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.

What’s New?

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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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Eduardo Souto de Moura, in collaboration with META architectuurbureau, has released images of a proposed urban renewal project in the Belgian city of Bruges. The Beursplein & Congresgebouw consists of a new exhibition hall and covered public square on the site of a recently demolished trade fair complex.

The $46million (€40million) scheme seeks to act as a catalyst for urban renewal at the center of Bruges, with a dual role of exhibition hall and conference center capable of receiving business delegates on weekdays, and tourists on weekends.

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Brussels-based architecture firm 51N4E have won first prize for their Skanderbeg Square project in Tirana, Albania. The European Prize for Urban Public Space is a biennale competition that promotes creating, restoring, and improving public spaces within European cities, and have chosen this year’s winners for their impressive transformation of the city’s central square.

51N4E’s restructuring and renovation of the Skanderbeg Square is a result of winning an international architecture competition back in 2008. After the project was paused in 2010 for administrative changes, and resumed in 2015, the end result is a series of urban interventions, “inviting public and semi-public neighboring functions to spread into the exterior space”.

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Instagram and social media are fundamentally changing the way we design in the 21st century. There is an inspirational component to the content we see and cite on the internet, but beyond the pretty pictures lies an opportunity for growth and learning. Zean Macfarlane (@zeanmacfarlane) has found his niche on Instagram somewhere in the middle. The "daily architecture" posts feature process sketches, articulated elevations, and graphic design; but the fun doesn't stop there.

Macfarlane's account also includes a link to tutorial ebooks where you can learn his unique graphic style and begin to apply the effects and techniques into your own drawings. The entire grid of posts acts as a digital artboard, rich with playful forms and careful composition. See for yourself why he has amassed a following of nearly 50k people.

 You can see more of Zean's work after the break. 

The College of Architects of Madrid (COAM) has made the initial digitization process of their Architecture Journal public, making one of the most important and influential Spanish architectural publications of the twentieth century available to everyone. COAM is a publication known as a platform for debate, thought, and a vital resource for architects, urban planners, and professionals from other closely related sectors.

Founded in 1918 as the official publication of the Central Society of Architects, the journal ARQUITECTURA, became the first publication of the Spanish architectural press. However, the Spanish Civil War would halt its normal development, transforming the magazine, as was required by the new times, into the National Journal of Architecture. It was edited until 1946 by the Directorate General of Architecture, then eventually placed in the hands of the Ministry of the Interior.

Brazilian contemporary artist Ernesto Neto recently realized a colorful sculpture made of hand-knotted cotton strips in the atrium of Zurich's Central Station. Titled Gaia Mother Tree, the installation resembles a giant tree and extends from the station's roof to its floor.

Exhibited by the Fondation Beyeler, Neto's sculpture is an immersive work of art, a space that one can enter into and walk around or remain and meditate. The Gaia Mother Tree will be on display until July 29th. A series of activities for adults and children, including musical concerts, workshops and debates, is scheduled to take place under the net of cotton.

Videos

Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange have launched an Indiegogo fundraiser for an 80-foot-diameter ORB to be constructed for the 2018 Burning Man festival at Black Rock City, Nevada. Scaled at 1/500,000th of the earth’s surface, the reflective sphere sits “at the axis of art & utility, capturing the entire Black Rock City in an airborne temporal monument that mirrors the Burning Man experience to the Burners as single beings in the midst of an intentional community."

As well as acting as a wayfinder for navigating The Playa, the ORB sits as a tribute to mother earth and human expression, designed to blend with its surroundings during the night, and leave no trace following its deflation.

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Foster + Partners has published photographs of their recently-opened Apple Store in Macau, intended as a “new oasis of calm” against the city’s buzz and excitement. The store, opened on June 29th, was designed in response to a brief calling for “an inviting, contemplative space, where technology, entertainment, and arts come together to make a positive contribution to the city.”

Apple Cotai Central was designed in a close collaboration between Foster + Partners and Apple’s chief design officer Sir Jonathan Ive, a collaboration which has previously produced Apple stores at Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and Regent Street in London.

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The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has released images of the MPavilion 2018, designed by Barcelona-based architect Carme Pinós of Estudio Carme Pinós, and situated in Melbourne, Australia. The fifth MPavilion in an ongoing series, the Estudio Carme Pinós design seeks to invite interaction at an intersection between people, design, nature, and the city.

The first Spanish architect to design an MPavilion, Carme Pinós follows on from past MPavilion designers such as OMA in 2017, Studio Mumbai in 2016, and AL_A in 2015.