Paris is set to make public transport free for all children under the age of 11. As detailed by Le Parisien, September 2019 will see new concessions rolled out across the Greater Paris region including free metro and bus travel for people under 11, including non-nationals, and free travel for people with disabilities under the age of 20. In addition, high school students between 14 and 18 will receive a 50% concession, as well as a free bike share account on the city’s Vélib scheme.

The scheme is expected to cost €15 million ($17 million) per year, only a fraction of the €10.1 billion ($11.5 billion) annual budget for the region’s public transport system, and is part of a broader strategy to make public transport more affordable for Parisians. In Spring 2018, the city also introduced free annual travel passes for low-to-medium income citizens with disabilities, and people over 65.

2019 has already witnessed a series of bridge-related milestones marked, from the world’s longest bridge nearing completion in Kuwait to the world’s largest 3D-printed concrete bridge being completed in Shanghai. As we remain fixated on the future-driven, record-breaking accomplishments of realized bridge design, "911 Metallurgist” has chosen to look back in history on some of the visionary ideas for bridges which never saw the light of day.

Whether stopped in their tracks by finance, planning, or engineering difficulties, the four bridge designs listed below embody a marriage of art and engineering too advanced for their time. From a proposal for a EuroRoute Bridge between Britain and France, to a 12-rail, 24-lane bridge across the Huston River in New York, all four designs share a common, ambitious, yet doomed vision of crossing the great divide from pen and paper to bricks and mortar.

MVRDV have released details of their proposed mixed-use complex, designed to redevelop a post-industrial site in Kiel, Germany. The 65,000-square-meter proposal will adopt a flexible design system as opposed to a fixed, unchangeable plan, thus allowing the scheme to adapt to future demands as the design development progresses.

Labeled the “KoolKiel,” MVRDV’s scheme will occupy an existing large, single-story building previously used to store chains of ships, and for the printing of Germany’s famous Werner comics in the 1980s. The site’s current use as a hub for media and creative industries, and its resulting charismatic identity, has strongly influenced the MVRDV scheme, with the retention of the existing structure and lively, playful exterior spaces.

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Each year, the Boston Society of Architects offers the James Templeton Kelley Prize to the best final design project for the MArch degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. This year, the March II recipient was Ziwei Song for their thesis titled “Not so skin deep: vernacularism in XL” for exploring alternative ways of integrating the Chinese vernacular with modern “XL” developments.

Ziwei’s thesis sought to re-approach the typical developer project in China, and demonstrate the capacity of the vernacular image to positively-effect the sequence, perception, and exposure of space. To test this, the project was placed on Chongqing, a typical second-tier city in China with a concentration of XL developer projects.

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The Vancouver Art Gallery has unveiled the final design for its 300,000-square-foot building designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Designed to serve the Gallery’s ever-expanding collection of art and educational programs, the scheme will offer “a global platform for Vancouver’s and Canada’s thriving arts scene and play a vital role in establishing this city as one of the world’s most foremost cities for arts and culture.”

The scheme has been designed as a sculptural, symmetrical, upright building infusing opaque and transparent surfaces. The stacked scheme sees a minimal mass at the bottom contrast with larger volumes concentrated at the top, allowing light and air to filter down to an active, open-air courtyard below.

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Gensler has released details of their proposed Tower Fifth in New York City. If realized, the 1556-foot-tall scheme would be the second-tallest building not just in New York, but in the Western Hemisphere. Located east of Fifth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street, the tower will sit adjacent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

According to Gensler, who designed the scheme in collaboration with developer Harry Macklowe, the tower “creates a new paradigm for how a supertall structure meets the street and interacts with its neighbors.”

Architecture research initiative “arch out loud” has announced the winners of their “Waste: Multi-Purpose Stadium” competition, asking participants to speculate on the design of a multi-purpose stadium at the former Olusosun Landfill in Lagos, Nigeria.

The competition was organized in response to the fact that the world creates more than a billion tons of garbage per year, most of which is incinerated, buried, and explored to landfills. As populations and major cities expand, so too must our “ability to reverse wasteful tendencies and begin living more efficiently and sustainably.”

Construction has begun on the Powerhouse Company-designed pavilion for the ING campus in Amsterdam. Located in the up-and-coming district of Amsterdam Southeast, the 900-square-meter pavilion seeks to “make a bold statement while integrating with its surroundings."

The clean, minimalist pavilion will sit at the heart of the ING campus, serving as both a dining area and a multifunctional space for the community. Emphasizing the natural landscape, the pavilion offers a synergy between the built and natural environment through a friendly circular form, a timber interior, and green Tichelaar tiles on the north and east facades.

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Construction has completed on Diller Scofidio + Renfro (Lead Architect) and Rockwell Group's (Lead Interior Architect) 15 Hudson Yards, an 88-story skyscraper marking the first residential project in the Manhattan masterplan. The scheme is now open with 60% of residential units already sold, totaling over $800 million in sales.

The tower marks DS+R and Rockwell Group's first skyscraper, designed in collaboration with executive architects Ismael Leyva. The scheme topped out in February 2018 to its architectural height of 914 feet.

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Microsoft has unveiled plans to commit $500 million to advance affordable housing solutions across the city of Seattle, Washington. The money, to be distributed as loans and grants, will kick-start new solutions to the city’s housing crisis, where income increases have lagged behind rising housing prices.

The investment breaks down as $225 million committed to subsidize middle-income housing construction in six targeted cities, $250 million to support low-income housing across the King County region, and $25 million to philanthropic grants to address homelessness in the greater Seattle region. The tech giant has targeted the region in close proximity to the site of its Redmond headquarters expansion, expected to accommodate 8,000 new employees.

Last week, we covered the work of Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko, whose “Monuments” project appropriated abandoned Russian Orthodox churches with abstract modernist shapes. Tkachenko’s further work, “Restricted Areas” is equally as impressive, focusing on the human impulse towards utopia through technological progress.

The “Restricted Areas” photography set distills humanity’s strive to perfection through recording abandoned Soviet infrastructure. Traveling to now-deserted landscapes which once held great importance as centers of technological progress, Tkachenko captured images of “forgotten scientific triumphs, abandoned buildings of almost inhuman complexity” and a “technocratic future that never came.”

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New photographs by Paul Clemence from Archi-Photo show BIG -Bjarke Ingels Group’s “The Eleventh” taking shape as construction continues in Chelsea, Manhattan. Having topped out in August 2018, the scheme’s twisting geometries are taking their place within the “Pritzker District” with neighbors including Frank Gehry’s IAC Building, Jean Nouvel’s 100 11th Avenue and Foster + Partners’ 551 West 21st Street.

The development’s larger 35-story, 400-foot-tall structure will twist alongside a second 300-foot-tall sister tower, both clad with bronze and travertine, sharing a connected podium and skybridge.

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Moscow-based visual artist Danila Tkachenko has developed a project researching the boundaries of historical memories in Russian Orthodox churches. “Monuments” involved the sensitive appropriation of the abandoned rural churches, erecting lightweight structures in abstract modernist shapes.

The project sought to explore the area between fact and fiction, reflecting on “humanity’s inclination to exploit images of the past for the sake of our current needs, and future goals.” The structures, all abandoned in 1917 following the Russian Revolution, were adorned with striking modernist elements which, although visually powerful, can be dismantled following the project’s completion with no effect on the landmarks.

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Shanghai/London-based firm Neri&Hu has published details of their “Unfolding Village” installation, set to take center stage at the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2019. The exhibition, taking place in February, will see Neri&Hu depart from the traditional convention of furniture fairs, often purely focused on product design, and instead actively engage with pressing social issues unique to their base country of China.

Having recently studied the issue of disappearing villages and village cultures in China, the designers were alarmed by the impact of such a disappearance on community, family, and cultural roots. With many products centered on the ideas of nostalgia, dwelling, and “the individual’s relationship within a collective,” the firm created the “Unfolding Village” exhibition to capture the essence of traditional Chinese villages.

A professional networking platform has been launched aimed at connecting early-career architects in the USA. Ticco admits architects with between 2 and 15 years of experience, with the goal of sharing smart design ideas for the future of the built environment. Developed by Katie Rispoli Keaotamai over a one-and-a-half-year timespan, the platform will now accept applications for its first 100 members until April, at a cost 31% lower than the fees paid for professional memberships.

Centered around dialogue, the platform offers access to ideas and opportunities that will positively shape the built environment, be it exchanging information, consulting on a project, or finding a new role in the profession.

The world’s longest 3D-printed concrete pedestrian bridge has been completed in Shanghai. Designed by Professor Xu Weiguo from the Tsinghua University (School of Architecture) - Zoina Land Joint Research Center for Digital Architecture, the 26.3-meter-long bridge was inspired by the ancient Anji Bridge in Zhaoxian, China.

The single-arch structure was created using a 3D printing concrete system developed by Professor Xu Weiguo’s team, integrating digital design, cost efficiency, smart technology, and architectural dynamism. Enclosing the 3.6-meter width, the bridge’s handrails are shaped like flowing ribbons on the arch, creating a light, elegant movement across the Shanghai Wisdom Bay pond.

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The European Commission and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation have announced the 40 shortlisted works that will compete for the 2019 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. The Prize, for which ArchDaily is a media partner, has seen a jury distill 383 nominated works into a 40-project-strong shortlist, celebrating the trends and opportunities in adaptive reuse, housing, and culture across Europe.

Foster + Partners have released images of their proposed Mullin Automotive Park at Enstone Airfield, now submitted for planning permission. Intended as a “world-class automotive museum in the heart of the British countryside” the scheme will rehabilitate a disused airfield to support a growing community of classic automobile collectors.

Designed as a collection of buildings arranged in a crescent, the museum draws inspiration from the concept of a rural estate, with a journey through a carefully-considered landscape towards a main focal building. As well as reflecting on the history of the automobile industry over the last century, the scheme will house an open-ended collection charting the future of mobility.