Pavel Hnilicka Architekti is set to design Prague’s Victory Square, having been announced as winners of an international competition. Led by Pavel Hnilička, Eva Macáková, and Josef Filip, the winning scheme seeks to divert all existing traffic away from the square, transforming the space with a striking central monument.

The scheme sees the removal of tram tracks through the square, which will instead be relocated to the west side and Evropská Street. While traffic will be removed from the square, a new traffic plan will, in fact, accommodate more cars than the existing layout, while the center of the existing roundabout will become a “functioning space for universal use.”

+ 5

GRAFT has developed a master plan for the Didube Chughureti District in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. The master plan for the business district attempts to provide its inhabitants with a healthy working environment by balancing scenic landscaping with the necessary amenities.

The overall complex consists of a pair of complimentary towers: the main tower, in particular, will house the head offices for the Georgian Railway Company. Elements of the façade reflect the railway. The facades, themselves, appear to divide in a similar way to a railway junction. At the base of the tower, the descending curve of the façade plateaus, creating a roof for the new open-air museum, which features locomotives from the Georgian Railway Company.

Amazon has selected New York City and Arlington for it's next headquarters, set to become two of the biggest economic development projects in the United States. Instead of choosing one site, Amazon will spread over $5 billion in construction and investments across the two locations. The tech giant will house at least 25,000 employees in each city, and could receive more than $2 billion in tax incentives. The new announcement ends a 14-month competition among cities across the country.

In an effort to aid the plight of refugees around the world fleeing war and persecution, two young architects in 2016 embarked on a project designed to improve the mental health of refugees in camps. Led by Bonaventura Visconti di Modrone and Leo Bettini Oberkalmsteiner, and supported by the UN International Organization for Migration, “Maidan Tent” allows refugees to benefit from indoor public space – a communal area to counteract the psychological trauma induced by war, persecution, and forced migration.

Two years on, the first tent has been installed at the Ritsona refugee camp in Greece, currently hosting more than 800 refugees. The camp which now hosts the inaugural Maidan Tent was also the subject site where the design team made eight visits to throughout the past two years.

+ 14

Construction has begun on MAD Architect’s “Courtyard Kindergarten” in Beijing. Located on the site of a traditional siheyuan courtyard dating from 1725, MAD’s proposal sees a new building inserted to protect the surroundings, and reinvigorate the existing buildings into use.

The courtyard will be surrounded by a “dynamic floating roof” offering a “multi-layered urban narrative, where old and new co-exist.” The rooftop element is envisioned as a “place full of magic – a playful escape for the children that is a symbol of freedom and endless imagination.”

+ 22

Among the dozens of software programs exploited by architects today, Photoshop is one of the most universal, enduring, and valuable. The go-to tool for students and architects for image-based editing, collages, and rendering, the popularity of Photoshop has given rise to countless online tutorials, tips, and resources.

One of the most frustrating and time-consuming exercises in using Photoshop is the endless search for high-quality material textures. This demand has led to the creation of many dispersed online libraries, allowing users to download royalty-free, high-resolution textures for almost any material. One such site is Texture Palace, offering an extensive, Flickr-based library with high-quality concrete, timber, steel, and many other textures.

Below, we have collated some of the best textures from Texture Palace, creating an easy go-to resource as you create your next masterpiece. The site is steadily updated with new textures, so be sure to visit the official site here, and their Flickr page here. To access the full range of resolutions for each texture below, simply follow the link in the image caption.

Videos

Editor's Note: This story was originally published 27 March 2018. It was recently announced that ICON, the construction company leading the project, has successfully raised $9 million in seed funding for the project. A new video of the project is included below. 

Tech gets a bad rap for serving developed economies in the interest of money-making. It often takes a few cycles for the technologies that are truly helpful to reach the developing world, hence the unfortunate, slow-draining term called the “trickle effect.”

+ 23

As part of a collaboration between the Centre Pompidou and the Mao Jihong Arts Foundation, the Cosmopolis #1.5: 'Enlarged Intelligence' exhibition features the developments of NLÉ Makoko Floating School. The Minjiang Floating System (MFS IIIx3), the fourth prototype and the third iteration of the prefabricated self-built system for water, investigates methods to counter the challenges posed by urbanization and climate change.

Earlier prototypes of the Makoko Floating School include the Waterfront Atlas (MFS II) launched in Venice, Italy and the Minne Floating School (MFS III) in Bruges, Belgium. The project, initially developed for the water in Lagos, is now usable in all these sites including the Jincheng Lake in Chengdu.

+ 1

Videos

Triptyque, Duncan Lewis, PARC Architectes, and OXO Architects reveal a design for Europe's largest wooden construction in Arcueil, France. Called Ecotone, the project is sited in the Coteau Area of southern Paris as a multi-use space set to link city and landscape. The design takes the form of two hybrid hills with trees and a large staircase containing several terraces and patios. Ecotone aims to rethink the future of sustainable cities and timber construction.

+ 8

Photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu has released new images of Heatherwick Studio’s Coal Drops Yard in London’s King's Cross. Unveiled to the public last month, the project includes two heritage rail buildings from the 1850s brought together as a new shopping district. The design extends the inner gabled roofs of Victorian coal drops to link the two viaducts together around shopping and public space.

+ 21

One of the star attractions of 2018’s Burning Man Festival was the ORB, designed and overseen by Bjarke Ingels, Iacob Lange & Laurent de Carniere. The 1/500,000 scale sphere of the Earth’s surface was designed to conceptually reference earth and human expression, intending to leave no trace following its deflation.

The designers wanted the giant sphere to act as a guiding landmark for festival-goers, and set up an Indiegogo campaign back in July to raise the remaining funding for the installation. In total, the team invested 30 tons of steel, 1,000 welding and sewing hours, and $300,000 of their own funds to make the ORB a reality.

London is one of the world’s most iconic and beloved cities, with a diverse blend of architectural styles spanning the centuries. Every year, 20 million tourists flock to the city in search of iconic landmarks such as Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster, the London Eye, and Trafalgar Square.

But London could have been so different. Through time, a host of ambitious, crazy, and revolutionary plans were drawn up around the city, only to be consigned to an unbuilt history. To demonstrate this, Barratt Homes has unearthed plans for “some of the capital’s most ambitious construction projects that never saw the light of day.”

From city master plans to pocket-sized products, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) have explored architectural formalism through innovative digital design methods. In 2006, the collaboration with furniture-makers and fashion houses led to the creation of Zaha Hadid Design that served both as an iterative process for and a resultant of ongoing architectural design.

A pop-up exhibition, located suitably on the ground floor of ZHA's renowned condominium along the High Line in New York City, features a scale model of the building itself on display. To honor and present the work produced by the firm in the last four decades, the Zaha Hadid Gallery showcases a series of projects in a wide range of mediums including the six 'Silver Models' that represent eight of the firm's key works.

+ 17

Where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan, a pivotal node in Chicago’s cityscape, bKL Architecture has designed three towers along the waterfront, which connect the natural elements of the landscape with the urban center and neighboring communities.

The urban development is located at a prominent junction utilized by both pedestrians and automobiles; the site’s new master plan separates the two, providing seamless integration between the active green space surrounding bLK’s three towers and the lakefront.

ZGF architects have completed Google's new L.A. office by transforming California's landmark Spruce Goose Hangar. Designed as a building-within-a-building, the project was built inside the seven-story, 750-foot-long historic wooden structure. The 450,000 SF, four-level design is sited between two existing Google properties, and the project aimed to unify the Playa Vista campus while bringing a new perspective to workplace through adaptive reuse.

Swedish studio Urban Nouveau created a plan to save Stockholm's Gamla Lidingöbron bridge by transforming it into a linear park and housing. After launching a petition to save the bridge and re-purpose it, ArchDaily followed up with Sara Göransson, founding partner at Urban Nouveau, to ask her about her background and how the studio approaches social integration, housing and the future of urban infrastructure.

+ 2

JP Morgan Chase announced this week that they had hired Foster + Partners to design their new global headquarters in New York. The project, located in midtown Manhattan, will replace the existing 1960s SOM design for the US investment bank.

This is not the first time Foster + Partners have been called in to handle a corporate headquarters project: the office is also responsible for the designs of the nearby Hearst Tower, Apple's Campus in Silicon Valley, and the Stirling Prize-winning Bloomberg HQ in London.

+ 1

Frank Gehry's Grand Avenue towers are finally set to begin construction, over a decade after the project was initially proposed. Conceived as a public-private partnership, the towers are sited across from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The project was designed from a central retail core into the two terracing towers with a mix of retail, entertainment and residences. The $1 billion complex aims to turn Grand Avenue into a full entertainment district.

+ 1

London-based architectural and urban design firm ecoLogicStudio has unveiled a large-scale “urban curtain” designed to fight climate change. “Photo.Synth.Etica” was developed in collaboration with Climate-KIC, the most prominent climate innovation initiative from the European Union, to “accelerate solutions to global climate change.”

Photo.Synth.Etica, currently on display at the Printworks Building in Ireland’s Dublin Castle, captures and stores one kilogram of CO2 per day, the equivalent to that of 20 large trees.

+ 4

Herzog & de Meuron have unveiled their proposal for a mountain outpost in the Swiss Alps. “TITLIS 3020” is situated on one of Switzerland’s most renowned tourist attractions, the 3000-meter-high Mount Titlis.

The design forms part of a master plan for the area developed by Herzog & de Meuron, which includes the construction of the outpost, the redevelopment of an old beam antenna tower, and redevelopment of an underground tunnel.

+ 11

Design House, which is held annually within the framework of Design Week Mexico, is celebrating its tenth anniversary. In this year's edition, 24 local designers and architects transformed an abandoned home, each restoring a room or outdoor area. One of these interventions, by Broissin Architects, reconstructed the outdoor patio into a micro-forest with the small, glass house placed on a centenary ash tree.

The use of earth plaster is very common in natural buildings; it is the same mixture used in adobe. Though easily made, its use is not widely known. Rafael Loschiavo, from Ecoeficientes, teaches the step-by-step method for bringing a new life to a run-down wall without the need for major renovations.

Wilkinson Eyre has revealed new images showing a plan to create a glass elevator in Battersea Power Station. The lift will travel 109 meters to the top of one of the building's iconic chimneys. On opening, it will offer visitors views of the capital's skyline from one of the most unique viewing platforms in London. The Chimney Lift is one of three new and exciting event/attraction spaces on offer inside the iconic Power Station. The station is working closely with a wide collection of heritage and emerging retail brands from the UK and across the globe to complement its vision for the 1930s and 1950s turbine halls.

The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) has been selected to design the German Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai. Designed as a vertical campus that blends nature and technology, the pavilion takes cues from local architecture and Germany’s history of outstanding lightweight pavilion design. Formally, the design features a freeform roof that encloses interlinked floating cubes that house exhibition and event spaces.

+ 11