For the past two years, we have found ourselves wanting to highlight what is the foundation of architectural practice: the architectural drawing. We realized that even after almost a decade of publishing the best projects from around the world, we should take on the task of singling out the exceptional cases of representation, taking into account all varieties and species of drawings. Following up on the criteria used in the previous edition, all the architectural drawings we have selected this year have a sensitive expression— whether it be artistic, technical or conceptual—and they all aim to express and explain the respective project using simplicity, detail, textures, 3D and color as main tools.

Below you will see the selection of drawings arranged under eight categories: Architectural Drawings, Axonometrics, Context, Diagrams, Sketches, Animated Gifs, Details and Other Techniques.

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“Will you look at that? St. Mark’s Square is flooded!” An Australian day tripper is astonished. “This place is actually sinking,” her friend casually exclaims. They, like so many I’ve overheard on the vaporetti, are convinced that the Venetian islands exist on a precipice between the fragility of their current condition and nothing short of imminent submersion. With catastrophe always around the corner a short break in Venice is more of an extreme adventure trip than a European city-break. If it were true, that is.

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "Africa’s Undeclared War on the Disabled."

Recently I spent part of a week in the company of a multidisciplinary group of academics and researchers from Europe, the US, and Africa, at a workshop entitled “The Practice and Politics of DIY Urbanism in Africa.” Jonathan Makuwira, a professor from the Malawi University of Technology, delivered a compelling paper on “Disability and Urbanism in Malawi,” highlighting the many challenges of the continent’s disabled population, using that city as a case study.

The lecture reaffirmed my sentiments on the gross inadequacies of urban public spaces for the disabled. It’s an issue that formed the basis for my 2016 entry for the Richard Rogers Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), where I had proposed to use the fellowship to develop a prescriptive accessible design blueprint for public spaces in the city of Abuja.

Sustainability. A word that, for many of us, has been driven into our minds from the very start of our careers as architects. We have a responsibility to the planet and future generations to design buildings that are socially conscious—from solar panels to triple-glazed windows, we have tried it all.

Ultimately, whether our designs are sustainable comes down to the early decisions we make for the building, with our choice of materials having a huge effect on the overall carbon footprint. With new technologies come new ways of incorporating abundantly found materials into the skin of the building that could reduce the building's embodied energy and enhance the structure's properties.

In this article, we have compiled a list of 8 familiar materials that you wouldn't initially associate with sustainability but which you might consider for your next design.

It’s no secret that the architecture field struggles with diversity. Both personal stories and deeper studies detail the profession’s lack of representation. But despite concerns suggesting diversity in the field remains stagnant, there’s good news: the latest data from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) reveals that gender, racial, and ethnic diversity is slowly improving.

The 2017 edition of NCARB by the Numbers (NCARB’s annual data report) indicates that while the number of architects and licensure candidates holds steady, the pool of individuals is more diverse than ever before. Although there is still much room for improvement, this data provides an encouraging glimpse into the future of the profession.

To speak of Paul Rudolph’s illustrious career is to trace a grand arc stretching from the 1940s to the 1990s. More often than not, the popular narrative begins with his student days at Harvard under the tutelage of Walter Gropius, touches upon his earliest, much-loved Florida beach houses, circles around his eventual break from the rigidity of both the Sarasota School and the International Style, and finally races towards the apex: his chairmanship of the Yale School of Architecture, and the concurrent shift to a Brutalist architectural style characterized by monumental forms, rugged concrete, and interwoven, multilevelled spaces awash with a remarkable interplay of light. Then comes the fall from grace: the beloved Yale Art and Architecture Building went up in flames just as the architecture profession began to question modernist ideals, and eventually Postmodernism was ushered in. Flickering, sputtering, Rudolph's grand narrative arc lurched towards Southeast Asia, bearing away the “martyred saint.” Save for several scattered commissions in the United States, Rudolph spent the last two decades of his life building abroad, mostly across Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Singapore, until his death in 1997.

But of course, time and again, historians have sought to challenge the myth of the failed architect by rereading his understudied work from the late years. Adding to this growing corpus of fresh research and alternate perspectives is architectural photographer Darren Soh’s ongoing project documenting—so far—three of Rudolph’s major works in Southeast Asia: The Colonnade (1986) and The Concourse (1994) in Singapore, and the Intiland Tower (1997) in Surabaya, Indonesia.

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This article was originally published on the blog of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest platform for contemporary architecture in North America. The 2017 Biennial, entitled Make New History, will be free and open to the public between September 16, 2017 and January 6, 2018.

When we think of contemporary architecture in China, we often refer to the megaprojects by international architecture studios that tend to get covered most in the design media. From OMA’s CCTV Headquarters and Shenzhen Stock Exchange to the recently completed Tianjin Binhai Library by MVRDV and Poly International Plaza by SOM, these projects dominate urban skylines at a singular scale that suggests they were built to impress.

Beyond individual buildings, China’s mega-architecture boom is rapidly developing entirely new cities, a process designed to relieve the country’s principal metropolitan areas of their high density, while offering new prototypes for urban life. These highly branded environments are prompting displacement – as a form of rural exodus – and social stress throughout the country, while also ignoring the legacy of traditional Chinese architecture in urban centers.

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Architects are people of great taste, who enjoy the finer things in life – especially when it comes to pens. The saying goes: ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, but inevitably we find ourselves judging an architect by their choice of pen. It’s easy to do when your colleague decides to grab the nearest biro to sketch a quick diagram, leaving you to squirm as you sit and watch it indent the paper.

Pens are powerful tools for architects, that harness our thoughts and ideas into potential three-dimensional structures. In the age of the digital world, pens have become sacred, grounding us back to the simple pleasure of drawing to begin the creative process. After years of trying and testing all the different writing instruments out there, we eventually find the one which can say a lot more about ourselves than you may think.

Do you think architecture is your calling? Do you have the passion and drive to explore this creative field and learn from the best? Every year, many young people decide to take on the challenge of an architecture education, but how many have any idea what is in store for them on that first day in the design studio? In truth, the exercises given to new students by their professors reveal a lot about the architecture world.

I reached out to hundreds of professors, assistant professors, and adjunct and visiting professors to find out their favorite first-year studio design prompt. The responses varied from the abstract to the concrete, as well as from simple drawing exercises to complex steps to end at a completed work. Most projects were designed for individuals, however some required a team effort. The following is a peek into that world from a variety of educators from schools around the globe.

Unbeknown to many, cork is something of a dark horse when it comes to the environment—a model of a sustainable industry and building material. By its very nature, cork is both recyclable and renewable, as it is the only tree that regenerates its bark, while harvesting that bark causes the tree no harm.

Cork has been sneaking its way into our buildings for many years now; due to its hard-wearing properties it can be found, for example, in the checkerboard flooring of the Library of Congress. Even NASA has been wise to cork's light weight and insulation capacity, using it as an insulator for their space shuttles.

This article was originally published by Autodesk's Redshift publication as "Next-Gen Virtual Reality Will Let You Create From Scratch—Right Inside VR."

The architecture and manufacturing industries are about to undergo a radical shift in how they make things. In the near future, designers and engineers will be able to create products, buildings, and cities in real time, in virtual reality (VR).

In predicting VR’s dramatic evolution, an analogy to early cinematic history is apt: As one legend has it, when the motion-picture camera first came out, actors were filmed on a set, in front of fake trees. Then someone said, “Why don’t you just put the camera in the forest?” Simple, but game-changing. VR technology is already available, and it’s only a matter of time before it is used to its full potential.