Boston city officials recently announced that developer Millennium Partners will build a new mixed-use project on the long-idle Filene’s site in Boston, and Handel Architects will be leading the design. Read the full article in the Boston Globe.

Handel Architects’ 3-bedroom private retreat called Zinfandel Wine Tower recently opened in Napa Valley, California. The home sits among the grapevines of a winery, and includes a 32-foot high tower, which functions as both entryway and observation deck. Chipped granite pathways and low stucco walls frame the house and grounds. The broad outdoor pavilion, with over 1,000 SF of space, has multiple levels and is interspersed with oaks.

The Santa Barbara Bowl, Handel Architects’ 4,500-seat outdoor amphitheater project in Santa Barbara, California, was recently awarded an Architecture Merit Award from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT). USITT is a membership organization dedicated to the performing arts and entertainment industry and includes over 3,800 professionals throughout the United States, Canada, and 40 other countries.

Territoria El Bosque (Left) and Alto El Golf (Right) are Handel Architects' newest projects in Chile; both buildings are located in Santiago’s El Golf neighborhood. Territoria El Bosque is a 21-story tower with office and ground floor retail space and parking for 370 cars. Alto El Golf is 18-stories with office and ground floor retail space and parking for 480 cars.

Handel Architects’ Nove Residences was recently featured in Green Building & Design Magazine, as Partner Glenn Rescalvo discusses this and other projects. Read the article HERE.

Nove was also named one of the 16 Leading Platinum Projects of 2011 by Jetson Green. See all 16 of the projects named HERE.

Travel + Leisure Magazine announced the 500 Best Hotels In The World in its January 2012 issue. Four of Handel Architects’ hotels were honored, including the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, which was named the best hotel in New York City. In the same issue, the Magazine named the Best New Landmarks of 2012, and Handel Architects’ National September 11 Memorial was voted the best Park & Public Space.

Projects that were honored include: (Clockwise from Left)
Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco: Top 3 Hotels in San Francisco
Ritz-Carlton Central Park, New York City: Top Hotel in New York
Trump SoHo, New York City: Top 3 Hotels in New York
Ritz-Carlton Georgetown, Washington, DC: Top 6 Hotels in Washington, DC
National September 11 Memorial: Best New Landmark, Parks and Public Spaces

Handel Architects’ National September 11 Memorial reached a major milestone, as officials announced that more than 1 million people have visited since its opening in September.

Handel Architects has been invited to work collaboratively with WCIT Architecture on a new 1.4 million SF multi-building project in Honolulu. The Princess Ka'iulani Development is a hotel, residential, and retail development located at the corner of Kalakaua and Ka'iulani Avenues. The project includes a new 35-story condo-hotel, called the Pikake Tower, and the renovation of the existing 28-story Ainahau Hotel Tower. A new four story podium contains 80,000 SF of retail on two levels, amenity space, and a pooldeck. A 954-car parking garage has an additional pooldeck, as well as a restaurant and ballroom on top.

The new Pikaki Tower includes 300 hotel rooms on 12 floors and 152 condominium units on 20 floors. The renovated Ainahau Tower contains 660 hotel rooms.

Drop-off for both buildings is at an elevated drive court between the two towers and is accessed with a driveway from Ka'iulani Avenue. A grand stair provides a pedestrian connection up from Kalakaua Avenue to the drive court.

On November 15th, Handel Architects along with Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino participated in a ground breaking ceremony for Millennium Place III in downtown Boston. Located across from the Ritz-Carlton, the 256 residential unit building will include one-, two-, and three-bedroom units as well as 9,700 square feet of ground floor retail. The project is being developed by Millennium Partners-Boston.

Located at the corner 10th and Market Streets adjacent to the San Francisco Civic Center district, Handel Architects' new residential rental complex for Crescent Heights ^SM began construction on November 4, 2011. The project will create one of the densest developments in the city at 754 units. The 9-, 12-, 22-, and 35- story towers contain mostly studios, one bedroom and two bedroom apartments. The towers are unified at the base with a podium that houses two residential lobbies, common areas, and retail fronting both Market and 10th streets. The 30,000 SF of amenity space includes a fitness center, swimming pool, fire pit, and billiards room. There are three landscaped terraces - on the 3rd, 11th, and 24th floors - as well as private terraces for units located on those three floors. The project is anticipated to be LEED Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Handel Architects' new Dream Hotel in Chelsea was recently featured in Interior Design Magazine, titled In Your Wildest Dreams. The 316-room boutique hotel, which opened this summer, features prints by Anish Kapoor and Richard Phillips of Dirty Vegas-fame, teak planks that line the lobby, and light wells between the lobby, pool and lower level that allow the spaces to flow. Dream has also been featured in other design publications, including Surface Magazine, Hotel Architecture & Design Magazine and ELLE DÉCOR Japan. In addition, Interior Design Magazine recently honored Dream Hotel by naming it a finalist in the magazine's annual Best of Year Awards. Other recent awards for the hotel include both Best Hotel and Best Exterior Award from Boutique Design Magazine.

To read In Your Wildest Dreams, click HERE.

Southwest Washington, DC has long been a neglected area of the city, but the quadrant has recently seen a spate of new building projects. Handel Architects is designing a new residential tower on the waterfront in Southwest, following a master plan designed by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects (EE&K). The project is a mix of rental and condo units and includes a sports club and retail.

St. Vincent's Triangle Park in New York City is to be the home of a new AIDS Memorial, and the coalition behind it has asked Michael Arad to chair the selection jury for an international design competition. The goal of the competition is to create a park, memorial, and underground learning center to educate visitors and honor the victims. Entries are being accepted on the website Architizer through January 21, 2012.

In the fall of 2003, "Reflecting Absence" was selected as one of the finalists in the World Trade Center Memorial design competition. I had created the design as a way of imagining a 9/11 Memorial that I myself might visit someday for mourning, commemoration, solace and hope.

Over the past eight years, all of us at Handel Architects, along with countless others in the design and construction industry, have worked hard to realize that vision and develop it to incorporate the aspirations and hopes of many more. It has been an incredible journey, simultaneously exhausting and inspiring, whose power we could not have imagined. The challenges of this project, so deeply emotional in nature, were the fuel that kept us going when we felt we could go no further. As the memorial opens to the public, and we step aside to allow the next chapter in the history of this site to unfold, we are proud of the work we have done, grateful for the opportunity to have made our contribution, and profoundly humbled by the responsibility that was entrusted to our hands. It has been an honor, a privilege, a duty, and, above all, a labor of love.

-MICHAEL ARAD, HANDEL ARCHITECTS

The memorial site offers a space for meditation and contemplation, centered around two reflecting pools that sit in the footprints of the original World Trade Center Towers. Lining the perimeter of each fountain is parapet of victims' names, arranged and inscribed according to a system of "meaningful adjacencies." The fountains rest within a new plaza that presents carefully chosen green space that acts as a sacred ground for those coming to honor the victims, while also integrating the Memorial into the surrounding city. The pools are clad in Jet Mist granite, and the names panels are made of bronze that has been treated with a ferric based patina. At night, the names are illuminated from within.

For an in-depth look at Handel Architect's design of the National September 11 Memorial, including a time-lapse video of the construction, please click here: National 9/11 Memorial