Architecture has long proved an inspiration to musicians, with artists as diverse as Art Garfunkel and Kanye all drawing (so to speak) from the field. Some musicians even began their professional careers as architects - Weird Al, Ice Cube, and three of Pink Floyd's founding members among them.
Because, for all the inspirational works across the world, we would be lost without the photographers dedicated to sharing this inspiration with us. Here we present to you the 50 most influential architectural photographs of the year.
Canada’s largest net-zero energy building has opened in Hamilton, Ontario. The Joyce Centre for Partnership and Innovation at Mohawk College was designed by B+H and McCallum Sather Architects to embody environmental technologies aimed at reducing the building’s carbon footprint. The Joyce Centre is one of 16 pilot projects selected by the Canada Green Building Council’s new Zero Carbon Building Standard. A net-zero footprint facility, the building was made to demonstrate Mohawk’s vision to be a center for environmental leadership.
A month after the event, the various nominees of 2018's World Architecture Festival have returned to their home cities, leaving the fanfare of the year's event in Amsterdam as a memory. But that's not to say it's not left a lasting impact.
Tech giant Apple has announced plans to build a $1 billion campus in Austin Texas, along with smaller facilities in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City. The Austin plans, images of which have not been released, will see the creation of at least 5,000 jobs in the Southwestern city as house prices in the San Francisco Bay area begin to discourage creatives from Silicon Valley.
Apple had announced plans for a second U.S. headquarters at the beginning of the year, as part of a $30 billion investment strategy. In 2017, it opened the Foster + Partners-designed Apple Park, pictured above.
Award-winning architect Steven Holl has expressed his dismay of modern-day architecture to Metropolis Magazine. Although Steven Holl Architects (SHA) have recently won the design competition of a gateway building at University College Dublin, and have completed new buildings in London, Houston, Virginia, and Richmond this past year only, the architect is convinced that regardless of all the success, “it’s not a great moment, there are a lot of bad architects”.
Jorn Utzon’s name is, for most people, tied inextricably to his most famous work: the Sydney Opera House. Completed in 1973, the project was named a World Heritage Site in 2007, making Utzon only the second architect (after Oscar Niemeyer) to receive such an honor in his lifetime. The project is arguably the most recognizable and significant works of architecture of the 20th century and remains a work ahead of its time. But the uncompromising detail and futuristic design of Utzon’s work left many of his projects unrealized or unknown by the time of his death in 2008.
Craig Taylor, Data Visualization Design Manager at ITO World, has created a series of beautiful visualizations showing commutes in the world's most liveable cities. Using color in the form of growing coral, the project depicts city infrastructure through rendered street networks. The visualizations show how far you can travel by car in 30 minutes from a city center. Dubbed Coral Cities, the project has extended to include 40 major cities across the world.
The California Building Standards Commission has approved a new rule starting in 2020 that requires all new homes built in the state to include solar panels. As the first of its kind in the United States, the new rule includes an incentive for homeowners to add a high-capacity battery to their electrical system. The move hopes to help meet the state's goal of sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions while drawing all electricity from renewable energy sources.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman is reported to be in discussion with U.S auction house Sotheby’s regarding the creation of a major cultural center, to be situated in the country’s archaeologically-rich region of Al-Ula. As reported by Bloomberg, the center would sit in close proximity to the ancient UNESCO World Heritage city of Mada’in Salih, among elaborate 2000-year-old sandstone buildings.
The link with Sotheby’s centers on the company’s co-chairman Allan Schwartzman, who also sits on the advisory board of the Royal Commission for Al-Ula which aids the region’s development. Schwartzman is also the leader of Art Agency Partners, Sotheby’s art advisory firm, which has submitted its vision for the major arts and cultural complex.
As imaginative and hypothetical as their work may seem to some people, many visionaries have created admirable artwork that look beyond the ordinary and rethink architecture and urban spaces. Xinran Ma, the New York-based architectural designer and illustrator has visualized his architectural fantasies, and created numerous series of drawings, two of which were entries for Fairy Tales 2016 and 2017 by Blank Space."
Drawing inspiration from Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, known for his imaginative etches of Rome, and the collaborative works of Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, who produced avant-garde depictions of cities and landscapes, the illustrator has once again shared his creations with Archdaily, expressing his passion “to vision architectural fantasies that transcends time through graphic narratives”.
Design firm Sasaki has unveiled a design to transform Shanghai's Hongkou soccer stadium into a sustainable health and wellness hub. Rethinking China's first professional soccer stadium, the project aims to bring new life into the 1990s single-purpose structure. The design was formed by addressing the lack of connection between the stadium and Luxun Park. As a result, the park’s landscape is extended through the stadium and rises to meet the landscape as it flows through the building.
Nordic engineering firm Peab will create the new Hurtigruten museum for the MS Finnmark. The ship will be housed in the facility in Stokmarknes in the northern part of Norway. Peab secured the $14.6m contract for Vernebygg in collaboration with Oslo-based LINK Arkitektur. The MS Finnmark was built in 1956 and is described by the museum as the world’s biggest museum artifact.
Leading London firms including Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects have joined together in festive spirit to create over 60 miniature gingerbread structures, forming a miniature edible city. The Gingerbread City baking initiative, curated by the London Museum of Architecture, will be on display in the Victoria & Albert Museum until January 6th, assuming it hasn’t been devoured.
As reported by The Daily Mail, the sugar-fueled city includes futuristic tower blocks, sports facilities, and a modern homeless shelter by Holland Harvey Architects. The architectural delights have been created using a mix of sweet ingredients including liquorice, Jelly Babies, and icing.
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On the surface, designing a new art museum for Harvard University is a brief so straightforward that it sounds like part of university curriculum itself. The program lends itself to the type of light and airy spaces architects dream of creating; the campus site promises both steady and engaged traffic. But, for all the apparent advantages, the road to realizing Harvard’s Art Museums was a deceptively complex one - one that ultimately took six years to see realized.
Burning Man has revealed the design for the central 2019 Temple for Black Rock City by Geordie Van Der Bosch. Featuring a design inspired by the Torii gates of the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Japan, the Temple submission was chosen for its elegant simplicity. Dubbed The Temple of Direction, the design consists of wooden archways that form a linear passageway to a large central hall.
Swedish practice Tham & Videgård Arkitekter designed a series of colored timber homes for Gothenburg, Sweden. Part of a larger site development along Landvetter Lake, the project was imagined as a "vertical village" that rethinks the row house typology. A series of compact, three-level homes include private gardens around tall hedges and rounded plots. The solid timber design reimagines the firm's original proposal for a site in Stockholm.
Written in 300BC, Euclid’s “Elements” is a collection of 13 books containing definitions, propositions, and mathematical proofs, and is considered instrumental in the development of logic and modern science. With the advent of the printing press, many editions of the book have been shared through the centuries.
One of the most famous is that of Oliver Byrne in 1847, an edition of the first six books that is set apart for its bold use of color to depict mathematical proofs, rather than using letters to label angles and shapes.
Mecanoo has unveiled their design for the Qianhai Data Center in Shenzhen, China, from which they received second prize in an international design competition. The 63,000-square-meter scheme, imagined as an urban beacon, consists of an opaque tower atop an open plinth with offices and support spaces.
The 113-meter-tall “digital lighthouse” is to be located within the 15-square-kilometer Qianhai Free Development Zone, where it will mark the arrival to the district and symbolize its innovative ambition.
Snøhetta has won the competition to create a new neighborhood connected to the Danube River in Budapest. The brief asked for innovative proposals for 12,000 students along with educational, recreational and sports facilities. The South Gate masterplan for the 135-hectare site in the Hungarian capital focuses on urban relations and connects the new city quarter to the water to create a strong identity. Aspiring to create a lively, diverse and colorful new urban quarter, the project aims to create a lively waterfront for the people of Budapest.
Emporis has announced the results of its annual Emporis Skyscraper Award, recognizing the best new supertall buildings completed in the previous year. This year, the top prize was given to the Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and Baum Architects. The tapered tower, South Korea’s tallest, also houses the world’s highest glass-bottomed observation deck, for architects who can handle the 1820-foot (555-meter) drop.
Hotels, both real and fictional, have hosted some of TV and film’s most popular screenings through the years, from classics such as Pretty Woman to modern phenomena like Bates Hotel. While a weekend trip to fictional locations such as the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Fawlty Towers are beyond our reach, there are in fact many iconic hotel rooms from films that you can book right now.
To demonstrate this, Expedia recently commissioned a series of detailed floor plans of hotels from famous plots. From the Majestic Yosemite Hotel featured in The Shining (which is seemingly spatially possible after all) to The Ceasars Palace Las Vegas suits from the Hangover (Ceasar didn’t actually live there) we have republished the floor plans below for your inspection.
The city of Belfast is enjoying a resurgence of life. Having been gripped by decades of conflict over politics and religion, the Northern Irish capital has been transformed by peace over the past ten years, and now hosts an array of sublime architecture old and new, by renowned architects past and present.
The urban landscape of Belfast, transitioning between industry, culture, arts, commerce, and education, makes the city a worthy destination for architects and designers. Influenced by Irish and British vernacular styles, shaped by the demands of shipbuilding, linen, security, and now post-conflict confidence, the city remains somewhat of a blank canvas for creatives to experiment, reflect, and dream.
'Tis the season of holiday cheer, and with that comes the creative greetings from offices, museums, photographers and collaborators around the world! See our favorites below (or check out our best reader-submitted cards).
Here’s to a joyful, exciting, and architecture-filled 2018! See the best projects and articles published this year, here.
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