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Throughout the past century, architecture's relationship with water has developed along a variety of different paths. With his “Fallingwater” house, for example, the American master Frank Lloyd Wright confronted the dramatic flow of water with strong horizontal lines to heighten the experience of nature. Since then, architecture's use of water has become more varied and complex. A space made almost purely of water emerged with Isamu Noguchi's design at the Osaka World Expo: glistening water appeared to fall from nowhere and glowed in the dark. Later with digitalization and fluid forms as design parameters, the focus shifted towards liquid architecture made of water and light. The interpretations have ranged from architectural forms modeled after literal drops of water, like Bernhard Franken´s visionary “Bubble” for BMW, to spectacular walk-in installations made of lines of water, transformed into pixels by light.

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In the canon of great Dutch architects sit a number of renowned practitioners, from Berlage to Van Berkel. Based on influence alone, Rem Koolhaas—the grandson of architect Dirk Roosenburg and son of author and thinker Anton Koolhaas—stands above all others and has, over the course of a career spanning four decades, sought to redefine the role of the architect from a regional autarch to a globally-active shaper of worlds – be they real or imagined. A new film conceived and produced by Tomas Koolhaas, the LA-based son of its eponymous protagonist, attempts to biographically represent the work of OMA by “expos[ing] the human experience of [its] architecture through dynamic film.” No tall order.

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Within the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo in a park designed by the French landscape architect Charles Thays, the Parque 3 de Febrero (February 3rd Park) , sits the Galileo Galilei Planetarium. Inaugurated on December 20, 1966, it was born of the idea of human evolution and the need to show it in architecture. The building exists as an instrument or bridge between the scientific world and the citizens of the city of Buenos Aires.

Designed by Argentine architect Enrique Jan, the building establishes a relationship between astronomy and architecture through its shared components: mathematics and geometry. Thanks to its location and unique shape, it is currently one of the iconic images of the city and the scene of many scientific, cultural, and festive events.

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The Japan Art Association (JAA) has named Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha as the winner of the 2016 Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award. Often credited as a founder of the Brutalist movement in São Paulo, 2006 Pritzker Prize Winner Mendes da Rocha was praised by the jury for his commitment to honoring “locality, history and landscape” in his projects and his ability to utilize “simple materials like concrete and steel to structure space to maximum effect.”

Tutors (or professors, depending on where you live). Everyone has horror stories about their tutors, just as everyone has stories about a teacherr they truly adored. Ultimately, your tutors are likely to be the single most important element of your architectural education; no matter how much effort you put into learning through other means, these people will probably become formative figures in not only your education, but your life in general.

It's easy to forget, though, that they are just that: people, with all the flaws and foibles that being a person entails. Some you will love to learn from, while others may be a little more difficult—but like Dickens' Christmas Carol ghosts, each type of tutor has their own lesson to impart. Here are the five different types of tutor you'll deal with in your architectural education, and what you should learn from each of them.

Our editors look at hundreds of websites per week. What do they admire and appreciate the most? Organization and simplicity. Sites that are not only clean, but fast. We actively search for projects to include on our platform, so it’s crucial that when we visit a website we not only know where to look, but how to access information. Filters and facets are our best friends. Typological differentiation is important, but perhaps not as important as distinguishing between built and un-built projects (“Is that a render?” is a question that comes up at least once a day).

This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "The Connector."

Andy Klemmer has had a front-seat view of the making of some of the most important pieces of architecture of our time. The president and founder of the consulting firm Paratus Group, Klemmer was an essential part of the team that helped develop the iconic Guggenheim Bilbao. Since then, he’s gone on to consult on the California Academy of Science, the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Kimbell Art Museum expansion, working with architects like Renzo Piano, Herzog & de Meuron, and SANAA (to name a few). By liaising between institutions and their chosen architects, he has unique insight into architecture, its practice, and that essential part of the architecture puzzle: the client.

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This article was originally published in Metropolis Magazine as "When It Comes to Sustainability, We're Ranking Our Cities Wrong."

A recent article published in Nature makes a bold claim: we're analyzing our cities completely wrong. Professors David Wachsmuth, Aldana Cohen, and Hillary Angelo argue that, for too long, we have defined sustainability too narrowly, only looking at environmental impact on a neighborhood or city scale rather than a regional or global scale. As a result, we have measured our cities in ways that are inherently biased towards wealthy cities, and completely ignored the negative impacts our so-called "sustainable," post-industrial cities have on the rest of the world.Metropolis editor Vanessa Quirk spoke with Professor Wachsmuth to learn more about the unintended knock-on effects of going "green," the importance of consumption-based carbon counting, and why policy-makers should be more attentive to the effects of "environmental gentrification."

REX has released images of the future Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center (The Perelman Center), located on the World Trade Center site in New York City. Located between the gleaming glass tower of One World Trade and the future Two World Trade Center, the Perelman Center takes on a solid, pure form as it is set to become a new home for theater, dance, music, film, opera, and multidisciplinary works for visitors and residents of Lower Manhattan.

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North Korea is one of the few countries still under communist rule, and probably the most isolated and unknown worldwide. This is a result of the philosophy of Juche – a political system based on national self-reliance which was partly influenced by principles of Marxism and Leninism.

In recent years though, the country has loosened its restrictions on tourism, allowing access to a limited number of visitors. With his personal photo series “North Korea – Vintage Socialist Architecture,” French photographer Raphael Olivier reports on Pyongyang’s largely unseen architectural heritage. ArchDaily interviewed Olivier about the project, the architecture he captured, and what he understood of North Korea’s architecture and way of life.

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As one practice among Japan's emerging crop of talented architects, Takaharu and Yui Tezuka of Tezuka Architects can boast some highly successful projects; perhaps most notably among their collection of houses, medical buildings, and community buildings is the Fuji Kindergarten. Completed in 2007, the unusual open-air design was so successful that it earned Takaharu Tezuka a spot on stage at TEDxKyoto. In this interview from his series “Japan's New Masters,” Ebrahim Abdoh speaks to Yui and Takaharu about their formative experiences in the United States and United Kingdom, their design approach, and the unique challenges that come with working in Japan.

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One of the main challenges in adding new spaces to a pre-existing building is in the dialogue that is generated between the original construction and the new proposal. The different possibilities are infinite and it is the architect who will make the final statement through their choice of design language; they must decide to either emulate the existing architecture, reinterpret it, or to propose a whole new language.

The Fine Arts Museum by Barozzi Veiga is a project that works autonomously, integrating with it’s site in order to generate a dialogue within the public space, while using both ornamentation on the facade and the interior plan composition to establish a common language between the two distinct parts of the museum.

August’s Project of the Month uses this dialogue to produce an equilibrium between the existing and the new construction, reinterpreting the original language and adapting it with detail and delicacy to the urban area which provides it’s context.

Architecture is propaganda. Throughout my two years of visiting and living in North Korea the country slowly revealed to me the details of this evolved and refined tool for totalitarian control of the country’s population. The West views the country with incredulity—surely this cannot be a functioning country where people lead “everyday lives?” Surely the country’s populace can’t possibly buy into this regime? But I assure you that they do. People have careers, they go to work on the bus, and those women crying over the death of their leader were doing so through their own initiative, if not out of genuine emotion. How is this possible? This is a carefully constructed regime which has, at its heart, an unprecedented understanding of how architecture and urbanism can influence and control people. Coming second only to the military on the list of party priorities, the design of the built environment has had an incalculable effect on reinforcing the ideologies of the North Korean regime and conveying these to the people.

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Last year, we asked the graduating students among the ArchDaily community to show us the design-build projects which they may have completed as part of their studies. The response we received was astonishing, and we were so impressed with the results that we simply had to do it again this year. So, two months ago we once again teamed up with ArchDaily Brasil and all four ArchDaily en Español sites to put out another call for submissions, and once again the response was overwhelming. Across over 100 submissions, the quality of the projects we received was so high that this year's results are bigger and better, containing 36 projects from 20 different countries. So, read on for the best student-built work from around the world in 2016.

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A few years ago we asked our readers to submit photos of their offices so that we could celebrate the many different environments in which architecture is created. Now we're asking you to not only show us where you work but also how you work. We want to see your immaculately curated desks and your overflowing studio cubicles—but more importantly, we want to see those sketching skills!

Architectural photographer Mirna Pavlovic has an obsession with abandoned places. For her, their appeal lies in their ability to exist on a different temporal plane from the rest of reality – both impossibly ancient and frozen in the present.

“They are never truly dead, yet never really alive,” Pavlovic explains. “Precariously treading along the border between life and death, decay and growth, the seen and the unseen, the past and the present, abandoned places confusingly encompass both at the same time, thus leaving the ordinary passer-by overwhelmed with both attraction and revulsion.”

For her latest series, Dulcis Domus, Pavlovic trekked over fences and past “no trespassing” signs to capture the once-glorious villas, palaces and castles of Europe that have now been left to decay, slowly returning to the Earth that existed before them. Through photography, Pavlovic attempts to highlight social issues through an aestheticised approach, allowing viewers to “see with fresh eyes what lies beneath those spots that we pass by on the street.”

Continue reading to see a selection of photographs from the series – hover over the images to see where each villa is located.

Just over a week ago in beautiful Rio de Janeiro the Olympic Games, the world's largest sporting event, came to an end. The Games, as well as the FIFA World Cup, have been a driving force for the city over the last six and a half years. In the wake of the frenzy caused by the much-anticipated event, Rio will have the Paralympics, which will take place between the 7th and 18th of September. But then what?

The word "legacy" being associated with major world events is nothing new. We see it used a lot when referring to the Olympics and the World Cup, and it’s come up time and time again in recent years when we look at the lasting effects these events have had on host cities like Barcelona (1992), Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012). Essentially, the issue revolves around some fundamental questions: Who are the major beneficiaries of the "legacy" of the Olympic Games? Were the huge public investments worth it? Will there be any improvement for the general population? Can the equipment that was built be adapted for everyday use?

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It’s the year 2036 in Generic City, a gloomy place where once mighty skyscrapers are lucky to be in decrepit condition, if they haven’t already been swallowed by the ever-increasing number of sinkholes appearing throughout the city. But the city is not lifeless: a constant hum echoes about the city, a well-choreographed churning motion in pursuit of one central activity. In this city, the world’s most precious commodity—not gold, not diamonds, not even black gold but just simple, fresh water is under the total control of a mega-corporation named Turquoise. The people are ruled by an oppressive autocracy and life is divided between the haves and have-nots. Life revolves around access to water.

Is this the opening paragraph of the latest dystopian novel? No, but it might be Joshua Dawson’s interpretation of our troubling future. With CÁUSTICO, an ode to the growing tradition of “speculative design fiction” pioneered by countercultural avant-gardists of the 1960s (think Archigram, Superstudio and Archizoom) Dawson exaggerates the implications of current social phenomena for the purposes of rhetoric. While the truthfulness of his vision is a little on the improbable side, the work is an eye-opening narrative on the increasing scarcity of fresh water. At the same time, Dawson’s dystopic vision opens a conversation about the relationship of the architect with utopianism, while his representational techniques brings up the question of what exactly the work of the architect entails.

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