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

Architects’ Journal has just announced that Mecanoo's Francine Houben has been chosen from an impressive shortlist of women architects as the winner of the Women in Architecture Awards.

In response to the honor, Francine Houben stated:“I feel privileged to be a woman, to be a mother and to bean architect, which was not always an easy combination. [...]I strongly believe that architecture is about teamwork, about being visionary and supportive at the same time. Women are especially good at that.”

More on Francine Houben, after the break...

The 2014 Winter Olympics has commenced in Sochi within the shell of Populous’ Fabergé egg-inspired stadium. Built solely to host the opening and closing ceremonies, the Fisht Olympic Stadium's translucent polycarbonate roof bears a slight resemblance to the nearby, snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. Once the Games are complete, the stadium’s 40,000-seat capacity will be expanded to accommodate the 2018 FIFA World Cup, before retiring as a scaled-down, 25,000-seat home venue for the local football team.

Populous’ stadium is just one of eleven purpose-built venues within the “Coastal Cluster” Olympic park. Check out a few others that caught our eye, after the break...

The Architectural League of New York has announced the winners of their 32nd annual Emerging Voices awards. The coveted recognition program spotlights eight emerging practitioners in North America whose “distinct design voices” have shown the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape design, and urbanism.

“The work of each Emerging Voice represents the best of its kind, and addresses larger issues within architecture, landscape, and the built environment,” described the League.  “This year, in particular, saw firms entrepreneurial in spirit, pursuing alternate forms of practice, often writing their own programs or serving as their own clients.”

This year’s eight Emerging Voices are...

The Southbank Centre has announced that it is delaying its planning applicationonce again.The decision has been prompted by comments from London Mayor Boris Johnson, who last month opined that the skate park should remain in its current location. An official statement from the Southbank Centre said: "it is far from clear how the scheme might now proceed without exposing Southbank Centre to unacceptable levels of financial risk but it has committed to a final three-month search."

However, despite the three-month extension, Chairman Rick Haythornthwaite has all but admitted defeat, saying "we are under no illusions [...] we don’t yet see how we will make it work."

Read on for more about the decision

The talented photographers of Hufton + Crow have shared with us their visual archive of Bjarke Ingels’ recently completed Danish Maritime Museum. Built within the crevasse of a dry dock in the historic surrounds of Helsingor’s Kronborg Castle, the subterranean museum is visible only as an imprint of a ship. By looping the museum around the dock's 60-year-old walls, Ingles was able to preserve the heritage structure while transforming it into a courtyard that provides daylight deep into the heart of the museum.

Experience the Danish Maritime Museum through a whole new lens, after the break...

+ 36

The Irish Turf Club has selected Grimshaw, alongside collaborators Newenham Mulligan & Associates (NMA), amongst 100 other leading practices to envision a concept design for the modernization of Ireland’s most prestigious thoroughbred race course.

Embedded within County Kildare’s open plains, the historic Curragh Racecourse is need of a masterplan that preserves the site, upgrades facilities and respects the surrounding landscape. Grimshaw’s winning proposal promises to satisfy these requests, in addition to constructing a new grandstand that retains the “intimate and distinctive character” of the existing grounds.

Videos

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 has selected "Hy-Fi," a “circular tower of organic and reflective bricks” designed by The Living (David Benjamin), as the winner of the 15th annual Young Architects Program (YAP) in New York. An exemplar of the cradle-to-cradle philosophy, the temporary installation will be built entirely from organic material via a new method of bio-design.

Long Island’s downtowns have more than 4,000 acres of surface area dedicated to parking lots. That’s roughly 6.5 square miles of prime real estate, a phenomenon quite common in most American cities. When necessary, these lots are often exchanged for a standard “set of concrete shelves” that share little to no connection with their surroundings. This leads to the question, why must parking garages be so monofunctional and, well, ugly?

To help solve this nationwide issue, the Long Island Index challenged four leading architectural firms to envision a more innovative way to free up surface lot space in four Long Island communities.

See what they came up with, after the break...

With minimal intervention, Swedish architecture firm visiondivision claims that the underused structure beneath Stockholm’s Tranebergsbron bridge could be transformed into a pedestrian walkway and informal cinema. If built, this proposal would not only remove pedestrians from the dismal walking space provided alongside the bridge’s bustling car lanes, but it would also dramatically shorten the walking distance between the city island of Kungsholmen and western suburb of Bromma.

The American Institute of America’s New York Chapter (AIANY) has selected six young, and “pioneering” firms as the winners of the 2014 New Practices New York portfolio competition. The award is designed “to recognize and promote” emerging practices that are less than a decade old and based within the five boroughs of New York City. As a result, each winner will be featured in an exhibition at the Center for Architecture from October 1, through January 15, 2015.

Without further ado, the 2014 New Practices New York winners are:

Adobe has unveiled a major update to Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) with the hope that a "radically simplified 3D printing process" will make their software the "go-to tool for anyone who wants to print a 3D model." Their new software allows for designers to create a model from scratch or refine an existing design leading to perfect print ready 3D models. Since one of the most common problems with 3D printing is the human errors in virtual modeling, Photoshop includes automatic mesh repair and will insert a support structure if necessary to ensure that the model will print reliably and without faults.

Snøhetta has released an updated, more "slimmed-down" version of the Golden State Warriors’ Stadium, which is scheduled to debut on a preeminent San Francisco waterfront site for the 2017-18 NBA basketball season. Located on Piers 30-32, just walking distance from the downtown Financial District and easily accessed by a variety of public transportation, the revised design has shaved off over 30,000 square feet of the venue's total square footage and increased public open space to nearly 8 acres, 60 percent of the 13 acre site.