A guide from Graphisoft on how to create powerful design presentations with Archicad through the use of Archicad version 25.

The world's largest waste-to-energy plant by Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Gottlieb Paludan is set to open next year on the outskirts of Shenzhen, China. The new plant is made to handle 5000 tons of waste per day within a simple, clean, and iconic structure. It will incinerate waste and generate power while teaching residents about the waste-energy cycle. The project aims to showcase new developments in China's waste-to-energy sector and share them with the world.

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Microsoft has unveiled plans to commit $500 million to advance affordable housing solutions across the city of Seattle, Washington. The money, to be distributed as loans and grants, will kick-start new solutions to the city’s housing crisis, where income increases have lagged behind rising housing prices.

The investment breaks down as $225 million committed to subsidize middle-income housing construction in six targeted cities, $250 million to support low-income housing across the King County region, and $25 million to philanthropic grants to address homelessness in the greater Seattle region. The tech giant has targeted the region in close proximity to the site of its Redmond headquarters expansion, expected to accommodate 8,000 new employees.

Last week, we covered the work of Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko, whose “Monuments” project appropriated abandoned Russian Orthodox churches with abstract modernist shapes. Tkachenko’s further work, “Restricted Areas” is equally as impressive, focusing on the human impulse towards utopia through technological progress.

The “Restricted Areas” photography set distills humanity’s strive to perfection through recording abandoned Soviet infrastructure. Traveling to now-deserted landscapes which once held great importance as centers of technological progress, Tkachenko captured images of “forgotten scientific triumphs, abandoned buildings of almost inhuman complexity” and a “technocratic future that never came.”

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© Annie Spratt. Image Courtesy of Architect-US

Looking for a job isn’t fun. It’s nerve-wracking for the applicant and it’s often time-consuming for the potential employer as well. It can be even worse if you’re job-seeking internationally, hoping for a position with a top firm in the United States. For an applicant from another country hoping to make the move to an architecture career in the US, the process can seem overwhelming: rules and regulations, visa issuance processes, and loads of supplementary documentation necessary for immigration.

Top Architecture Firms enrolled in the Architect-US Programs. Image courtesy of Architect-US. 

Videos

Saving space, reducing costs and a pleasant user experience – parking doesn’t get much better than this.

Cityscapes around the world are changing, architects face the constant challenge of integrating parking space into new or existing real estate in densely built-up urban environments. While there is a growing ambition to replace cars as a prime mobility tool, we’re far from realizing this goal. Most downtown revitalizations today require structured parking. Where space is tight, access ramp or radius of a conventional parking garage may be hard to fit. Because robotic parking systems require neither these nor access for pedestrians, they can place up to 60% more cars in the same space – increasing the RoI on parking spaces Alternatively, the same number of cars can be parked in 60% of the space of a conventional parking garage, creating significant cost savings in the construction phase. In either case, the user experience in robotic parking systems – brightly lit entrance areas, safe vehicle retrieval processes and reduced car fumes as the search for parking is effectively eliminated – is second to none.

Videos

A new video by AERIAL FUTURES explores commercial space flight through the Houston Spaceport. The video was produced as part of a broader research initiative bringing together leading thinkers, practitioners and operators to imagine the potential opened up by spaceports. The video explores the spaceport as a new kind of architectural typology, and asks what kind of impact a spaceport is likely to have on the city and its population.

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Architects are often bound by the will of their client, reluctantly sacrificing and compromising design choices in order to suit their needs. But what happens when architects become their own clients? When architects design for themselves, they have the potential to test their ideas freely, explore without creative restriction, and create spaces which wholly define who they are, how they design, and what they stand for. From iconic architect houses like the Gehry Residence in Santa Monica to private houses that double as a public-entry museum, here are 9 fascinating examples of how architects design when they only have themselves to answer to.

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Online courses have gained more and more recognition in the past couple of years. In addition to the flexibility and convenience of learning wherever and whenever you want, they provide access to content from well-respected professors and colleges. In the field of architecture and construction, online courses have grown exponentially. Last year, we compiled a list that focused mainly on constructive and material techniques. This time we selected 15 online courses covering a range of subjects. We hope this selection of courses can help you with your next project.

The world's longest bridge by Hyundai E&C and Combined Group Contracting is nearing completion in Kuwait. Called the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah causeway, the $3 billion project is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world. Running a total length of over 30 miles, the bridge will connect Kuwait City on the south of the bay with Subiya New Town to the north. The causeway joins a larger development plan for the revival of the ancient Silk Road trade route.

The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has presented 27 projects with 2019 Design Awards. AIANY announced the results after two days of deliberations by a a jury of independent architects, educators, critics, and planners. For each of the five categories, winning projects were granted either an “Honor” or “Merit” award, and were chosen for their design quality, innovation and technique.

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Some architects love color, some are unmoved by it, some hate it, and some love to dismiss it as too whimsical or non-serious for architecture. In an essay on the subject, Timothy Brittain-Catlin mentions the “innate puritanism among clients of architecture,” architects and their “embarrassment of confronting color,” and how “Modernism tried to ‘educate out’ bright colors.” So, while the debate on color in architecture is far from being a new one, it is not finished, and probably never will be.

In today’s world where the exhausted stereotype of the no-nonsense architect clad in black still persists, and while we quietly mull over the strange pull of the Cosmic Latte, there are some architects who haven’t been afraid of using broad swathes of color in their work at all. Read on for a list of 7 such exemplary architects both from the past and the present.

New photographs by Paul Clemence from Archi-Photo show BIG -Bjarke Ingels Group’s “The Eleventh” taking shape as construction continues in Chelsea, Manhattan. Having topped out in August 2018, the scheme’s twisting geometries are taking their place within the “Pritzker District” with neighbors including Frank Gehry’s IAC Building, Jean Nouvel’s 100 11th Avenue and Foster + Partners’ 551 West 21st Street.

The development’s larger 35-story, 400-foot-tall structure will twist alongside a second 300-foot-tall sister tower, both clad with bronze and travertine, sharing a connected podium and skybridge.

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Moshe Safdie has been named the laureate for the 2019 Wolf Prize for Architecture. The award recognizes a winner in either painting, music, sculpture, or architecture. As one of Israel’s most prestigious international awards, the prize is bestowed upon luminaries for their accomplishments in advancing science and art for the benefit of humanity. The jury cited Safdie’s exemplary career motivated by the social concerns of architecture and his formal experimentation.

Videos

Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko has developed a project researching the boundaries of historical memories in Russian Orthodox churches. “Monuments” involved the sensitive appropriation of the abandoned rural churches, erecting lightweight structures in abstract modernist shapes.

The project sought to explore the area between fact and fiction, reflecting on “humanity’s inclination to exploit images of the past for the sake of our current needs, and future goals.” The structures, all abandoned in 1917 following the Russian Revolution, were adorned with striking modernist elements which, although visually powerful, can be dismantled following the project’s completion with no effect on the landmarks.

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Videos

Five design teams have been selected to present their ideas for the Chicago O'Hare Airport Global Terminal and Global Concourse expansion. The designs are on display at an exhibition opened by Mayor Rahm Emanuel at the Chicago Architecture Center. Teams include Fentress-EXP-Brook-Garza, Foster Epstein Moreno, Studio ORD, SOM and Santiago Calatrava. Known as O’Hare 21, the project represents O’Hare’s first major overhaul in 25 years.

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Sculptor and jewelry designer, Cydney Ross explores the architectural passage of time through unconventional ceramics and mixed media. By over-firing, freezing, and thawing her materials, she simulates the swaying, slumping, and even collapsing of structure.

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Shanghai/London-based firm Neri&Hu has published details of their “Unfolding Village” installation, set to take center stage at the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2019. The exhibition, taking place in February, will see Neri&Hu depart from the traditional convention of furniture fairs, often purely focused on product design, and instead actively engage with pressing social issues unique to their base country of China.

Having recently studied the issue of disappearing villages and village cultures in China, the designers were alarmed by the impact of such a disappearance on community, family, and cultural roots. With many products centered on the ideas of nostalgia, dwelling, and “the individual’s relationship within a collective,” the firm created the “Unfolding Village” exhibition to capture the essence of traditional Chinese villages.

A professional networking platform has been launched aimed at connecting early-career architects in the USA. Ticco admits architects with between 2 and 15 years of experience, with the goal of sharing smart design ideas for the future of the built environment. Developed by Katie Rispoli Keaotamai over a one-and-a-half-year timespan, the platform will now accept applications for its first 100 members until April, at a cost 31% lower than the fees paid for professional memberships.

Centered around dialogue, the platform offers access to ideas and opportunities that will positively shape the built environment, be it exchanging information, consulting on a project, or finding a new role in the profession.

Cities are hotter than surrounding areas because of a climate phenomena that is known as the urban heat island (UHI). While scientists have studied this effect for decades, new information has recently come to light that points to the way we arrange our cities as a key contributor to raised temperatures. The results could help city planners build our future cities better.

New York City's famed Chrysler Building is up for sale for the first time in over 20 years. According to the Wall Street Journal, the art deco office tower’s current owners officially placed it on the market, though the building's value has yet to be released. Designed by William Van Alen, the building was bought by Tishman Speyer in 1997. As an iconic part of the New York skyline, the building is admired for its distinctive ornamentation based on Chrysler automobiles.

Singapore’s creative community will soon be thriving as one of the city's buzziest projects, Design Orchard, nears completion. Designed by Singapore-based architecture firm WOHA, the 2350 sqm green project has been under construction since early 2018, and will officially be open to the public on the 30th of January, 2019.

Located on Orchard Road, the city’s most iconic shopping avenue, the project's publicly accessible sloped rooftop park will incorporate multiple services and public areas, accentuating the design and providing up-and-coming designers with a space to create, produce, and exhibit.

Videos

The New Raw has launched the Zero Waste Lab in Thessaloniki, a research initiative where Greek citizens can upcycle plastic waste into urban furniture. Part of the larger Print Your City project, the project utilizes a robotic arm and recycling facilitates to create custom furniture pieces that close the plastic waste loop. The initiative aims to use flakes from recycled products to redesign public spaces within the cities.

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The world’s longest 3D-printed concrete pedestrian bridge has been completed in Shanghai. Designed by Professor Xu Weiguo from the Tsinghua University (School of Architecture) - Zoina Land Joint Research Center for Digital Architecture, the 26.3-meter-long bridge was inspired by the ancient Anji Bridge in Zhaoxian, China.

The single-arch structure was created using a 3D printing concrete system developed by Professor Xu Weiguo’s team, integrating digital design, cost efficiency, smart technology, and architectural dynamism. Enclosing the 3.6-meter width, the bridge’s handrails are shaped like flowing ribbons on the arch, creating a light, elegant movement across the Shanghai Wisdom Bay pond.

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