The Swiss architects first submitted controversial plans to overhaul the Grade II-listed terminus in the City of London in May 2023 on behalf of Sellar and Network Rail. Now the AJ understands the practice is drawing up a rival scheme, separate to its original proposal, which is effectively a third but as yet unseen design for the station and a development above it. ACME, on behalf of Network Rail, submitted its own proposals in April after Network Rail appointed the Shoreditch practice to draw up plans last year. This put the brakes on Herzog & de Meuron’s 2023 scheme, which had been updated with amendments in 2024 in response to criticism over heritage harm – though the application was never withdrawn and remains live on the City of London’s planning portal.Advertisement According to sources, Herzog & de Meuron – still with Sellar’s backing – is actively working on a fresh scheme with ‘much less demolition’, which could rival ACME’s plans as well as its own 2023 scheme. SAVE Britain’s Heritage, which the AJ understands is among several bodies to have been consulted on the ‘third’ scheme for Liverpool Street station, told the AJ: ‘There are now potentially three live schemes for the same site. ‘However, what is interesting about Sellar’s latest proposal is that it involves much less demolition of the station. Network Rail and their current favoured architect, ACME, would do well to take note.’ Historic England, which strongly opposed the original Herzog & de Meuron scheme, is understood to have been shown the Swiss architects’ latest proposals in March. The heritage body’s official response to the ACME scheme has not yet been made public. A spokesperson for the government’s heritage watchdog told the AJ of the emerging third proposal: ‘We have seen a revised scheme designed by Herzog & de Meuron, but it has not been submitted as a formal proposal and we have not provided advice on it.’Advertisement The C20 Society added that it ‘can confirm that it has been in pre-app consultation with both ACME and Herzog & de Meuron regarding the various schemes in development for Liverpool Street Station’. The body, which campaigns to protect 20th century buildings, added: ‘We will provide a full statement once all plans have been scrutinised.’ In November, the Tate Modern architects appeared to be off the job following the appointment by Network Rail of Shoreditch-based ACME, which came up with an alternative scheme featuring slightly smaller office towers as part of the planned above-station development. The ACME plan for Liverpool Street includes an above-station office development that would rise to 18 storeys, with balcony spaces on the 10th to 17th storeys and outdoor garden terraces from the 14th to 17th storeys. These proposals are marginally shorter than Herzog & de Meuron’s original 15 and 21-storey designs. However, despite these changes, ACME and Network Rail’s scheme has recently seen criticism by the Victorian Society, which told the AJ last month that it would object to the ACME scheme, claiming the above-station development ‘would be hugely damaging to Liverpool Street Station and the wider historic environment of the City of London’. In September last year, Sellar confirmed that that Herzog & de Meuron was working on an amended proposal, as the AJ revealed at the time. However, it is unclear if the latest, third option is related to that work. While both applications introduce more escalators down to platform level and accessibility improvements, the Herzog & de Meuron scheme proved controversial because of planned changes to the inside of the Grade II*-listed former Great Eastern Hotel building above the concourse, which would have seen the hotel relocate to new-build elements. The Swiss architect’s original proposals would have also removed much of the 1992 additions to the concourse by British Rail’s last chief architect, Nick Derbyshire – which had not been included in the original 1975 listing for Liverpool Street station. Historic England listed that part of the station in late 2022 after a first consultation on the Herzog & de Meuron plans. Network Rail told the AJ that it remains ‘fully committed’ to the ACME plan, which was validated only last month. Herzog & de Meuron referred the AJ to Sellar for comment. Sellar declined to comment. ACME has been approached for comment.

The transformation of Hangzhou’s old steelworks into a park is a tribute to China’s industrial past in a city of the future The congressional hearing about Chinese AI engine DeepSeek held in the US this April has propelled Hangzhou, the heart of China’s new digital economy, to the headlines. With companies such as DeepSeek, Unitree and Alibaba – whose payment app allowed me to get on the metro without needing to buy a ticket – headquartered in Hangzhou, China’s future in AI, robotics and automation is emanating from this city. Getting off the metro in the suburban area of Gongshu, the sun was shining on an old steelworks, overgrown with vines and flowers now that it is being transformed by Jiakun Architects and TLS Landscape Architecture into the Grand Canal Steelworks Park. The unfolding trade war might help to accelerate China’s journey into an automated future, leaving the world of factories behind, yet this new public space shows an impulse to commemorate the country’s economic history, and the forces that have shaped its contemporary built environment. Starting in Hangzhou and travelling more than 1,700km to Beijing, the Grand Canal is an engineering project built 2,500 years ago to connect the different regions of eastern China. The country’s geography means rivers flow from west to east: from higher elevations, culminating in the Himalayas, to the basin that is the country’s eastern seaboard. Historically, it was difficult to transport goods from mercantile centres in the south, including Hangzhou and Suzhou, to the political centre in Beijing up north. As a civil engineering project, the Grand Canal rivals the Great Wall, but if the Great Wall aims to protect China from the outside, the Grand Canal articulates Chinese commerce from the inside. The historic waterway has been an important conduit of economic and cultural exchange, enabling the movement of people and goods such as grain, silk, wine, salt and gravel across the country. It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014. The state‑owned enterprise collective was founded, and the physical facility of Hangzhou steelworks built, in the 1950s during the Great Leap Forward, when China strove for self‑sufficiency, and wended its way through the country’s economic trajectory: first the economic chaos of the 1960s, then the reforms and opening up in the 1980s. Steel remains an important industry today in China, home to more than half of the world’s production, but the listing of the Grand Canal enabled city leaders to move production to a new site and decommission the Hangzhou steelworks. External mandates, including entry into the World Trade Organization, the Beijing Olympics and UNESCO listings, have been instrumentalised in the country to pursue a range of internal interests, particularly economical and real estate ones.  In 2016, the factory was shut down in 150 days, in what the company describes as a ‘heroic’ effort, and the site attracted tourists of industrial ruins. In the competition brief, Hangzhou planners asked for ‘as much of the existing blast furnaces and buildings’ as possible to be preserved. When I arrived in China in 2008, Chinese cities were notorious for heritage demolition, but today urban planners and architects increasingly work to preserve historical buildings. Just like several industrial sites in Beijing and Shanghai have been transformed into major public and cultural spaces in the past decade, in the Yangtze River Delta – of which Hangzhou is a major hub – several industrial sites along the Grand Canal’s course are being given a new lease of life. Today, the three blast furnaces of Hangzhou steelworks remain, with the silhouettes of their smokestacks easily recognisable from a distance. The project preserves as much as possible of the aesthetics of a steel mill with none of the danger or dust, ready to welcome instead new community facilities and cultural programmes in a vast and restored piece of landscape. Situated in a former working‑class district that has been gentrifying and welcoming young families, the new park is becoming a popular venue for music festivals, flower viewing in springtime and year‑round picnics – when I visited, parents were teaching their children to ride a bicycle, and students from Zhejiang University, about a kilometre from the park, were having lunch on the grass. New programmes accommodated in the old coke oven and steel mills will include a series of exhibition halls and spaces welcoming a wide range of cultural and artistic workshops as well as events – the project’s first phase has just completed but tenant organisations have not yet moved in, and works are ongoing to the north of the park. On the day of my visit, a student art exhibition was on display near one of the furnaces, with works made from detritus from the site, including old packing containers. The rehabilitated buildings also provide a range of commercial units, where cafés, restaurants, shops, a bookshop, ice cream shop and a gym have already opened their doors to visitors.  Several structures were deemed structurally unsafe and required demolition, such as the old iron casting building. The architects proposed to partially reconstruct it on its original footprint; the much more open structure, built with reclaimed bricks, now houses a semi‑outdoor garden. Material choices evoke the site’s industrial past: weathered steel, exposed concrete and large expanses of glazing dominate the landscape. The widespread use of red, including in an elevated walkway that traverses the park – at times vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese torii gate in the space below – gives a warm and reassuring earthiness to the otherwise industrial colour palette. Elements selected by the designers underwent sanitisation and detoxification before being reused. The landscaping includes old machinery parts and boulders; recuperated steel panels are for instance inlaid into the paving while pipes for pouring molten steel have been turned into a fountain. The train tracks that once transported material continue to run through the site, providing paths in between the new patches of vegetation, planted with local grasses as well as Japanese maples, camphors and persimmon trees. As Jiawen Chen from TLS describes it, the aesthetic feels ‘wild, but not weedy or abandoned’. The landscape architects’ inspiration came from the site itself after the steelworks’ closure, she explains, once vegetation had begun to reclaim it. Contaminated soil was replaced with clean local soil – at a depth between 0.5 and 1.5 metres, in line with Chinese regulations. The removed soil was sent to specialised facilities for purification, while severely contaminated layers were sealed with concrete. TLS proposed phytoremediation (using plants to detoxify soil) in selected areas of the site ‘as a symbolic and educational gesture’, Chen explains, but ‘the client preferred to be cautious’. From the eastern end of the park, hiking trails lead to the mountain and its Buddhist temples. The old steel mill’s grounds fade seamlessly into the hills. Standing in what it is still a construction site, a sign suggests there will soon be a rowing centre here.  While Jiakun Architects and TLS have prioritised making the site palatable as a public space, the project also brings to life a history that many are likely to have forgotten. Throughout, the park incorporates different elements of China’s economic history, including the life of the Grand Canal and the industrial era. There is, for example, a Maoist steelworker painted on the mural of one of the cafés, as well as historical photographs and drawings of the steelworks peppering the site, framed and hung on the walls. The ambition might be in part to pay homage to steelworkers, but it is hard to imagine them visiting. Gongshu, like the other suburbs of Hangzhou, has seen rapid increases in its property prices.  The steelworks were built during the Maoist era, a time of ‘battling with earth, battling with heaven, battling with humanity’, to borrow Mao’s own words. Ordinary people melted down pots and pans to surpass the UK in steel production, and industry was seen as a sharp break from a traditional Chinese way of life, in which humans aspire to live in harmony with their environment. The priorities of the government today are more conservative, seeking to create a garden city to attract engineers and their families. Hangzhou has long represented the balmy and sophisticated life of China’s south, a land of rice and fish. To the west of the city, not far from the old steelworks, are the ecologically protected Xixi wetlands, and Hangzhou’s urban planning exemplifies the Chinese principle of 天人合一, or nature and humankind as one.  Today, Hangzhou is only 45 minutes from Shanghai by high‑speed train. The two cities feel like extensions of one another, an urban region of 100 million people. The creation of the Grand Canal Steelworks Park reflects the move away from heavy industry that Chinese cities such as Hangzhou are currently making, shifting towards a supposedly cleaner knowledge‑driven economy. Yet the preservation of the steelworks epitomises the sentimental attitude towards the site’s history and acts as a reminder that today’s middle classes are the children of yesterday’s steelworkers, drinking coffee and playing with their own children in grassy lawns next to shuttered blast furnaces.  The park’s second phase is already nearing completion, and the competition for the nearby Grand Canal Museum was won by Herzog & de Meuron in 2020 – the building is under construction, and should open at the end of this year. It is a district rich in history, but the city is resolutely turned towards the future.  2025-06-02 Reuben J Brown Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now

Some collaborations are unexpected in the best way. “Satellites”, a new exhibition conceived by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and celebrated Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima – is one of them. Presented by Prada with support from Fondazione Prada, the show landed at Prada Aoyama Tokyo with a simple but lofty goal: exploring how two creatives, from opposite sides of the world in different industries, overcome language barriers to connect over time, space, and shared imagination. When you arrive on the fifth floor of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed Prada Aoyama building, you’re not stepping into a typical gallery. Instead, you enter a meticulously staged, mid-century one-bedroom apartment, complete with a couch, bed, lamp, and rotary telephone – each seemingly pulled from another era, eerily lifelike and strangely timeless all at once. The space feels more like a movie set than an exhibition, setting the tone for what unfolds next. The exhibition is divided into two parts. In the first, Refn and Kojima appear on six retro-futuristic televisions reminiscent of small spaceships with exposed circuit boards, wires, and glowing components. Inside these sculptural screens, the two creatives engage in a slow, contemplative dialogue – one speaking in English, the other in Japanese. Their conversation drifts through themes like friendship, collaboration, technology, creativity, identity, and even mortality. The effect is intimate and reflective, inviting visitors to linger, listen, and interpret at their own pace. The second part of the installation unfolds in a nearby dressing room, where a cassette player sits surrounded by stacks of tapes. Each tape contains a remix of Refn and Kojima’s conversation, blending sound bites, cinematic scores, and alternate versions of their dialogue translated into various languages using AI. Visitors are encouraged to sift through the tapes, piecing together their own version of the exchange. At its core, “Satellites” is an exploration of connection between people, mediums, and realities. As the worlds of film and video gamess continue to converge, they hint at a future shared digital dimension – one that reimagines how we create, communicate, and experience together. It’s a poetic look at how creativity and technology might ultimately bring us closer, no matter how far apart we begin. Nicolas Winding Refn and Hideo Kojima \\\ Photo: Daisuke Takeda “Satellites” is on view until August 25, 2025 at Prada Aoyama Tokyo every day from 11am – 8pm. For more information, visit prada.com. Photography by Yasuhiro Takagi courtesy of Prada.

Marcel Breuer’s HUD headquarters may be in jeopardy, but folks who adore the the Hungarian emigre’s most famous New York work now have good reason to celebrate. The former Whitney Museum of American Art, completed by Marcel Breuer and Associates in 1966, was unanimously designated an individual and interior landmark today by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). Now, both the former Whitney Museum of American Art’s exterior and its interior are protected under the Landmarks Law—a major preservation win. The LPC also recently designated Paul Rudolph’s Modulightor Building Apartment Duplex an interior landmark. The LPC recognized the interiors as emblematic of the 1960s, when Brutalism was in vogue. (Courtesy NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission) The Whitney Museum of American Art was renamed the Met Breuer in 2016, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art took it over. Sotheby’s acquired 945 Madison Avenue in 2023, and subsequently brought on Herzog & de Meuron to renovate the place. The “sensitive adaptation and renovation,” Sotheby’s said in 2024, will deliver new world class gallery space for displaying the auction house’s “full suite of offerings.” Today’s landmark designation by LPC had the support of Sotheby’s. “We fully endorse the landmark designation, as reflected in our initial plans for the building,” Sotheby’s Global Head of Real Estate Steven Wrightson said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming the public back and honoring the Breuer’s enduring legacy as we usher in a new chapter of Sotheby’s.” Sarah Carroll, LPC chair, commended the former Whitney Museum of American Art building for its “unique interior” that serves as a remarkable example “of the Brutalist style of modern architecture.” The interiors, Carroll elaborated, “represent a powerful testament to New York City’s role as a global center of innovative design.” “Today’s designation honors Marcel Breuer’s groundbreaking vision and ensures that this architectural icon will continue to serve as a premier showcase for world-class art, and be preserved and protected for generations to come,” Carroll continued. The news comes after Cape Cod Modern House Trust acquired Breuer’s summer cottage, following a lengthy preservation initiative to save it.

14 winning schemes include a retrofitted telephone exchange, Passivhaus almshouses and a converted barn Source: Jack HobhouseYoungs Court Development at Emmanuel College by Stanton Williams An infill development for Emmanuel College, Cambridge by Stanton Williams has been named RIBA East Building of the Year 2025. The scheme includes new accommodation and communal facilities for students. The Young’s Court Development was praised by the jury for how it “sits comfortably and effortlessly on site” and “subtly elevates the experience of student life”. The panel also described it as a “model for how to conserve and enhance a historic place for future generations”. Source: Jack HobhouseThe Entopia Building, Cambridge, designed by Architype with Feilden and Mawson and Eve Waldron Design Among the 14 winning projects is The Entopia Building, also in Cambridge, designed by Architype with Feilden and Mawson and Eve Waldron Design. The project involved the reuse of a 1930s telephone exchange as a new home for the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. It was also recognised with the Sustainability and Project Architect of the Year awards. Source: Valentin LynchJankes Barn by Lynch Architects Jankes Barn by Lynch Architects was awarded both a regional award and the Conservation Award. The project involved the conversion of a disused barn in Essex into a contemporary rural home. Source: David ButlerDovehouse Court Almshouses by Mole Architects Dovehouse Court Almshouses by Mole Architects, a new Passivhaus development in Cambridge for residents over 55, also featured among the winners. The project delivered energy-efficient later-life living within a setting designed to promote social interaction. RIBA Central Regional Director Matt Blakeley said: “Congratulations to all the Award winners in the East region. This year, the breadth of schemes recognised is a remarkable statement to the ambition and vision of the region. “These projects exemplify not only admirable excellence in design and beauty, but a bold commitment to architecture’s vital role in our environmental goals and social impact.” The Discovery Centre (DISC) by Herzog & de Meuron with BDPSource: Hufton+Crow Sunspot by HAT ProjectsSource: Jim Stephenson Cast Corbel House by GraftedSource: French+Tye Knights Park by Pollard Thomas Edwards and Alison Brooks ArchitectsSource: Paul Riddle Knights Park by Pollard Thomas Edwards and Alison Brooks ArchitectsSource: Alison Brooks Architects Harpenden House by Emil Eve ArchitectsSource: Taran Wilkhu Housestead by Sanei Hopkins ArchitectsSource: Peter Landers Photography North Sea East Wood by Hayhurst & CoSource: Kilian O’Sullivan Mill Hide by Poulson ArchitectureSource: Nick Guttridge Clayworth by ArkleBoyce ArchitectsSource: Jim Stephenson Clayworth by ArkleBoyce ArchitectsSource: Jim Stephenson Amento by James Gorst ArchitectsSource: James Retief 1/12 show caption The other winning projects were: The Discovery Centre (DISC) by Herzog & de Meuron with BDP, a medical research facility for AstraZeneca in Cambridge Sunspot by HAT Projects, a coastal community hub in Essex with flexible units, a café and market hall Cast Corbel House by Grafted, an extension to a Norwich home Knights Park by Pollard Thomas Edwards and Alison Brooks Architects, a large-scale housing scheme in Eddington delivering 249 net-zero homes Harpenden House by Emil Eve Architects, the renovation and extension of a Victorian villa previously used as a nursery Housestead by Sanei Hopkins Architects, a coastal home in Suffolk North Sea East Wood by Hayhurst & Co, a reworking of a 1980s bungalow in Norfolk, also named Small Project of the Year Mill Hide by Poulson Architecture, a low-energy single-storey villa designed to meet future accessibility needs Clayworth by ArkleBoyce Architects, a contemporary family home Amento by James Gorst Architects, a single-storey rural dwelling Regional award winners will now be considered for a RIBA National Award, which will be announced on 10 July.  The shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK’s building of the year will be drawn from the RIBA National Award-winning projects later in the year.

Documents reveal team tested options including building over station’s entire listed trainshed New image of Acme's proposals for the station's main entrance 1/22 show caption The City of London has published the planning application for Network Rail’s proposed redevelopment of Liverpool Station, revealing new images of how the scheme could look when built. The £1bn Acme designed scheme was submitted at the beginning of April and has been validated by Square Mile planners in the space of just six weeks.  A highly controversial previous version designed by Herzog & de Meuron for Network Rail and its former development partner Sellar, which has since been dropped, took more than six months to appear on the City’s planning portal. More than 20 previously unseen images of the new proposals, set to be one of the largest schemes in London, have been unveiled along with new details about how the scheme would be built. Acme’s plans would see a 21-storey office block built above the 1980s extension to the grade II-listed station’s train shed and a set of new vaulted gothic entrances built to replace the building’s existing gateways. These entrances would be faced predominately with yellow stock bricks, the same type used for the original 1875 station building and its 20th century extension, with bricks from parts of the extension set to be demolished to be reused in the new entrances. Acme has also proposed incorporating amber-tinted glass bricks, which will be “speckled” in the upper parts of the 18m-high entrance vaults and concentrated at the top of the concave areas of the arches between the ribs. Network Rail said the glass bricks will “serve as one of the contemporary subversions of an otherwise historic typology”, adding a “crystalline light scatter of the material [to] mark the stations thresholds as spaces of architectural interest”. The application documents also reveal Network Rail had considered building over the entire listed train shed roof prior to opting for a limited development over the 1980s concourse area. Options tested included a single block facing Exchange Square at the northern end of the train shed, three blocks spaced over the length of the train shed, elongated blocks running along either side and a large block containing multiple light wells which would sprawled over the full extent of the station. Options for the over-station development tested by Network Rail prior to the selection of the current proposal for a building above the concourse A further option to build a tower scheme over the existing Metropolitan Arcade opposite the main station building on Liverpool Street was also considered but was ruled out due to ownership issues and below ground constraints of the Circle and Elizabeth Lines. Network Rail initially favoured an over station development facing Exchange Square but concluded this was scrapped because of its impact on train services, its engineering complexity and difficulty in creating viable entrances. The preferred development above the concourse was identified as the most viable, although it will not include building above the grade II*-listed former Great Eastern Hotel which had been one of the most controversial aspects of Herzog & de Meuron’s proposals for the site. The plans confirm Network Rail’s pledge last year to take a more “heritage-led” approach to the redevelopment compared to the previous scheme, which had proposed interventions in a strikingly different design to the 19th century station. That scheme was abandoned last year with Network Rail’s development partner Sellar dropped after the application amassed more than 2,000 objections from members of the public and criticism from heritage groups including Historic England. A selection of Acme’s early design concepts for the station entrances Network Rail’s property arm, Network Rail Property, is now leading the redevelopment and has sought closer collaboration with heritage groups on the design, although the Victorian Society, which led the campaign against the previous proposals, is still objecting to the new designs and has described the planned over-station office tower as “perverse”. The office component is being used to fund improvements to the rest of the station, which is currently the UK’s busiest with around 118 million people a year crossing its concourse with annual passenger numbers expected to hit 158 million by 2041. Network Rail said the redevelopment, which will significantly enlarge the building’s concourse, will enable the station to serve more than 200 million passengers a year. It also aims to turn the station into a “destination in its own right” with new retail, leisure and workspace, aligning with the City of London’s Destination City ambition to diversify its economy. The project team includes Aecom on engineering and transport, Certo as project manager, Newmark, previously known as Gerald Eve, on planning, Gleeds as cost manager, Donald Insall Associates on heritage and townscape, GIA on daylight and sunlight and SLA as landscape architect.