Last month, we reported on the topping out of 53 West 53rd, a skyscraper designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel. The impressive 1,050-foot tall building will serve as a luxury residential condominium and offer its residents views across Central Park and downtown Manhattan. The Real Deal recently sat down with the architect to talk about his new project, and how he predicts it will transform the city’s iconic skyline.

A new short film by the non-profit organization AERIAL FUTURES explores the complex relationships between cities and their airports. In conjunction with New York's AERIAL FUTURES: Urban Constellations think tank, this video asks how cities can be imagined collectively to improve both urban life and future travel capabilities. The film features several experts who discuss the challenges and opportunities for the future of New York City’s airports and supporting infrastructure, drawing on the think tank’s focus of urban design and digital interfaces.

As a part of the second Art and Architecture Triennial in Bruges, Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY’s prototype pavilion entitled nonLin/Lin has been taken out of storage and placed on public display for the first time. First commissioned and displayed in 2011 by the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France, the exhibition will explore the rise of computational form-making. The work will spend the summer installed in the nave of the Grootseminarie, a 17th century Cistercian Abbey hosting an exhibition curated by Abdelkader Damani entitled Liquid Architectures.

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Paris-based h2o architectes revealed their designs for three pavilions to be constructed along the Seine River, near the western entrance of the Lagravère Park in Colombes.

The pavilions are woven into the existing landscape, creating a dialogue between the architecture and surrounding nature. The three small structures were designed according to function and are spread out along the promenade.

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Neighboring Grand Central Station, Company’s office building at 335 Madison Avenue has one of the most coveted locations in midtown Manhattan. Charged with completely renovating the building’s atrium and office floors, the local New York firm SHoP Architects has unveiled a set of interior renders that show their plans for the commuter-friendly office space.

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Held every two years, the International VELUX Award challenges students to generate projects that take advantage of daylight, with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of this energy source.

A jury of renowned architects chose 9 regional winners for its 2018 iteration, who will now compete for the winning title at the World Architecture Festival in November. The winners were chosen from projects presented by students from 250 different architecture schools in 58 countries.

In what has to be one of the most spectacular collisions of high fashion and architecture, fashion designer Guo Pei has tapped into the "immutable" qualities of Gothic buildings with a series of outfits inspired by vaults, spires, flying buttresses, and elaborate window tracery. According to Vogue, the Chinese designer described her work as "a dialogue between the human body and spatial dimension," while Pei's own Facebook post explained her Fall 2018 collection with just a short phrase: "Time flows unhurriedly, while architecture stands immutably."

Many of the designs in Pei's collection seem to have been conceived as architectural structures in themselves, projecting outwards from the body to create striking church-like forms. Converting the rigid stone structures of the Gothic style into fabrics designed to hang from the human body is clearly a challenging technical feat, and proves extremely satisfying for architecture-obsessed onlookers when achieved with the audacity brought to her work by Pei.

Sir Norman Foster has received the American Prize for Design, an award presented the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture and Urban Studies. The award, which was established in 2016, is presented to an individual for their lifetime achievement in the fields of design.

Snarkitecture’s “Fun House” has opened at the National Building Museum in Washington DC, an interactive exhibition forming part of the museum’s Summer Block Party series of temporary structures created inside its historic Great Hall.

More than 1500 people visited Fun House at its July 4th opening day, which comes three years after Snarkitecture’s installation at the 2015 Summer Block Party, titled "The BEACH." Other noted collaborations for Summer Block Party include Studio Gang in 2017, James Corner Field Operations in 2016, and Bjarke Ingels Group in 2014.

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Studio Gang has released images of its first project in Canada, a mixed-use residential and retail tower at the southwest corner of Yonge and Delisle in Toronto. Intended as a “new model for sustainable urban growth,” One Delisle seeks to establish the Yonge and St. Clair district as a “vibrant, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood with thriving retail, welcoming open spaces, and world-class architecture.”

The scheme, which was designed in collaboration with WZMH Architects, is driven by a desire to integrate with the local urban context through adherence to existing grid patterns and retention of existing elements, and to provide extensive outdoor space at an important transit node in midtown Toronto.

The four winners of the Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA) 2018—a competition run by the European Commission, the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, the Architects’ Council of Europe, and the European Association for Architectural Education—have been announced. With “implicit social and cultural relevance,” each of the winning projects deals with the theme of heritage in a personal yet visionary manner, leading to a set of projects that “show good architectural citizenry.” In the second edition of the competition, 451 students from 118 schools participated, representing 32 countries from across Europe (with China and South Korea participating as Guest Countries).

Read on to see the four winners with descriptions of their projects provided by the Young Talent Architecture Award.

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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is set to open a new exhibition exploring the architecture of the former country of Yugoslavia. Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 will be the first exhibition in the United States to honor the peculiar architecture of the former socialist nation.

More than 400 drawings, models, photographs, and film reels culled from an array of municipal archives, family-held collections, and museums across the region will be presented to an international audience for the first time. Toward a Concrete Utopia will feature works by many of Yugoslavia's leading architects. It will explore "large-scale urbanization, technological experimentation and its application in everyday life, consumerism, monuments and memorialization, and the global reach of Yugoslav architecture."

Read on for more about the exhibition and Yugoslav brutalism.

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The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named the initial list of speakers for the 2018 Middle East Conference, Polycentric Cities: The Future of Vertical Urbanism. The list features men and women from some of the most influential businesses in the industry, such as HOK, Safdie Architects, Kohn Pederson Fox, Gensler, Perkins+Will, SOM and many more.

The conference will highlight a wide array of subjects and disciplines related to the conference theme, as well as other hot topics in the industry, including smart technologies, modular construction, 3D-printing buildings, net-zero skyscrapers and much more.

Read on for more about Polycentric Cities and the initial list of speakers.

Foster + Partners will detail its vision of life on Mars and the Moon at the UK’s Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018. Forming part of the festival's Future Lab event, the vision will be presented through a range of models, robotics, and futuristic designs exploring the future of life in space.

The firm's showcase will include a virtual reality experience, allowing visitors to explore the inside of a proposed state-of-the-art habitation pod.

Henning Larsen has released images of their proposed urban development for the historic Imperial Shipyard at Gdansk, Poland. The 4.3million-square foot (400,000-square-meter) development seeks to transform the shipyard, built in 1844, into a “powerful financial and social engine building a thriving, mixed-use, inner-city neighborhood by the waterfront that is alive around the clock.”

The old industrial site has played a central role in the economic development of both Gdansk and Poland, serving as a key shipbuilding hub on the Baltic Coast. Through creating spines of public life centered on pedestrian/bicycle-friendly streets, Henning Larsen seeks to maintain the shipyard’s strong presence through waterfront living, work, and recreation.

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Kasteel van Horst, a 17th-century castle in rural Belgium, and the raucous music festival it hosts every fall are an unlikely pair. But for the past four years, the Horst Music and Art Festival hosted at the castle just outside of Leuven, Belgium has brought together international artists, musicians, architects, and designers for a weekend of creative celebration. For the fifth and final iteration of the festival this year, Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow will join the mix.

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The Fab City Global Initiative in collaboration with the City Hall of Paris and the Fab City Grand Paris Association are organizing this year’s Fab City Global Initiative in Paris, France from July 11-13. The three-day program will take place at the Parc de la Villette, and bring together 18 Fab City Members and international city leaders to discuss and imagine ways to define the future of productive cities. This global collaboration project combines innovation ecosystems, governments, and industries that enable cities to become more sustainable through 2054.

The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, curated by ​Jan Boelen with Nadine Botha ​and ​Vera Sacchetti, has just announced the participants of this year’s edition. Under the theme “A School of Schools”, it seeks to explore how design education, and education in general, can evolve and adapt in a new age of artificial intelligence.

Organized by the ​Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by ​VitrA​, the Biennial will bring together old and new knowledge, academic and amateur, professional and personal, engaging multigenerational, transdisciplinary practitioners from Turkey and abroad. The event will run for six weeks, from September 22 to November 4, and willinhabit ​six of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions​, which will play host to the biennial's many schools, exploring the multiple dimensions of design as learning.

Details about the venues and participants:

Last October, Germany-based Gewers Pudewill was awarded first place in an invited competition to design the Stream Tower, a new office high-rise in Berlin. The 24-story scheme elaborates on a vertical folding theme expressed through the slabs and façade, creating a programmatic sculpture depicted in recently-unveiled imagery.

Situated next to the city's Mercedes-Benz Arena, the tower will reach a height of 300 feet (90 meters), and a floor area of 430,000 square feet (42,000 square meters). Upon completion, the scheme will host the popular online fashion retailer Zalando.

New images have been released of the $925million (£700million) redevelopment of west London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre, designed by Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC Architecture. The project will see an extensive renovation of the existing exhibition halls, and the addition of creative offices, studios, and co-working space.

The 130-year-old center will be transformed into a creative hub with 2.5 acres of public space, intended to “support ambitious enhancement to focus on creative industries, entrepreneurship, and new green space for community and visitors.”

Being a 21st-century designer is not always a walk in the park, but it certainly has its perks. Fortunately, innovative product and software designers have created numerous programs that transform our ideas and visions into visual and tangible reality.

Concepts, the “next-generation design platform” is an iOS application, suitable for all design and engineering fields. Accommodating almost 80% of all design tasks, product designers, fashion designers, game designers, and industrial engineers can benefit from what the application has to offer. The TopHatch creation - which is trusted by leading designers at Disney, Apple, Nike, PlayStation, Unity, and several other leading corporations - was initiated as a simple prototype, and gradually built on feedback and innovative updates.

Following our Top Apps for Architects article, the award-winning vector-based app, is launching a brand new update, with exclusive features that enable a limitless, customized, and more precise creative experience, exclusively shared with ArchDaily readers.

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MAD Architects’ first project in the U.S., an 18-unit residential complex, has topped out in Beverly Hills. The project named ‘Gardenhouse’, is founded upon the idea of coalescing nature and the built environment in a dense urban center, providing residents an experience similar to that of living in a “hilltop village”. Once fully completed, Gardenhouse will feature a terraced arrangement of urban villas atop a plant-covered podium.

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The iconic Vlooybergtoren in Tielt-Winge, Belgium, designed by Close to bone, has been heavily damaged by an explosion. The striking piece of landscape architecture, opened in May 2015, was badly damaged on Saturday night/Sunday morning, as reported by national news outlet VRT.

VRT is reporting that an arson attack was responsible, with Mayor Rudi Beeken stating “there are clear signs that this was not an accident”.

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