The Chinese Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, themed "Building a Future Countryside", is endeavored to explore new technology and ideas to make better of China's rural areas. A digitally-fabricated outdoor pavilion "Cloud Village" has been set up in addition to the national exhibition at the Venetian Arsenale. The Cloud Village has a twisting form which creates a sequence of open and semi-enclosed spaces under its roof. It seeks to convey an abstraction of the everyday life in Chinese countryside where boundaries of private and public realms are not always defined.

The Cloud Village is structurally made possible by the robotic printing technology developed by Philip F. Yuan and his team. Read below for a detailed account of the project from the architects.

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On April, the continental ceremony of the Prix Versailles 2018 took place in the International Center of Conférences d'Alger with the announcement of the selected projects in shops, shopping centers, hotels and restaurants for the "Africa and West Asia" and "Europe" regions.

The 24 new projects are now incorporated into the list of 46 continental winners -from Central America, the South and the Caribbean; North America; Central Asia and the Northeast; and South Asia and the Pacific regions- resulting in 70 projects that will compete in the 2018 Prix Versailles World Final at the UNESCO Headquarters.

See the selected projects after the break.

The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) has announced the 31 winning schemes for the “2018 Outstanding Projects” award, chosen from 200 nominations. Awarded on a biennial basis, the awards seek to recognize the most distinguished architectural works built on the continents of North and South America.

The 31 projects will now form a shortlist for the MCHAP Prize, with winners to be announced in July 2018. Hosted by the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the winner will be honored in a grand prize ceremony at Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall in October. In the last series, top honors went to SANAA's Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut, USA.

With the opening of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale comes a look at the first ever contribution by the Holy See, an exhibition that brings together architects to design chapels that, after the Biennale, can be relocated to sites around the globe.

Located in a wooded area on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 10 chapels by architects including Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Smiljan Radic, are joined by the Asplund Chapel by MAP Architects. This 11th structure serves as a prelude to the other chapels, while reflecting on Gunnar Asplund's 1920 design for the Woodland Chapel.

While 2016's Golden Lion-winning project 'The Unfinished' surveyed architecture after the construction crisis, this year's Spanish pavilion will explore architecture's future through the eyes of researchers.

The 'becoming,' an exhibition curated by Spanish architect Atxu Amann, opens its doors to the works and productions of architecture students developed between 2012 and 2017. According to the curators, "becoming makes an allusion to a vector of the future, with a common educational background in the 'EscuelaS,' which extends to other learning experiences in space and time, in dialogue with other disciplines."

Selected along with nine other architects by the Vatican, Carla Juaçaba has shared images of her proposed chapel design as part of the Venice Architecture Biennial, which marks the city-state's first time participating in the largest architectural event in the world.

The proposed chapel design seeks a harmonious integration between the water and trees that surround Venice, with the nearby vegetation outlining the interior space of the chapel. The space between the treetops - which offers a view of the sky - functions as the ceiling of the chapel.

Videos

Louisiana Channel has released a new video interview with acclaimed architect Daniel Libeskind, in which he retraces the story behind his architectural career. In the interview, Libeskind unravels his view of architecture, and the architectural profession, drawing comparisons between architecture and music, while reflecting on the adherence to legislation and inherent optimistic outlook required to practice architecture.

In the 30-minute in-depth interview, Libeskind guides observers through his childhood, the roots of his architectural career, and reflects upon his most noted schemes, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the World Trade Center Masterplan in New York.

The New York City Public Design Commission and Mayor Bill de Blasio have announced the 11 projects selected as winners of their 2018 Awards for Excellence in Design. Established in 1983, the award has been bestowed annually to projects from the city’s five boroughs that “exemplify how innovative and thoughtful design can provide New Yorkers with the best possible public spaces and services and engender a sense of civic pride.”

The 2018 awards recognized projects which responded to the de Blasio Administration’s commitment to providing an “equitable, resilient, and diverse city for all New Yorkers.” All five New York boroughs feature in the awards, with schemes encompassing education, culture, art, and recreation.

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There is no female pronoun for architect in Italian, so a new project, Architette, was born aiming to professionally promote the female title in Italian. The project's objective consists of monitoring all-male juries and conferences, mentoring young generations on the ground to advocate for a more heterogeneous and fair professional landscape, where women can be an inspirational reference in architecture. 

Dr. Yael Reisner of Yael Reisner Studio, London, was selected as head curator for the 2019 Tallinn Architecture Biennale titled: “Beauty Matter: The Resurgence of Beauty." The architect’s winning proposal rejuvenates the importance of beauty, reflecting on how after almost 8 years of beauty being a tabooed subject, a cultural shift has changed its perception. The selected assistant curator will be Johanna Jõekalda, who has previously advised on the Estonian architectural scene and its socio-political-cultural features.

“Today, design has become a form of inquiry, power, and agency,” say Jan Boelen and Deniz Ova, curator and director of the 2018 Istanbul Design Biennial. “It has become vaster than the world itself, permeating all layers of everyday life.” Their curatorial statement for the 4^th Istanbul Design Biennial, which opens later this year themed with the title “A School of Schools,” seeks to explore how design education, and education in general, can evolve and adapt in a new age of artificial intelligence.

The team is determined that the Biennial should not read as a two-year scheduled event, but should “reinvent itself and become a productive, process-orientated platform for education and design to research, experiment, and learn in.” The team is undoubtedly well equipped for the challenge.

A BBC investigation has alleged that the insulation used in the refurbishment of London’s Grenfell Tower, which was tragically destroyed by fire in June 2017 with the loss of 72 people, never passed a fire safety test, and was unfit for use.

The BBC Panorama program, which aired on Monday night, concluded that the manufacturer Celotex “used extra fire retardant in the product that qualified for the safety certificate,” with the more flammable produce then sold for public use. According to the BBC, Celotex is yet to deny the program’s allegations.

One year after the launch of Resilient by Design's Bay Area Challenge, led by TLS Landscape has presented the final nine design concepts. The Bay Area Challenge launched with a call to action to "bring together local residents, community organizations, public officials and local, national, and international experts to develop innovative solutions that will strengthen our region's resilience to sea level rise, severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes." The idea formulated as a “blueprint for resilience” that can be replicated and utilized locally and globally. Other urban challenges will also be addressed, including housing, transport, health and economic disparity as a means of not just protecting the current regions, but strengthening them.

The elite, collaborative teams include world-renowned designers like BIG, Mithun and HASSELL+.

Read on for more about each of the final design concepts.

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If you think you’ve seen this handsome fella before, you have; except he was wearing a flashy red hat and an old blue robe, attempting to protect your house from thieves. Luckily, gnomes have gotten quite the modern makeover. Thanks to the collaboration between Plato Design and designer Pellegrino Cucciniello, you can finally get rid of the kitschy little guy, and replace him with NINO, the modern, brutalist gnome.

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As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage we present the proposal for the Estonian Pavilion. Below, the participants describe their contribution in their own words.

Estonian Pavilion curators, Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa and Tadeáš Říha, explore the spectrum between the explicit representation of the monument and the implicit politics of everyday architectures: from the triumphal column to the pavement beneath it, through all that is in between. The title itself – Weak Monument – is an oxymoron, a rhetorical device that offers fresh perspectives on how to recognize politics in any built form.

The Fundació Mies van der Rohe has announced a list of 40 projects that will compete for the Young Talent Architecture Award 2018 (YTAA 2018). The award was established in 2016 to “support the talent of recently graduated Architects, Urban Planners and Landscape Architects who will be responsible for transforming our environment in the future,” and joins the Foundation's European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award “in promoting high-quality work amongst emerging and established architects through the acknowledgment of the value of good buildings.”

More than 330 projects were submitted from over 118 European, Chinese, and Korean architecture schools, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of 40 projects by an esteemed jury of architects and curators. The YTAA 2018 exhibition is a collateral event at the Venice Biennale, opening on May 24th at the Palazzo Mora, where 12 finalists will be announced. The names of the four winning schemes will become known on June 28th.

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The polls are closed and the votes are in! With nearly 15,000 votes cast over the last three weeks, we are ready to unveil the winners of ArchDaily's inaugural Refurbishment in Architecture Awards. This crowdsourced architecture award, developed in partnership with MINI Clubman, showcases the best refurbishment projects published on ArchDaily throughout 2017, with our readers filtering a 450-strong shortlist down to 15 finalists, and ultimately, three winners.

Reflecting ArchDaily's global reach, the 15 finalists hailed from five continents, with the three winners located in South Africa, Mexico, and the United States. The award therefore demonstrates the global importance of architectural refurbishment as a means of enhancing sustainable urban environments at different scales. 

Without further ado, meet the winners of the ArchDaily's 2018 Refurbishment in Architecture Awards.

London-based AL_A has been appointed for their first Scottish commission: the $55million (£42million) transformation of the Paisley Museum. The brief calls for the revitalization of the home of Paisley’s textile heritage, natural history and art and science collections.

The museum’s transformation is a flagship project for a $135million (£100million) investment in cultural venues by the council governing the city of Paisley, in preparation for a UK City of Culture 2021 bid legacy.

C.F. Møller Architects have collaborated with Kristin Jarmund Architects and Rodeo Architects in the design of a new urban realm at Oslo Central Station in Norway, comprising a square, hotel, and high-rise building. The scheme seeks to create an attractive recreational area around the transport hub, connecting different areas and terrain differences in an organized, efficient flow.

The latest scheme represents a further development of a proposal by C.F. Møller Architects and Kristin Jarmund Architects for the area in a prequalified architectural competition in 2009.

Earlier this year, the jury of the Pritzker Prize chose the Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi, also known as B.V. Doshi, or Doshi, as the winner of the 2018 Pritzker Prize. In recent weeks a lot of information has come to light about the winning architect's practice who, as you probably already know, was an apprentice and collaborator of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. Being the first Indian architect to receive Architecture's most prestigious award, Doshi has had an active career of more than 70 years, with a poetic architectural style that is based on oriental cultural influences, creating a production that "covers all socioeconomic classes, in a wide spectrum of typologies, since the 1950s," according to the jury's record.

But, can you imagine what it's like to work with Doshi in his firm? We talked with four alumni from the School of Architecture, Art and Design from Tecnológico de Monterrey, who some years ago had the opportunity to travel to India to work directly with Doshi through a professional internship program promoted by the same university. Arturo Acosta, Jeimi Cuendulain, Airam Moreno and Giovanni Llamas tell us about their experience working in the firm, as well as anecdotes that marked them both professionally and personally that helped them see and experience architecture beyond the obvious. Here are their testimonies below:

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Hiroshi Sambuichi's approach to a site entails long-term study and reflection upon the qualities and forces of nature embedded within. His understanding is “deeper and with a finer grain,” explains American architect and member of The Daylight Award jury James Carpenter as one of several reasons why Sambuichi was recently announced as the latest laureate of the nearly 50-year-old Daylight Award in 2018. In Sambuichi's hands, “light becomes timeless, fluid and rich.”

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Mercer, the multinational consultancy recently announced that Vienna, Austria has been ranked as the city with the best quality of life in the world, for the ninth year in a row. In a ranking that is dominated by European cities in the highest positions, this year Vancouver (5th), Singapore (25th) and Port Louis (83rd) are the highest-ranking cities in North America, Asia, and Africa, respectively.

So, what is happening in Latin America? Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, once again occupies the top position. "Although they are challenged by economic and political turmoil," experts at the consultancy explain, "cities in emerging markets are catching up with major cities, after decades of investment in infrastructure, recreational facilities, and housing for the purpose of attracting talent and multinational businesses," they add.

In its twentieth edition, the consultancy, which specializes in advising multinational companies in employee transfers, evaluates more than 450 cities around the world, analyzing 39 factors divided into 10 categories, including political and economic environment, socio-cultural status, hygiene, educational institutions, leisure, housing, the market, and natural disasters.

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