SOM also designed the Guoco Tower in Singapore. The skyscaper is 64 stories tall and is the only skyscraper exempted from Singapore’s height restriction of 280m or 918ft. This has allowed it to be the tallest building in Singapore since 2016. There are six levels of retail space and dining. The Guoco tower allows people to live, work, shop, and play all within the same building.
SOM architecture, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, helped design the Pennsylvania Station in New York City New York. This train station serves over 600,000 passengers per weekday. The station is named for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania railroad was the largest rail road in 1882 and was the largest transportation enterprise and corporation in the world. Its budget was so large it was second only to the U.S. Government. The facility is actually the remodeled underground remnant of the original Pennsylvania station. The rebuild took approximately six years and retained most of the original rail infrastructure. The station currently has 21 tracks fed by 7 tunnels and has future plans for adding more railway platforms to accommodate 2 additional tunnels that are currently being proposed.
The Caf at OU is a building that is very boring from the outside. Once inside though is where the magic begins. From wall to wall it is filled with seating and food of all varieties. Not only is there good food but there is a dedicated stand for deserts with cheesecake of all kinds. Every time I entered this building it filled me with a sense of joy that only good food can provide and here lies the problem. While this experience made me and my brain happy these visits made my body quite sad. While the building seemed unimposing before the end of the year it added 30 pounds to my weight and made me go up a pant size. While easily obtainable good food seems nice when it comes to watching your calories and weight it can wreak havoc in no time.
The pictures above are of the Opryland hotel in Nashville Tennessee. This hotel was the first of its kind that I ever stayed at. This hotel really shows how you can create a completely indoor environment but make it feel like you are almost always outdoors. This hotel seamlessly blends hotel life with the beauty of nature. The hotel when I stayed there was split up into 4 different “biomes”. The hotel had areas all of which had different flora, watercolor, and even micro weather. You could walk only about 20 yards and feel a drastic change in humidity as you enter a different biome. I found the environment relaxing and gorgeous.
This made me feel as though we do not have to destroy nature for us to be comfortable. It is doable to blend nature and building in a way that benefits us as humans while also benefiting nature and the planet as a whole. While this isn’t the best way to design building to not impact nature as this one is mostly using foreign flora and is all indoors it gives people that exposure to what having different buildings in an outdoor space would be like. The hotel has many shops and restaurants inside which do not feel like they are outside, and they blend near seamlessly with the environment they are in. This is mostly due to the plant coverage that is blended into a lot of the indoor buildings. So, while the hotel may not be the best structure for the environment the way it is designed to make the guests feel like the hotel is blended with nature I feel could help influence people to start thinking about how we blend future buildings with nature.
