Architectural plans require training in order to read, understand, and produce. Mastering their codes can unlock the most powerful tool that architects have to imagine and construct new buildings. It is not only important to learn the intricate formal and geometric operations to produce these types of drawings, but also to interrogate the traces they leave on the buildings we design. In this video, architecture professor and designer, Stewart Hicks talks about the basics of architectural plans: where they came from, how they are made and used, and what they are good at representing. Using a three-dimensional model of a basic house, he goes through the steps of transforming it into a plan projection while discussing the implications of each step and offering precedents to reveal their nuanced implications.

Videos

What is the danger of making something pretty? Well, when it comes to homes it can be complicated. Curb appeal seems like an innocent concept, but architects have been quoted calling it “empty signifiers of good design” or even eerie or creepy. Curb appeal privileges superficial visual composition over deeper, more spatial considerations. Further, the overregulation of visual propriety easily strays into practices that are exclusionary and oppressive. This video takes a close look at the history, evolution, and consequences of curb appeal from an architect’s perspective using examples from popular culture, art, film, and architecture. Unexpected origins and peculiar turns through picturesque gardens, mirrors for viewing the landscape, and exhibitions like Venturi Scott Brown’s ‘Signs of Life’ serve as waypoints in our journey for understanding people’s views of what houses should look like.

With nearly 200,000 votes cast during the last 21 days, we are happy to present the winners of the 2021 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards. This peer-based, crowdsourced architecture award showcases projects chosen by ArchDaily readers who filtered thousands of projects down to the 15 best works featured on ArchDaily in 2020.

Videos

Geometry is a language and a portal that allows objects to pass between the physical world and the world of drawing, abstraction, and language. How does stepping through this portal leave an imprint on the buildings we design and build? Architects and theorists like Vitruvius, Alberti, and Le Corbusier all believed that geometry was an important key to architecture’s understanding and design. Is that as true today as it was then? The tools of the architect have changed, has their relationship to geometry changed as well? In this video, we explore why and how geometry is so important to architecture as well as some different approaches to the use and expression of its most indelible principles.

After 2 weeks of voting in our 12th edition of the Building of the Year Awards, our readers, with over 150,000 votes, have narrowed down over 4,500 projects to just 75 finalists, representing the best architecture published on ArchDaily. With finalists from six continents, this award developed in partnership with Dornbracht demonstrates that the trust placed in us by our readers to reflect architectural trends from regions around the whole world creates challenges that we are eager to rise to.

Now that the finalists have been selected, the second stage of the Award is now underway to narrow down these 75 projects to just 15 winners, the best of each category.

The 2021 Building of the Year Awards is brought to you thanks to Dornbracht, renowned for leading designs for architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.

Videos

We’ve all commented on a building’s character before. An apartment might have it because of some special oak trim, or a building might not fit with the ‘character’ of its neighborhood. In this video, architectural designer and professor Stewart Hicks takes a close look at the meaning and origins of this elusive concept. Why do we use this word for both people and for buildings? Characters also occur in fiction, does that help explain how buildings tell stories? From the Enlightenment architects Ledoux, Boullée, and Lequeu, to the Beetlejuice house, to contemporary practices exploring what it might mean for a building to have a face or a posture, we get to the bottom of why architects might consider architectural character to be a good idea.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.

It has been a vibrant first week of voting for the Building of the Year Awards. With more than 100,000 votes, gathered up till now, this prize has shown to be, one of the most relevant and democratic in the architecture community… where YOU are the decision-makers, selecting the best architecture of the year.

By voting, you become part of an unbiased and distributed network of jurors that has elevated the most relevant projects over the past decade. Over the next week, it is your collective intelligence that will filter over 4,500 projects down to just 75 finalists.

The 2021 Building of the Year Awards is brought to you thanks to Dornbracht, renowned for leading designs for architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.

Videos

Ever wondered (or forgotten) the difference between open plans and free plans? In this video, architectural designer and professor Stewart Hicks breaks down what makes Open Plans a unique form of ‘open concept.’ It is part of a series that explores terms from real estate using contemporary, historical, and theoretical examples from architecture. In this case, the spatial strategies of Mies van der Rohe are explained, beginning with his early unbuilt houses, through the Barcelona Pavilion, to the Farnsworth House. Each one features a particular, but evolving, use of walls, columns, and roof planes that add up to what we call ‘Open Plans.’ Other videos in the series are dedicated to things like Free or Organic Plans and can help anyone sharpen their understanding of architectural concepts.

2020 was a challenging year for ArchDaily and for all of us. The changes and uncertainty that emerged around the globe allowed us to double down on our mission to provide information, knowledge, and tools to architects, leveling the access to architectural knowledge and working towards a more diverse, equitable profession. This includes the importance of building a community, for which the Building of the Year Awards has always been one of our flagship community-led initiatives.

This is why for the 12th consecutive year, we are tasking our readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that are making an impact in architecture and in our built environment, with ArchDaily’s 2021 Building of the Year Awards. By voting, you are part of an unbiased, distributed network of jurors and peers that has elevated the most relevant projects over the past decade. Over the next two weeks, your collective intelligence will filter over 4,500 projects down to just 15 stand-outs for the best in each category on ArchDaily.

The 2021 Building of the Year Awards is brought to you thanks to Dornbracht, renowned for leading designs for architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.

Videos

The term ‘open concept’ is popular with house-flipping television shows and real estate descriptions for lofts or contemporary style homes. However, the phrase is absent from the architect’s lexicon, likely due to a much more robust vocabulary and archive of precedents for describing the continuity of space in a domestic environment. This video is the second in a series that breaks down various ‘open concepts’ in architecture. The first video was dedicated to the ‘Organic Plan’ of Frank Lloyd Wright and this one takes a closer look at the ‘Free Plan’ of Le Corbusier. Through comparisons with Wright and supported with examples from the Five Points of a Modern Architecture, ‘Free Plans’ are presented as a unique way of understanding the coherence of space.

The Barcelona International Architecture Film Festival, BARQ. Festival is a film festival aimed at vindicating films on architecture as a specific genre and at deepening the relationship between architecture and the seventh art. Cinema uses architecture to show and create worlds that explore social realities, and architecture uses cinema to encourage reflection on the most current issues regarding the spaces we inhabit.

Videos

Architects, not Architecture is turning five and is celebrating it with a Virtual World Tour. With its new event series, „AnA“ brings the architectural community a bit closer together by taking participants on a tour around the globe to “visit” selected cities and virtually meet some of their most relevant architects.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.

On 25 November, 10am CET, OMA, Hassell, WA Museum Boola Bardip, and the Netherlands embassy in Canberra will join a panel discussion with a focus on the architecture of the Museum.

Architectural visualizations have recently reached unthinkable levels, being a great source of inspiration and a fundamental part of the design process in architecture. This is why we are proud to announce the first edition of the ArchDaily Architecture Visualization Awards, where we will award the best of the year.

For us, visualizations have become a powerful tool that has helped us to think without limits about the design of our future cities, buildings, and structures. This is why we are proud to launch thanks to IPEVO, Cove.tool and Concepts the 1st edition of the Architectural Visualization Awards: to find the best talent from around the world and discover who is setting trends with their work and aesthetics, helping us to visualize the future of architecture.

The second edition of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial (TAB), conceived under the name "what do we have in common" opens on Saturday, October 17, and will run through November 8th, 2020.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.