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Geography and climate are two important conditions that determine how people can live in a certain environment. When we add to this the cultural characteristics of a region, what appears, as Carl Sauer would say, is a "cultural landscape," a result of humankind’s settlement and adaptation to the territory. When architecture adopts a sensitivity to these conditions, and concerns itself with what the environment offers, living conditions take on a quality of lasting comfort.

For October’s Project of the Month we want to highlight the Casino and Hotel Ovalle by Turner Arquitectos, which adopts an aesthetic pertinent to the geography and cultural landscape of its location. ArchDaily en Español spoke with the project’s architects to find out more about their design.

New from the Belgian-Indonesian vlogging architect duo #donotsettle comes “6 Things You Don't See From Architecture Media (Until You Visit Them).” Known for their user-oriented architecture videos, in this video they present something slightly different to the usual, using a quick tour across several international cities to visit buildings by the likes of Herzog & de Meuron, Unstudio and OMA to demonstrate to viewers all of the experiential aspects of architecture that are often lacking in architecture media.

Mental Canvas is not the first software that attempts to save the act of sketching--we have seen 3D "sketching" tools such as SketchUp, as well as applications that simply simulate sketching on paper, such as Morpholio's popular range of sketching apps. But what makes Mental Canvas revolutionary is that you have the ability to sketch freely in a three-dimensional space without the constraints of traditional CAD modelling; it’s what Julie Dorsey, founder of Mental Canvas, calls a "graphical media"; not fully flat but not fully 3D. The software will be released later this year on Microsoft Surface devices, including the recently announced Surface Studio, working with the hardware of the Surface computers and the Surface Dial to provide a natural sketching experience on a virtual canvas.

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This article by Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, the cofounder of Snøhetta, was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Opinion: The Next Great Public Spaces Will Be Indoors."

Maybe with the sole exception of railway stations, public space is generally understood as outdoor space. Whether in the United States or in Europe, especially now with heightened concerns around security, there seems to be this determined way of privatizing everything that is indoors, even as we are increasingly aiming to improve access to public space outdoors. But in the layered systems of our cities of the future, we will need to focus on the public spaces that are found inside buildings—and make them accessible.

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BIG and French studio Silvio d'Ascia have been selected to design the new Pont de Bondy metro station in Paris. The station is the latest design to be announced as part of the Société du Grand París’ Grand Paris Express project, which is seeking to modernize the existing transport network through the addition of nearly 200 kilometers of rail lines and a series of architect-designed stations throughout the city.

Of a total of 68 new stations, nine have been labeled as “emblematic,” meaning that they are expected to serve as significant neighborhood nodes within the larger masterplan. The Pont de Bondy station will constitute one of these emblematic projects, joining designs from Kengo Kuma & Associates, Dominique Perrault, Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) and Bordas+Peiro, Agence Duthilleul, and Elizabeth de Portzamparc.

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Traditional 3D models made up of surfaces have for a long time aided us in visualizing buildings and spaces, but they often come at a cost: large models require a lot of storage and processing power, and can become incredibly complex to the point where they are difficult to navigate. As a part of our Selected by Sketchfab series, Sketchfab has their eye on a more efficient, increasingly common method of capturing architectural spaces; namely, point clouds. Point clouds are made up of a set of points located in a three-dimensional coordinate system, that when put together merely give an impression of the surface of an object, or the façade of a building.

The method is fairly simple. The collection of data points is generated by a 3D scanner that rotates while emitting a laser that measures the distance to points on surrounding surfaces. This data can then be converted into a polygonal model that can be rendered like any other 3D model. However, the advantages of keeping the scan in point form are what makes it great; the file sizes are much smaller, and the porosity of the point clouds make it possible to see through walls and surfaces, accessing "hidden" spaces and uncommon views of seemingly familiar surroundings. Read on to find out more about the possibilities and advantages that come with point cloud modelling.

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This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Q&A: Steven Holl."

For twenty years, Maggie's Centres have been providing cancer treatment to patients within thoughtful, beautiful spaces designed by renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid. Steven Holl's Maggie's Center Barts, located adjacent to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London, is slated to open at the end of this year. While the design has been somewhat controversial in the UK due to its contemporary nature, the cancer care facility incorporates innovative lighting, sustainable materials, and a compact structure in a way that is—according to the architect—entirely complementary to its historical neighbors. We spoke with the renowned architect to learn more about the project and what it has meant to him over the past four years.

Completing a degree in architecture can be a long and arduous process, but also wonderfully rewarding. Despite this, many freshly graduated architects find themselves unsure about where to begin, or deciding that they actually don’t want to be architects at all. Here is a list of 21 careers you can pursue with a degree in architecture, which may help some overcome the daunting task of beginning to think about and plan for the professional life that awaits.

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Floor plans of favourite television shows tell an interesting story, offering the viewer an extra dimension of a world they are already familiar with. A new series of poster-ready plans from Homes.com continues this with some of the most followed television shows both old and new—featuring Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Arrested Development, Breaking Bad, Mr Robot, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Sherlock and Stranger Things, there's something in this set for TV viewers of all tastes.

The Plaza of Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie has opened to the public. The concert hall’s observation deck, located 37 meters (121 feet) above ground level, is designed around a public square concept and is accessed via a 82 meter (269 foot) long, curving escalator, providing visitors to panoramic views of the city and harbor.

To mark the event, the Elbphilharmonie has released a new set of photographs by Iwan Baan, showing off the newly completed interior spaces. The full building is set to officially open to the public on January 11 and 12, 2017.

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The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named Gensler’s Shanghai Tower as the 2016 Best Tall Building Worldwide, citing its “innovative design scheme in traditional Shanghainese architectural traditions.” The building was selected from among four regional winners, which included BIG’s VIA 57 West (Americas), Jean Nouvel’s The White Walls (Europe) and Orange Architects’ The Cube (Africa).

Elected in 2001, over eight years in office Miami's former mayor Manny Diaz oversaw one of the most dramatic urban transformations in the United States' history. Diaz was therefore invited to offer the opening remarks to the second day of the 2016 Design Matters Conference, presented by the Association of Architecture Organizations, which is currently taking place in the city. In his speech delivered at the Miami Center for Art and Design, Diaz explains how he developed the "Miami 21" zoning code to leverage the power of architecture and urban planning, ultimately turning Miami from a subject of jokes into one of the United States' most successful and admired cities. Below is an edited version of this speech.

Ron asked me to explain how a lawyer with no experience in elective office and with no training whatsoever in architecture, urban planning or city design ends up with land use and Miami 21 as the signature project of his administration.

Jeanne Gang, the founder of Studio Gang Architects, has made a name for herself as a designer who can design both show-stopping skyscrapers and sensitive small-scale buildings. From her breakout 2009 Aqua Tower project, to the hypothetical “Polis Station” proposal presented at last year's Chicago Architecture Biennial, Gang has established herself as perhaps Chicago's leading architect.

Gang is also included as part of Vladimir Belogolovsky's ongoing City of Ideas exhibition tour, representing Chicago among 9 other significant architects, each from a different global city. With the exhibition currently in Gang's home city at the Chicago Design Museum until February 25th, here as part of his City of Ideas column on ArchDaily Belogolovsky presents a shortened version of the interview featured in the exhibition.

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Today, at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Bjarke Ingels and BIG were presented with the International Highrise Award for Via 57 West, their "courtscraper" building in Manhattan. The following speech, which has been translated from the original German by Clara Jaschke, was delivered by architecture critic and curator Bart Lootsma at the event.

I was truly delighted when Peter Cachola Schmal called me to ask whether I would deliver the citation for Bjarke Ingels and BIG at this year’s edition of the International Highrise Award.

Just the weekend before I had been thinking that I should write something about BIG. For weeks, one spectacular and interesting project after another had been popping up on Bjarke’s, Kai-Uwe Bergmann’s and a couple of others’ Facebook pages.

Welcome to the fourth installment of The Long(ish) Read: an AD feature which presents texts written by notable essayists that resonate with contemporary architecture, interior architecture, urbanism or landscape design. Ornament and Crime began as a lecture delivered by Adolf Loos in 1910 in response to a time (the late 19th and early 20th Centuries) and a place (Vienna), in which Art Nouveau was the status quo.

Loos used the essay as a vehicle to explain his distain of "ornament" in favour of "smooth and previous surfaces," partly because the former, to him, caused objects and buildings to become unfashionable sooner, and therefore obsolete. This—the effort wasted in designing and creating superfluous ornament, that is—he saw as nothing short of a "crime." The ideas embodied in this essay were forerunners to the Modern movement, including practices that would eventually be at core of the Bauhaus in Weimar.

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This article was originally published on Autodesk's Redshift publication as "A Video Game Is Overtaking Post-Occupancy Evaluation in Architecture."

Evaluating the user performance of a particular building design is obviously a good way for clients and architects to gauge whether their design was successful—or could have been better.

There’s even an entire academic discipline called post-occupancy evaluation (POE) devoted to this concept, and Arup is tapping into it with a network of 22 industry partners using the Building Use Studies (BUS) methodology. Too few designers tap into POE, but with gamified simulations done before projects are built, that could change.

Mankind has a strange relationship with the darker elements of its history. While some argue that we must consign our greatest mistakes to the past in order to move forward, others believe that ignoring, or refusing to acknowledge, our transgressions dishonors those who suffered – and leaves us vulnerable to repeating them. This ongoing debate has found its latest incarnation in western Austria, where the national government has announced its intention to demolish a seemingly unremarkable yellow house in the riverside town of Braunau am Inn – a house which, despite its unassuming façade, has gained infamy as the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.

Architecture is often the backdrop, rather than the subject, of the scary. For example, The Shining owes much to the Overlook Hotel, “haunted” is often followed by “house,” and Victorian architecture has come to be associated with the creepy. In a less supernatural manner however, architectural elements themselves have proven over history to be scary in their own right. With the clarity that only retrospect can offer, it’s easy to look back on the following macabre materials, bleak utilities, and terrifying technologies in horror... but perhaps what is most scary is to consider which aspects of architecture we might blindly accept today that will also become glaringly frightening with time.