The world of home décor is witnessing new trends and styles everyday. It is an intriguing space, infused with innovation and freshness. From innovative shapes and colors to unconventional materials, novelty is the name of the game!

First launched in 2014, Godrej Design Lab, in association with ELLE DECOR, is a platform that brings new creative design endeavors to life, acting as a catalyst for design experiments by propelling innovative ideas to the next level. This year designers are invited to showcase their skills, with a focus on ideas that strike the perfect balance between originality and manufacturability. Designers can submit their ideas across four categories: Furniture; Furnishings; Lighting; and Home Décor & Accessories. Shortlisted projects will be mentored by the best minds in the industry, and a handful among those designs will be developed into prototypes and exhibited at the prestigious India Design ID 2016.

This summer graduate students from Massachusetts College of Art and Design transformed an unused parcel of land into an outdoor learning space for a neighborhood charter school in Boston. The Codman Academy, Charter Public School, serving students from kindergarten through high school, now has an outdoor learning space that, through its design and assembly, engages young minds to think about the built environment.

The MassArt architecture graduate students who designed the space chose to express the assembly connections, material characteristics and the dynamic geometry with a goal to excite younger students to think about design and their environment. The graduate students, guided by faculty and a structural engineer, completed every aspect of the project from proposing the concept to completing the working drawings, and installing the plantings. In fact, they even used the college’s metals shop to weld and assemble the steel supports. This project is one in a long series of community building projects that MassArt students have completed through the years and it is a required part of the Master of Architecture curriculum.

From the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Administration Building and 15-story Research Tower, to the Norman Foster-designed Fortaleza Hall, SC Johnson’s global headquarters is rich in design and history. The company’s gallery, At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright, houses an exhibit featuring lithographic plates from the Wasmuth Portfolio, a collection that has been hailed as one of the most important publications of the early modern architecture movement and established Wright as the international icon he is today.

The gallery features 43 of the Portfolio’s 100 framed lithographs as well as artifacts of Wright’s most famous work, revealing plans and perspectives of the buildings in natural landscapes. Wright’s experiences and personal struggles leading up to, and throughout, the creation of the Portfolio were the backdrop for some of his history-altering work like the SC Johnson headquarters’ Administration Building and Research Tower.

The European University of Valencia offers a postgraduate education linked to Architecture and Design through three educational programmes. The different MArch programmes are directed by Fran Silvestre and feature influential speakers from current architecture, such as: Alvaro Siza, Souto de Moura, Manuel Aires Mateus, OAB • Carlos Ferrater and Juan Domingo Santos.

Eleven has launched its inaugural ideas and design international competition based on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake: a chance for architects, designers and students to engage in a unique design challenge and help make a difference along the way.

Located just a few miles south from the magnificent Angkor Temples, the Tonle Sap Lake is the largest fresh water basin in Southeast Asia. It boasts a UNESCO biosphere status since 1997 due to its ecological significance as a haven for hundreds of species of birds and fish, many of which are endangered. The lake is also home to more than 1.2 million people living in traditional floating villages. These remote communities migrate seasonally around the basin and rely heavily on its waters for sustenance.

The Metropolitan Regional Government of Santiago, Chile has launched a Two Stage International Public Competition for the development of the urban design and engineering of the urban axis Alameda Providencia. This axis is not only the main avenue of the city of Santiago de Chile, but is also considered to be the “heart of the metropolis” and the republic's most representative public space. The 12 km corridor integrates civic, symbolic and economic functions, represented by the highest concentration of retail, business and civic activities of the Metropolitan Region.

Based on the national relevance of this space, this competition not only aims to select the best team of professionals, but also the best comprehensive urban design, public space, landscape and urban mobility proposal, which considers the demands of the inhabitants of the city of Santiago for a better quality of life and the need for revitalized public spaces and public transport improvements. The Master Plan should take into account the surrounding buildings and natural heritage, land uses and existing and future social activities along this metropolitan axis.

The Conceptual Master Plan should consider that Santiago's Metropolitan Transit System is an open system. Therefore, the proposals should be functional for bus services entering or leaving at various points along its 12 kms and/or at its ends; that is, the infrastructure must allow for intermediate points where buses can enter and/or exit, in addition to at the ends. Due to this, bus courtyards are not required, yet spaces for frequency regulation are.

View competition details after the break.

UIC Barcelona School of Architecture has adapted to recent changes in the field of architecture to offer an education that provides an overarching perspective of the profession and the opportunity to learn a wide-range of skill sets. Learn more about what makes the school unique after the break.

The Orlando International Airport ("OIA"), operated by the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, seeks innovative, visionary architects and engineers for its planned, new airport terminal compound. OIA is a world-class airport that welcomes over 36 million business and leisure passengers per year.  In order to better accommodate its increasing number of passengers, especially in the international sector, OIA has under construction an Intermodal Terminal Facility for multiple modes of ground transportation, an Automated People Mover System connecting the main terminal, a 2,500 unit parking deck, and all associated horizontal infrastructure to support this program and the future expansion for a new terminal building. 

With a clear international outlook and universal approach, the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture's Bachelor's Degree in Architecture offers students a holistic approach to architectural education, improving competitiveness by encouraging multiple skill sets, teamwork, responsibility, and entrepreneurship. The university employs a unique teaching method, where each student is tasked with undertaking a project at every step of the process.

Dwell on Design LA, America’s Largest Design Event, curated by the editors of Dwell magazine, returns to the Los Angeles Convention Center, May 29-31 celebrating its 10^th year. Over 30,000 people are expected to attend this three-day wonderland of modern design.

Thousands of the best modern products across five design zones will be on display, including Furniture & Accessories, Kitchen & Bath, Design Materials, Dwell Outdoor and International Design, in addition to hundreds of brands such as Bugaboo, Cosentino, Hansgrohe, Lutron, Marvin Windows & Doors, Miele, Panasonic, TOTO, and Sunbrella.

Designing and building an 831,000 square foot hospital in 30 months is no easy feat. In fact, the Denver Saint Joseph Hospital project, owned by SCL Health Systems, is actually one of the fastest hospital builds ever completed in the US. Innovative methods of design, construction and collaboration among project partners throughout all phases of the project — from planning to construction — were critical for the team to open the hospital doors on time.

“The document management was tough—a million square feet of anything is going to generate a lot of documentation,” said Dale Clingner, an associate with Davis Partnership Architects, who partnered with H+L Architecture and ZGF Architects on the project, which was built by Mortenson Construction. To avoid the type of document management confusion that could slow progress, all project partners established a tacitly agreed-upon BIM execution plan and decided to incorporate digital design review in live collaborative sessions to successfully meet the condensed timeline on or under budget.

"The role of the architect, or the designer, is that of a very good, thoughtful host, all of whose energy goes into trying to anticipate the needs of his guests – those who enter the building and use the objects in it." Charles Eames

Herman Miller is a furniture design and manufacturing company, which in addition to producing contemporary designs also continues manufacturing classic pieces, including those originally designed by Charles and Ray Eames. The company’s relationship with the designer duo goes back to the 1940s, when they worked together to develop the Eames' Molded Plywood chairs and the classic Chaise Lounge.

Following a long investigation into the curvature of plywood and the construction of organic forms using new technologies and materials, the pair of architects developed their Shell Chair, an iconic design that is still manufactured today. Learn more about the development of the Shell Chair and see how it is constructed, after the break. 

A dynamic post-professional program in Emerging Systems, Technologies, & Media (ESTm) offered by the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles has been charged with examining core contemporary issues facing architecture and design today. Spanning topics from advanced manufacturing methodologies to new building systems, this one year Master of Design Research track allows professionals to rethink architecture and design through the experimental hands-on approach of the SCI-Arc community.

The ESTm program tests new levels of environmental performance as it prepares students to successfully integrate formal, technical, logistical, and material processes into advanced architectural designs. The program is open to graduates in architecture, engineering, product design, computer sciences and other professionals who wish to develop advanced research and design skills in light of continuously evolving materials and new production paradigms of the 21^st century.

Young Architects Competitions (YAC) is launching an open architectural competition to design a Food & Wellness Club for the upcoming F.I.CO.^® (Fabbrica Italiana Contadina) theme park in Bologna. In 2016, F.I.CO. will become the world’s biggest theme park dedicated to food farming and food culture, with nine million tourists expected to visit this structure each year. Such a project will trigger a redevelopment of the surrounding area in order to provide visitors with services. The Food & Wellness Club aims to offer a wellness area for those visitors willing to discover both nutrition and body care, offering comfort and care in a multi-sensory and exclusive space. The question of the competition becomes: how to create an architectural space that combines the elements of food, relaxation, wellness and seasonality?

Urban public spaces create common grounds for diverse, public participation. They are places of social interaction, recreation, cultural activities, political activities, and many other public events, enhancing the quality of urban life.

As the world's population continues to grow and urban density increases, public space is dropping in proportion to private space in countless cities around the world. And it is almost impossible to add conventional public spaces like large public parks or squares, as the space left in the public domain becomes more and more limited.

The competition asks an open–ended question of how we could use architecture as a device to perform a surgical operation on the already dense city fabric in order to provide a new model of public space. To add to the quality of people’s urban life, what, where and how can we insert a place into the city? What kind of a place would it be? What is currently missing? What is not enough?  Where would we place this intervention when available city space seems scarce? How could we redefine our positive relationship with density?

The Wienerberger Brick Award is a biannual architectural award that is presented to outstanding examples of modern and innovative brick architecture. In 2016, Wienerberger will present this internationally established award for the seventh time, and the award is now open for submissions. Architecture critics, journalists and for the first time also architects themselves can submit projects online until March 31, 2015. The official Brick Award ceremony will take place in Vienna in spring 2016.

The Award acknowledges innovative brick buildings of international quality that show the varied and diverse ways brick can be used in contemporary architecture. At the same time, the award, and in particular the accompanying architectural book, gives people with an interest in architecture, as well as experts, an overview of current developments and trends in international brick architecture with its remarkable range of applications.

AA Istanbul Visiting School is beginning an exciting collaboration with Istanbul Bilgi University in 2015. Continuing its expertise on generative design methodologies and large-scale prototyping techniques, the programme will investigate patterns of emergence, differentiation and complexity in natural formation processes, which will then be transformed into digital simulation platforms for design purposes. In contemporary architectural processes, a significant diversion from linear parametric tools towards generative design simulations is taking place. The design and analysis processes will reflect this shift by focusing on simulations, whereby attention will be focused on the process of design generation as opposed to the final form itself. The design agenda of the programme will revolve around the design and fabrication of a one-to-one scale pavilion.