This guide covers a workflow that moves from project parameters to generated floor plans, 3D perspective views, exterior design exploration, and site context visualization, using AI tools in place of preliminary CAD and rendering work.

Videos

As every architect and professional working in the building industry knows, construction is a labor intensive and time consuming process. Expected difficulties with construction and installation can be compounded by unforeseen delays caused by mechanical errors, political or economic circumstances, or even weather. As such, some of the best construction products on the market work to minimize installation times and labor. BŌK Modern's Structurally Integrated Metal Panel System, for example, reduces installation time in the field and minimizes redundant supporting structural elements, which allows for savings in both materials and in the high cost of field labor. At the same time, their panel system provides superior customizability, making them ideal for a variety of different architectural and construction needs.

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A School to Educate with Dignity is an intervention at the Juan H. Álvarez Intercultural Bilingual Primary School in Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero, Mexico. Led by Judith Meléndrez Bayardo (M.Urb.), Arch. Antonio Plá Pérez, and Gabriel Konzevik Kabib (M.Arch.), the project arose from a request for expansions and improvements at twenty-three indigenous schools in the mountainous region of Costa Chica, Guerrero, which are affiliated with the Guerrero 50-50 Project. This program seeks to reinforce the identity of indigenous communities by preserving their native languages. Consequently, in this particular community, the native ñomndaá language carries significant weight within the educational system, and above all, in shaping cultural identity and understanding the environment. Therefore, transforming the space became essential for the architecture to contribute to this project of cultural resistance.

Marcos Parga, director of the Madrid-based studio MAPAa, presents a speculative essay titled "Everyday Rebellions." This is a series of reflections on new domesticities and some considerations regarding the challenges we face in architecture following the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing primarily on how to reimagine and update domestic groupings in our cities.

One of the key questions of Parga's research: What if we were provided with a new type of "retroactive" tools to recalibrate and unlock our domestic life and community interactions, exploring the hackable potential of today's housing blocks?

Hawaii has become a place that defines paradise. From pristine beaches and a warm climate to natural scenery and active volcanoes, the islands are home to incredible landscapes and culture. With indigenous and modern building styles, the state’s architecture is intimately tied to the environment. Reinterpreting historic building techniques and traditions, contemporary Hawaiian architecture balances a desire to honor the past while celebrating new experiences and modern culture. This has led to the formation of incredible spaces to live and dwell.

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Whether dining, relaxing or focusing on work, Wagner’s W-Club chair serves space-sharing home/work places with style. Watch the video to learn more.

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Just over a year after the start of the pandemic in Peru, a multidisciplinary team from OjoPúblico and Espacio y Análisis has conducted an extensive investigation based on various geographical and socioeconomic databases. The study reveals wide gaps in access to public spaces and green areas across 44 districts in Lima and Callao (Peru). In several cities around the world, the pandemic has demonstrated how unequally public space is distributed, especially in low-income neighborhoods and vulnerable areas that lack shared spaces like green areas, parks, or playgrounds. Through this mapping report, the team shows how more than half of the districts in Lima and Callao have less than 3 square meters of recreational space per inhabitant. It also highlights stark urban contrasts along district boundaries separating different socioeconomic levels and underscores the urgent tasks facing local authorities to increase and improve the quality of recreational areas.

Scheduled originally from August to November 2020, the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale was postponed, like every other event this year, and will be held from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021, due to the pandemic. Questioning “How will we live together?” the original statement of curator Hashim Sarkis, called upon architects “to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together”. Relevant today more than ever, with the current worldwide circumstances, the theme of the Biennale is in fact the focus of interest of the global scene.

After having discussed “How will we live together?” in 2019 with Hashim Sarkis in Venice, ArchDaily had the chance to open the debate once more and re-examine the question of the Architecture Biennale. In a two-part interview, the architect tackles the theme, the Biennale, the present situation, and the future.

Text by  Reutov Design. Reconstruction of a small creative office in a 19th-century building. This is the former Tsarist factory for the production of weapons. After the revolution and the Second World War under the USSR, a scientific and technical complex was placed here, and in the future, this place was completely abandoned, turning it into an old office center.

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What we are currently experiencing in the world is a shift in values. A crisis like COVID-19 leads us to question how we want to live, who is important to us, how we should spend our time. As our needs change, we focus on enduring values such as family, community, and an emphasis on our physical and mental well-being. When it comes to the objects that we surround ourselves with, themes such as lasting value, longevity, and quality are coming to the forefront. It is no longer only about what is good for the individual today, but also what will be useful and relevant tomorrow.

In the last decades, architecture has embraced the medium of film to explore new readings of spaces and atmospheres. Crafting a visual narrative of the underlying design concepts while also establishing a connection with the viewer, architecture films use cinematic camera movements and carefully curated sound designs to convey emotion and create a compelling impression of the built object. The article looks into architecture films as a means of capturing the experience of a space, with films by 9sekunden, a team of young designers who combine their passions for film and architecture into an alternative means of exploring architectural atmospheres.

America’s central business districts suffered greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic through job losses and business closings, but they also have a good chance to recover if stakeholders can capitalize on trends that will shape the way people live and work in a post-pandemic economy. That’s the view of the author and urbanist Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto and author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis.

In primitive huts thousands of years ago, humans used animal skins and tree branches to build their shelters—the very same materials used to protect their bodies from the elements. From clothing to housing, these textile elements have accompanied human history, evolving alongside technology and securing a place in architectural production that goes far beyond membrane structures made of polyester/PVC and canvas. Today, they can be seen in other applications such as facade panels, interior partitions, openwork canopies, and more.

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Videos

While working on Raid on Bungeling Bay—a game about bombing cities—legendary game designer Will Wright discovered he had more fun designing the cities than destroying them. He then wondered if players would enjoy having that same opportunity.

Four years later, the result was SimCity, a game that broke away from traditional gaming conventions by swapping levels for open-ended gameplay and clear objectives for a sandbox—a blank slate for creativity. Players were given an empty plot of land, a pile of cash, and a few basic planning tools, and then left to do as they pleased.

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 episode is also available on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify. This week David and Marina discuss the best strategies for getting the most from a design review. The two cover when not to listen to critics, the two essential parts to any critique, why design reviews are often a complete mess, crying at reviews, controlling a review, bad feedback, how to structure a productive review, and much more. Enjoy!

The U House is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of Pritzker Prize winning architect Toyo Ito. It was designed specifically to nurture his sister and two daughters after they lost their father to cancer. Decades later, the house sat empty once the family had eventually moved on from the grips of their grief. In 1997, the house was demolished to clear the site for sale and today the building only lives on in memory, drawing, and images. In this episode of Architecture with Stewart, he reconstructs the U House to simulate what it would have been like to visit in real-life. After a forensic investigation and a close analysis of its program and geometry, he builds a 3D model and navigates it in the real-time render engine Enscape and offers a link for you to explore as well. What hidden treasures are lurking inside this important building lost to the wrecking ball?

The role of an architect has not always been what it is today. Historically, and almost since its inception, it was viewed as a “one-man show”, where the architect was the artist, the sculptor, and the visionary of a structure. As the practice has continued to evolve, it has become a much more collaborative, and much less individualistic profession in nature, continuously understanding the importance of considering outside perspectives- even those not traditionally trained in design.

Lehrer Architects converts several leftover plots in Los Angeles into micro-homes developments, unfolding an experimental template for tackling homelessness. Together with the Bureau of Engineering for the City of Los Angeles, the architecture firm creates an efficient yet functional design using prefabricated pallet shelters and brings character to the project through vibrant colours to shape a new sense of community and restore dignity through design.

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"Acoustics" in architecture means improving sound in environments. Although it is a complex science, understanding the basics - and making efficient and effective decisions - is much easier than you might think. The first step is to understand that there are two technical categories used in acoustics: soundproofing and acoustical treatment. Soundproofing means "less noise" and treatment, "better sound".

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Dozens of neighborhoods in New York City have been upzoned based on contrived, and even false claims made by the city, which promised more diversity, affordable housing, minimum displacement, and other worthy goals. None of those projections materialized, but this is never acknowledged. Worse, the upzoning created the opposite conditions: less diversity, fewer affordable units, and whiter, wealthier neighborhoods. This, too, is never acknowledged. But the damage is done—and developers are having their way—following the new zoning. Then it’s onto the next neighborhood, with the same approach. Roberta Brandes Gratz explores in her article city planning and city promises in New Tork City, disclosing zoning regulations that lead to the opposite of what they preach.

Architecture is shaped by its environment and natural forces. Inherently, the discipline focuses on the design of objects over systems, on formal morphology over networks or ecologies. However, no building exists outside its context; every structure is sited among ever-changing climates and cultural conditions. How designers respond and connect to these larger systems can radically change the nature and quality of their work. Often, it is the greatest constraints that produce novel solutions.

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Imagine yourself welcoming your colleagues to a business meeting at your home. The table is set next to the infinity pool, under the shadow of a huge curved metal structure reminiscent of Zaha Hadid's most audacious designs except for the complete absence of pillars. Hovering in the air, the roof completes an idyllic setting for this mansion on a rocky hillside. The house was recently acquired as an NFT and is digitally accessed via encrypted code. That's right, this is your virtual home. The physical one is a small 40m2 apartment in the center of one of the busiest and most polluted cities in the global south.

The Un-Habitat or the United Nations agency for human settlements and sustainable urban development, whose primary focus is to deal with the challenges of rapid urbanization, has been developing innovative approaches in the urban design field, centered on the active participation of the community. ArchDaily has teamed up with UN-Habitat to bring you weekly news, article, and interviews that highlight this work, with content straight from the source, developed by our editors.

As the fight against coronavirus keeps on bringing many cities around the world to a standstill, the need to support urban entities and local governments is greater than ever. Although the pandemic has drastically changed our relationship with the public realm, due to all the imposed but necessary restrictions, from physical distancing to limiting access, the demand for public space has not decreased. People still need to go outside, commute, work, study, play, socialize, and maintain a healthy mental state. Discover in this article UN-Habitat’s key areas of focus for an effective urban response for COVID-19 that local and national governments should focus on to prevent the spread of the virus and to develop resilience to and preparedness for events of a similar nature.

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This week, we feature two firms currently hiring: a London-founded international practice and a studio led by a female architect with a global educational background. Both are active across diverse architectural sectors, each bringing a unique design ethos and seeking talented professionals to join their teams.

2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic forced architectural students around the world to go virtual with their classes and coursework, transforming the way architecture was both taught and learned. Once based primarily on in-class participation, and collaboration, architectural workshops had to take on whole new methods of instruction. Conversations and debates between students and their instructors, a key element of architectural education were relegated to phone and video calls as well as written documents, making digital formatting an essential tool for students to share their ideas and receive feedback on their work.