A New York media production studio backed by actor Robert De Niro won a prize from the Mipim conference as one of the world’s best new commercial development projects.
Wildflower Studios in the Queens neighborhood of Astoria was named the winner of a museum Award in the industrial and logistics category. The $1 billion facility — designed by the Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group and developed by De Niro, Adam Gordon and Meadow Partners — opened in August. It has been described as the world’s first vertically oriented film studio.
This year’s Mipim Award winners all “seek to enhance the built environment’s prospects, in line with [environmental, social and governance] goals,” according to a news release. “The six key criteria are overall sustainability, originality of the concept, architectural qualities, integration of the project in its environment and community, quality of the user experience, and economic contribution.”
The 775,000-square-foot Wildflower film studio includes 11 soundstages stacked on two floors and features “off-street parking and dedicated support spaces that allow for seamless work from pre- through post-production,” according to the Wildflower website. The studio is designed to handle production work for film, television, video games, virtual reality and other digital media.
The exterior’s “angled concrete panels” are inspired by the hard surfaces and geometric shapes of brutalist buildings, according to trade publication Architectural Digest.
The Queens studio opened as the city’s film industry rebounds from a decline caused by the pandemic and the actors’ and writers’ strikes. The volume of office leasing by media-related firms in New York doubled in the first half of 2024 compared to full-year volume in 2023, according to a CBRE report issued in August.
The Mipim conference named nine other winners in its awards program this year, located in China, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal. Wildflower Studios was the only U.S. project to win.
The yearly Mipim conference for real estate professionals is held in March in Cannes, France.
For the record
LBG, a subsidiary of global engineering and construction firm Aecom, was general contractor. Fried Frank was legal counsel to Meadow Partners and De Niro on financing the project.