The US Architecture Billings Index (ABI) has dipped again, this time falling from a mark of 53.1 in October to 49.3 in November. As the American Institute of Architects (AIA) report, "this score reflects a decrease in design services (any score above 50 indicated an increase in billings)." The new projects inquiry index was 58.6, up just a nudge from a reading of 58.5 the previous month.
“Since architecture firms continue to report that they are bringing in new projects, this volatility in billings doesn’t seem to reflect any underlying weakness in the construction sector,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD. “Rather, it could reflect the uncertainty of moving ahead with projects given the continued tightness in construction financing and the growing labor shortage problem gripping the entire design and construction industries.”
Over the past 12 months at ArchDaily, we've been working hard to bring our readers more articles that will interest, inspire and aid them, and our most read articles of the year reflect a few trends that have characterized the year. Firstly, they show the success of our attempts to bring our readers’ favorite articles from the past back into the limelight through social media and other means, with 7 of our top 20 articles from the year published earlier than 2015. Secondly - perhaps more obviously - it shows the continuing popularity of lists. And what do we do when 75 percent of our most popular articles of the year are lists and rankings? Why, we make a list of them of course. So put your countdown cap on and keep reading to see our top 20 most read articles of the year - including everything from the world's top 100 universities, to 19 notable former architects, to 22 websites you didn't know would be useful to you.
https://www.archdaily.com/778925/archdailys-top-20-most-read-articles-of-2015AD Editorial Team
TEN Arquitectos have been selected as the winner of a competition to design a luxury, mixed-use resort at St. James Point, Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands. Set to open in the fall of 2018, the resort is situated on a 16-acre property and includes a private beach as well as a 200-room hotel. TEN Arquitectos’ design seeks to both “contrast and compliment the surrounding tropical environment.”
“Providing more integrated environments for living and travel, without losing connection to nature or sense of place, is key to the success of a project like this,” said principal of TEN Arquitectos, Enrique Norten. “We have a unique concept here that will fit harmoniously within the landscape.”
The new Civic Center by 3TI Progetti in Villacidro, Italy, is sited at an important reference point for the city, due to both its history and natural features. Located in the "historic garden of the Episcopal Palace," the new center re-interprets the surrounding urban elements, redefining the relationships between its urban and natural surroundings. Read more about this project after the break.
Following an open-call and two-stage evaluation, Mehmet Kütükçüoğlu, Ertuğ Uçar, and Feride Çiçekoğlu with the support of Namık Erkal and Cemal Emden, have been selected as co-curators of the Turkish Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, directed by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena under the theme 'Reporting from the Front'. Commissioned by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), the project's title—'Darzanà'—reflects the great "twin harbours of the Mediterranean:" Istanbul and Venice.
Henning Larsen Architects, Foster + Partners and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios are all competing to design the University of Cincinnati's (UC) new Carl H. Lindner College of Business. According to the Cincinnati Business Courier, public presentations by the three finalists for the $135 million project took place last week. The University is expected to select an architect early next year. The (roughly) 275,000-square-foot building will be part of the campus' "Beautification Plan."
This isn't your typical New York skyscraper; Mark Foster Gage has been commissioned to design a 1492-foot-tall luxury tower in Manhattan - 41 West 57th Street. Described by Skyscraper City as the "missing link between Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Expressionism, Gaudi-Modernisme and Contemporary architecture," the outlandish design boasts a uniquely carved facade cloaked in balconies custom tailored for each of its 91 residential units.
"I think that many of the supertall buildings being built in New York City are virtually free of architectural design - they are just tall boxes covered in a selected glass curtain wall products. That is not design," said Gage.
Architecture photographer Haruo Mikami has shared with us a series of black and white photographs of some of Oscar Niemeyer’s most important works in Brasília. From the Cathedral of Brasília to the Alvorada Palace and the National Congress, see some of the Brazilian architect’s most iconic works after the break.
Architecture is a subject that takes decades to master. Just look at the field’s consensus masters - it is not uncommon for an architect to work through his or her fifties before receiving widespread acclaim. So it should come as no surprise that architecture schools simply don’t have the time to teach students all there is to know about architecture. School is the place where future architects are given a foundation of skills, knowledge and design sensibility that they can carry with them into their careers - but what exactly that foundation should contain is still a hot debate within the field.
In an attempt to come closer to pinpointing what an education should give you, we asked a group of people with a wide range of experience as students, professionals and teachers - our readers - "what do you wish you had learned in architecture school?"
Recognized with a prize of 30,000 euros, Campo Baeza’s project was selected from 750 projects located in six different European countries. Five national winners and five finalists were also announced, while Samuel Delmas (a+ samueldelmas architects urbanistes) was awarded the Special Mention for Young Architects for his building in Nozay, France.
View all of the award winning projects after the break.
According to The Japan Times, the two new designs were both designed by Japanese architects. Both feature wood prominently in their design, something which prompted Japanese architect and critic Takashi Moriyama to tell the newspaper "I think the idea of using wood in large structures may globally impact architecture."
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) has selected Richard Rogers as the 2015 recipient of the J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. The Institute’s highest honor, the award "recognizes a person or a person representing an institution who has demonstrated a longtime commitment to the creation of communities that reflect the highest standards of design and development."
Rogers was selected as the prize's 16th recipient for "his career-long focus on creating sustainable communities that thrive by providing a high quality of life for all citizens."
The Guardian's latest, Oliver Wainwright and Monica Ulmanu discuss London's controversial skyline and the forces that shape it. "Perhaps the tortured heap of towers that seem to be the future of London’s skyline (some thrilling, some monstrous, all very large) is inevitable," says Wainwright. "It is a vertical expression of the Square Mile’s medieval street pattern, forced skywards by global finance and massaged by reactive planning – the chaotic cocktail of invisible forces shaping the city." Read the whole article, here.
The Pritzker Prize has announced that it will be revealing its 2016 laureate on the 13th of January, starting what is sure to be a month of intense speculation about who the next winner of architecture's most prestigious prize might be. Will the jury honor an influential member of the old guard, as they did this March when they gave the award to the late Frei Otto? Or will they recognize a young architect who has made a big splash? Will they reward virtuoso spatial design, or will they acknowledge the role of social impact, as they did in awarding the prize to Shigeru Ban in 2014? And will the award go to an individual or to two or more architects working together, as it did in 2010 when SANAA scooped the prize?
We want to hear from our readers - not just about who probably will win the prize, but about who should win the prize and why. Read on to cast your vote in our poll, and let us know in the comments whose name you'd like to hear announced on January 13th.
https://www.archdaily.com/778688/who-should-win-the-2016-pritzker-prizeAD Editorial Team
Star Wars (1977) is more than a film. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. The Star Wars saga is its own universe, and with such distinct characters and mythology, even talking about Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope as a standalone film (which is part of such a larger whole) is a fascinating exercise. It’s quite remarkable that for a film that takes place in space, in worlds outside of ours, it still holds up, architecturally.
The product of Toronto-based Lateral Office and Montreal-based CS Design, in collaboration with EGP Group, Mitchell Akiyama, Maotik and Iregular, “Impulse” is a winter installation in the city of Montreal. Thirty giant seesaws and a series of video-projections on surrounding building facades, all with accompanying music, transform the Place des Festivals into an “illuminated playground.” The project was selected as the winner of an open competition this past summer, for the sixth annual Luminothérapie event. Read more about this interactive installation after the break.
Arup’s Foresight + Research + Innovation, MadridSustainability and Master Planning, and Landscape Architecture teams have released Madrid + Natural, a series of guidelines to address climate change within the city.
The forward-thinking report to seeks to provide “multiple nature-based solutions to regulate Madrid’s urban environment and respond to problems like pollution, increased heavy storm events, drought, periods of abnormally hot temperatures, and local biodiversity loss.”
A Belarus-based rendering studio, iddqd, have faithfully recreated Marcel Breuer's St. John's Abbey Church in a series of highly detailed images representing both the building's interior spaces and iconic external volume. The first in a long-term project called 'Unforgotten Heritage', this collection of drawings are complemented by a movie which shines a spotlight on a building which, according to the artists, "might otherwise be forgotten."
We’ve all heard the story of the cocktail napkin sketch that inspired a masterwork. Architecture is all about communicating ideas visually, and there is no better way to quickly express an idea than through sketching. But for many students just starting on the path of architecture, the skills to actually create such sketches don't come naturally, and mentors who will take the time to explain such basics can be hard to find.
Geared towards young and aspiring architecture students, a new youtube channel, Themodmin, provides short, free tutorials on how to get the most out of your sketches in their series Architecture Daily Sketches. Covering topics from lineweight to perspective to adding people to your drawings, the videos follow a simple format that is easy to follow. Watch a few of the videos below and head over to their youtube page here for more tutorials.
First place: Abode+Abode / Chowdhury Mohammad Junayed, Sheikh Ahsan Ullah Mojumder, and Erum Ahmed, of the Sheikh Ahsan Ulla Mojumder & Associates in Bangladesh. Image Courtesy of NKA Foundation
NKA Foundation has announced the winners of the 3rd Earth Architecture Competition, Designing for the Arts, in Ghana. The competition called for recent graduates and students of architecture and design to design innovative, modest, and affordable housing for artists that could be built using earth and local materials in Ghana.
The design was required to be a mud house type of about 2,400 square feet for eight to ten users on a plot of 80 by 100 feet in the Abetenim Arts Village, near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The overall design was designated for use by musicians, theater artists, potters, sculptors, painters, textile artists, designers, writers, or media arts practitioners. Total costs of construction were not to exceed $7,000 USD for materials and labor, not including the land value.
“Twin Phenomena” Proposal by ArenasBasabePalacios, one of the winners of Europan 12. Image Courtesy of ArenasBasabePalacios
With 1,305 projects submitted, 44 winners, 49 runner-ups and 61 special mentions have been selected in the Europan 13 competition. Held annually, Europan is a Europeancompetition to design urban and architectural projects for implementation. Europan 13 was done in partnership with governing bodies of cities across Europe in collaboration with 15 European structures, under the theme “The Adaptable City: Self-Organization – Sharing - Project”, with participants called on to address the economic and ecological issues of sustainability in European cities.
The resulting conversations from our readers touched on everything from the coherence of London’s future skyline to Will Alsop’s design lineage. Read on to find out what they had to say in the latest installment of our "ArchDaily Readers Debate" series.
Have you ever wanted to live in a Hobbit House? Or maybe just be closer to nature? Now, with Green Magic Homes’prefabricated houses, you can. Made with fiber re-enforced polymer modules, the homes can be customized, and take as few as three days to construct.
As part of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, Tomás Saraceno has revealed a sculpturalinstallation, “Aerocene - Around the world to change the world," at the Grand Palais and Palais de Tokyo. The project features a series of air-filled sculptures that float without burning fossil fuels or using engines, solar panels or batteries.
.jpg?1449882975 "Urban farming. Image Courtesy of Arup")
