Google Earth has released an update to its Timelapse feature, giving viewers a better look at the rapid expansion of the world’s urban areas between 1984 and 2016.
Originally released in 2013 in partnership with TIME and NASA, the update adds in four more years of data, as well as petabytes of imagery data from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2, to provide clearer views of new developments and the recent effects of climate change on our natural environments.
Even as architecture moves deeper into the digital realm, drafting and rendering by hand remains quintessential to the craft. The George Architect channel on YouTube—managed by Reza Asgaripour and Avdieienko Heorhii—aims to inspire both practitioners and fans of architecture by demonstrating new ways of depicting the built environment with impeccable style. Tune in to see how you can improve your own sketches.
In collaboration with Kistefos Museum, photographer Frédéric Boudin has captured Jeppe Hein's installation "Path of Silence," now permanently located in Jevnaker near Oslo. The sculpture is inspired by the topography of the Kistefos Sculpture Park, creating a conversation between the installation and its site by adapting the park's stepped slope and terraces to a freeform profile.
The designs of the Zaha Hadid-created statuettes to be handed out at this year’s BRIT Awards have been unveiled. One of Hadid’s final commissions before her death this March, the design consists of a family of 5 interrelated trophies take the form of abstracted female figures representing diversity. One of those family members, meant to represent Britannia, the female personification of Great Britain, will be awarded to musicians for their victories in the BRIT Awards ceremony this February.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is abandoning plans for a museum in the Finnish capital after a proposal for funding was rejected by the Helsinki City Council, 53-32.
“We are disappointed that the Helsinki City Council has decided not to allocate funds for the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki museum, in effect bringing this project to a close,” Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, told the Helsinki Times.
Fairy chimneys, also known as hoodoos or tent rocks, are spooky looking spires of rock that range from the height of an average person to over 40 meters. While recently on assignment creating one of his time-lapse videos for Turkish Airlines, photographer and filmmaker Rob Whitworth captured the fairy chimneys found in the Cappadocia region of Turkey in all their eerie charm.
Building a highway in a city is often thought of as a solution to traffic congestion. However, the induced demand theory has shown that when drivers have more routes, they choose to continue using this medium instead of using public transport or a bicycle, and as a result, congestion doesn’t decrease.
As a result, some cities have chosen to remove spaces designated for cars and turn what was once a highway into urban parks and less congested streets.
Here we have six examples, some have already been completed, while a few are still under construction. To the surprise of some, most of the projects are in the US, which reflects that American designers are looking into further studying European transport policies.
Last week, RIBA announced the first two homes shortlisted for this year's House of the Year Award: Antsy Plum by Coppin Dockray and Outhouse by Loyn & Co Architects. Antsy Plum is a 1960s modernist house located in Antsy, Wiltshire, renovated to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent; Outhouse, located in Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, is a partly subterranean concrete structure on a sloped site.
The inaugural show at the new London Design Museum, Fear and Love, presents a collection of "reactions to a complex world." Featuring eleven specially-commissioned installations designed by the likes of OMA/AMO, Hussein Chalayan, Andrés Jaque and Metahaven, the spatial context which frames them is the work of Sam Jacob Studio.
The first piece of the new Bauhaus Museum Dessau will be set into place this weekend as part of the “Bauhaus Building 90th Anniversary” event, one year after Barcelona architects González Hinz Zabala were selected as the winners of a fierce international competition for the commission.
González Hinz Zabala’s open concept, “Black Box” design was originally selected as a joint 1st place winner with a proposal from New York architects Young & Ayata in September of last year, and then awarded the commission for the final design in December following further fine tuning of the design.
Ateliers Jean Nouvel and Australian firm Architectus’ 70-story mixed-use tower, 383 La Trobe Street, will be the newest addition to the Melbourne skyline, after its approval by the Victoria Department of Planning.
Upon completion, the building will be Nouvel’s first project in Melbourne and second in Australia following One Central Park in Sydney, which was named the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) Best Tall Building Worldwide in 2014.
OMA has released images of their masterplan for Feyenoord City, Rotterdam, after the plan was approved by city’s mayor and alderman. Developed for the Feyenoord football club, the project will consist of a redeveloped mixed-use district centered around a new 63,000 seat stadium for the team located along the Maas River.
CBS has announced they will produce a television adaptation of the 2016 book, “A Burglar’s Guide to the City,” with a storyline that centers on modern-day Robin Hoods led by a talented architect. Written by futurist Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG, the book serves a blueprint to the urban fabric’s various potentials for crime. Manaugh uses architecture to study structures and their weak points that could allow for a possible break-in (i.e. elevator shafts, walls of high-rise apartments, gaps in museum surveillance).
China-based firm EID Architecture has been selected as the winner of a design competition for a mixed-use development, entitled Longfor Phase IV, in Chongqing, China. Designed as an exploration of vertical urbanism on a high-density scope, the project is composed of a “single tower and associated podium integrated as an assembled massing of stacked box-like volumes.”
In the latest edition of Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, the team speak to Moshe Safdie – the Israeli-Canadian architect whose "signature geometric style of lavish curves and green space has made the self-styled Modernist an influential voice" in the profession. The conversation, broadcast from Safdie's Marina Bay Sands complex in Singapore, reflects on his life and work – including Montréal's Habitat 67.
“The Archipreneur Concept” is an action-oriented guide about exploring new business models for entrepreneurially minded architects. You have the chance to win 1 out of 10 copies the Archipreneur Team is giving away for free this week.
Eric Parry Architects’ 1 Undershaft has been granted planning permission from the City of London Corporation’s Planning Committee, which will allow the 73-story tower to become the tallest building in the London Financial District and the second tallest building in the UK, behind only The Shard.
