Videos

The V&A Dundee, in collaboration with Rapid Visual Media, have released drone footage and imagery ahead of the building’s opening, marking Kengo Kuma’s first UK project. The footage showcases the new museum jutting out into Dundee’s River Tay, inspired by the cliffs of Scotland.

The museum is formed of 2,500 pre-cast concrete panels hung from complex curving walls, casting shadows which vary depending on weather conditions. As well as being Kuma’s first UK building, the V&A Dundee is also the first dedicated design museum in Scotland.

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World Architecture Festival has announced the winner of its inaugural Water Research Prize. First place was awarded to a team of students from Pontificia Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) who designed a water management system that "captures, stores, and treats rainwater and inserts it into pre-existing water networks."

Sidewalk Labs has unveiled a new proposal for Toronto's eastern waterfront and a neighborhood development called Quayside. After announcing plans to create a model smart city in Toronto last fall, Sidewalk Labs has been working to pioneer a new approach to future urban developments. Plans for Quayside were revealed during a roundtable discussion on August 14, 2018. As the subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, the team responded to an open call from Waterfront Toronto with a design that features heated pavements, large public spaces and mass timber buildings.

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Fender Katsalidis Architects’ Seafarers Place project has received planning approval for its $450 million redevelopment of the Northbank Goods Shed. Designed to revitalize the industrial waterfront site, the project will include a mixed-use precinct and a 5-star luxury hotel along the Yarra riverfront. Created with property developer Riverlee, the project aims to radically rethink the area's public space with a 3,500sqm public park and significant restoration along the historic wharf.

Since moving to New York in 2010, BIG founder Bjarke Ingels has built an impressive portfolio, from developed projects such as VIA 57 West and The Eleventh to propositions such as West 29th Street and The Spiral.

In a new interview with Louisiana Channel, Ingels steps back from the pragmatism of individual projects, and instead reflects on his view of New York, from multiculturalism and inequality to regeneration and skyscrapers.

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The Brussels Lebeau – Sablon competition has announced MLA+, the sister company of Maccreanor Lavington, as the winners of the international contest to transform the city's historic Le Sablon district. Working together with local firm Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten, the team's proposal is a new mixed-use development for Belgium developer IMMOBEL, which seeks to regenerate the key historical district. The winning scheme includes offices, residences, a student hotel, and a public square.

Videos

39 people are now reported to have died following the collapse of the Morandi motorway bridge in Genoa, Italy. The incident happened on Tuesday 14th August, when one of the bridge’s structural components, comprising of pre-stressed concrete stays and trestles, collapsed onto a railway line and warehouse 150 feet (45 meters) below.

The cause of the collapse is not yet known, however, attention is now turning to the bridge’s maintenance record, concerns of its integrity stretching back decades, and how the collapse sits within the broader context of aging Italian infrastructure.

UNStudio and Cox Architecture have officially been announced as the winners of Melbourne’s landmark Southbank Precinct overhaul. Selected from a range of high-profile offices, including BIG, OMA, and MAD, UNStudio's vision for the $2 billion project includes a pair of twisted towers called Green Spine. As the largest single-phase project in the history of Victoria, Australia, the Green Spine is designed as a state-of-the-art, mixed-use environment centered around innovation in architecture and design.

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Time Magazine and MONEY have released a new 2018 ranking that identifies the affordability and education quality of more than 700 leading institutions across the United States. The ranking looked at colleges that have a strong record of helping students graduate and preparing them for jobs at which they’ll earn enough to pay off student debt. Of the top 25 schools, over half offer either unaccredited or NAAB accredited architecture degrees for undergraduate students.

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The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has issued a statement outlining its new initiatives in response to the rising tide of school shootings in the United States. The statement, titled “Where we stand: School design and student safety,” outlines four paths of action the Institute intends to take to support architects and school communities.

While not containing a detailed policy to tackle the ongoing crisis, the AIA statement commits to updating school design guidelines, supporting education to achieve safe school design, making safe school design eligible for federal grants, and establishing a federal clearinghouse on school design.

James Stirling (1926-1992) was a British architect who is considered by many as the premier architect of his generation and an innovator in postwar architecture. Some of his most famous projects include the Sackler Museum, No 1 Poultry, and the Neue Staatsgalerie. Through the influence of his teacher Colin Rowe, Stirling had a deep understanding of architectural history, yet never adopted a singular doctrine. His career began with designs that were more aligned with what would later be labeled as the high-tech style, but evolved into buildings that were a series of dynamic and often colorful arrangements. Stirling’s aesthetic tropes ultimately gave the final push that broke architecture free from the clutch of post-war European Modernism as he turned the Modernist canon of “form follows function” into a hyperbole by celebrating the expression of a building’s program with his over-the-top details. Stirling’s work is still largely influential, and the recursive wave of history has shown that the underlying implications of his oeuvre remains somewhere in all architectural practice of the present day.

Peter Zumthor's quiet, technically pristine, and beautifully detailed work has long been an inspiration for architects. His Kolumba Museum, located in Cologne, Germany, a city that was almost completely destroyed in World War II, houses the Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s collection of art which spans more than a thousand years. Zumthor’s design delicately rises from the ruins of a late-Gothic church, respecting the site’s history and preserving its essence.

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I hope you have caught your breath after this year’s FIFA World Cup. France’s win in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium marked the end of an era; the last World Cup with a classic format. After the 2022 Winter tournament in Qatar, the competition will be expanded to 48 teams (rather than the current 32).

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Ever wonder how Burning Man’s famous Black Rock City rises from the dust of the Nevada Desert every year? A video by vlogger Shalaco Sching offers an insight, documenting the process undertaken by the team of surveyors tasked with creating a temporary city from scratch, year after year.

As Shalaco documents through his video below, his Instagram, and a written account on the Burning Man Journal, a team of 21 surveyors spend seven days laying the lines and waypoints of a 5.62-mile plan, creating the largest and most iconic art installation at Burning Man – the city itself.

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Dubai Municipality has announced that the city is planning to preserve its landmark buildings from the 1960s and 70s as part of a new initiative called Modern Heritage. Jointly launched by the Planning Department and the Architectural Heritage Department, the initiative aims to save the first footprints of Dubai. The initiative would protect some of the most significant buildings constructed when the city was first beginning its rapid development. The plan includes the preservation of the Dubai Trade Centre, a 149-metre-high tower regarded as the city's first skyscraper.

The Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission announced the final design has been unanimously selected for the memorial in Newtown, Connecticut. The Clearing by Ben Waldo and Daniel Affleck of SWA Group was officially recommended by the commission, and the Board of Selectmen will make final approvals this month. Chosen out of three concepts unveiled in May, the winning memorial honors the 26 victims and survivors of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

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Videos

New York-based collaborative and design studio Snarkitecture have unveiled their newest interactive installation, bringing a surreal sense of play to Hong Kong’s waterfront. Titled “BOUNCE,” the installation features hundreds of 300% sized bouncing balls contained in a cage-like stadium, inviting the public to “create their own unique playing experiences.”

The program is spread across three locations, with the feature installation along the Harbour City waterfront, an indoor installation at the Ocean Center titled “Gallery by the Harbour,” and a children’s “Eyeball Maze” at the Ocean Terminal.

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Istanbul-based studio Superspace has proposed a design for Prague’s Victory Square that transforms the dead zone in the middle of Prague into a space flourishing with nature and social activities. The simple but effective solution inverts traffic and pedestrian access to create a green urban center, where markets, art festivals and even wintertime ice-skating can take place. Tall, local evergreen trees would be planted in the horseshoe shape surrounding the inner ring, creating an iconic visual impact while shielding the community space from the noise of the busy traffic area beyond.

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Videos

Founded by the Hanover and Berlin-based artists Thomas Granseuer and Tomislav Topic, Quintessenz has its roots in both graffiti-culture and chromatics. Combine painting, moving image, and installation, their work uses patterns and shapes found in architecture to change perceptions of space. Using old factory buildings as their canvas, Quintessenz consistently aims to create space for color. In every medium they use, color is the content itself.

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Opening next month, the London Design Biennale returns with an impressive cast of characters. In its second iteration, the Biennale begins September 4 under the theme ‘emotional states’ and will run until September 23. After the 2016 inaugural launch, the event has expanded to include 40 countries, cities and territories. Taking over Somerset House, including the Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court and River Terrace, the event will explore ideas ranging from social equality and pollution to migration and cities.

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American artist Michael Velliquette has produced his latest series of paper-based artwork, creating intricate paper models of sacred architecture. His hand-cut paper shapes are assembled into complex forms “akin to sacred architecture and three-dimensional mandalas.”

Prioritizing formal symmetry, balance, and order, the models aim to evoke “a sense of visual equanimity” through a restrained palette of neutral or monochromatic tones.

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Videos

Carrots cannot help you see in the dark, but they could make your buildings stronger, and more environmentally friendly. Engineers at Lancaster University in the UK have worked in collaboration with Cellucomp Ltd UK to study the effects of adding “nano platelets” extracted from the fibers of root vegetables to enhance the performance of concrete mixtures.

The vegetable-composite concretes, made from vegetables such as sugar beet or carrot, have structurally and environmentally out-performed all commercially-available cement additives, such as graphene and carbon nanotubes, doing so at a much lower cost. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised that countries throughout the world eliminate the use of all types of asbestos, a dangerous carcinogen, to prevent asbestos-related diseases. According to the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, it was estimated that 40,000 people in the U.S. die each year from asbestos-related conditions.

Despite the WHO's concerns, Fast Company reported that under Trump's administration, "The [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] (EPA) has even made it easier for companies to introduce new uses of asbestos-containing products in America." Although Asbestos Nation estimates that 55 countries have outlawed the carcinogen, this issue brings up a common question: Has my country banned asbestos? Below, we have provided a list by International Ban Asbestos Secretariat's Laurie Kazan-Allen on the following 65 countries and regions that have banned asbestos.