SketchUp developer Trimble has launched SketchUp Viewer, a new virtual and mixed reality app for the Microsoft HoloLens that will allow users to inhabit and experience their 3D designs in a completely new way. Using the holographic capabilities of the HoloLens, SketchUp Viewer creates hologram versions of models that can be placed in real-world environments –allowing architects to study and analyze how their buildings will react to their context while still in the design stage.

At today’s Trimble Dimensions keynote, architect Greg Lynn presented SketchUp Viewer for the first time, demonstrating the technology using his re-imagining of the Packard Plant in Detroit, commissioned as part of the “Architectural Imagination,” the U.S. Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale exhibition.

"Trimble mixed-reality technology and Microsoft HoloLens bring the design to life and bridge the gap between the digital and physical. Using this technology I can make decisions at the moment of inception, shorten the design cycle and improve communication with my clients,” said Lynn.

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The Illuminated River Foundation has unveiled the six designs shortlisted to transform the river Thames in London by lighting up key bridges along the length of the river. The six teams were selected in September and asked to work their initial schemes into concept designs for the Westminster, Waterloo, London and Chelsea bridges. The teams comprise: Adjaye Associates; A_LA; Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Leo Villareal with Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and Future\Pace; Les Éclairagistes Associés with ecqi and Federico Pietrella; and Sam Jacob Studio with Simon Heijdens. Read on to see all six designs.

Architectural photographer Danica O. Kus has shared with us new images of BIG’s VIA 57 West. Having opened earlier this year, the “courtscraper” has already been the recipient of several awards, including its unanimous victory of the 2016 International Highrise Award last week. This new photoset takes us inside the public and private spaces of the 32-story building, including interior shots of the lobby, lounge, pool and the residential units.

Check out the full set after the break.

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One of modernism’s most iconic houses, Case Study House 21 (Bailey House) by Pierre Koenig, is now on sale. The two-bed/two-bath Hollywood Hills landmark has been touted as among the finest of Arts & Architecture Magazine’s Case Study Houses, and one of the program’s few truly experimental projects to explore groundbreaking design and materials.

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The Sunday Times British Homes Awards has selected the recipient for its Resilient Home for the Future Award: "A Home for All Seasons" by JTP Architects and environmental design specialist Ed Barsley. JTP and Ed Barsley's proposal was chosen from four other entries by means of a public vote. Competition requirements asked for designs to respond to potential flooding and overheating — two of climate change's impending variables.

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Architectural competition organizer Bee Breeders has announced the winners of the international Melbourne Tattoo Academy competition, which sought to “recollect and [postulate] principles of architectural humanism in contemporary culture,” asking entrants to consider disciplinary introspection into spatial and material issues concerning culture, society, and individuality.

Successful entries to the competition thus challenged personal and social conceptions of the tattoo as an art form, as well as the cultural and philosophical implications of tattoos in architecture.

Notable among the relationships and juxtapositions established include: critiques on permanence and longevity; the irreversible transformation of flesh and nature; correlation between graphic and retinal expression, graffiti and street art, the scenographic and decorated shed; lastly, body art as boutique parlor fashion, and high couture - noted the compatition organisers. 

The winners of the Melbourne Tattoo Academy competition are:

The future development of the Arabia Historic District in Helsinki has culminated in the second round of a two-stage competition.

Arabiazza(s) — one of the four proposals selected for the second stage — was developed by team leader Anssi Lassila and comprised of OOPEAA working in collaboration with Lunden Architecture and Gehl Architects acting as a consultant in urban public space. Through a sequential flow of spaces in the form of public squares, Arabiazza(s) fundamentally aims to encourage public interaction. The intent to engage a broad range of people — from students to tourists to workers — inspired the creation of multiple sheltered inner courtyards.

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The winners of the 2016 INTBAU World Congress Excellence Awards have recently been announced. Categories for this year’s competition were Community Engagement, New Building, Urban Design, and Emerging Talent. The awards were given during the INTBAU World Congress 2016, a biennial forum that brings together international participants to debate the most pressing global issues facing building, architecture, and urbanism.

"I join my jurors in applauding the considerable depth and breadth of this year's award submissions," said Anne Fairfax, President a Fairfax & Sammons Architects and jury chair of the Excellence Awards. "We found the projects to be thoughtful in leading by example in the use of traditional design but we were also pleased to see the positive social activism and environmental responsibility that characterized many of the projects, reaching deep into the values of the INTBAU mission."

The winners of the 2016 INTBAU World Congress Excellence Awards are:

The "Rust Belt," a region of north central United States, is well known as an area where once thriving industrial cities have declined in economic health and population. As a result, many of the region's cities have been subject to grand proposals that aim to fix these city's problems--but could such schemes also provide a way to intervene in other serious global issues? In a recent article, Metropolis Magazine’s Web Editor and former ArchDaily Managing Editor Vanessa Quirk argues that refugees could reinvigorate such cities, describing how refugees are “boosting American’s legacy cities,” but simultaneously “encountering resistance from residents.”

In October 1997, the unforgettable swooping metal panels of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao made their debut, drawing the attention of art and architecture lovers around the world. Images of the building quickly circulated through the infant world wide web, turning the museum into an instant icon that permanently elevated and transformed the international perception of the city of Bilbao.

Cities all over the world saw the potential in creating their own “Bilbao Effect,” and soon, a slew of new eye-catching, sculptural buildings had be built. This phenomenon persisted through the 2000s, manifesting itself in works by Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and many others. But recently, notable figures both inside and outside architecture have began to distance themselves from the icon, notably in the design philosophies of OMA and alumni such as Jeanne Gang and Matthias Sauerbruch.

In a new opinion piece for the Guardian, photographer Stuart Franklin extends this sentiment not just to architecture, but to all images in general. Franklin explains the history of the “iconic image” and the reasons why it may no longer exist. 

Read Franklin’s full piece, here.

The Library of Congress has announced the winners of the 2016 Holland Prize, which recognizes the best single-sheet, measured drawing of a historic building, site, or structure, completed to the standards of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), or the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS).

The prize is awarded annually to “increase awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of historic resources throughout the United States while adding to the permanent HABS, HAER, and HALS collection at the LOC, and to encourage the submission of drawings among professionals and students. By requiring only a single sheet, the competition challenges the delineator to capture the essence of the site through the presentation of key features that reflect its significance.”

Young tech team (Bar Smith, Hannah Teagle, and Tom Beckett) has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Maslow, a four-by-eight-foot at home CNC cutting machine made to assist construction efforts by cutting user-specified shapes out of wood or any other flat material. Designed to be affordable—at under $500—easy to use, inclusive, and powerful, the project aims to share designs digitally so that you can build on the work of others or create your own from scratch.

Based on the design of the hanging plotter, Maslow “uses gear-reduced DC motors with encoders and a closed-loop feedback system to achieve high accuracy and high torque.”

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For this edition of Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, the team turn their attention to the crossroads where design and architecture meet film. From a documentary about Pruitt-Igoe, the St. Louis housing project, to a new reading of the title sequence of Superman, this episode investigates the role of architecture in film – and visa versa.

Chilean studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen has erected a temporary wooden tower of “an ambiguous” scale in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. Named the “Deci Pavilion,” the structure is made up of ten stacked octagonal wooden drums of decreasing size. While in reality only large enough to hold one visitor at a time, the column’s form and relationship to its surroundings give it the presence of a much larger structure.

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The Wall Street Journal has named Snøhetta their “Architecture Innovator of the Year” for 2016. Founded by 55-year-old American Craig Dykers and 58-year-old Norwegian Kjetil Trædal, Snøhetta rose to prominence with their competition-winning designs for the 20th-century successor to the lost wonder of the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, and the National Norwegian Opera House in Oslo.

Zaha Hadid Architects has been announced as the winner of an international competition to design a new football stadium for the Forest Green Rovers in Stroud, UK. Following a seven month competition featuring over 50 entries from around the world, ZHA was selected over finalist Glenn Howells Architects for their all-wood proposal. When finished, the stadium will be the first in the world to be built entirely out of wood.

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The $1.4 billion MGM National Harbor has started taking reservations. Nestled in the woodlands of Prince George's County, Maryland, HKS Hospitality Group's gaming resort is gearing up for its December 8th opening.

The hotel is slated as one of the "20 Most Anticipated Hotel Openings of 2016" (Forbes.com). In addition to suites, the hotel has a casino, two-story conservatory with horticulture and entertainment, and a dining and shopping complex. 

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BIG has completed their second building on U.S. soil, a 92,000-square-foot office building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that also marks the firm’s first realized office building design. Located within the revitalized Philadelphia Navy Yard master plan (designed by Robert Stern), the four-story building features a bowing, double-curved facade and a supersized “periscope” inspired by the historic battleships docked a few blocks away.

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BIG’s VIA 57 West has been unanimously chosen as the winner of the 2016 International Highrise Award (IHA) for the world’s most innovative highrise.

One of the world’s most important architectural prizes for tall buildings, the award is presented by Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) every two years to the project that best exemplifies the criteria of future-oriented design, functionality, innovative building technology, integration into urban development schemes, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness.

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As a way to obtain a sample of participatory architecture from all over Mexico, last October, the Mexican Fine Arts Institute (INBA) published an open call for entries. Works by 31 teams—out of more than 200 registered—were selected to be part of Mexico’s Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, which was curated by Pablo Landa.

Among the teams selected are Arquitectos Artesanos and RootStudio, both based in the city of Oaxaca. Works by these offices stand out because they recover and adapt traditional building techniques for new contexts, and because they are often realized through the collaboration of architects and organized communities.

London-based firm Nex—Architecture has unveiled its plans for a new Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum as a part of the RAF’s 2018 Centenary Program. The new project will revitalize an existing RAF museum in North London that was created in 1972, transforming it into a visitor facility and promoting the airfield heritage of the museum’s location.

The new scheme will put emphasis on improving visitor experience by “establishing a clear route through the exhibition spaces.” A prominent new 40-meter-long entrance and visitor center will be placed inside the Hangar 1 building, acting as a welcome and orientation point.

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