David Basulto

Founder & Editor in Chief of this wonderful platform called ArchDaily :) Graduate Architect. Jury, speaker, curator, and anything that is required to spread our mission across the world. You can follow me on Instagram @dbasulto.

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ArchDaily: Welcome 2021!

ArchDaily: Welcome 2021! - Image 2 of 4
Illustrations by Francisca Álvarez

Dear community,

As we close this crazy 2020, we look back on what happened during the year, from the buildings that left an impact, to the fast changing trends in the profession and in our built environment.

But as we prepare for a challenging 2021 I want to share our reflections on these intense moments, which are not just a consequence of the pandemic, but also of the diverse and much needed social and cultural changes that have been unfolding during the last years. As a young and diverse Internet company, with a conscious and globally distributed team, we have been working during the last years to embrace change, as we think it is one of the attitudes that can prepare us for a world that is changing fast, on the intersection of two of the industries that are shaping society today: Internet and the built environment. To be ready for change is not easy, as we need to constantly challenge ourselves and our egos, and do things in new ways, in new contexts. But as 2020 demanded, we were ready.

Beat Guhl: "We Allow Architects to Build Fluid, Uninterrupted, and Digitized Spaces"

We spoke with Beat Guhl, CEO of Sky-Frame, during the Swiss Bau fair – one of the largest events in the materials industry. Sky-Frame produces frameless sliding window systems; vital components to achieve an effective and efficient transparency in architectural projects. The company is constantly pushing for technical innovation and works closely with architects to help achieve fluid spatial concepts.

Clément Blanchet: “The Source of Knowledge is in the Past"

We visited Clément Blanchet in his Paris studio, located in Villa Seurat, a small Parisian street flanked by modernist buildings. Inside a beautiful loft by Maillard et Ducamp, the team of Clément Blanchet Architecture was working hard on a master plan in China.

After going through diverse education programs, that included the AA in London, the Chulalongkorn Mahawitthayalai Architectural School in Bangkok, and the University of Illinois in Chicago, Clément started his career at OMA, “a long therapy [...] to discover who I was”. During his career at OMA, he became the director of OMA France, participating in projects such as the Caen Library, the Parc des Expositions in Toulouse, the Lab City CentraleSupélec, among others.

The practice is structured as a laboratory, researching, informing and generating architecture and urbanism in all its forms and sizes. From a series of carefully designed interiors for restaurants, playing with a diverse palette of materials, to large scale multifunctional buildings and master plans, adapting to the fast-changing needs of society. 

ArchDaily + Architonic: Welcome to a New Era

Dear architects,

When we started this project 15 years ago, we knew that the expansion of cities would become the biggest challenge for humanity, and that architects, with better access to knowledge, had the ability to radically improve the quality of life of billions of people. That is why we envisioned ArchDaily as a global source of inspiration, knowledge, and tools to help architects face this challenge. Our carefully curated, unbiased, categorized database of projects, materials and knowledge, paired with a stream of globally diverse content, now serves more than 650,000 people every day.

As our industry is on the verge of a rapid digital transformation, it is our responsibility to understand how technology will integrate inspiration, product sourcing, project delivery, construction and even the management of the life cycle of buildings, enabling architects to do more and better, in an efficient and sustainable way, to face the big challenges ahead. 

That is why we are happy to share the news that we are joining Architonic, the largest database of curated products, to expand both our value propositions for the architecture and interior design world.

ArchDaily, One of the 1,000 Most Visited Websites on the Internet

ArchDaily has become one of the 1,000 most visited websites on the Internet, according to the latest Alexa Internet ranking -- an Amazon-owned company that measures the popularity of all Internet sites.

More than 360,000 users visit our flagship English-speaking platform every day, which when combined with our network of Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese sites, creates a daily global audience of 650,000 people: the most visited architecture network in the world. 

But why is this relevant? Why do these numbers matter?

When we started this project 15 years ago, we knew that the expansion of cities would become the biggest challenge for humanity, and that architects, with better access to knowledge, had the ability to radically improve the quality of life of billions of people. That is why we envisioned ArchDaily as a global source of inspiration, knowledge, and tools to help architects face this challenge. A carefully curated, objective, categorized database of projects and knowledge, paired with a stream of globally diverse content.

But architecture is bigger than architects, and it has become - to our joy - a transversal subject. We have all, as a society, understood the importance of our built environment, how it can shape our mindset, improve our well being, form our education, and drive opportunities and set the grounds for a more egalitarian society. Moreover, a bounty of changes in urban and economic dynamics is also molding architecture into something more relevant, more recognizable, and more democratic. That is why our profession and craft are permeating into Netflix and Apple TV shows, becoming an object of admiration on Instagram, and representing something that you can dream of, aspire to, and work towards catalogues such as Pinterest.

Alfredo Thiermann and Artifacts: Understanding Architectural Space Through Sound

ArchDaily had a chance to visit Alfredo Thiermann (ThiermannCruz) at his Berlin studio, to learn more about his work at the intersection of practice, research, and his passion for music. Alfredo studied architecture in Chile at Universidad Católica, and received his Master's degree from Princeton. He started his practice at an early stage with a series of experimental small scale projects, the "artifacts", always in collaboration with diverse professionals. From scenographies to acoustic installations, these artifacts are structures that carry a meaning, for when "building something becomes necessary to understand a broader situation, a situation that you cannot describe through other means, you need to embody it, and therefore this construction becomes a condensation of political, cultural trajectories that each of these projects wanted to tell."

Building Future Podcast: KP Reddy / Shadow Ventures

In this new podcast series, ArchDaily invites architects and interdisciplinary leaders to discuss the future of the architecture and construction industry. Welcome to Building Future. 

Building Future Podcast at the 2019 AIA Convention

Building Future Podcast at the 2019 AIA Convention - Image 1 of 4

During the 2019 AIA Convention in Las Vegas we invited a selected group of manufacturers and industry leaders to discuss the future of architecture and construction. Trends, technology, apps, BIM, customization, supply chain, and more insights on the first edition of Building Future featuring Morin Corp., Sto, Cosentino, panoramah!, Dri-Design, Graphisoft, Owens Corning, AkzoNobel, and C.R. Laurence.

ArchDaily Topics - June: Travel

As architects, we are on an endless journey of discovery, open to new experiences that fuel our creativity. We explore our surroundings and beyond, we travel to expand our views and open our mind, being often exposed to the unexpected. All these experiences are stored in our mental hard drive until the inspiration moment comes, drawing random non-linear connections between them and putting us into a state of divergent thinking, from where new ideas appear. 

ArchDaily Topics - May: Use & Reuse

“The greenest building is the one that is already built." (Carl Elefante, FAIA)

The world’s urban population will double by 2050, and cities need to come up with sustainable ways to accommodate this mass movement. We often see projects being built as quickly as possible to support growth, however, rapid growth often leads to cities and buildings that lack originality.

A smarter and more sustainable solution is to increase the density of existing centers, as well as to recover existing structures through refurbishment and repurposing. But, turning something old into something new is a challenging process — it requires a bold vision and a rigorous commitment to design.

ArchDaily Topics - April: Public

In Ancient Greece, a Polis referred to both the city and its body of citizens, where one cannot exist without the other. It is in this intersection, where Public Architecture, has the opportunity to construct the ideals of society: a space where individuals gather, relate to one another, and become citizens.

ArchDaily Topics - March: Home

Le Corbusier’s statement, “a house is a machine for living in,” forecasted a future where the house would become an engineered product of standardized, easily-duplicable pieces for an ideal city, while also achieving its ultimate functional purpose: the well-being of its inhabitants.

ArchDaily Topics - February: Representation in Architecture

Starting this month, ArchDaily will introduce monthly themes. Our editors and curators will align their efforts to go deeper into topics we find relevant in today’s architectural discourse, presenting new articles, projects, collaborations, and submissions by our readers. This month we will begin with Architectural Representation.

What started as a ground cut to represent buildings as a 2D maze or the flat representation of styles on an elevation, later evolved into the axonometric representations of battlefields and fortresses for military use, and since then into a diverse variety of views, formats and techniques that go beyond the mere representation of a volume for its construction.