Misc

Happy New Year from ArchDaily to our readers from around the globe! We had a great 2015 and we couldn’t have done it without your support. We can’t wait to see what 2016 will bring. In the meantime, check out some of our most popular projects, stories and highlights of 2015, after the break.

With the goal of harnessing and exploring the benefits of clay as a raw material, which is characteristic of Colombia's Cúcuta region, Architects Miguel Niño and Johanna Navarro created Sumart Diseño y Arquitectura SAS, a studio that designs and develops sustainable architectural solutions.

One of their most successful projects is the Bloque Termodisipador BT, a ceramic block designed with an irregular cross section that allows ventilation to pass through the brick, reducing the amount of heat that enters the interior of the building.

+ 9

After receiving over 600 projects from all over the world, a panel of architecture journalists and critics has selected the 50 shortlisted projects for the Wienerberger Brick Award 2016. The biannual architectural award is presented to outstanding examples of modern and innovative brick architecture.

Among the 2016 shortlisted projects are Sharon Davis Design’s Women’s Opportunity Center, Ateliers Jean Nouvel + MDW Architecture’s Police Headquearters & Charleroi Danses, O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects’ LSE Saw Hock Student Centre, BC Architects’ Library of Muyinga and Frank Gehry’s Dr Chau Chak Wing Building.

"Within humanitarian responses, programmatically, children often become invisible." (Marc Sommers)

The Syrian crisis has forced thousands of families to leave their homes in search of safe places to continue with their lives. Many families have moved to Lebanon, where the UN has raised a series of informal settlements. While effective in providing shelter, they don't provide specific solutions for children, many of whom have had their studies interrupted and don't have public spaces equipped to play sports and interact with other kids.

In response to this situation, the architects of CatalyticAction have designed and built a playground in one of the schools developed by The Kayany Foundation and American University of Beirut's Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service, involving children throughout the entire process and allowing the structure to be easily disassembled, transported and either reassembled or repurposed.

+ 18

In November, SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso announced the launch of SCI-Arc EDGE, Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture. Beginning in fall 2016, the new center is intended to serve as a platform for multiple postgraduate programs. Diaz Alonso sat down to talk about SCI-Arc EDGE, the philosophy behind it, and the fields of study it will offer.

The significance of people in architectural rendering is nothing new – the added realism, and addition of narrative elements can make or break whether a render successfully sells its project. With sites like Skalgubbar, architects and architecture students have easier access than ever before to “Render People”: PNG cut-outs of people, ready to be photoshopped into buildings.

In the early years of free, online render-people databases, there was a stark homogeneity to the people represented. As the people providing the crowdsourced images were from predominantly Caucasian, Scandinavian countries, there was a surge of such people appearing in renders in projects across the world. In wake of this, other groups have worked to produce workable databases of diverse, culturally representative render people, giving architects and architecture students the freedom to accurately depict their work in its intended context.

We’ve rounded up 5 different sites that offer free render people of a wide range of ethnicities. See them all after the break.

Videos

Inspired by the mass production of the automotive and aerospace industries, Spanish architects [baragaño], in collaboration with ArcelorMittal, have designed a housing model that can be completely constructed in a factory. Once completed, the house is transported to the site and installed.

The basic model [#bh01] is 39 square meters, composed of two volumes and can be easily expanded both horizontally and vertically in the future. According to the architects, it’s a method that “makes construction easier, generates less waste than traditional systems and increases the safety of personnel involved in the assembly work.”

+ 19

As part of our Architectural Photographers interview series, we spoke with Rodrigo Dávila, an architecture photographer based in Bogotá. When he was a teenager, Dávila inherited a Rolleiflex medium-format camera from his grandfather and never looked back. After working as an architect for two years and taking pictures of landscapes in his free time, Rodrigo moved to Melbourne, Australia to study photography at RMIT University. Back in Colombia, Dávila established a photography business through which he expresses his passion for design, Scandinavian architecture and contemporary buildings.

“Architectural photography works in the opposite way of designing a building. Instead of projecting in order to construct a building, a photographer analyzes the image in order to deconstruct the building and understand the architect’s intention," explained Dávila.

Read the complete interview after the break.

French artist and illustrator Vincent Mahé has shared his most recent work with us -- a series of illustrations made for a special edition of Telerama magazine that depicts the life of the renowned Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier. In just eight pages, the artist highlights the most relevant facts of this unforgettable architect's life. Expressed in green and pink tones, we can see key moments that have without a doubt shifted the course of contemporary architecture, with the extreme care and clarity that Mahé's work presents us.

View the eight illustrations after the break.