This concept/schematic project consists of a new 1/2 km long civic center - 20,000 sqm retail, a city hall, a hotel with a regional conference center, an office building, a train station, 1,000 residential units + diplomatic housing - linked to the historic pedestrian downtown by a 1/2 km retail art walk.

Challenges to the design arose from the complexity of the program (civic, entertainment, office, commercial + residential) located within a small and complicated footprint (access-security-privacy). The north boundary is a huge, regionally successful shopping mall to which the project had to connect; the project crosses over regional train tracks and two major thoroughfare; street frontage is minimal; connection to the historic center would involve private property rights.

Ioana Urma worked on this project at The Jerde Partnership as designer, together with Alex Lin, under the guide of David Rogers and Jon Jerde. She also supervised Napoleon Merana on the residential design and led sustainability efforts.

The images here belong to Jerde. Ioana Urma manually produced the ones that aren’t credited to someone else, though she participated as designer of the whole package. The 3D modeling team consists of Alex Lin, Francis Francisco & Dominik Martinez.