Latest news with #Safdie
New York Post
22-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Marina Bay Sands is getting an $8B expansion
Singapore's eye-catching Marina Bay Sands hotel and resort is undergoing an $8 billion expansion. A trip to Singapore isn't complete without taking a look at Marina Bay Sands. The massive resort, made up of three 650-foot-tall skyscrapers and connected by a boat-like skybridge, is a symbol of the city-state's modernism and prosperity. Such a pricey expansion to such a national icon is, predictably, a hot-button topic. Marina Bay Sands is set to receive a fourth tower, plus a 15,000-seat arena. The makeover broke ground this month under the looming specter of public scrutiny. 6 When it opened in 2011, Marina Bay Sands hotel and resort radically redefined the Singaporean skyline. AFP via Getty Images 6 A rendering of the planned fourth tower and adjoining event venue. Safdie Architects The resort's original architect, Moshe Safdie, designed the new tower. 'The (Urban Redevelopment) Authority repeatedly said, 'This is our icon; our people of Singapore love this, and we cannot do anything that's going to compromise it,' Safdie told CNN. The 87-year-old Israeli architect told the outlet that his goal was to design an edifice that was complimentary to the originals, while bearing its own identity. The current iteration of Marina Bay Sands, owned by the US casino and resort company Las Vegas Sands, attracted 38 million visitors and the equivalent of $1.7 billion in business spending last year, according to CNN. Safdie, whose firm is headquartered in Massachusetts, said connecting the fourth tower to the other three was hardly considered. Instead, the 55-story extension will be set apart on an adjacent plot. He described the new tower as the dot of an exclamation point. 6 The fourth tower's boat-like 'Skyloop.' Safdie Architects 6 The adjoining event venue will host a massive arena, and 200,000 square feet of conference and exhibition space. Safdie Architects 'The buildings look related,' Safdie told the outlet. 'They're in the same family.' The new tower will comprise of 570 suites, as well as luxury retail and gaming facilities. The facade, twisting at a 45-degree angle, tops off with a 76,000-square-foot 'Skyloop,' featuring the resort's famous infinity-edge pools, an observatory, restaurants and lush rooftop gardens. The fourth tower will share the original resort's panoramic views of the Marina Bay and Singapore Strait. A massive event venue, designed by the team behind the Las Vegas Sphere, will sit neatly in between the two structures. The building will span approximately 200,000 square feet of conference and exhibition space, with a 15,000-seat sports and entertainment arena at its core. The new development aims to capture more tourism revenue from so-called 'Mice' travelers, according to CNBC, who flock to the city for meetings and conferences, as well as leisure travelers trekking through Asia. 6 Local reactions to the recently announced plans range from disgust to excitement. AFP via Getty Images 6 The three-pronged resort is known for its highly Instagrammable rooftop pool. Best View Stock – Online commenters reacted strongly to the development's recent groundbreaking, with some Redditors comparing the fourth tower design to a lurking neighbor of a 'huge dehumidifier.' Safdie told CNN that all the new development needs is time, saying that, before long, 'people will feel it's always been there.'
Business Times
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Times
How architect Moshe Safdie's new Marina Bay masterpiece will redefine Singapore's skyline
[SINGAPORE] Fifteen years ago, when the glitzy Marina Bay Sands (MBS) with its avant-garde architecture opened for business, its architect, Moshe Safdie, wondered if the integrated resort would become an icon in Singapore. Well, we know the answer to that one. Since then, the development's three sloping hotel towers – topped off with a surfboard-like SkyPark carrying its now-famous infinity pool – have been frequently featured in popular culture, from movies and TV shows to music videos, documentaries and even video games. 'I'm amused by the fact that if I want to explain what Marina Bay Sands is to somebody, I just ask, 'Did you see the movie Crazy Rich Asians?' and that takes care of it,' Safdie tells The Business Times in an exclusive interview. MBS is today not only an instantly recognisable symbol of Singapore, but also a glittering architectural marvel the world over. 'We had no clue whether it would be iconic,' says Safdie. 'It's a kind of magic you don't control.' A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 2 pm Lifestyle Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself. Sign Up Sign Up Perhaps, but it certainly helps when the architect is one as visionary as he is. At just 26, he established his own firm to realise the innovative Habitat 67 for the 1967 World Exposition in Montreal, Canada. The project was an adaptation of his thesis at McGill University for a revolutionary, three-dimensional modular urban housing system. MBS with the new, yet-unnamed US$8 billion development on its right. ILLUSTRATION: SAFDIE ARCHITECTS In town for the official groundbreaking ceremony for IR2 – as the new, yet-unnamed US$8 billion development next to MBS is currently called – Safdie has said MBS changed lives at his eponymous firm in terms of the work they received. Among other projects, he went on to design another Singapore landmark, Jewel Changi Airport – with the world's tallest indoor waterfall within, surrounded by a lush, multi-level garden – adding one more Instagram favourite that's synonymous with the city. One could say Singapore struck gold with Safdie, who has helmed such large-scale projects that cemented the city's image as modern, innovative, vibrant and yes – green. After all, who else could have dreamt up these things? Given the successes Safdie has had, expectations are naturally high that with him fronting IR2's architecture, Singapore can add yet another stunning landmark to its skyline. Get ready for this new waterfront composition with the addition of an ultra-luxury development to the right of MBS' three towers. ILLUSTRATION: SAFDIE ARCHITECTS He's excited too. 'People will get used to the new composition, and it'll become part of the so-called iconic view from across the water,' Safdie predicts. Of rooftops and stealing the thunder While MBS' design took just four months of conceptualisation ('we were under enormous pressure'), IR2 is running at eight years just to get to a schematic. This is due in part to the pandemic, but also because of technical constraints from the tight site (3 hectares versus MBS' 15.5 hectares), the logistical puzzle of how to move people in and out of the area, as well as the connecting networks under and overground that the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) wants. 'One thing you can say about designing in Singapore,' Safdie says wryly, 'the whole system insists that you think about the next step – growth and expansion – which is somewhat different from our experience in some other places.' The architectural challenge? MBS as a building that's already a beloved icon and the danger of compromising it with a new structure. 'So (IR2) has to be substantial in its own right and have an identity that complements and, in a sense, improves on the existing icon.' There's 'a gallery' of IR2 models in Safdie's office, and the team lived with the original plan of the new, 55-storey, 570-suite luxury hotel tower abutting MBS' Tower 1 'pretty comfortably for a couple of years'. The final schematic flipped the location of the arena with that of the new tower, so the latter is no longer right next to MBS' three towers. ILLUSTRATION: MARINA BAY SANDS Then, just as they were coming close to the decision to build, the team felt uneasy about the juxtaposition of the two developments being so close. They proposed flipping the location of the tower with that of the low-rise 15,000-seat arena to its current position, solving the problems of access that they thought were insurmountable. This, Safdie says, was 'very well-received by the URA, who also had concerns'. Now, the arena acts as a spacer between the three towers and the new one. Voila, all the stakeholders are happy. Funnily, once the new development was announced, the first question people asked him was whether IR2's roof will be connected to the SkyPark. 'I said 'no', we didn't think that would be appropriate. The roof of the new tower should be an experience in itself.' Because it isn't as long as the linear SkyPark, Safdie conceived a completely new design to 'make it almost as long'. The 76,000-square-foot (sq ft) Skyloop will be a multi-level rooftop experience made of two boomerang-shaped structures placed atop each other, one facing the city, and the other, the Singapore Straits, with another layer in between. Skyloop will be a multi-level rooftop experience made of two boomerang-shaped structures placed atop each other, but facing opposite directions. ILLUSTRATION: SAFDIE ARCHITECTS The Skyloop, almost three stories higher than the SkyPark, will be 'quite a sensational experience' and 'kind of science fiction', says Safdie. 'What you get are very dramatic views from the SkyPark to the Skyloop and vice versa.' The lower layer of the Skyloop will offer public access, including restaurants, an observatory and over 300 feet of a Skywalk. ILLUSTRATION: SAFDIE ARCHITECTS The lower layer of the Skyloop will offer public access, including restaurants, an observatory, over 300 feet of a Skywalk and a small section with 'the traditional glass floors to get a little vertigo', he jests. On the upper layer, there will be a cantilevered wellness terrace, private cabanas and infinity pools for hotel guests. The upper layer of the Skyloop will feature a cantilevered wellness terrace, private cabanas and infinity pools for hotel guests. ILLUSTRATION: SAFDIE ARCHITECTS 'In terms of building composition, you get the linear first phase of (MBS') towers three, two, one, and then you get an exclamation mark… boom!' When IR2, which includes 200,000 sq ft of meeting space, is completed in 2030, the SkyPark would be two decades old. But it won't just sit idly by while Skyloop steals its thunder. An overhaul is in the works, reveals Safdie, with plans to restructure elements such as the lounging areas, bars and plantings, while adding a new restaurant and rebuilding to 'accommodate a more ambitious programme'. Of garden cities and liveable buildings It was Safdie's birthday on the day of BT's interview. At 87, the great-grandfather may move less quickly than before, but his mind is clearly still as sharp. A citizen of Israel, Canada and the United States, Safdie is known for his humanistic approach to architecture and urban planning. His oeuvre includes projects ranging from cultural, educational and civic institutions to neighborhoods, public parks, housing, mixed-use urban centres and airports around the world. Having first visited Singapore in 1975, and coming and going since, Safdie feels he's been a part of the nation's 60-year history. Safdie turned 87 on July 14. PHOTO: YEN MENG JIIN, BT 'I think it's one of the most impressive stories of a city developing and growing; an urbanistic story,' he says. 'The combination of all the planning and attention to landscape which started from (modern Singapore's founding father) Lee Kuan Yew, has produced an extraordinary outcome. I think the emphasis on planting the city, making it green, is one of the most inspiring decisions made right at the beginning of the state.' That said, architecture in the last decades has leapt in terms of the emergence of 'many sculptural, visually very exciting buildings that are not that livable'. 'At the same time, we're dealing with density in a way that we never had and an environment that's in great danger, with global warming being one. All of that needs to be achieved within a very livable, humanistic environment.' So the challenge Singapore now faces lies in dealing with density and towers as the dominant building type in the city, while keeping it humane. 'This is the next phase as the building codes already encourage the creation of public spaces, gardens and parks at different levels to make the city more livable and achieve a better balance between greenery and construction,' Safdie notes. 'There are many new areas opening up for development here and I hope there'll be a lot of the architectural innovations that we see, some of them downtown, towards that objective.' Of big projects and an unfulfilled architectural dream Home for Safdie is Cambridge, Massachusetts, although he still sticks to a punishing schedule that sees him travelling almost every week. Some of the projects his firm is currently working on include a large addition to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, a museum for the Cherokee people in Oklahoma, the Canadian embassy in Senegal and two medical schools in Israel. In a storied career spanning over six decades, which are the projects most significant to him personally? 'Certainly, Habitat 67, my firstborn, is the most radical thing I've ever done,' he says. 'I'd say my first museum, the National Gallery of Canada, which is now 37 years old, was a very important milestone. The Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, was maybe the most emotionally challenging. 'The United States Institute of Peace headquarters, which President (Donald) Trump just shut down – I hope the building survives – was very important in terms of a symbol of peace.' Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada. PHOTO: UNSPLASH But if there is one project he would love to work on, that would be to realise the original Habitat 67, which was digitised into virtual reality by Epic Games in 2023. His vision was to create 1,200 prefabricated dwellings arranged in Lego-like stacks, rather than the scaled-down 158 units that were eventually built. The modular units and their sculptural placement allow natural light and enhanced views and are connected to gardens, suspended terraces and pedestrian walkways. Seeing it in its original form is important to Safdie because it embodies the urban idea of a three-dimensional city in which different activities are reorganised to make dense, high-rise housing more livable – a concept which is yet to be realised or understood, he says. 'I'd say if we could build that today, it would look as fresh and meaningful and significant as it did 60 years ago.'
Business Times
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Times
Moshe Safdie
THINK Marina Bay Sands (MBS), think Moshe Safdie. The man who designed Singapore's iconic landmark is himself an icon in the world of architecture. Now, he's lending his name to MBS Part 2, or rather IR2 – the as-yet-unnamed US$8 billion development being built next to the integrated resort. The stakes are high for the 55-storey, 570-suite luxury hotel tower. The building has to be 'substantial in its own right and have an identity that complements and, in a sense, improves on the existing icon', says the celebrated architect who was in town for the groundbreaking ceremony. Read what Safdie has to say about the impact that MBS has made on the Singapore skyline, and on his career, in an exclusive interview with BT Lifestyle this week. We also head across to Singapore's other integrated resort, Resorts World Sentosa, where another groundbreaking attraction is about to open. We give you a sneak peek of the Singapore Oceanarium – in which the former SEA Aquarium has been completely transformed into a mega marine institute that's three times the size of the original and devoted to the conservation of sea life. Dive into a world of sharks, sea horses and sea jellies in vivid colour, in our pictorial essay of these enchanting sea creatures. Finally in Dining, French cooking goes casual at The Plump Frenchman, a new bistro that serves up affordable classics in cosy surroundings. For all this and more, don't miss this week's BT Lifestyle.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Acting Return: ‘It's Different When You're Reprising an Avengers Thing'
Gwyneth Paltrow is set to star in the upcoming A24 film Marty Supreme, a role that sees Paltrow return to the world of movies for the first time in over a decade. This is not counting the MCU, however, which is something she does not count fully. Speaking to Vanity Fair in a recent interview, Paltrow opened up about what it was like to step back into a role in which the actress would be going all in for. According to Paltrow, the last time she feels like she did that was in 2010's Country Strong, which to her is the last time she was 'laying it all on the line and accessing a kind of vulnerability.' Despite the comments, Paltrow has appeared in several movies since 2010, including many Marvel Studios projects, like the Iron Man franchise and various Avengers films. However, Paltrow noted that there was a difference in those projects versus something like the upcoming Marty Supreme. 'It's different when you're reprising an Avengers thing,' said Paltrow. Sign-up today for access to Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ Learn More Marty Supreme is co-written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein. The cast also includes enn Jillette, Odessa A'zion, Kevin O'Leary, Abel Ferrera, and Sandra Bernard. Safdie, Bronstein, and Chalamet serve as producers alongside Eli Bush, Anthony Katagas, and A24. 'The movie was rumored to be a biopic about iconoclastic ping-pong player Marty Reisman, and now we're hearing it's not exactly that,' reports from Deadline on the movie read. 'More loosely based. The pic is being billed as a cross between Wolf of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can.' Safdie made his feature film directorial debut in 2008 with The Pleasure of Being Robbed. He went on to direct a handful of movies alongside his brother, Benny, including 2017's Good Time and 2019's Uncut Gems. They've since decided to embark on solo projects, as Benny is now working on The Smashing Machine with Dwayne Johnson. The post Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Acting Return: 'It's Different When You're Reprising an Avengers Thing' appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
10 Indie Films You Should Watch for in 2025
This year's edition of the Sundance Film Festival was not quite the hype machine that the event has long functioned as—where distributors wage eight-figure bidding wars for the most acclaimed premieres, and at least one or two future-awards contenders start their run. Maybe that's because of the multiple disruptions that have roiled the movie industry of late; studios have shifted away from lower-cost fare post pandemic, and the months-long Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes stalled production in 2023. Or maybe it's because Sundance itself, which has operated out of Park City, Utah, in some form since 1981, is getting ready to move: The indie institution has outgrown the tiny ski town it takes over for a feverish period every late January. Wherever Sundance ends up—the three finalists for its expected 2027 relocation are Salt Lake City, Boulder, and Cincinnati—the festival will probably have to contend with ongoing turmoil in the independent-cinema world. Small-budget movies have a seemingly tougher and tougher time finding big-screen audiences, but last year's event did produce some art-house hits, such as the Oscar-nominated A Real Pain and A Different Man, and the fan-favorite Thelma. More than a few other gems screened among 2025's crop; below are the 10 films that particularly resonated with us. If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You (A24, release date TBD) This story about parenting is told with the crushing intensity of Uncut Gems (heck, a Safdie brother is one of the producers). It's also the writer-director Mary Bronstein's first feature in 17 years—and an unsettling marvel, powered by an arresting lead performance and a jangly, unsparing air of dread. Rose Byrne stars as Linda, whose husband is away for months on a work trip. Her daughter, whose face is never seen, is plagued by an unspecified health condition that requires her to use a feeding tube. Shot largely in close-up, the film builds a sense of calamity through a series of small crises as Linda struggles with the responsibility of motherhood and the feeling that she's fundamentally not cut out for it. Byrne is incredible, but the true revelation is Conan O'Brien as her tweedy, unsympathetic therapist; it's a coup of casting that really underlines Bronstein's sense of inventiveness. — David Sims The Wedding Banquet (Bleecker Street, in theaters April 18) This romantic dramedy, a remake of Ang Lee's charming 1993 film, seems to have the potential to become totally absurd. It's the story of Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), who takes ill-advised lengths to fund the IVF procedure she and her partner (Lily Gladstone) are trying for: She marries the women's wealthy, gay housemate (Han Gi-Chan) for his money, while also procuring him a green card. It's a complicated non-solution that becomes progressively more foolish, but the director Andrew Ahn (Fire Island) and his winsome cast—including Bowen Yang, Joan Chen, and Minari's Yuh-jung Youn—keep the screwball twists grounded; the film's lived-in vulnerability evokes the original's earnest warmth. — Shirley Li Sorry, Baby (A24, release date TBD) The comedian and actress Eva Victor's directorial debut won the festival's screenwriting award and sparked one of the year's few acquisition battles, eventually ending up with the indie powerhouse A24. It's easy to see why the film got studios excited—Victor has a firm grasp on sparse, ironic dialogue, giving her movie a breeziness that belies its dark subject matter. She plays Agnes, a young academic who is wryly smart, if a little adrift. Her life is upended, however, when she is sexually assaulted by an older mentor. Sorry, Baby is about navigating the boring mundanity of trauma, and that's where Victor's blasé affect really works. The pain of what she's working through is clear, as is her lingering feeling of powerlessness in the face of institutional apathy. As a darkly funny mood piece, the movie works well. — D.S. Train Dreams (streaming on Netflix, release date TBD) The director Clint Bentley's new film was a major surprise for me; his first feature, Jockey, left only a slight impression upon critics, and adapting the work of the novelist Denis Johnson has long been a tricky cinematic task. (The acclaimed filmmaker Claire Denis's Stars at Noon is a recent, highly flawed example.) But Train Dreams is a minor-key triumph, a lyrical and quiet life saga that's photographed with the sweep of a great American epic. Joel Edgerton does career-best work as Robert Grainer, a laborer working on railroads around the country during the early 20th century; he experiences love, joy, and tragedy while witnessing all kinds of political upheaval. Bentley handles this narrative heft with grace; my hope is that Netflix, which bought the movie, will allow such a striking work to hit big screens. — D.S. Folktales The documentarians Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady specialize in stories of communities that exist on the margins or within some extreme circumstance. The Boys of Baraka looked at a rural Kenyan boarding school; One of Us examined Brooklyn's Hasidic community; and the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp eventually led to the closure of the charismatic summer camp it dug into. Folktales picks a much more whimsical educational program to look at: a nine-month 'gap year' in northern Norway during which kids learn about outdoor survival skills, how to mush with a bunch of huskies, and other aspects of life in the frozen wilderness. The teens, drawn from a worldwide pool of applicants, are a charming, awkward bunch, and the landscapes they're tossed into are gorgeous and dramatic. But Ewing and Grady's fascination lies largely with the relatable ways young people socially and emotionally develop, even in an unusual setting. — D.S. Twinless Two men grieving the loss of their respective identical siblings meet in an emotional-support group and, to cope with their suffering, build a worryingly codependent relationship. Despite the heavy premise, Twinless is actually a comedy—a wry, mordant, and stylish one that's constantly walking a tonal tightrope between harrowing melodrama and pure farce. The airheaded Roman (Dylan O'Brien) and the canny Dennis (James Sweeney, also the film's writer-director) seem to be opposites at first. But as their friendship blossoms and becomes complicated by Dennis's attraction to Roman, the story transforms, too, revealing one twist after another, each more somber yet strangely delightful than the previous. O'Brien is excellent, and though Sweeney never reaches the heights of his co-star's performance, the two share a highly appealing chemistry. They're just lonely men trying to fill voids they don't understand. — S.L. Plainclothes This nervy psychological thriller about a closeted undercover cop can be hard to watch. The first feature from the filmmaker Carmen Emmi, Plainclothes follows Lucas (a fine-tuned Tom Blyth), whose perspective is often rendered through jarring, lo-fi VHS footage; it's as if the character is viewing everything through a surveillance camera. Yet the director's choices effectively portray his protagonist's paranoia: For Lucas, who's tasked with baiting gay men into exposing themselves, each encounter with a target conjures thrill and terror in equal measure; his shame soon causes him to become unmoored. His past and present collide in his mind—and when he falls for a mark, Andrew (Russell Tovey), the film's experimentation becomes more aggressive, capturing Lucas's struggle to grasp who he is amid his clandestine endeavors. Plainclothes pulses with tension, but it's also an exhilarating and sharp portrait of a person attempting to separate perception from the truth. — S.L. Predators To Catch a Predator, the wildly successful spin-off of NBC's news program Dateline, made for addictive television in the 2000s. Each episode chronicled a high-stakes sting: A watchdog group would lure an alleged pedophile into meeting someone they thought to be a minor, only for the show's host, Chris Hansen, to confront them instead; the conversation would typically end in an arrest. But in spite of the series's good intentions, did it ever help its audience better comprehend an offender's motives—or did humiliating them serve mostly as entertainment? That's the question the documentarian David Osit, himself a survivor of child abuse, attempts to answer in this riveting assessment of the show's legacy. Predators acknowledges the show's strengths, but queries the merits of a program that blurred the line between law enforcement and vigilante justice—as well as public service and 'reality' TV. — S.L. Brides Teenage best-friendships can be vital. The bond between Doe and Muna (played by Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar, respectively) is forged in part because they're outcasts—two of the only Muslim students at their East London school. It has also become a life raft, motivating them to take an extreme measure they'd never consider alone: running away from home and heading for Syria, where they intend to join the Islamic State. The film is based on the real-life case of three British girls who secretly journeyed across borders to become child brides, but it's more interested in its protagonists' relationship than the shocking nature of their quest. The director Nadia Fall confidently examines how the quiet Doe and brassy Muna are just teens: naive and rebellious, headstrong and confused. Brides may be one of the darkest coming-of-age movies I've ever seen, but it resonates as a study of a life-changing friendship. — S.L. Come See Me in the Good Light At one point in this crowd-pleasing documentary, the spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson jokes that all of their writing amounts to rearranging the same, simple words over and over again. 'Why write a poem that's over somebody's head?' Gibson argues. 'More than that, over somebody's heart?' Come See Me in the Good Light, which focuses on the performer's cancer battle, works similarly: The director, Ryan White, doesn't deploy innovative storytelling techniques or say anything new about life and death. Instead, he spotlights the chemistry between Gibson and their partner, Megan Falley, through a year of doctor appointments, dinners with friends, midday editing sessions of each other's work, and late-night conversations about their feelings and fears. White sprinkles in archival footage exploring the couple's trajectory and Gibson's career, but his subjects' raw, often humorous testimonies—about mortality, sexuality, and gender identity—are most illuminating. — S.L. Article originally published at The Atlantic
