2018 marked a banner year for ArchDaily. Our global audience has continued to grow in leaps and bounds, taking advantage of the nearly 40,000 new articles and 4300 projects added to our site. We are proud and excited to reach readers in every corner of the world, and we savor the opportunity to continue sharing the inspiration, knowledge, and tools needed to design a positive urbanizing world.
We recently shared with our readers the trends that will define the field of architecture in 2019. We are able to confidently identify these trends, not just because of our experience in reporting on them but also due to our data-driven approach. We are committed to listening to and sharing the interests of our readers - and no effort exemplifies this better than our annual Building of the Year awards.
The 2019 edition of BOTY, presented in partnership with Unreal Engine, is a particularly exciting one for ArchDaily, as it marks ten consecutive years of our flagship award program. With the Building of the Year award, we ask you, the reader, to share in the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects making an impact in the profession. In sharing your opinion, you become part of an unbiased and representative network of jurors and peers that have been dedicated to elevating the most relevant projects in the profession of the past decade.
Over the next three weeks, your collective wisdom will whittle the more than 4,000 projects published in the last year to just 15 stand-outs––the best project in each category on ArchDaily.
Sidewalk Labs has released new renderings from Snøhetta and Heatherwick Studio of the Quayside neighborhood development in Toronto. After announcing plans to create a model smart city, Sidewalk Labs has been working to pioneer a new approach to future urban developments. Plans for Quayside were first revealed last summer, designed to be interconnected smart neighborhood for the city. The latest renderings were released with further documents outlining how the company plans to pay for the ground-up development.
A while ago I was researching material on the internet for a project about representation in architecture, so I started reviewing the websites of different architecture offices. Several passed quickly, without much notice, however, I found some that kept me completely immersed. I explored and appreciated the sensibilities of their authors, whose penchant for drawings and freehand sketches I hadn’t previously known. Within those libraries of mental excursions, I discovered Alberto Campo Baeza’sdrawing library; I loved it so much that I decided to share it with you.
Turkish practice Melike Altınışık Architects (MAA) has won an international competition for the design of a Robot Science Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the competition called for a “world first” museum to support public education in robotics, and increase public interest in robots.
The principles of robotics, science, technology, and innovation have shaped all aspects of the scheme’s design, from form and structure to material and operation. The main character of the museum is to “create its own universe for robots and their visitors,” manifesting as a non-directional, fluid, spherical structure.
Minsheng Museum of Modern Art / Studio Zhu Pei. Image Courtesy of Studio Zhu Pei
Since the early 2000s, China consistently has been surprising the world as the playground for international superstar architects’ most daring creations. It still does so, but the element of surprise is gone, and with increased concern for building more pragmatically, resourcefully, and overall responsibly, we are much more critical of these spectacular buildings. The script has been flipped: it is the architecture that is produced locally, with humility and social relevance, that attracts attention these days. Nowhere is this process more evident than in China, where the projects led by homegrown talent are by far the most relevant and meaningful architecture that is being built in the country today.
Most of the materials that we use in the construction of our projects have shapes and dimensions that seek to facilitate their storage, transfer, and installation, being constituted in its majority by orthogonal modulations. These straight angles don't always fit with the irregularity of our designs, nor do they coincide exactly when encountering more organic materials or other specific elements such as ducts, pillars, or furniture.
This simple tool allows you to copy, duplicate, and measure complex contours so that the materials adapt perfectly to other elements. Its mobile 'teeth' must be pressed against the profile to obtain a mold of its shape, generating templates that will allow cutting and adjusting the original material with precision. Thus, the tool could even be useful for replicating or repairing unique details in restorations or refurbishments.
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