Architecture enjoys a close connection with moving picture, perhaps because of the limitless imagination it allows. Our mind can be taken far away to utopian worlds where we live different realities with our eyes and skin; movies can carry us to new and distant places, where we face new unusual realities.

However, besides carrying us to distant places, movies can also be a vehicle of social criticism. This is not news, as it has been done for almost as long as cinema has existed. The evolution of this role is relative to the topic of critique that has developed over time, as have our habits and ways of living. In this sense, one of the most emerging problematic of nowadays is climate change.from architecture to arts and, clearly, the movies.

MVRDV has won a competition to create a master plan for a new cultural and creative quarter in the heart of Potsdam, Germany. The project designed for developer Glockenweiß was acclaimed for its particular approach in creating considerably more space than required in the initial brief.

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As people adopt more control over the rituals behind their deaths, cremation has become an increasingly popular option across the world. This, in turn, has led to the considered design of spaces that respond to the deep emotions surrounding cremation, life and death, and stillness. Increasingly, architects are contending with the question of what role does architecture play in these rituals?

MILLIØNS, headed by SCI-Arc Faculty Zeina Koreitem and John May, was announced as the winner of the Everson Museum of Art competition. The L.A. team’s proposal was selected from submissions by four semifinalists including FreelandBuck, NATURALBUILD, and Normal Kelley.

For a chance to showcase your work to a global audience, now is the time to enter your design for an A’ Design Award. The international competition was "born out of the desire to underline the best designs and well-designed products" of designers, architects, and innovators from all design fields. Among other design competitions and awards, the A' Design Award stands out for its exceptional scale with over 100 design categories.

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HENN has designed the first Sino-French aeronautics campus plan for Hangzhou, China. Supported by the French Government, the public project aims to welcome 10,000 students and researchers. Balancing contemporary design with traditional Chinese cultural heritage, the project was designed to integrate the masterplan with the natural topography of the site.

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When we approached the Flores & Prats firm, we wanted to focus on their precise drawing just as much as their detailed mock-ups. We wanted to see a project that not only "values the time invested and accumulated in it but also sees said time as a virtue and not a defect;" an indication of paying attention to the process as well as the unexpected. (In this sense, it reminds me of reading about how to draw a forest, among other things, in "Las tardes de dibujo en el estudio Miralles & Pinós").

We conducted a long-distance interview with the Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores studio for this reason; to get a better idea of their thoughts on the impact of drawing on architectural representation.Their input makes clear the "why" of their decisions, and explains not only how they operate in a contemporary context but also indicates their relationship with construction among other disciplines.

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UNStudio, in collaboration with Werner Sobek, had designed a new high-rise for Dubai, expected to become one of the world’s tallest ceramic facades, once completed. Created for the wasl Development Group, the project is located along the famous Sheikh Zayed’s Road and directly opposite to Burj Khalifa.

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Every working day presents new challenges for architects, fabricators and distributors. The key to success in the building industries is the optimum and timely implementation of projects and the satisfaction of clients and customers. Versatile, easy to work with materials like wood can streamline the process without sacrificing design or options. Wood, in addition to being a structural material, can also be utilized in the form of wooden composite boards and wood-based products. EGGER is a company with a history of producing multiple different types of wood products with unique purposes and applications within a design.

We may not give them the importance they deserve, but toilets are fundamental to our daily lives and our health. There are two "golden rules" that articulate their usefulness: they 'separate' us immediately from our waste, and they transport them for treatment, preventing them from contaminating the environment or making people sick.

In addition to being a good place to think about new ideas, browse Instagram, and answer emails, the toilet helps us stay healthy, an attribute we take for granted until we lose access to it.

A new executive order by Donald Trump has the potential to make new federal architecture in the United States follow the classical style. Called "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again", the order would require rewriting the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, issued in 1962, to ensure that “the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style” for new and upgraded federal buildings.

Studying the data that indicates a climate crisis that has been affecting the whole planet for the last decades, the reactionary attitudes may sound disappointing. However, at the same time that the news indicates a global average temperature rise, the political focus on the climate crisis is also intensified, according to the UN Environment report released in 2019, which is a reflection not only of the occurrence of manifestations and protests around the world but also of the so-called activist art expression.

As the architectural community and the world looks forward to a new year, and a new decade, we do so from rapidly shifting grounds. The world around us is being transformed by a variety of factors in the built environment, from the opportunities of new materials and technologies, to pressing challenges such as climate change and inequality. At ArchDaily, we continue to proactively respond to this changing world, evolving as a tool for knowledge and inspiration for all those involved in shaping the built environment, be they architects, designers, or our growing audience of ‘DIY architects;’ everyday citizens taking an active interest in shaping their own homes and communities. 

While our database, mission, and focus develops, some traditions endure. Chief among this is our flagship award series – the Building of the Year Awards. Now, we are proud to launch the 11th edition of one of the architecture world’s most influential and democratic award series, celebrating the best architecture around the world as chosen by you, the reader.

Therefore, we once again invite you to participate in the ArchDaily Building of the Year 2020 Awards. We ask you to recognize and reward the projects that you feel are creating the largest impact in the built environment, that ArchDaily has published on our projects database in 2019. By nominating and voting, you form part of an interdependent, impartial, distributed network of jurors and peers that has consistently helped us celebrate architecture of every scale, purpose, and condition, from countries large and small, and architects of all descriptions. Over the coming weeks, your votes will result in 4000 projects being filtered down to just 15 – representing the best in each project category on ArchDaily. Read below for more details on how to submit, and thank you once again for helping us continue to democratize architectural excellence across the world.

Dedicated to love and diversity, the public art installation Heart Squared has just opened to the public. In its 12^th edition, the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition curated by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum had selected the winning proposal of MODU, an architecture and design firm based in Brooklyn, and Eric Forman Studio.

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Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future. In the first episode, Thomas Heatherwick founder of Heatherwick Studios discusses the notion of Designing on a Human Scale, describes his conceptual approach and introduces his latest venture in the heart of historic Prague. Joining the interview is ArchDaily editor, Christele Harrouk.

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Architecture theorist, historian, and curator Beatriz Colomina has been awarded the 2020 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture from the W Awards. As the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and co-director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton, Colomina is an internationally renowned architectural historian and theorist who has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, technology, sexuality and media.

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Today's designers have inherited unprecedented global challenges, a legacy which will require radically new ways of fashioning the buildings, places, and landscapes that harbor our diverse ways of life. The College of Environmental Design offers several introductory and advanced programs for those interested in confronting these challenges in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and environmental planning, urban design, and sustainable city planning. Please visit UC Berkeley's Summer Programs website to view images of student work and learn more about the CED Summer experience.

With growing awareness of the impact of fossil fuels on the natural environment and their common usage in buildings, architects are increasingly required to specify and accommodate alternative energy sources in their design approaches. Included in this portfolio of progressive energy sources is biomass, a scalable system that combines the usage of raw, sustainable materials with a lower resulting emission of CO2. As a method often heralded as the most transferable alternative to gas and coal, we answer a simple question: what is biomass energy?

Last week, The School of Architecture at Taliesin announced the closing of the school after 88 years. Both the school and the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation issued statements on the closure, and now the Student Body has created their own statement outlining the impact of the decision. The news of closure followed the conclusion of a multi-year struggle back in 2017, when the school was approved to maintain its accreditation as an institute of higher learning.

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It is truly odd how we always find ourselves in a bad mood at work and our productivity keeps decreasing as the week passes by. To be fair, we can’t keep blaming our colleagues, clients, or Monday for our rough day; sometimes it’s the chair we are sitting on, the fluorescent lighting above our computer, or the constant “chugging” sound of the printer near the desk.

Other than the fact that people spend about 70-80% of their time indoors, almost 9 hours of their day are being spent at work; and studies have indicated that the environmental quality of an office has short and long term effects on the comfort, health, and productivity of the people occupying it. While research on the comfort conditions of workplaces is still relatively minimal, we have put together a list of factors that have proved to be highly influential on the comfort of individuals in workplaces.

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Videos

Reparametrize Studio and Digital Architects have created an exhibition combining photography and 360-degree projection mapping, to showcase destroyed cities, part of the 2019/2020 Bi-City Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. As Ziwar Al Nouri, Founder of Reparametrize Studio stated, the project underlines the different possibilities “when numbers meet Architecture and Culture and help us improve human life and the future of our city”.

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