The Harvard Graduate School of Design has relaunched its free online course entitled “The Architectural Imagination.” Directed by the school’s Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, K. Michael Hays, the course seeks to teach students “how to understand architecture as both cultural expression and technical achievement.”

The free 10-week program runs until July 2019 and is carried out through the online edX platform, a Harvard/MIT system that specializes in high-quality massive open online courses. During the course, students will engage with the social and historical contexts behind major works of architecture, basic principles to produce drawings and models, and the pertinent content for academic study or a professional career as an architect.

What do Kanye West and Frank Gehry have in common?

As a first impression, not much. However, they have both engaged on stages with striking design details: the use of exaggerated scale and dimensions to manipulate visual perception, bulky concrete walls and slabs to emphasize heavyweight and grandiosity, visible scaffolding to create an industrial, unfinished feel... Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

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Heatherwick Studio has received planning approval to transform Olympia London, a 150-year old exhibition and event space in West Kensington. Working with SPPARC, the project will transform the 14-acre site into restaurants, hotels, performance venues and office space, as well as create 2.5 acres of new public space. The proposal aims to turn Olympia London into a world-class cultural hub in West London.

Skyrocketing prices of London housing have become so unbearable that many have turned to less-than-ideal compromises. Large homes can be found but come with commutes of hours; places are still available in the city, but only for those with sky-high paychecks. Unable to balance their needs, people are resorting to workarounds that disrupt the existing urban fabric and dissatisfy all involved. Surely we can do better.

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ODA New York has been selected to redesign the historic post office of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The iconic Postkantoor has sat vacant for more than a decade, and now the adaptive reuse project aims to bring new life to the city center. Built in 1916, the post office was one of the only original structures still standing after the Rotterdam Blitz aerial bombardment in 1940. The city of Rotterdam hopes to re-energize the neighborhood by activating the site with residential, retail, and hospitality.

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Sasaki has released details of their redevelopment proposal for the Yangtze Riverfront Park in Wuhan, China. Developed in collaboration with OMA and Gensler, Sasaki has drawn on the centuries-old symbiosis between the city and river, leveraging the river’s dynamic flooding to nurture a rich regional ecology and create dynamic recreational experiences.

The endeavor in landscape urbanism seeks to celebrate the river’s spontaneity, and incorporate flooding as an essential element. Stitching together then OMA and Gensler “urban balconies,” a series of microenvironments will host a wide variety of distinct wetland ecosystems, the characters of which evolve throughout the seasons.

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Ateliers Jean Nouvel has collaborated with French practice OXO Architectes on a competition-winning design for a mountainous campus in the Sophia Antipolis technology park in Antibes, France. The “Ecotone Antibes” will serve as the main entrance to the technology park, which is home to over 2,000 companies.

Described as a 21st-century campus for France, the 40,000-square-meter mountainous structure is covered in lush vegetation, containing offices, a hotel, amenities, and co-working spaces. The campus, a rare exercise in biomimicry for the South of France, sought to capture the site’s rich landscaped surroundings, translating a natural ethos to the hard, technological campus.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects has announced the foundation of a new award focused on recognizing work in housing in the UK. The award is named in memory of Neave Brown, the British architect, and designer famed for his many housing estates in London.

The idea of turning cold, raw materials into elegant shapes has always fascinated artists, architects, and designers. In the Carrara marble sculptures of Lorenzo Berdini and Michelangelo, human forms were carved from heavy blocks of stones with great detail and precision. There is no difference in architecture: from taking a light volume off the floor, to leaving a small indentation between a structure and a fence, to altering the lining of a block, there are several devices to make buildings visually lighter.

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Have you ever found yourself losing a good night’s sleep due to an overly warm room? Or wearing four jackets and a scarf just to tolerate your office’s frigid air conditioning? Truth be told, you can’t please everyone when it comes to adjusting an indoor climate, and there is always that one unfortunate individual who ends up sacrificing their own comfort for the sake of others.

Evidently, there are no ‘universal standards’ or ‘recommended comfort ranges’ in designing building systems, since athletes training in a gym in Mexico will not feel comfortable in an interior with the same building systems of a nursing home in Denmark, for instance. Which is why, if we were to briefly define ‘thermal comfort’, it is the creation of building systems that are adapted to the local environment and functions of the space, cooperatively.

So how can we design for optimum thermal comfort?

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Ghilardi+Hellsten and Karres en Brands have won the competition to design Norway's new Stavanger cultural hub. Dubbed ‘Three Houses and a Long Table’, the project will transform the historical Nytorget site in Stavanger. The team worked with engineering partner Dipl.-Ing. Florian Kosche AS to combine a youth cultural center, offices, shops and an art gallery around a multi-functional green space. The proposal aims to build upon the qualities with a design that's anchored in the city fabric around public space.

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Safdie Architects have unveiled details of their proposed corporate headquarters for Surbana Jurong in Singapore. The scheme seeks to reflect the mission of Surbana Jurong (Singapore’s leading architecture, urban design, and infrastructure firm) of characterizing Singapore as the “Garden City.” Located on a previously undeveloped site, the campus will “integrate harmoniously with its natural landscape” while also offering over 740,000 square feet of space for the firm’s 4000 employees. The scheme marks the first initiative for the Safdie Surbana Jurong joint venture, which was established in 2017 to develop innovative and iconic projects in Asia-Pacific.

The scheme manifests as a series of treehouse-like pavilions united by a central pedestrian “street,” all shaped by a careful examination of, and respect for, the site’s existing trees and unique flora. The result is a distinctive network of offices embedded within surrounding parkland, with the glazed pedestrian street interweaving interior and exterior landscapes.

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The shortlist has been announced for the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture, recognizing excellence in design with an emphasis on achievements and completed projects. Part of the Women in Architecture Awards organized by The Architectural Review and The Architects’ Journal, the prize is named in memory of the late Moira Gemmill (former V&A director of design and director of capital programmes at the Royal Collection Trust), and offers a £10,000 prize fund to support the professional development of the winner(s).

The four shortlisted candidates hail from France, Spain, China, and Switzerland. Previous winners of the prize include Gloria Cabral, partner at Gabinete de Arquitectura (2018); Rozana Montiel (2017); Gabriela Etchegaray, co-founder of Ambrosi Etchegaray (2016); and vPPR founders Tatiana von Preussen, Catherine Pease and Jessica Reynolds (2015).

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After having previously photographed the architecture offices in the Netherlands, Dubai, London, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, the Nordic countries, Barcelona and Los Angeles, the architectural photographer Marc Goodwin continues the series with an exploration of some of the most recognized architecture offices in Mexico. With a set of emerging and world-renowned offices alike, the series offers insight into the lives of designers in Mexico City.

Videos

If you're looking to upgrade your standard architecture presentation, SENTIO VR's tutorials can be very useful. They allow you to accurately use Revit, SketchUp, V-ray, 3Ds Max, Lumion and Cinema4D to create 360 renders and perform virtual reality experiences, with both technical and visual advice.

Below, we've compiled a list of useful videos. 

The Chicago Plan Commission has approved the $6 billion Lincoln Yards project to develop 55 acres of riverfront land in Chicago. Proposed by real estate investment and development firm Sterling Bay, the project has the potential to reshape the city's skyline along the Chicago River. Lincoln Yards would include office, residential and hotel towers, as well as restaurants, retail and entertainment spaces along Lincoln Park and Bucktown.

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The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced Annabelle Selldorf as architect of the new Qianlong Garden Interpretation Center within the iconic Forbidden City in Beijing, China. One of few American architects to lead architectural projects at the site, Selldorf’s scheme will allow the public access to the Qianlong Garden for the first time, permitted through a new Visitor’s Center.

Selldorf, working with her NYC-based firm Selldorf Architects, will design the interpretation center within an existing, restored structure of the Qianlong Garden’s second courtyard. Designed as three distinct halls surrounding an open pavilion, the different spaces within the restoration will offer a unique perspective on the past and present of the Forbidden City.

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The world’s first quarry hotel has been opened in China, designed by Martin Jochman and his studio JADE + QA. Situated in an 88-meter-deep, water-filled, disused quarry, the 337-guestroom Intercontinental Shanghai Wonderland Hotel contains only two levels above ground, with 16 more levels plunging into the quarry below.

The winner of an international design competition in 2006, Jochman developed the scheme in collaboration with ATKINS, in a process which has lasted over a decade. The resulting “groundscraper” features such amenities as an underwater restaurant and aquarium, all set within a form which seeks to minimize its impact on the local environment.

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Architect Liz Diller and architectural photographer Hélène Binet have been awarded the 2019 Jane Drew and Ada Louise Huxtable Prizes, respectively, for their exceptional contributions to the field of architecture. The prizes are part of the eighth edition of the Women in Architecture Awards founded jointly by The Architect's Journal and The Architectural Review.

Artist Holly Hendry has been announced as the winner of the Experimental Architecture Award, organized by the United Kingdom’s Arts Foundation. London-based Hendry's sculptural works employ the language of architecture and building to challenge the notion of space, permeated by a fascination with rear spaces and open cracks.

The first award of its kind given by the Arts Foundation, the Experimental Architecture Awards was “conceived to bring to light discussions about what new meanings architecture, art & design are bringing to address spatial issues and what role does experimentation play in contemporary practice.” The prize forms part of the Arts Foundation Future Awards 2019, which also features the categories Designer-Makers, Hip Hop Dance, and Poetry & Visual Arts.

Architects no longer need to drag around giant roller drawings to a job site, now they can flip through a 3D model on an iPad. This shift in technology elevates the conversation about design and simplifies presenting design ideas from the start.

The urban consultancy Strelka KB has announced the winners of the international competition for alternative housing in Russia. Designed to test the country's new Integrated Guidelines for Urban Development, the competition asked participants to rethink standardized housing and apartment typologies. 689 projects were submitted from 37 countries to address issues of adaptability, ergonomic efficiency and functional diversity.

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