They say one cannot separate art from the artist, or perhaps in this case, the artist from the architect. Arguably one of the most criticized architects, Le Corbusier is often portrayed as cold and controlling. Depicting his more dreamy and humorous nature, the Nasjonalmuseet's exhibition titled, “Le Corbusier by the Sea,” draws upon his memories from his summer travels along the coast of southwest France.

Hosted in Villa Stenersen, one of the National Museum's venues, the exhibition showcases Le Corbusier's work as an artist during the period 1926-36. Not only does the exhibition include fifteen of his reproduced paintings alongside a collection of sketches, but also screens two films from Le Corbusier's own footage of his surrounding views.

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As part of its Keeping It Modern initiative, the Getty Foundation announced over $1.7 million will be dedicated as architectural conservation grants to eleven iconic 20th-century buildings this year. Including national and international sites such as Eero Saarinen's recently renovated Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, and Oscar Niemeyer’s Rashid Karami International Fairground in Tripoli, Lebanon, the organization has supported 54 conservation projects since 2014.

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The "Single-Family Housing" Architectural Design Workshop, organized by the architecture firm Cota Paredes Arquitectos, concluded its seventh edition, which invited graduate architects and final-year architecture students to develop a Single-Family Housing Project over four weeks, either in-person or online.

The "Bunker" project arises from a lawyer's need for a more private space to practice their profession and meet with clients in a more intimate and secure setting. Consequently, they decided to use their home as a meeting point, making modifications to create a space with character. Grounded in the concept of introspective architecture to maximize privacy, the house becomes a bunker where life and work merge.

The dominating news of the week came courtesy of RIBA and IIT, with the two announcing this year’s laureates of the Stirling Prize and Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, respectively. Foster + Partners were awarded RIBA’s Stirling Prize for their Bloomberg HQ in London. Said jury member Sir David Adjaye, “Bloomberg is a once-in-a-generation project which has pushed the boundaries of research and innovation in architecture.” The project has been a controversial choice, with some citing the tension between the building’s massive price tag and the current UK housing crisis.

The Los Angeles-based firm, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, a transdisciplinary practice engaging in design from urban planning to product design, opened their new offices in the city's Crenshaw neighborhood. A recent article by Metropolis Magazine outlines the firm's design process in creating their new office layout to emphasize their aspirations as an established practice.

On October 20, the Museu da Casa Brasileira will host the launch of the book Uma ideia de arquitetura – escritos de Lina Bo Bardi, by Marina Grinover. During the event, the author will join José Tavares Correia de Lira (Professor at FAUUSP), Renato Anelli (IAU-USP), and Ana Maria Belluzzo (FAUUSP) for a panel discussion.

Swedish studio Urban Nouveau has created a plan to save Stockholm's Gamla Lidingöbron bridge by transforming it into a linear park and housing. Built in the 1920s, the rail and pedestrian bridge features a lattice structure and arched steel trusses that would frame 50 new apartments and a pedestrian park above. While the local council has made plans to demolish the Lidingö bridge, Urban Nouveau launched a petition with the aim of saving the bridge and re-purposing it for the city.

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Out of 132 cities across 23 countries worldwide, a Colombian city has once again won the One Planet City Challenge, an initiative organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to recognize urban centers taking action for sustainability.

The winning city is Montería, which was recognized during the Global Climate Action Summit held in San Francisco, United States, on September 12. Awarded for the fourth consecutive year, the Colombian city was highlighted for implementing sustainable mobility through urban design modifications, such as the construction of bike lanes and pedestrian pathways. Additionally, Montería was recognized for integrating strategies in its agricultural sector, particularly in cattle ranching, which is known to be a major contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Waugh Thistleton Architects’ ten-story Dalston Works project stands proudly as the world’s largest Cross Laminated Timber building in Hackney, London, having been completed in 2017. The 121-unit development made entirely of CLT from external to core walls, the scheme weighs one-fifth of an equivalent concrete building.

In addition to tackling London’s need for dense, high-quality housing, the scheme offers a methodology for implementing timber technology with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, such as an 80% reduction in the number of deliveries during construction.

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Seattle-based Olson Kundig has released details of their second-place winner from the 2018 Land Art Generator competition, set in Melbourne, Australia. The “Night & Day” scheme combines solar energy with a hydro battery, generating enough power for 200 Australian homes, 24 hours per day.

The St Kilda-situated infrastructure proposal doubles as an artwork and pedestrian bridge, with a flagship 5,400-square-meter solar sail suspended above the St Kilda Triangle in Port Phillip city. After sunset, further electricity is generated through two turbines capturing the kinetic movement of water released through them.

Videos

In recent years, architecture film festivals have erupted around the globe providing critics, theorists, and all architectural thinkers with an additional median for architectural expression and discussion. The symbiotic relationship between architecture and film stems from architecture’s effect on its built environment and its determined social/cultural impact.

As the international audience grows and new genres emerge, architecture film festivals have come to encompass more than just the film’s initial viewing; programs, lectures, and discussions are organized, enhancing the intellectual impact of the viewing material. Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR) is celebrating its tenth edition this October by exploring the concept of “building happiness” in an age when we seek to build a more sustainable world - a challenge for both historic and contemporary design.

Jacob Witzling may lack formal architectural training, but his passion for nature and cabin architecture has provided him with all the tools needed to both design and construct idyllic living spaces. Witzling’s cabins can be found throughout the United States; these structures are often sequestered to the woods, providing a remote escape from urban centers and suburban sprawl.

Witzling’s interest in cabins began at the age of 16. His father, an architect and engineer, provided him with a preliminary exposure to the world of designing and building. “I needed to exist in the woods, and even though I had never built anything other than a blanket fort, I knew that my passion to create would be sufficient,” says Witzling. “I remember pouring over the pages of my dad’s favorite book, 'Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutcher’s Art.' I would gaze at the pictures from inside my blanket fort and daydream about building one of my own.”

Orange Architects + KCAP have created a Golden City Block for St. Petersburg, Russia. Bordering the Finnish Gulf, the new urban development is part of Vasilievsky Island. Three of Orange and KCAP's projects in the development are already underway, including the towers of block 6, as well as construction for block 7 and block 8. Inspired by the morphology and structure of St. Petersburg’s city center, the design utilizes urban blocks with enclosed gardens and courtyards.

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"Residencial Casa Atlântica" in Copacabana, Zaha Hadid's first project in South America, was canceled. O Globo reported the cause as "the delay of the city hall to release the work license and the consequent delay of the launch and inauguration of the project." The luxury residential condominium was designed in 2013 and should have been opened in time for the Olympics.

The MIT-based Mediated Matter Group have created Fiberbots, an autonomous digital fabrication platform designed to quickly build architecture during disaster. By utilizing cooperative robotic manufacturing, Fiberbots can create highly sophisticated material structures. The small robots work as a group to wind fiberglass filament and create high-strength tubular structures. MIT researchers envision the bots building in extreme environments and natural disaster zones.

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UK entrepreneur Ehab Syed has developed a mushroom-based insulation with his company Biohm, embodying techniques that are “completely natural, biodegradable and vegan.”

As reported by Global Construction Review, the material will come to the market in the coming months, with interest expressed by Tata Steel, Heathrow Airport, and leading UK house builders.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has unveiled an updated $13 billion plan to transform John F. Kennedy International Airport into a “world-class 21st-century airport.” The scheme will add two major international terminals at the North and South sides, increasing airport capacity by 4 million square feet and 15 million annual passengers.

The plans are derived from a 2017 masterplan led by Grimshaw Architects and Mott MacDonald, which sought to combine the airport’s eight disparate terminal sites into one unified system.

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The jury of the Oscar Niemeyer Prize has announced the 20 finalist works for the second edition of the award. The organizers aim to biennially highlight the best of architectural production "at a time of an unquestionable strengthening and presence of Latin American architecture on the international stage."

Established under the umbrella of the Network of Architecture Biennials of Latin America (REDBAAL), the 2016 edition of the award recognized a built work for "its values as an architectural and technological proposal; and for its relationship with the context, as well as social, cultural, and environmental aspects." The winner was The Place of Remembrance, designed by Barclay & Crousse (Peru), while second place went to the Brasiliana USP Library, designed by Eduardo de Almeida + Mindlin Loeb + Dotto Arquitetos (Brazil), and third place went to the San Bernardo Chapel, designed by Nicolás Campodónico (Argentina).

"We must recognize the value of the local and enrich it with the global, embracing everything that enriches us as peoples and societies. Architecture protects and communicates; it is a public reality from which we cannot detach ourselves. The city is also composed of architectural elements, meaning that architecture must be conceived from and toward the city," the organizers explained in the official press release.

The jury—composed of architects Carla Juaçaba, Carlos Jiménez, Fabián Farfán, Jean Pierre Crousse, and César Shundi—evaluated all the submissions and selected the twenty finalists:

Videos

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have announced Foster + Partner's Bloomberg HQ as the winner of the 2018 Stirling Prize. Seen as the UK's most prestigious architecture award, this award is given to the building " that has made the biggest contribution to the evolution of architecture in a given year." Selected from a list of six projects, the design highlights the collaboration between a civic-minded client and architect, as well as addressing the public realm.

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Barclay & Crousse Architecture’s Edificio E, University of Piura in Peru has been announced as the winner of the 2018 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), recognizing the most distinguished architectural works built on the North and South American continents.

The project was selected from a shortlist of six finalists, joining SANAA’s Grace Farms, Alvaro Siza’s Iberê Camargo Foundation and Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road as winners of the highly-regarded prize which was established in 2003.

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Finnish office Lahdelma & Mahlamäki architects have won the competition to design a new high-rise district in Helsinki. Proposing a cluster of public space and triangular plan towers, the firm will see the phased construction of the high-density, mixed-use towers and public space alongside construction firm YIT. Located in the Pasila district, the project is called Trigoni as a reference to the triangular plan of the towers and the desire to create strong connections around sustainable development.

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Videos

The American Institute of Architects have released the winning films for the 2018 Film Challenge. As part of the institute's larger Blueprint for Better campaign, the film challenge asked participants to produce, shoot, and edit 3 to 5 minute documentary-style short films. The AIA invited architects and filmmakers to collaborate in telling stories of architects, civic leaders and communities working together toward positive community impact.

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David Chipperfield and Euroboden have collaborated on the design of a five-story building in Munich, located near the city’s Herzog Park. The 2800-square-meter scheme seeks to “fit sensitively into the historic fabric of the neighborhood.”

The design process revolved around the incorporation of history and pattern from the surrounding environment, without copying or resorting to historicization. The result is a scheme which is “simultaneously self-confident yet restrained, a building that integrates itself into its context without subordinating itself.”

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Meu Coração Bate Como o Seu, the sculpture designed by Guto Requena and built in downtown São Paulo at Praça da República in honor of the LGBT community, has had its wiring destroyed and its internal light bulbs stolen.

Conceived to celebrate 40 years of community activism in São Paulo, the act against his work is, for Requena, homophobic in nature: "The country is becoming too violent, so I have no doubt that the vandalism of my work was intended to target the LGBT community."