Today the President of La Biennale di Venezia Paolo Baratta and the appointed Curator of the 17th International Exhibition Hashim Sarkis introduced the theme of the next year’s event “How will we live together?”. La Biennale Architettura 2020 will take place at Venice’s Giardini and Arsenale from May 23 to November 29, 2020.

“We need a new spatial contract. In the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, we call on architects to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together,” reads Sarkis’ Statement. The theme that explores architecture as material, spatial, and cultural field, encourages the participating architects to engage other professionals in their research — inviting artists, builders, politicians, social scientists, and everyday citizens the Curator demands the society to acknowledge the role of the architect “as both cordial convener and custodian of the spatial contract”.

Bee Breeders has revealed the winners of the 2019 Rome Collective Living Challenge competition. Teams were asked to to propose solutions for collective living in Italy's capital city. Participants were tasked with designing a concept for affordable co-living around affordability and community. Organizers sought ideas that could be implemented across Rome to increase the city's housing stock.

Dutch design practice Mecanoo has won 1st Prize in the Futian Civic Culture Center Competition. The proposal includes a new cultural tower for Shenzhen in one of the city's oldest and densest districts. The project is designed to house cultural programs and social spaces to stimulate urban activity in the neighborhood. Made with three theaters, a library and exhibition halls, the project aims to be open to the city and bring people together.

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The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has advised planners to reject the Foster + Partners-designed Tulip Tower. As reported by the BBC, the mayor has highlighted a number of concerns raised in a London Review Panel report, and advised City of London Corporation (CLC) planners to reject permission, despite a previous endorsement of the scheme by the CLC’s chief planning officer.

GVL Gossamer has released images of their design for a 19 kilometer stretch of waterfront along the Jing River in Xi’an, China. The proposal, a finalist in an international design competition, celebrates the site’s history at the origin of the Silk Road through strategies that tap into ancient and enduring histories of traditional architecture, merchant trade, and agricultural innovation. These enduring histories are woven with contemporary influences such as responses to major climatic and environmental challenges.

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Four finalist teams have been shortlisted to design a new cultural hub along Perth’s Cottesloe Beach in Australia. Developed by the Minderoo Group, 11 Australian architecture firms were invited to submit ideas to reimagine the Cottesloe foreshore and the Indiana Tea House site. The designs aim to open and activate the waterfront and provide a destination for locals and visitors that brings people together.

Architectural firm bauchplan has won first prize in the competition to revitalize a disused viaduct in London. Dubbed Fish n’Chips, their proposal includes a series of green houses, aquaponics and swimming pools to create a new High Line for the city. Sited in Hammersmith, the design was made to become a blue & green living room, with a recreation area and island of retreat for the neighborhood. The project aims to bring awareness to processes of waste management and urban food production in London.

NextOffice and Alireza Taghaboni have released images of their proposed Afarinesh Tower in Shiraz, Iran. The tower is formed as a regular, uniform core housing administrative spaces, which lose their rigid order as the floor levels change, and the program becomes recreational.

ARCVS has released details of their first place entry for a competition to design a multifunctional bridge in Novi Sad, Serbia. Spanning the River Danube, the “Elbow Shadow” bridge contains a hotel and office building alongside the pedestrian walkway. The scheme combines European influences such as the Ponte Vecchio and Rialto Bridge with vernacular responses to the river channels.

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Canadian architecture practice Henriquez Partners has designed a series of ten towers for a new suburban development in Vancouver. The mixed-use project was made for developer Westbank to create a new 4.5 million-square-foot residential community for the city. Dubbed Oakridge, the towers will include housing, office and retail as a contemporary architecture for the Pacific Northwest.

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Danish architecture firm Henning Larsen created a new proposal for the Ostrava House of Culture in the Czech Republic. As the the second place winner in an international competition, the project's offset concrete frames set up the form of the new Ostrava Concert Hall as they join together with the existing structure. The design emphasizes openness and connection to the outdoors in the midcentury campus to craft a quiet icon for the city.

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Bryden Wood, Cast, and the Mayor of London have launched a new app to speed up the capital’s home building. The freely-available app, titled PRISM, is aimed at the design and construction of high-quality, factory-built homes to address the current demand of 50,000+ houses per year.

The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced the launch of the RIBA International Awards 2020 to recognize architecture outside of the United Kingdom. Now open for entries, the awards are open to any qualified architect in the world for a building outside of the UK, of any size and budget. The biennial awards celebrate buildings that exemplify design innovation, embrace sustainable technologies and deliver meaningful social impact.

Architects CHYBIK + KRISTOF have broken ground on a new modular architecture research center in the Czech Republic. Partnering with Czech module manufacturer KOMA MODULAR, the project was made to introduce a new system of modular construction. The design celebrates architecture and organic shapes through the vacancies between each element in modular construction.

Glenn Murcutt’s design for the MPavilion 2019 has been revealed. The scheme relays Murcutt’s longstanding interest in buildings that make efficient use of the researched site and climatic conditions that relate to the Australian landscape. The scheme will strike a white, refined, minimalist design, and will be a milestone summer attraction for Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens.

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The acclaimed architect Phil Freelon has passed away. The founder of the Freelon Group, he was diagnosed with ALS in March 2016. Among is most celebrated works are the Harvey B Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, the Anacostia Library, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, designed in collaboration with Adjaye Associates.

The LAB at Rockwell Group has partnered with The National Building Museum to present the 2019 Summer Block Party installation LAWN. Designed to be an immersive installation taking up the entirety of the Museum’s Great Hall, the project presents a series of interactive experiences for all ages. The lawn itself is programmed with summer entertainment and activities, including movie nights, yoga, and meditation. By creating custom software, the LAB also developed an Augmented Reality game alongside the installation.

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Steven Holl Architects and Architecture Acts has won an international competition for the design of a concert hall in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Chosen by six of the seven-person jury, the new 1,300-seat concert hall is situated next to the existing House of Culture, and is designed as “a perfect acoustic instrument in its case.”

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The initial phase of London’s first linear culture park has opened to the public along the Thames. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Neiheiser Argyros, the project is sited on the Greenwich Peninsula as a new outdoor destination for the city. Called The Tide, the park offers free-to-view public art by emerging and world-renowned artists and includes a landscaped route for running, walking and meditation that is freely accessible to all.

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JDS Architects have won the competition to design a new residential tower and mixed-use development in France. Located in Rennes, the project will include new buildings on the Blériot-Féval site to generate an inclusive neighborhood within the Eurorennes development. As the master plan's geographic centerpiece, the new Féval Tower will offer 188 new apartments to the city.

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Danish architecture firm COBE has won an international competition for a new science museum in the Swedish university city of Lund. The museum will be sited in the middle of the new urban district around Science Village Scandinavia, which is an international research environment dating back to the tenth century. The new science center will be fully CO2-neutral and aims to become an icon of sustainability.