Designed by Czech designers Atelier SAD and distributed by mmcité1, this mobile, nature-inspired gazebo is a playground must-have for children and adults alike. 109 waterproof, plywood scales are treated with resistant glaze and connected by galvanized joints to create a self-supporting, sustainable structure.

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The 2018 Milan Design Week is now underway, a festival which this year is expected to attract over 300,000 visitors. Every year, the festival brings together a wide range of practitioners and design companies resulting in unusual yet fascinating collaborations and installations.

Below, we have compiled a list of collaborations to look out for throughout the week, including investigations into water, healthcare, and micro-living.

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British architect, historian, critic and educator Kenneth Frampton has been announced as this year’s recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2018 Venice Biennale. The decision was made by the Board of The Venice Biennale chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon recommendation from the Biennale’s curators, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects.

Having studied at the Architectural Association in London, Frampton has taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, New York since 1972. He has also lectured at several leading institutions, including ETH Zurich, the Royal College of Art in London, and the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam. Perhaps his most influential work, “Modern Architecture: A Critical History,” was described by Biennale President Paulo Baratta as a book which “no student of the faculties of architecture is unfamiliar with.”

OPEN Architecture has released the latest construction photos of the Dune Art Museum topping out in a Chinese coastal city near Beijing. The art museum manifests itself as a complex of interconnected concrete shells, which in the next and final stage of construction, are to be buried in sand and shrubs to restore the natural silhouette of the dunes on the beach.

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eVolo Magazine has announced the winners of its 2018 Skyscraper Competition. Now in its 13th year, the annual award was established to recognize “visionary ideas for building [high-rise] projects that through [the] novel use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations, challenge the way we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.”

This year, 3 winners and 27 honorable mentions were selected from a pool of 526 entries. Among this year’s winners are a foldable skyscraper inspired by origami, an urban building for rice farming, and a prototype for vertical housing in areas damaged by wildfires.

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Studio Gang’s 10-story commercial “Solar Carve Tower” has topped out in New York’s Meatpacking District. Officially named “40 Tenth Avenue,” the scheme responds to a perceived lack of site-specific design in New York, with Studio Gang prioritizing “intentionality and contextuality” as their guiding principles. The scheme is therefore defined by a dramatic curtain wall, chiseled shape, and a dynamic relationship with its surrounding environment.

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Sou Fujimoto, Nicolas Laisné and Dimitri Roussel will be building a new gateway to the city of Rosny-sous-Bois in Grand Paris. Their project, Village Vertical, has been chosen as the winning proposal for the "Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris" competition. The team includes landscape and urban designers from Atelier Georges and urban developers from La Compagnie de Phalsbourg and REI Habitat.

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A post shared by Franky Lam (@frankylamchops) on Apr 16, 2018 at 5:02am PDT

UK-based design studio NEWSUBSTANCE has debuted at the Coachella Valley Music & Art Festival with a seven-floor pavilion taking visitors on an “ever-changing journey of light, color and perspective.” The 75-foot-high (23-meter-high) pavilion named “Spectra” consists of a spiral form featuring an observation deck at its peak, projecting a rainbow band of color.

The dazzling color scheme is produced by the separation of light waves by their varying degrees of refraction, embodying the lively spirit of the Coachella festival. Through this manipulation of the physical properties of light, Spectra is capable of producing over 16 million colors.

On Saturday in Santiago, Chile, the Prix Versailles Committee announced the continental winners of its annual awards celebrating built commercial architecture.

Ten winning projects in Central America, the South and the Caribbean and twelve in North America are awarded in four categories: stores, shopping malls, hotels and restaurants. In May, built projects in Africa and Asia will be awarded in Algiers and Beijing. The European winners will be announced in Paris.

Check a gallery of the continental winners projects, below.

Continental Winners Central America, the South and the Caribbean:

Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi, known for his majestic wire mesh sculptures, has unveiled his biggest artwork to date for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. Titled “Etherea,” the site-specific installation represents the culmination of Tresoldi's research in the music field, realized as three transparent structures taking inspiration from Neoclassical and Baroque architecture.

The Italian artist has established a reputation for wire mesh sculptures, having been named by Forbes as one of the 30 most influential European artists. The Etherea sculpture represents the artist’s investigation into architecture as a tool for contemplation, a “dedicated space where the sky and clouds are narrated through the language of classical architecture.”

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Barcelona is a thriving city with world-class architecture and a rich history that makes it one of Europe’s most popular destinations. When you first think of this Spanish metropolis, what comes to mind? For many of us, it is the image of Antoni Gaudi’s unique style and gravity-defying Sagrada Familia. But what would Barcelona look like without this cathedral or some of its other buildings the city is known for? In Menilmonde’s new video titled “Barcelona Archi’llusion”, the buildings flicker between total erasure, a pseudo-sketch, and views of their actual forms, allowing you explore to what the city would be like without some it’s most famous icons.

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The Expo Guadalajara Technical Committee invited five different Mexican architecture studios to participate in the design competition for the conceptual proposal for the extension of this trade fair venue in the capital of Jalisco state. Following a lengthy competition period, Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos has been selected as the winner with a conceptual project that takes as its main objective: the creation of a multifunctional space with an important urban interaction.

Dubai Nhabitat, a mixed-use tower proposed by Ankara-based firm rgg Architects, utilizes its own unique formal system to create "permeability through different materials and building tectonics." The tower is an aggregate of individual modules that can be enlarged or shrunk by an "8mx8m grid" based on programmatic needs, creating views and outdoor spaces unique to each spatial arrangement.

Adjaye Associates has unveiled images of its proposed reconceptualization of the protective façade of an electrical switching station into an engaging “Art Wall” in Newark, New Jersey. The 30-foot-high walls of the Fairmount Heights switching station will be transformed into a canvas for original works of 14 local and international artists, exploring themes of youth, education, and community, while a canopied passageway will house a market, art installations, and gathering space.

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Taiwan has announced the scheduled October 2018 opening of the Mecanoo-designed National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, also named “Weiwuying.” The Mecanoo scheme incorporates five state-of-the-art performance spaces under a single roof which, at 35 acres (141,000 square meters), stands as the world’s largest performing arts center under one roof.

Set across a 116-acre (470,000-square-meter) subtropical park in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, the scheme will occupy a former military training base, symbolizing the city’s transition from a major international harbor into a rich, diverse, cultural hub, connecting local and international artistic talent.

Videos

Late last year, we reported on the progress of world’s first 3D printed steel bridge designed by Netherlands-based MX3D. With the design now finalized, the start-up company has announced that the span of the bridge is now complete.

The final round of structural tests is expected to take place this summer, just three years after the project was first announced. After the structural integrity has been tested, the final design will be modified and the completion of the bridge will follow only a few months after. MX3D hopes to showcase the potential of their multi-axis 3D printer during the Dutch Design Week, and the first of its kind bridge is planned to be installed into its final location in a canal in Amsterdam sometime next year.

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The rust-belt city of Cleveland, Ohio is home to a number of famous architectural icons including Farshid Moussavi's Museum of Contemporary Art, Rafael Vinoly’s Cleveland Museum of Art, and Frank Gehry’s Peter B. Lewis Building at Case Western Reserve. Cleveland is also the site of the oldest publicly-owned NBA arena in the country that has yet to receive a major renovation. However, Quicken Loans Arena, home court to LeBron James and the Cavaliers, will be undergoing a large transformation to be spearheaded by Gensler.

This new design, which will greatly improve the visitor experience and serve as a catalyst of the growth in Cleveland, will have all Cavalier fans excited to “Defend The Land” once the renovations are complete in 2019.

Last month, the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) announced four finalists in their MCHAP award for emerging architecture: The María Montessori School by EPArquitectos and Estudio Macías Peredo, Children Village by Rosenbaum and Aleph Zero, the Embodied Computation LAB by David Benjamin, and Common Unity by Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura.

Now, the jury of Ricky Burdett, Jose Castillo, Ron Henderson, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce and Claire Weisz has declared Common Unity as the winner of the 2018 MCHAP.emerge award.

British architect Sir David Adjaye, Founding Principal of Adjaye Associates, will be honored as this year’s recipient of the Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award by the Center for Architecture and Design in Philadelphia. The annual award celebrates the achievements of an individual who has made a significant contribution to the field of architecture, while also celebrating the achievements of influential Philadelphia-based architect Louis Kahn.

Past recipients of the award have included Bjarke Ingels, Norman Foster, Peter Bohlin, Daniel Libeskind, Robert A.M. Stern, Rafael Viñoly and César Pelli.

Videos

MVRDV has won a competition for the design of an art installation in the Dutch coastal city of Den Helder, seeking to strengthen the connection between land and sea through a new public landmark. The “SeaSaw” consists of a viewing platform balanced in equilibrium atop the city’s flood defenses, a distinguishable structure praised by the jury for capturing “the energetic spirit of the city represented as an infinite form.”

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In his latest photographic collection, Federico Scarchilli captures Cistercian order in the form of Abbazia di Fossanova, Casamari, and Valvisciolo. Simple and utilitarian, Cistercian architecture reflects the transition between the Romanesque and Gothic periods. During this time, many religious authorities felt excessive ornamentation was a distraction to spiritual studies.

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BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group has unveiled images of their proposed Audemars Piguet Hotel des Horlogers, a ski hotel set in the scenic Vallée de Joux, Switzerland. The compact scheme, designed in collaboration with Cche Architecture, is defined by a zig-zag form seamlessly integrated into the smooth topography of the surrounding valley, forming a connection with the nearly Musée Atelier.

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