Jean Nouvel is engaged in talks to provide master planning concepts for the town of North Adams, Massachusetts, home to the renowned art institution MASS MoCA and a few miles from the Tadao Ando-designed Clark Art Institute. Initial discussions have included preliminary design proposals for three buildings in the city center along Heritage Park and on Main Street.

The new plan would be tasked with contributing to the economic revitalization of the city’s downtown, and would need to respond to the MASS MoCA campus, itself master planned with consult from Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi, David Childs and Simeon Bruner of Bruner/Cott & Associates.

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A metal microlattice developed by Boeing and HRL Laboratories has just been awarded the Guinness World Record for lightest metal.

Made from nickel phosphorus, the microlattice emulates human cell structure, reaching a density and surface area similar to lung tissue. So light it can be balanced on the top of a dandelion seed head, the material weighs in at approximately 100 times lighter than styrofoam.

Studio Seilern Architects (SSA) has unveiled its design for a new skyscraper in New York, located on the riverfront of the Hudson River, which will offer views to the South West towards the river and Hoboken, as well as to the East towards the Empire State Building and Manhattan skyline.

The 16.107 square meter building (24 floors) will feature commercial units in the form of a gallery in the plinth—which is reduced to form a sculpture garden—at the lower levels, while upper levels will contain residential units.

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Molenaar & Co architecten (Rotterdam), Hebly Theunissen architecten (Delft), and landscape architect Michael van Gessel (Amsterdam) have won the 2016 World Monuments Fund/ Knoll Modernism Prize for the preservation and rehabilitation of the Justus van Effen complex in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Originally designed by Michiel Brinkman in 1919-1921 and completed in 1922, the Justus van Effen complex is a strong example of the ideals embodied in the modern movement, particularly with its use of an elevated “street” as a means of facilitating social cohesion, which became very influential for subsequent generations of designers. 

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Dubai Design District (d3) has announced the opening of offices by 4 of the world’s leading architecture firms – Zaha Hadid Architects, Santiago Calatrava Architects & Engineers, Foster + Partners and Benoy – marking another step towards the city’s goal of becoming a global design hub.

Since first launching in April 2013, d3 has become the region’s preeminent destination for artists, designers and creative types of all kinds to work and collaborate. So far, d3 has welcomed in over 30 architecture firms of medium to large size, including SSH and Viktor Udzenija, RMJM and Wanders Wagner.

Tadao Ando’s only project in the United Kingdom, the ‘Japanese Pavilion’ at Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, is slated for demolition as part of a £10m redesign of the park and plaza.

Built in 2002 as part of a makeover for the square, the pavilion takes the form of a long, gray concrete wall along the park’s southwestern edge, which critics have argued divide the public space, describing the design as “bleak and depressing” and comparing it to the Berlin Wall.

JAJA Architects has been announced as the winners of an open international competition to design a new parish church in the Sydhavnen (South Harbor) district of Copenhagen. When completed, it will be the first new church built in Copenhagen since 1989.

The competition, organized by The Danish Association of Architects, sought proposals for a 3,200 square meter church to be located on a waterfront site in the revitalized district of Sydhavnen that could be used for a range of religious, social, cultural and musical events. Construction of the church is expected to be completed in 2019.

Continue reading to see the winning proposal as well as several additional entries.

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Aedas has unveiled plans for Gemdale Changshou Road, a new mixed-use project located within Shanghai’s urban city ring that will add 45,000 square meters (484,000 square feet) of terraced office and retail space within close proximity of a planned residential development.

Designed by Andrew Bromberg at Aedas, the design is nicknamed “Cloud on Terrace,” as it uses a series of green terraces as a visual and occupiable “bridge between the low-rise, residential developments to the south and Changshou Road to the north.”

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Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Hyperloop One have unveiled joint designs for an autonomous transportation system and the world’s first Hyperloop pods and portals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The designs are being presented as Hyperloop One signs a deal with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), bringing the project one step closer to reality.

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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.