Kuntzel & Deygas What's new
Ten highly anticipated debuts for 2007—new museums, hotels, airport expansions, urban redevelopment projects, and more.
Openings listed by launch date:
Launch: Spring 2007
When the low-cost carrier launches this year (at press time, the airline was awaiting Department of Transportation approval), it will fly Airbus 319’s and 320’s along mostly transcontinental and longer-haul domestic routes in the States from its San Francisco hub. Planned entertainment features include the largest seatback TV’s of any U.S. airline. The first route: San Francisco to New York’s JFK
Launch: March
On a site that once belonged to the Japan Defense Agency, less than a half mile from Roppongi Hills, the Tokyo Midtown project opens in five buildings. Its centerpiece, the 814-foot Midtown Tower, will be the tallest building in Tokyo; the new Ritz-Carlton Tokyo will occupy the building’s top nine floors. Also in the complex: an art gallery designed by Issey Miyake and Tadao Ando.
Launch: April
Architect Philip Johnson’s iconic 1949 Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, a glass box with no exterior walls touching interior walls, has never been open to the public. In 1986, Johnson gave the house to the National Trust as a life estate. This spring, two years after his death, it opens to the public as one of the 28 National Trust Historic Sites.
Launch: Summer
The Miraval Resort in Tucson, Arizona, expands to the East Coast, with a full- time urban spa community on New York’s Upper East Side. Residents of Miraval Living’s 365 units will occupy apartments with special HEPA filters, farm-raised hardwood floors and cabinets, and bacteria-resistant kitchen counters. They’ll get spa treatments and consultations from exclusive in-house health gurus.
Launch: June
The venerable Toronto institution adds over 200,000 square feet of new and renovated space, including Daniel Libeskind’s design for eight new galleries, which appear to have crash-landed on the original 1912 building—and will allow the museum to exhibit twice the collection currently on display.
Launch: Fall
Explora, the luxury-travel company based in South America, opened two nine-room inns in refurbished local homes in 2005, called Casas Rapa-Nui. This year the company opens a 30-room hotel; all the rooms in Posada de Mike (pronounced "Mique") will face the ocean from a series of circular buildings meant to blend in with the island’s landscape.
I. M. Pei designed this nearly 150,000-square-foot museum, which will open on an artificial island off the coast near Doha. The dramatic building, which appears to rise from the lagoon and has its own marina, will house Qatar’s vast, important collection of ceramics, metalwork, jewelry, woodwork, and glass made in countries all over the Islamic world, from medieval Spain to central Asia and India.
Launch: Winter
Construction on the Metropol Parasol, a series of six massive timber "umbrellas," is to be finished over Seville’s Plaza de la Encarnación. The structures—set in a dense, medieval inner city and incorporating an archaeological museum—will partially enclose a farmers’ market, with bars and restaurants below and a terrace with panoramic views above.
Launch: November
London’s formerly crumbling Victorian train station, St. Pancras, whose soaring arched roof and parapets are landmarks, replaces Waterloo as the terminus for the Eurostar. The high-speed train runs from London to Paris and Brussels through the Chunnel. Once this renovation is completed, work will begin on a giant redevelopment project nearby, called King’s Cross Central.
Launch: December
In advance of the 2008 Olympic Games, the busiest airport in China adds a third terminal, a third runway, and a rail link to Beijing’scity center. The $3 billion project kicks off a massive air transportation expansion program in China, which includes plans for 48 new airports by 2010.
