns support the Bank HQ, while the majority will define the public Forum. Manufactured by Europoles, the majority of the columns are 21m tall, with widths of 40cm, 60cm and 120cm, depending on their function and place. Each columns is individually positioned by the tower cranes and fixed into position with pre-installed base plates.

Against strong international competition, Watermark WestQuay has won two Prix Versailles in Paris, for Best Shopping Centre Europe and for Best Shopping Centre Worldwide. The ceremony was held on May 15th at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. The jury included the president of UIA Thomas Vonier and a number of renowned architects, among them Manuelle Gautrand, Wang Shu and Ma Yansong.

As part of the JUNG architecture talks series, Friedrich Ludewig will speak on the 17th of May in the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie designed by James Stirling. The event is part of a lecture series running since 2006 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The event will start at 18:30 and is accessible upon registration. See you there!

Marsa Plaza, our new public space for Al Mouj in Oman had its grand public opening on 11th of April. 
His Excellency Sayyid Badr bin Hamed Al Busaidi, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a number of dignitaries came to open the new public square to music and fireworks.
Located at the intersection between the main boulevard and the marina promenade, the Plaza forms the public heart of Al Mouj, the award winning new urban development that is expanding the Muscat coastal strip towards the airport. Shaded by a series of canopy inspired by the patterns of traditional Omani architecture, the Plaza is a  gathering space for residents, a leisure destination for visitors and a performance arena for events.
 The canopies and trees provide shading from the sun and the plaza terraces towards the marina, opening views out to sea and forming a number of benches inviting occupation . The water feature at the centre of the Plaza has quickly turned the space into a family play destination, and regular concerts and performances will take place on the main stage in the weekends.

The Leeds Victoria Gate Carpark has won the British Parking Awards 2018. The site-specific award recognises outstanding car park design built around UK.
The Leeds Carpark is located in the eastern part of Leeds City Centre, replacing a brutalist 1960s police station by a busy roundabout. 
The façade reinterprets the Victoria Leeds diagrid motive into an open performative skin, providing natural ventilation and daylight while producing a recognizable identity. 
Anodised aluminium fins produce an interplay of light and shadow that appears as a diagonal grid pattern when seen from afar.

Swansea City Council announced the signing of a deal with the global leader in live entertainment, the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG), to run Swansea Arena, with construction set to begin late on this year.
As part of phase one of the £1.3bn Swansea Bay City Deal, the arena designed by ACME for City and County of Swansea is on schedule to throw open its doors to the public in 2020.  
The arena form is a fluid arrangement of bifurcating curves, shaped by the spatial requirements of the internal programme, each peel representing a specific use that sits above the glazed plinth. The digital facade consists of a pleated anodized aluminium facade with integrated LED lighting to broadcast events and performances to the adjacent digital square and the wider city.

 ACME are delighted to work with Hammerson on the vision for a new quarter in Dublin’s north inner city. Often referred to as the Carlton site, the prime six acres stretches from Upper O’Connell Street to Parnell Street to Moore Street & Henry Street.  The location has a historic connection with the Easter Rising of 1916, as a place of refuge for the Irish leadership, the location of the final council of war and the subsequent capitulation of the Irish Volunteers. The site is at the heart of the commercial and retail centre of Dublin, and the last remnant of the Dublin Market Quarter. 
We look forward to developing the vision for a vibrant mixed-use quarter, to integrate and enhance the existing street market, to create new squares and routes through the site, to provide an appropriate setting for the key buildings from 1916 and to bring Upper O’Connell Street back to life as a major European boulevard.

Construction works are progressing for the new bank headquarter for SAB in Leipzig. Due to the high ground water table, extensive piling works were needed to create a watertight box extending 40m below ground. This has allowed for the demolition of the 3m thick Robotron foundations that had previously remained stuck in the ground below the water. With all demolition now completed, works have finally commenced on the new basement slab, and the cores are scheduled to rise in February.

The first room has been completed for the new Canopy by Hilton hotel in Minories, City of London. The hotel is a part refurbishment, part new construction, reusing an old office building that is not deep enough for contemporary office uses.
Through material and patterns, the hotel seeks to evoke the vernacular and sometimes forgotten history of the Whitechapel context. The interior design of the rooms seeks to stay true to the late modernist origins of the existing concrete frame, exposing the waffle slab ceiling where possible in the rooms. Furniture and wardrobe are designed as lightweight steel and timber structures, temporarily inserted between floors and ceilings. Carpets, cushions and wall fabrics are inspired by the woven legacy of the Huguenots, by reworking an abstracted floral pattern of Anna Maria Garthwaite (1728-1763). In conjunction with Dais Contemporary, ACME have commissioned a number of local artist to create miniature editions for each room and the common spaces. 

The Oast House in Kent is finally taking shape, with the structural framing of the five oasts visible for the first time. The house has been designed as a 21st century interpretation of the formal language of Kentish Oast Houses. The five towers are slightly separated from each other, creating inward-looking spaces in each tower and a more outward-looking central space opening out into the surrounding apple orchard. Each of the towers houses private functions such as bathrooms, bedrooms and service spaces, and framed window openings allow for framed views over the adjacent apple orchards. 

Watermark Westquay and Victoria Gate are among the fifteen finalists of the ICSC European Shopping Centers Awards as Best Refurbishment and Expansions and Best New Development. Since 1975, the International Council of Shopping Centers has presented awards for the most outstanding new and refurbished shopping centers in Europe. The jury will announce the winners at the ICSC Conference on the 26th of April 2018 in Barcelona.
 

Victoria Gate has won the award for Best New Shopping Centre in Cannes at MAPIC, the international property conference. We are delighted that the scheme is recognized in this way by the professional development community. 

Catherine Hennesy from ACME will speak on the 15th of November at The Chester conference, an exploration of how Conservation Areas can add value to the quality of life in our cities, towns and villages.
Chester is famous for its historic Rows- recessed walkways set above street level which line the two main routes through the city. These streets subdivide the centre into quarters, one of which is the site of ACME’s masterplan to rejuvenate Chester's ailing retail offer and the Market. The new Northgate scheme will feature a sequence of new public spaces, a new department store, hotel, market and cinema, to bring renewed footfall and activity to this ancient heritage quarter.

Tickets available here.
http://bit.ly/2xPmz4e

Victoria Gate and WestQuay Watermark have been shortlisted in the Mixed Use and Retail categories at the AJ Architecture Awards 2017. The AJ Architecture Awards seeks to highlight the very best UK projects across a range of key categories – from community schemes and cultural projects to tall buildings and workplace designs. Winners will be revealed on the 7th December.

Victoria Gate and WestQuay Watermark have been shortlisted in the Re:new and Re:lax categories at the Revo Gold Awards. The Gold Awards celebrate the best examples of development and innovation in the retail property and placemaking sector. The winners will be announced on the 6th of December.

Over the last 6 month, extensive earthworks have taken place to dredge Folkestone Harbour and raise the land levels behind the beach as future flood defence. These works have now been completed and a new boardwalk has been installed at the crest of the raised shingle beach. The 800m long wooden walkway connects the Lower Leas Coastal Park and the Folkestone Harbour Arm. 
The boardwalk is made from 1960s railway sleepers, made from extremely tough tropical hardwood that is saltwater resistant. The shape of the boardwalk corresponds to the Folkestone Harbour masterplan which will be built behind it. 
During the Folkestone Triennial (2 September – 5 November 2017), several artworks are accessible from the new path, including Out of Tune by A K Dolven, a holiday home by Richard Woods, Jelly Mound Pavilion by Lubaina Himid and Casa Anacaona by Sol Calero. 

We are delighted that Robina Town Centre has won the Queensland Retail Property of The Year for 2017, and Excellence awards for marketing and food retailing.

The expansion of Robina Town Centre seeks expands the previously indoor nature of the Town Centre to create a new civic square. The Kitchens, the new fresh food market works with local artisans and food producers to shape a new destination that combines fresh food shopping, cooking, tasting, learning and eating.

Coles Mall, Central Market and South Mall are unified by an undulating timber clad roof creating shaded apertures. A series of south-facing notches, like gill slits, brings daylight inside with minimal solar gain. Inside, the volume evokes a reversed nave, defined by the regular ribs and layers of locally sourced honey-coloured timber.

Victoria Gate and Eastland have been shortlisted for best Shopping and Mixed use buildings at the WAF Awards 2017.
Eastland Melbourne is a new town square surrounded by commercial units and restaurants, a new David Jones department store, the public realm and a new central library as part of the extension of the existing Eastland Centre. 
The Victoria Gate Arcade is designed as a two storey, twin arcade with a complex roofscape continuing the grand history of Leeds’ 19th century arcades.

We are delighted that Victoria Gate has been shortlisted for three categories, Urban Regeneration,Commercial Building and Innovative Use of Brick and Clay Products at the Brick Awards 2017.
The exterior of new arcade building evolves from the 19th and 20th century language of the surrounding Blomfield and Victorian brick and terracotta buildings in Leeds, and consists of sculpturally pleated brick elevations, changing in rhythm and scale to respond to the context. The bricks have been specially selected with Ketley to ensure that they will weather well when exposed to Yorkshire rain, and have been pointed off site as prefabricated units with concrete backing by Thorp.
The winner projects will be announced on the 9th of November 2017.

Construction works have started in Muscat/ Oman for ACME's new Harbour Plaza. The Wave is a new urban quarter of Muscat, expanding the city along the coastal strip towards the airport, with a new Marina and Harbour at its heart. The Plaza is designed as an auditorium type event space for the new quarter and a place to enjoy view from the new restaurants out to the boats and the sea. The first steel structure have been installed to set out the position of the eleven canopies, which will create shade and shelter across much of the plaza.

ThinkCity was founded in 2009 as a subsidiary of Khazanah, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, and has been working as a key placemaking agency involved in the regeneration and urban planning of a number of projects in Penang, KL and other parts of Malaysia. ACME, Lacaton & Vassal and Kayoko Ota have been invited as part of the current lecture series to speak on the subject of creativity in construction. Friedrich Ludewig will explore as part of his talk the contemporary use of regional references and materials and construction methods in our buildings. Please join us on Monday 24th of July at the main lecture theatre of Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (PAM) - the Malaysian Institute of Architects. 

Our Minories construction site in Aldgate, within the financial heart of the City of London, has started construction. Following detailed planning consent for an office building, a 360-bed Hilton hotel and an apartment tower, and following demolition of existing buildings last year, McAleer and Rush have completed the shared basement under the entirety of the site. The basement will serve all three new buildings and provide a route to the back of house areas of each typology whilst keeping disturbances for residents in the area to an absolute minimum. A landscaped park will be created over the basement to provide green grass, allotments, shade and playgrounds, open to all residents and workers of the local neighborhood.

In the coming weeks, Leeds Victoria will get two new rooftop restaurants with great views over Kirkgate. A spiral stair and oak lined atrium connects them to the new arcade, lit from above by a sculptural ceiling. The computer generated dome design was built with 18,000 pieces of stained oak. The offset in three dimensions between the oak pieces allows daylight through and creates sensations of levity and movement, despite the weight of 4 tonnes. The continuity of oak on walls, balustrade and the domes seeks to unify walls and ceiling, to evoke the visual sensation of a tall and mysterious contemporary grotto.

The mock-up for our footbridge over the Berlin-Spandauer Schifffahrtskanal has arrived on site. This footbridge will connect the newly developed Europacity area to the east, across the canal where the Berlin Wall separated Berlin from 1961 to 1989.

The 2m long mock-up gives a first  impression of the steel work for the laser cut balustrade which forms the main structural beam of the bridge. The degree of openings of the perforation reflects the gradient of forces within the structural balustrade, more solid to the abutments, more open to its centre.

At last night's awards ceremony in Hull, RIBA Yorkshire awarded Victoria Gate the award for Best Building of the Year and an RIBA Regional award. It is a great honour to see a decade of work from many people at Hammerson, ACME, McAlpine and the wider design team recognized in this way. 

The RIBA Yorkshire awards follows on from recent success of Victoria Gate at Mipim in Cannes where it won the award for Best International Shopping Centre and from the Irish Concrete Society where it won the award for Best International Project.

We look forward to the next award ceremony in Melbourne, Australia, where our Library and Public Square in Eastland has been shortlisted for the Victorian Architecture Awards by the Australian Institute of Architects.

Victoria Gate Arcades has won the award for best building of 2016 at the Leeds Architecture Awards. We are delighted that the building has been recognised in this way to acknowledge all the work from a large group of dedicated people across Leeds City Council, Hammerson, Waterman Structures, Hoare Lea, Gardiner & Theobald, ACME and others. 

Construction works have started on site in Leipzig for our new headquarter building for SAB. Concrete guide walls have been installed to set out the position of the diaphragm walls around the site, making the extent of the 100 m x 100 m site visible for the first time. Contaminated groundwater is expected 3m below ground level, so a watertight wall around the site has to be installed before any further works can commence.

Following the soft launch of the Watermark Westquay in December last year most of the restaurants and the bowling alley at Watermark are now open. This Friday, 10th February, the project reaches another major milestone with the opening of the ten screen Cinema. From it's elevated position the foyer offers fantastic new views to the waterfront and the plaza below, between the curving stainless steel tubes of the facade.

More than 12 years have passed since the inception of the project, we can't wait to see this last key piece of the Watermark puzzle in place and the people of Southampton enjoying a new corner of the city and a stroll through the new square along the medieval city walls.