Architecture News

Morpholio Trace and Shapr3D have joined forces to imagine a new workflow for iOS 12. Their new feature named “Drag’n’Fly” allows users to “literally put a live 3D model into their Trace sketches, create infinite views and then, automatically generate the perspective grids to draw over.”

Designed for the iPad Pro, Drag’n’Fly seeks to streamline the existing process of architects exporting one view at a time to sketch over. The new feature offers an infinite number of views to draw over, allowing designers to navigate around a 3D model from sketch to sketch to create a narrative, or zoom in on spatial details.

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Three SCI-Arc graduates became the recipients of the first Woods Bagot Prize, an award that recognizes the top design portfolios and academic achievements from students in the undergraduate and graduate programs on September 9. The prize-winners were awarded USD $20,000 along with an offer for a position at any of the international firm’s 15 studios. From a pool of over 50 applicants, the prize-winners Mikiko Takasago from Japan, M.Arch 1, José Carlos García from Mexico, M.Arch 2, and undergraduate Luciano Meghini from Italy, B.Arch, were selected.

Work has begun on Foster + Partners' 200-meter-high Suhewan Skyscraper in Shanghai. Designed as part of a larger regeneration plan, the 42 story tower will be built for property development company China Resources Land. The first office tower in the residential district, the project is part of a larger move to make Shanghai a top financial and technology center by 2020. Designed as a landmark development in the Suhewan East Urban Complex, the skyscraper will open up to views of Pudong, Bund and the Huangpu River.

Mecanoo and Metaform Architects have won a competition to design a new Velodrome and Sports Complex in Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg. Sited in the countryside outside the city, the project was designed as a destination for recreation. The new project will include a new national velodrome with an aquatic centre, multisport hall and climbing wall. The design aims to be a sporting hub that could host national and international cycling events while also remaining open to the community and future international school on site.

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How much of our utility bills are devoted to heating and cooling? What is the R Value of fiberglass? In fact, what is an R Value?

Senator Windows answers these questions with a new infographic driven at “reducing heat loss in your home.” Aimed at both designers and home users, the infographic features a blend of statistics, diagrams, and definitions outlining how heat loss occurs, and how to mitigate against it.

We have republished the infographic below, offering a useful introduction to an almost universal issue in both the design and occupation of buildings.

Heneghan Peng’s proposal for a new National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Moscow has been abandoned. As reported by the Calvert Journal, public officials were unwilling to foot the $240million bill for the flagship project, which Heneghan Peng were selected to design in late 2013.

Speaking to the Art Newspaper Russia, the head of the NCCA Sergey Perov confirmed that the project has been officially scrapped due to lack of funding.

Videos

The European Culture Center’s Time Space Exhibition during the Venice Biennale 2018 features a new short film depicting the spatial qualities of light in architectural design, both as a material and metaphor.

This collaboration between architect and professor Jorge L. Hernández and photographer Carlos Domenech explores their endeavors in providing a lighting-based design solution for the Williamsburg, Virginia courthouse. Battling the issues of security and privacy of the court with the need for natural daylight, Hernández recreated the cupola, a vernacular roof turret intended for ventilation for illumination instead. Light, entering the courtroom from above, transforms the previously dull space and becomes, “an allegory for justice”.

Material manufacturer Re-Structure Group has begun using a new 3D cementitious sandwich panel in the United States to help protect homes during natural disasters. As CNBC reports, the material has been widely used around the world, but is now being tested in the United States. Designed for mass production, the panels are fireproof, seismic resistant beyond any earthquake recorded in human history, and are hurricane resistant. The material is made as a sustainable and resilient building system that aims to reshape the U.S. housing market.

Studio Gang, BIG, Calatrava and SOM are among twelve leading architecture teams vying to work on the Chicago O'Hare International Airport expansion. The city’s request for qualifications calls for demolishing O'Hare's Terminal 2 to replace it with a global concourse and terminal for both domestic and international flights from United and American Airlines. The city’s Department of Procurement Services estimates the total costs of the expansion process (from design through construction) will cost an approximate $8.7 billion. Known as O’Hare 21, the project represents O’Hare’s first major overhaul in 25 years.

SLO Architecture has built Harvest Dome 3.0, a floating dome project made to celebrate the riparian heritage of Grand Rapids. Made with local materials harvested from the Grand River industry, the 20-foot-diameter orb would be constructed from brightly colored surplus seat-belts and studded with rearview mirrors, set atop a ring of 128 repurposed two-liter soda bottles. The project explores the city’s legacy of manufacturing and a history of production.

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The Sydney Opera House is celebrating a significant environmental milestone, having become carbon neutral five years ahead of schedule. For reducing its carbon dioxide emissions through efficiencies in waste and energy management, the Opera House was awarded certification from the Australian Government’s National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS).

The sails of the Sydney Opera House were illuminated green on the night of Monday 24th September to celebrate the carbon neutral certification.

Bjarke Ingels Group has designed a cluster of buildings as the new home for Noma, one of the world’s most acclaimed restaurants. Situated between two lakes within the community of Christiania in Copenhagen. Built on the site of an ex-military warehouse once used to store mines for the Royal Danish Navy, the project is imagined as an intimate culinary garden village. With interiors completed in collaboration with Studio David Thulstrup, the project dissolves the restaurant’s individual functions into a collection of separate yet connected buildings.

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When it comes to sustainability, the Netherlands has always been at the forefront. In recent news, Zwolle, one of the country's "greenest cities," implemented the world's first bicycle lane composed of post-consumer waste that would normally be discarded or incinerated. 

To create the material, Zwolle used old, plastic bottles, festival beer cups, cosmetic packaging, and plastic furniture. Still, in the pilot phase, the bike path contains 70% recycled plastic in its 30-meter pathway. Although, the city hopes to create a bike path made entirely of recycled plastic in the future. 

French architects USUS Architectes reinvent the typical campground by designing a modular multipurpose structure as an ecological bivouac along the trekking routes in Massif Central, France. Together, the Association of Natural Parks of the Massif Central (IPAMAC), PNR Livradois-Forez, PNR Millevaches in Limousin, and the International Center for Art and Landscape (CIAP) wanted to tackle the lack of suitable accommodation along the trails. After deliberating from over 64 proposals, the agencies ultimately selected Peaks + Simon BOUDVIN and USUS + Zebra3 as project co-laureates of the competition.

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Office Ou, a Toronto-based landscape design firm, in collaboration with INOSTUDIO Architects, has designed a new public school for the historic Smíchov district of Prague. The initial competition, organized by the Centre for Central European Architecture, chose the Office Ou & INOSTUDIO design out of 66 anonymous submissions. This school would be the first new public school built in Prague's urban center in close to 100 years.

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After a series of failed attempts, the Monaco building in Medellín will finally be demolished at the beginning of 2019, according to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.

The Monaco building, which was converted into a municipal asset this year, was the residence of the late drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in the El Poblado neighborhood of Medellín. In January of 1988, a car bomb with 80 kilograms of dynamite exploded in front of the building giving rise to a series of attacks between the drug cartels in Medellín.

Dubai-based architecture firm Znera Space have released "The Smog Project," a design to clean the air in Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities. Shortlisted in the World Architecture Festival's Experimental Project Category, the Smog Project hopes to address Delhi’s noxious air quality by adding a network of smog filtering towers throughout the entire city. India's capital has become known for toxic smog levels from overcrowding and industrial waste. Znera's proposal hopes to cleanse the smog chamber and generate smog free air.

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