Produce personalized presentation boards that distill complex concepts into simple visual representations with a few helpful tools and effects.

Three finalists have been selected for the Tel Aviv University Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Center Design Competition.

The competition called for designs to meet scientific needs and establish an identity befitting the local context of the city of Tel Aviv and the University campus. Thus, the three finalists created a balance between technical requirements and soft program elements like office and public space, presenting proposals for a center that acts "as an effective facilitator in the dialogue between modern science, Tel Aviv University, and the general public," according to a press release.

The 2016 Pritzker laureate Alejandro Aravena has announced that his firm, ELEMENTAL, has chosen to release four of their social housing designs to the public for open source use. Speaking in a panel discussion held by the Pritzker Prize earlier tonight titled Challenges Ahead for the Built Environment, Aravena stressed the need to work together to tackle the challenge of rapid migration that is taking place all around the globe, a message closely tied to the theme of the upcoming Venice Biennale which Aravena is directing. In this spirit, DWGs of these four designs - which offer the basic elements of a house at a low budget and encourage the residents to expand into an adjacent space as they find the money to do so - will be available for architects worldwide to learn from.

Thomas Heatherwick has been selected to receive the Tribeca Film Festival's (TFF) 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award. Part of the TFF's seventh annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards (TDIA), the Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Heatherwick for his "dedication to bringing design, architecture and urban planning together in a single workspace at his own Heatherwick Studio." He will be presented the award alongside Kenya Wildlife Service Chair and leading paleoanthropologist and conservationist Dr. Richard Leakey.

Videos

Chilean-born artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz has designed Swiss watchmaking brand Audemars Piguet's new lounge for Art Basel Hong Kong. "Taking inspiration from the ice formations and snowy winters of Audemars Piguet’s home in Le Brassus, Switzerland, the lounge will express the purity of nature and the passing of time," says Errazuriz.

"With water and ice as its main thematic elements, the new stand will give form to the concept of ice cycle as a metaphor of time. Three key components will anchor Errazuriz’s design: the icicle as a beautiful form, accumulating over time; the water drop, seen as nature’s ticking pulse; and ripples in the water, symbolizing the forward movement of new life. The drips of the melting icicles resemble nature’s pulse, like the beating of a heart or a ticking clock."

UPDATE: The news has now been confirmed. David Chipperfield Architects has been officially selected to convert the US Embassy near London's Grosvenor Square into a "world-class" 137-room hotel, after the building's current occupants relocate. According to a new report from AJ, restaurants, retail, a spa and a 1000-person ballroom will also be included in the design. The first images of the project have now been released.

As reported by the Architects' Journal, David Chipperfield Architects has been selected in an invited competition to remodel the US Embassy in London, once the building's current occupants move into the new embassy building currently being constructed in the Nine Elms. The existing building, a Grade-II listed design by Eero Saarinen dating back to 1960, is set to become a hotel after developers Qatari Diar purchased it in 2009.

Tonight, the "Pritzker Laureates' Conversation"—titled Challenges Ahead for the Built Environment—will be broadcast live at 6.30pm ET. It will provide a rare opportunity to hear 2016 Pritzker Laureate Alejandro Aravena in conversation with previous Pritzker Prize Laureates, including Richard Meier, Glenn Murcutt, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Christian de Portzamparc, Richard Rogers, and Wang Shu. The conversation will be moderated by Cathleen McGuigan.

The Museum of London has announced the six architecture teams that are shortlisted to design a new museum in West Smithfield. The international competition was organized by Malcolm Reading Consultants and has a budget of £130-150 million. The museum will help preserve and regenerate a historic part of London, relaunch the recently popular museum, and protect a series of heritage buildings.

Yesterday during the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) ceremony, Mexico's most prominent public square, the Pavilion at the Zocalo by Mexico City's PRODUCTORA won the MCHAP.emerge 2014/2015 award, deeming it the best new architecture in the Americas by an emerging practice.

The MCHAP.emerge prize is awarded biennially by the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). As winner, PRODUCTORA will be given the opportunity to lead a research studio in 2017 related to 'rethinking metropolis' along with $25,000 of funding. 

PRODUCTORA was a finalist among practices from Canada, the United States, Chile and Paraguay. The decision was made by Jury President Stan Allen, architect and former Dean of Princeton University’s School of Architecture (New York); Florencia Rodriguez, editorial director of Piedra, Papel y Tijera publishers (Buenos Aires); Ila Berman, Professor of Architecture, University of Waterloo (Waterloo); Jean Pierre Crousse of Barclay & Crousse (Lima), and Dean Wiel Arets (Chicago).

Tonight the Pritzker Prize will hold its annual award ceremony, this year honoring the work of 2016 Laureate Alejandro Aravena, who is also directing this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. The ceremony is being broadcast from the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Make sure to catch the event live right here, tonight at 7.30pm Eastern Time (4.30pm PDT, 12.30am GMT, 1.30 am CET, 7.30am HKT).

We are pleased to announce a new content partnership between ArchDaily and Moscow's Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in which we will share a collection of critical essays, interviews and articles on urban events, studies in urbanism, and urban technologies which are currently taking place in Russia. ArchDaily's Editors will be working closely with those of Strelka Magazine, which was launched in 2014, to translate and publish ideas and opinions from their expert team of local writers.

Construction has begun on the Quadram Institute, a new innovation hub for the advancement of food and heath research in Norfolk, in the United Kingdom. Designed by the London office of NBBJ, the 13,900 square meter center will bring scientists, clinical researchers, and a healthcare clinic together under one roof.

Prolific organizers of architecture competitions, Bee Breeders has revealed the winners of their latest challenge: repurposing a brutalist department store in Bangkok into an artists’ retreat. Competitors were expected to not only renovate the building, but also to engage the public in the surrounding city with the arts, as well as to “reflect on both the history and future” of the site. The program was loosely defined and open to interpretation, with entries evaluated primarily on the strength and clarity of their concept, originality, presentation quality, relevance to context and its possible presence as a strong community for artists in Bangkok. See all of the winners after the break.

Grimshaw and MDT-tex have launched a tessellating canopy system at the Frankfurt Light + Building design festival and trade fair. The Tensilation Type EV canopy system is the result of a partnership that aimed to develop a product that not only offers the flexibility of modular canopy systems, but also has the engineering advantages of a unified structure.

The winners of the latest Combo Competitions challenge, Prison Puzzle, have been announced. Based on the idea of utilizing architecture to reduce recidivism—the large number of criminals that relapse into crime and back behind bars—Prison Puzzle sought out proposals for the design of a medium-security prison with a capacity of 500 inmates. The design was to be sited in Arizona, in the United States, where the number of inmates per resident is high above the national average. Each design had to include elemental components like cells, exercise yards, and visiting rooms, and participants were encouraged to explore "how architecture can help in shaping environments that influence behaviors."

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has announced Phyllis Lambert, architect and CCA Founding Director Emeritus, as the winner of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize 2016 Architecture Awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. The $20,000 prize is given to an architect of any nationality who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art.

Lambert "is the conscience of modern and contemporary architecture, protecting its past and advocating for its future as a vital art form," said jury chairman Elizabeth Diller.

In the latest installation of NOWNESS’ In Residence series, British architect Ian Simpson describes how was told by his careers teacher "not to set [his] sights too high" when he decided that he wanted to become an Architect. Here, he discusses the design intentions behind his home – the tallest residence in the United Kingdom's second city: Manchester. For Simpson, "home is [only] forty seconds away by lift."

+ 2

The Iraqi-born British Architect Dame Zaha Hadid, DBE (1950-2016) has died aged 65, in Miami, Florida. According to reports from the BBC, Hadid was being treated in hospital for bronchitis when she suffered a heart attack. Earlier this year she became the first sole woman to receive the RIBA Royal Gold Medal at a ceremony in London.

Read on for the official statement from Zaha Hadid Architects:

Following the loss of part of their proposed site to LinkedIn and the subsequent reveal of an alternative site, Google has unveiled the revised plans for their Mountain View Campus. Designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, the original proposal featured several “Lego-like” buildings covered by glass canopies. The new proposal uses similar design decisions, with the building massing adjusted to the new site.

A new cultural center designed by Mecanoo, located in the Longgang district of Shenzhen, China is currently under construction and is set to top out by end-April. With the goal of revitalizing an existing park-square, the new complex includes a variety of programs such as a bookshop, an art museum, a youth center, and a science center. The nearly 100,000 square-meter building is set to open to the public in 2018.

Khoja Obi Garm is a Soviet sanatorium nestled high in the mountains of Tajikistan – a place known for its curative, radon-rich waters. When Maryam Omidi, a former journalist, visited in 2015 she was "blown away" by both the architecture and landscape: a enormous concrete, Brutalist block at the peak of a snow-capped mountain. She has since launched a Kickstarter campaign to develop a book of photographs exploring "the best sanatoriums" across the former Soviet Union.

+ 5