Architecture News

In 2017, ArchDaily went from strength to strength, as we continued to grow our audience around the globe. Last year we reached more people than ever before, with increases being particularly notable in developing countries. This means that ArchDaily's community of readers is more diverse than ever before

2017 was a defining year for ArchDaily. The change and uncertainty around the globe which emerged during the past year allowed us to double down on our mission to provide information, knowledge, and tools to architects, leveling the access to architectural knowledge and enabling a more diverse, equitable profession. As part of this, we now have a renewed focus on data-driven decisions and crowdsourcing architecture's understanding of its own work. The flagship of this crowdsourcing effort has always been our annual Building of the Year awards.

Now, for the 9th consecutive year, we are tasking our readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that are making an impact in the profession, with ArchDaily's 2018 Building of the Year Awards. By voting, you are part of an unbiased, distributed network of jurors and peers that has elevated the most relevant projects over the past eight years. Over the next two weeks, your collective intelligence will filter over 3,500 projects down to just 15 stand-outs—the best in each category on ArchDaily.

This is your chance to reward the architecture you love by nominating your favorite for the 2018 Building of the Year Awards!

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Amazon’s innovative, checkout-free convenience store concept, Amazon Go, has opened to the public in Seattle.

Located in the base of an existing Amazon office building, the 1,800-square-foot (167-square-meter) store offers grocery and convenience items. To begin shopping, customers simply scan an Amazon Go smartphone app and pass through a turnstile.

Using machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence technologies (incorporated into the software powering cameras and weight sensors), the store can then track the actions of customers as they remove items from the shelves, creating a virtual shopping list as they go. When a customer is finished shopping, they simply exit the store through the turnstiles and the user’s Amazon account is automatically charged.

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Beoffice and HSY Architects’ competition-winning proposal for Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University Campus in Turkey represents a generation of knowledge that will flourish and support Bandırma’s innovation in industry and economy. The university will take an integrated approach to the region, blurring the boundary between campus and city with interactive spaces that can open up for flexible use.

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From the creators of Museum Of The History Of Polish Jews in Warsaw, comes a competition finalist proposal for the new Museum for the Defense and Siege of Leningrad in St. Petersburg. Lahdelma & Mahalmäki Architects, in collaboration with Ralph Appelbaum Associates, designed three main parts: the Thread of Life (museum and exhibitions), the Memorial of Heroes of Leningrad and the Square of Testimony. Thought to have the popular vote, this entry sought to redevelop and reconnect the city of to the park and museum with its Neo-Classical grid.

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Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) has launched the United States’ first-ever Ph. D in Historic Preservation. GSAPP is ranked within the top 10 architecture graduate schools in the US in the latest figures for 2017. It’s leadership in learning and experimental practice is about to be further enhanced by the introduction of the course.

Foster + Partners has revealed designs for the new headquarters of the PGA TOUR to be located in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Located on a large freshwater lake at the TPC at Sawgrass resort, the 187,000-square-foot building will create an “uplifting and inspiring” environment for employees and visitors through its transparent walls, lush greenery and all-encompassing roof structure.

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has revealed the design of a new campus complex for the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Norway’s largest geotechnical specialist community, to be built in Northern Oslo.

The 30,000-square-meter (323,000-square-foot) complex will be comprised of two new buildings linked by a common entrance podium and a series of elevated walk- and bikeways. Aimed at housing up to 300 new employees, the NGI is envisioned as a new “knowledge axis” that will spawn increased pedestrian and bicycle traffic in the coming years.

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Amazon has announced the list of 20 finalists in the running to become the new home city for their highly hyped second headquarters, known as HQ2.

The tech company, based in Seattle, selected the finalists from more than 238 applications from cities located in Mexico, Canada and the United States, each hoping to raise their global profile and jump start their individual economies with the 50,000 new jobs the company says it would create.

The finalist cities include:

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Apple has announced plans to open a second U.S. campus as part of a $30 billion plan to invest in United States operations over the next 5 years.

Apple’s new Foster + Partners-designed headquarters, known as Apple Park, opened last year.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced the figures for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, which closed its four month run on Sunday, January 7th.

The second edition of the event, helmed by Artistic Director Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, was able to match the success of the inaugural edition, seeing 554,866 visitors from around the world.

Loose or corroded joints have been identified as the likely culprit of the collapse of a mezzanine floor at Jarkarta’s Indonesia Stock Exchange on Monday that resulted in injuries to more than 70 people.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Company, a preliminary report released by the Indonesian Ministry of Public Works based on interviews with building management and analysis of CCTV footage found that the structure had possibly failed as a result of weak shear joints from “loose or corroded bolts.”

This scenario could have caused the mezzanine to be vulnerable to high weight concentrations, such as occurred Monday when nearly 100 visiting university students were gathered on the platform.

A 100-meter-tall air purification tower in Xi’an, China – believed to be the world’s largest air purifier – has significantly improved city air quality, results from its preliminary run suggest.

According to researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the tower has managed to produce more than 10 million cubic metres (353 million cubic feet) of clean air per day since it was launched a few months ago. In the 10-square-kilometer (3.86-square-mile) observed area of the city, smog ratings have been reduced to moderate levels even on severely polluted days, an improvement over the city’s previous hazardous conditions.

In 2018 the Vatican will participate in the Venice Architecture Biennale for the first time. Ten international architects will construct 10 different chapels as part of the representation of the city-state in the Italian architecture event. The news was confirmed by Paraguayan media outlets ABC y Última Hora, who revealed that one of the participants was local architect Javier Corvalán.

The elite group of architects was selected by Francesco Dal Co, an Italian architecture historian and curator. The designers have been instructed that their chapels must be able to be relocated so that they can be deployed around the world, in places that are in need of these spaces of worship.

The architects who will build chapels in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale:

Architecture lovers and amateur archaeologists take note – or rather, get ready to take notes.

Japanese model making company Triad has released a new series of notepads called the Omoshiro Block (loosely translated to “fun block”) that slowly reveal intricate architectural sites as they are used. Appearing at first as a regular square of paper note cards, each block is specifically laser cut to produce a 3-dimensional model of some of Japan’s most recognizable buildings, such as Kyoto’s Kiyomizudera Temple, Tokyo’s Asakusa Temple and Tokyo Tower.

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Lord Norman Foster has been named the next President of the UK’s Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, an independent charity aimed at promoting “visual awareness and public appreciation of high-quality design” within the United Kingdom.

Chaired by one of architecture’s foremost patrons, Lord Peter Palumbo, the organization was established in 1987 as a complement to the Royal Fine Art Commission (since absorbed into the UK Design Council), the Government’s advisor on matters affecting public amenity and aesthetics in England and Wales.

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and Aedas have unveiled the design of a new boundary crossing that will serve as an important transportation exchange point within the Pearl River Delta, linking Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. Already under construction, the project is expected to be completed in 2019.

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Thomas Heatherwick is touching the New York Architecture Scene again, revealing his design for a pair of residential towers in a pair of renderings. The two towers will flank either side of the New York High Line, located at 18th Street, it will situate itself adjacent to Frank Gehry’s IAC Headquarters building.