Produce personalized presentation boards that distill complex concepts into simple visual representations with a few helpful tools and effects.

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There are several reasons why the Estado de Mexico (a state, not the country) is important not only at the national level but also because of its intrinsic relationship with Mexico City since 59 of its municipalities are considered part of the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico. In this area, there are a large number of industrial plants. In addition, it houses some of the most visited archaeological sites such as Teotihuacán, Tetzuco, Azcapotzalco, Chalco, and Amaquemecan.

Videos

The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.

A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

This week David and Marina are joined by Jacob van Rijs, Founding Partner of MVRDV, Architect and Urban Planner to discuss the beginnings of MVRDV, working internationally, the office's structure and growing from 3 people to 300, creating a positive office environment (the MVRDV house), design process, having fun in design, MVRDV's diagrams, why clients hire MVRDV.

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Videos

Architecture and photography are deeply dependent on one another. The first photograph ever taken frames buildings as its subject. Even more, it took an entire room to produce the image through a camera obscura. In the early days, buildings were one of the few subjects that could sit still for the 8 hours it took to burn an image onto a photosensitive medium. However, architecture is dependent on photography too. Buildings are large, slow, and immobile. Without photographs, it would be difficult to visit the important structures around the world. In this way, photographs are an easily shareable surrogate for buildings. But, photographs are not truthful 1:1 depictions so photographers have a lot of agency when it comes to how we experience architecture. This video offers some insight into this relationship and presents a few photographers as examples for how they interpret an architect's intentions and add their own voice. These include Julius Shulman, Ezra Stoller, Stephen Shore, Iwan Baan, among others.

Following the Second World War, United States veterans and citizens were seeking a fresh start, a rightful place to live out their modern American dream. With a significant housing shortage looming around and fast-growing families, solutions had to be found to provide equitable living means for all. The development of new construction techniques and propagation of easy building materials promised an age of prosperity.

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Architecture has been increasingly focusing on adaptive reuse, taking advantage of the opportunity to redesign existing spaces to provide new purposes while also reducing damage to the environment. In this context, recycling warehouses is quite usual and is becoming more popular every day because these spaces often have large open plans which allow many different layouts.

On a clear fall day in 2005, a group of friends and collaborators from the art collective Rebar commandeered an 8-foot-wide by 20-foot-long metered parking space in downtown San Francisco. This two-hour guerilla art installation evolved into Park(ing) Day, a global public art and design activism event that has been celebrated every year since. In 2009, Rebar and other design studios were approached by the City of San Francisco to prototype a more permanent version of Park(ing) Day. In response, we created one of the world’s first parklets in San Francisco (we called our version walklet), and through the diligent efforts of Andres Power in the Mayor’s Office and City Planning, San Francisco’s pioneering parklet program was born.

Artificial intelligence is transforming how we design and build. By 2050, the effects of AI adoption will be widely felt across all aspects of our daily lives. As the world faces a number of urgent and complex challenges, from the climate crisis to housing, AI has the potential to make the difference between a dystopian future and a livable one. By looking ahead, we're taking stock of what's happening, and in turn, imagining how AI can shape our lives for the better.

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Twenty years after the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi was first announced in 2006, the museum may finally have its grand opening.

Videos

Welcome to the Slow House, Diller and Scofidio’s (now Diller, Scofidio and Renfro) first building commission for Long Island, in NY. The crescent-shaped slug doppelganger, was a pivotal design for the firm — and architecture at large — when it was first revealed in 1990. However, the building was never built, living only through its extensive catalog of models and drawings. In this video, the Slow House is digitally reconstructed, analyzed and explored to discover unique elements lurking in its design that can only be revealed through a first-person experience. From delayed million-dollar views, to CCTV feeds of the water, to dozens of operable plywood doors and shades, the house is truly a machine for viewing. And now, you can view it for yourself. 

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In this week's reprint, author Mark Alan Hewitt talks about models and their importance. "For those of us lucky enough to have grown up during the 1950s and ’60s, models were hot stuff—and not just the kind that statement may bring to mind", he states. Going back to the realistic models of the 70s, similar to today's virtual renderings, this essay retraces their history and the artists that produced them.

In Mendoza, Argentina, the digital fabrication research lab Node 39 FabLab created a frame loom structure made of digitally cut wood to help indigenous people in the central region of the country weave and create their traditional patterns. In the state of Ceará, northeast Brazil, a study entitled "Artífices Digitais" (Digital Artisans) by the Federal University of the State of Ceará used digital fabrication tools, namely 3D printing, to produce digital models, like digital prosthetics, to restore the damaged parts of an altarpiece of the high altar of the Mother Church in the city of Russas.

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In honor of World Photography Day (August 19 ), Chilean architect Francisco Ibáñez Hantke offers a a perspective of urban transformation and the resulting instability caused by the regenerative processes and the constant real estate speculation that drive it. The photographs center on London, and reveal an exhausting array of construction and demolition and highlight the often blurry line between architecture and urban decay.

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After a year-long absence, Milan Design Week has wrapped up yet another year of creativity and innovation. From the 5th to the 10th of September, thousands of design companies displayed their creations to more than 200,000 visitors hailing from different countries, demographics, and industries. And while the design fair gravitated towards the world of interior design, many renowned architects such as Bjarke Ingels, Foster + Partners, and Herzon & de Meuron participated in the week-long exhibition and joined forces with interior and furniture design brands to create signature pieces.

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Sex Day is an unofficial holiday created by marketers celebrated on September 6th in Brazil, highlighting one of the greatest taboos in modern society: sexuality. From an architectural and urban point of view, the immorality associated with sexual activities, especially in exchange for payment, deeply impacts our society and also affects the territory.

While sometimes considered morally wrong, sinful, forbidden, and impure, sex, sexuality, and pleasure are all inherent to human physiology. Prostitution is sometimes referred to as "the world's oldest profession," playing a fundamental role in our societies, as well as in our territory, in the spatial organization and dynamics of cities. This practice is at the margins of modern society and therefore has ended up occupying segregated spaces in the cities.