Videos

ArchDaily’s Architecture App Guide will introduce you to web and mobile apps that can help you as an architect: productivity, inspiration, drafting, and more. 

A year ago we introduced you to The Morpholio Project a web and mobile app based portfolio, created by architects, for the entire creative industry. A few months later they released iPad App: Morpholio Trace, a layered drafting tool that gained traction among architects and designers. This feature was just the beginning of what evolved into Morpholio 2.0 (free download from the App Store ) part of a series of new tools that turn the portfolio app into a flexible workspace where designers, architects, fashion designers, 3D artists, photographers, automotive designers, and everyone in the creative industry can interact and evolve ideas through feedback.

It builds on research into human-computer-interaction to deliver innovations like a tool for image analytics called "EyeTime" and virtual "Crits" where collaborators can share images, and comment on each other’s work via notes or sketches. Human behavior data-mining is essential to offering these forms of powerful feedback, letting you know how your followers are interacting with your work.

Learn more about the 7 new tools Morpholio 2.0 offers to the creative world:

Ada Louise Huxtable was a renowned architecture critic who started at The New York Times in 1963. Her probing articles championed the preservation of buildings regarded as examples of historic design still imperative to the life of the city. Her arguments were leveraged by research and an in-depth understanding of architecture as an ever-relevant art form ("the art we cannot afford to ignore"). Alexandra Lange of The Nation points to the connection between Ada Louise Huxtable's writing and its influence on the culture of preservation that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965.

More after the break.

From innovative mud and bamboo schools to state of the art “green” high-rises, the Master Jury for the 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture has selected 20 deserving nominees to be in the running for the prestigious, US$1 million prize. Since the award was launched 36 years ago, over 100 projects have received the prize and more than 7,500 building projects have been documented for exhibiting architectural excellence and improving the overall quality of life in their regions.

Farrokh Derakhshani, the Director of the Award, remarked: “The Master Jury, which includes some of the most prominent architects of our time, made interesting choices this year. For example, they chose schools in Afghanistan and Syria, but they also chose a hospital in Sudan, a high rise in Bangkok and the reconstruction of a refugee camp in Lebanon. In many ways, the choices reflect a central preoccupation of the Award: the impact of buildings and public spaces on the quality of life. Now this seems fairly mainstream, but we must remember that the Aga Khan Award has been talking about 'human scale' and 'sustainability' since 1977”.

The 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Shortlist includes: 

Videos

Harpa, the Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre in Iceland, is the winner of the 2013 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award the European Commission and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation announced today. Designed by Henning Larsen Architects, Batteríið Architects and Studio Olafur Eliasson the building has helped to transform and revitalise Reykjavik harbour and brought the city and harbour district closer together.

The 'Emerging Architect Special Mention' award goes to María Langarita and Víctor Navarro for the Nave de Música Matadero (Red Bull Music Academy) in Madrid, Spain. The award ceremony will take place on 7 June at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, coinciding with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the prize.

More information after the break.

Imminent domain has a new justification and it's called the Olympic Games. Once again, the anticipation of the Olympics brings to light the slew of human rights violations that are permitted by countries as they prepare to host the games. So what is the real cost of hosting the Olympic Games? We posed this question on ArchDaily last year in regards to Rio de Janeiro's pick for hosting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Summer Games. http://www.archdaily.com/214726/rio-de-janeiros-favelas-the-cost-of-the-2016-olympic-games/ And here we are again, looking at the controversies that surround building the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia which has been preparing for the games for six years now since it won its bid in 2007. If Brazil's practices with the favelas struck a nerve with human rights groups, Sochi's is sure to spark more controversy. Every time the International Olympic Committee sits down to choose the next host city, cities all over the world jump at the opportunity to impress, hoping that they will be chosen for the global celebration of human feats and accomplishments. As spectators, we are assured that cities can only benefit from being chosen to host the events. They bring tourism, new architectural projects, and global recognition. They encourage city infrastructure to develop and upgrade. They inspire measures that clean up a city, make it "presentable"; and eventually they raise the standard of living for residents. However, they also have the capacity to infringe on the rights and dignity of the very people whose land is being leased to this global event. The massive buildings that host the events have to be built somewhere, and often they are built in the disadvantaged neighborhoods that haven't the political leverage to fight against imminent domain. We've seen this happen in different versions to varying degrees, and we're seeing it now in Sochi as neighborhoods are destroyed, homes are razed, and life becomes unbearable for those still living among the construction and pollution with no means to relocate. The global community looks on in horror as reports like Anna Nemtsova's for ForeignPolicy.com (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/11/russia_s_olympic_city) reveal the treatment of citizens to make room for the infrastructure that supports the Olympics. Nemtsova gives some insight into the status of these projects and their affects on communities: The rising concrete wall (set to be 12 feet high upon completion) is about to cut off Acacia Street's view of the mountains -- and, indeed, of the rest of the world. During rainstorms, bulldozers push mud into residential courtyards, where the dirty water floods residents' basements, destroying floors and furniture. Mold is creeping up the walls in homes, filling the air with a rotten-garbage smell. Last month, Sochi City Hall filed a lawsuit against Acacia Street inhabitants who haven't been willing to demolish their own outhouses, kitchens, and water pumps that happen to be in the way of the construction of a new federal highway. But what happens here is not just a human rights issue that leaves people disenfranchised. This otherwise idyllic get-away city has been transformed by the massive construction undertaking and in some cases has become an ecological disaster as well. Greenpeace an World Wildlife Fund have both expressed concern over the construction that is poisoning the lakes which are a crucial ecological site for migrating birds. And community protest and activism in regards to their own condition has gone unregistered by President Putin, according to Nemtsova. The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/12/sochi-2014-an-olympic-preview/100422/) posted some progress photos from the construction late last year. These images are bittersweet. On the one hand they show growth, construction, progress and the majesty and grandiosity that we associate with this celebration. On the other hand, we see photos of demolished, scattered rubble, and construction sites where there once were neighborhoods. It's sad to think that this global celebration has so many casualties. Is this something that was always the case, the unmentionable part of the Olympic Games? Or has it become more acceptable to bulldoze neighborhoods for the sake of the games and declare imminent domain without regard for the people or the place? And what can we do differently next time? While the global community watches and comments, it largely turns a blind eye to these developments, permitting them to perpetuate year after year.

Could a new revolution in wind-turbines be on its way? A team from Australia's University of Wollongong (UOW) have collaborated with leading marine engineering firm Birdon Pty Ltd, to develop PowerWINDows - a new type of wind-to-energy converter that could potentially be appearing on skyscrapers near you soon.

Read more about this new idea after the break...

With the ambition of honoring and encouraging outstanding artistic talent, the Dutch state prize for the arts - the Johannes Vermeer Award - has been awarded this year to architect and writer Rem Koolhaas. The jury made a unanimous decision, citing Koolhaas’s critical contributions to architecture and urbanism since his career began with the publication of Delirious New York in 1975.

Madrid-based architect Angel Borrego Cubero of Office for Strategic Spaces (OSS) has directed and produced the first documentary focused on the tense process that characterizes an architectural competition. Appropriately titled The Competition, the film captures a fascinating account on how five world renowned architects - Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Dominique Perrault, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster - “toil, struggle and strategize to beat the competition.” The premise is based on a nearly forgotten, 2008 competition for a new National Museum of Art of Andorra, a small Pyrenees country nestled between Spain and France, which has yet to be realized.

The Competition is expected to debut in late 2013. Updates will be available on OSS’s website and facebook.

Videos

Inspiration is a funny thing: when you need it is nowhere to be seen, and just when you're not expecting it, it can blindside you in the least convenient of places. Here's ten inspirational TED talks for architects (in no particular order) from people with broad and unique views on architecture. Some might enlighten, educate or even enrage you - at the very least they should get those creative juices flowing a little better.

Take-in these ten TED talks after the break...

Last Sunday James S. Russell, architecture critic for Bloomberg News and a former editor for Architectural Record, mused on his personal blog about the possible influence Paul Rudolph’s Brutalist University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth may have had on Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two Boston Marathon bombers who was also a student there.

Mr. Russell describes the campus as “a gigantic eerie, dozen-building concoction of grim ribbed-concrete hubris….” This is the sort of description that drives right to the heart of urban alienation. It’s Edvard Munch’s The Scream. This ability to sum up and drive the nail home is one reason he is the architecture critic for Bloomberg News. No side-stepping here.

The mid-century modern master, Richard Neutra was well known for his cutting edge modernism. Since Julius Shulman immortalized his houses in his iconic photographs, Neutra's bright, airy homes have widely been seen as the pinacle of modernism and desirability. One problem though, they're in high demand and it's not exactly like they're making any more Neutra buildings; in fact, quite the opposite is true and as a result they have become a pretty expensive commodity.

Read more about how to get your very own Neutra home after the break...

Peter Williams is the founder and executive director of an organization whose goal is to improve global health, using design to create healthier environments as preventative measures for tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria. Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments, or ARCHIVE for short, has projects in countries all over the world, including Haiti, Cameroon, and Ethiopia. ARCHIVE identifies and addresses the causes of poor health in disadvantages communities and uses strategies related to housing design improvements to create environments that promote better health.

TIME Magazine has released their tenth-edition of the 100 issue, representing who they believe to be the world’s 100 most influential people in 2013. Gracing the list among music titan Jay-Z and Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen is architecture’s very own Wang Shu, who was honored for “successfully blending China’s quest for novel and eye-catching architecture with respect for traditional aesthetics.”

For the past four decades, as cities faced financial pressures, high-rise public housing met its decline. Cities throughout the country demolished public housing that was failing financially and socially, like Chicago's Cabrini-Green Housing Project whose demolition was completed in 2011, to make way for mixed use developments that encouraged economic and social diversity by way of the HOPE VI Program. This strategy resulted in the uprooting and relocation of former residents who faced uncertainty throughout the process.

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) stands out among housing authorities in the United States due to its size - 179,000 units in 2,600 buildings across the city - and the fact that the buildings are relatively well maintained.  NYCHA has avoided resorting to demolitions to deal with its issues, instead resorting to special police services that costs NYCHA a purported $70 million a year.  Over the past decade NYCHA has been underfunded by approximately $750 million causing backlogs in necessary repairs.  

To address the mounting costs of public housing, New York City's Mayor Bloomberg has proposed an infill strategy that would attract developers onto NYCHA land and create a new layer of commercial space and residential units in public housing developments. The goal over the next five years is to develop methods of preservation for the housing development and promote mixed-use and mixed-income developments to generate income for NYCHA.

More on the plan after the break.