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

Mecanoo has unveiled plans for a new £350 million engineering campus for the University of Manchester. Known as the "Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD)," the project will be the UK's largest, single construction endeavors ever conducted by a higher education institution.

"The campus will help demonstrate how UK engineering is one of the most creative industries in the world – a key feature on the ground floor of the main hall will be a dedicated ‘maker space’ which will provide dynamic workshops for students and academics to share ideas and innovate," says Mecanoo.

Russian artist Nikolay Polissky has completed yet another of his impressive, handcrafted installations. Located in Zvizzhi Village, in the Ugra National Park in Russia, Polissky’s newest creation—called SELPO, which stands for The Rural Consumer Association, in Russian—wraps around an abandoned soviet building, which used to house the village shop.

The project utilizes off-cut materials from Polissky’s previous work, which has ranged “from temporary pieces of landscape proportions, collectively created […] to public art works in city parks or sculpture parks […] in Europe and in Russia, as well as museum installations.”

+ 7

The first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize in 2004, Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid tells newspaper El País that she was fortunate as a child to have traveled with her parents and seen some of the world’s most impressive works of architecture and engineering feats.

Awed by the Mosque of Cordoba, Hadid says that the contrast between the darkness and the marble of the central church left a lasting impression, making this one of her favorite works to this day. 

HHF architects has created a temporary pavilion for the first biennial for contemporary music and architecture ZeitRäume in Basel, Switzerland.

At nearly six meters tall, the installation is constructed of simple parts:  “a large drum made of bamboo poles, with a roof of scaffolding brackets.” While seemingly basic in construction, the pavilion additionally features movement in the roof portion, when blown by the wind.

Videos

Martha Thorne has been appointed as dean of the IE School of Architecture and Design in Madrid. Thorne, who is currently IE's vice dean, has had a major impact on the profession by serving as the executive director of the Pritzker Prize for nearly a decade. As BDOnline reports, Thorne will retain her Pritzker role as she furthers "the school's aim to bring the best of innovation and management to architectural disciplines.”

US President Barack Obama has awarded San Antonio architect and landscape architect Everett Fly with the 2014 National Humanities Medal. Harvard GSD's first African-American graduate, Fly is being recognized for his work in "preserving the integrity of African-American places and landmarks."

Grimshaw Architects, in collaboration with Arup, have revealed renderings for their proposed 25,000 square metre High Speed Two (HS2) railway terminal at Euston Station, in north London. They have developed an "incremental staged design" that will allow for the construction of the new high speed station while maintaining all existing services. Fronted by a 38 metre glazed façade, the new entrances will transform the internal circulation spaces into a "light and airy destination with shops, restaurants, and cafés."

Rafael Viñoly and OLIN have unveiled plans to transform Cupertino's Vallco Shopping Mall into a new mixed-use neighborhood that boasts the "world's largest green roof." The current plans call for a 15-block sustainable town center with 625,000-square-feet of retail, two-million-square-feet of office space and 800 residential units. All this, if approved, would be topped by a 30 acre public green space with a 3.8 mile trail network that runs through orchards, vineyards, an amphitheater and play areas.

Videos

Santiago Calatrava's Innovation, Science and Technology (IST) Building at Florida Polytechnic University has picked up another award, this time being named "Project of the Year" by Engineering News-Record. The "centerpiece" of the new Floridian university, which was also masterplanned by Calatrava, the 162,000-square-foot building was recently awarded "Best in Steel Construction" by the AISC.

“Educating, particularly young people, is one of the most noble tasks that exist,” said Calatrava in response to the award. “The Innovation, Science and Technology Building aims to be itself a tool to achieve the highest level of education for young people. 

A lot of architects love glass. A lot of architects love curves too. The two can be combined, but in most cases this is a highly bespoke and expensive process, with individual sheets of glass being heated in a kiln over a mold created especially to fit the desired curve. Cheaper options are available though, and one common approach is to use smaller sections of flat glass - often a U-shaped channel section - angled to approximate a curve.

But this strategy also leads to a problem: as the desired curve gets tighter, the gaps between the glass segments get more and more apparent and less efficient as enclosure. To address this problem, German designer Holger Jahns has created "c--c," an update to standard U-shaped channel glass which can be fixed together at any angle and create any curve without gaps appearing between the panels.

+ 15

Videos

The Japan Art Association (JAA) has named French architect Dominique Perrault winner of the 2015 Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award. Lauded for his "wildly imaginative [or] abstractly minimal" designs, Perrault is known for masterfully blending innovative works with their context.

“Architecture should not be closed on itself, with its back to the context," says Perrault. "It should always be in resonance with the environment, whether natural or urban. We architects should always think about our buildings’ place in the urban design, and about the city itself as a whole.”

The prestigious global arts prize, now in its 27th year, recognizes "outstanding contributions to the development, promotion and progress of the arts" in the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, music and theater/film. Perrault joins a small handful of architects who have received the award, including James Stirling, Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza, Richard Rogers, Jean Nouvel, Toyo Ito, Zaha Hadid, Peter Zumthor, David Chipperfield, andJacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.

All five 2015 Praemium Imperiale laureates include:

The Australian Institute of Architects’ International Chapter has announced the winners of its 2015 International Architecture Awards, which honors projects by Australian architects abroad.

Out of 26 entries, the jury, chaired by Grant Marani, awarded five projects, and commended four more in the interior, public, residential, and small project architecture categories.

Awarded projects are now also in the running for the 2015 Jørn Utzon Award for International Architecture, to be announced at the National Architecture Awards in November.

Read on for the full list of awards and commendations, after the break.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin opened its doors 14 years ago today. Inspired by a lecture given by Daniel Libeskind, Berlin-based photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu captured the building and its dramatic plays of light and texture in a series of 20 photographs.

David Adjaye has been selected as the winner of MIT's 2016 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, which honors “individuals whose artistic trajectory reveals that they will achieve the highest distinction in their fields and continue to produce inspiring work for many years to come.” The award consists of $100,000 prize in addition to an artist residency at MIT in the spring of 2016. During the residency, Adjaye will participate in four different public events, including panels and symposia.

+ 1

Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) has shared initial photos by Iwan Baan of their new McMurty Building for Art & Art History at Stanford University, which will be officially unveiled to the public on October 6. The 100,000 square foot building will open for the 2015 fall semester, and allow students studying art history and students practicing fine arts to work together under the same roof for the first time at Stanford. See and read more about the soon-to-be opened project after the break.

Denmark-based architects CEBRA have won a competition to design a Smart School educational complex in Irkutsk, Russia. Their winning design, dubbed Smart School Meadow, fulfills the competition’s call for a new typology of school that combines architecture and landscaping into a learning environment and local community center.

The design integrates buildings and landscape together through a ring of individual structures connected by a large, ridged rooftop. With this roof, spaces between the buildings can be used as multifunctional, semi-covered learning spaces, activity zones, and flow areas, all of which diffuse into the central and outer landscaped areas.

+ 5

Marcin Chmura, a recent graduate from London's Bartlett School of Architecture, has developed a project which attempts to imagine a new future for the 'American Dream'. The United Suburbs of AmeriKa, named after Franz Kafka’s novel in which—despite never having visited America—he depicts the United States as a utopia offering eternal wealth and happiness for his foreign protagonist.

Architect Magazine has unveiled its list of the 50 best architecture firms in the US, with Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Gensler taking the top three slots in the overall ranking, respectively. The rankings are based on scores from three categories: business, sustainability and design. This year the methodology was updated to include three new factors: percentage of women and minority designers; range and value of employee benefits and the rate of employee turnover. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture also ranked first in the business category, followed by Kirksey Architecture and EYP Architecture & Engineering. EYP also headed the sustainability rankings, followed by Gensler and ZeroEnergy Design, while the design rankings were led by NADAAA, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Studio Gang Architects. Learn more about the methodology and view the full rankings here.

FC Barcelona has announced 14 teams in the running for two planned overhauls of their facilities at the Camp Nou in Barcelona, including alterations to their main stadium and the rebuilding of the Palau Blaugrana, the nearby arena owned by the club and used primarily for basketball and handball. The alterations to the two buildings are part of a larger €600 million project, known officially as "Nou Espai Barça," which seeks to improve the club's entire campus, also adding an ice skating rink, new offices, 5,000 parking spaces and improving the outdoor space surrounding the facilities. The Nou Espai Barça project was approved by the club's fanbase last April after a 72% vote in favor of the proposal.

The list names eight teams - including BIG, Populous, HKS and Arup Sport - in the running for the overhaul of the stadium itself, which will involve the addition of almost 6,000 seats to bring the stadium's total capacity to 105,000, increasing the stadium's lead as the largest football stadium in Europe. It will also include a complete redesign of the lowest seating tier to offer improved views, and the addition of a roof over the terraces. Also named are the six teams in the running to rebuild the Palau Blaugrana.