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.

Henning Larsen won the competition to design a new university building for the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI), the studio’s first project in Austria. Founded in 1995, the MCI outgrew its facility in the city centre, and the competition was meant to establish a new unified campus, gathering together the many faculties now scattered on different locations throughout Innsbruck. The design consists of an isolated object with no back or front featuring multi-story voids carved into each façade, establishing distinct relationships with the surroundings and framing views of the Alps.

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The first wooden housing modules of Juf Nienke, a new circular prefabricated timber housing project by SeARCH, RAU, and DS landscape architects, has been installed in Amsterdam. The project will feature 61 rental homes made entirely of wood, and will sit at the entrance of Centrumeiland, a newly raised piece of land on Lake IJmeer that features 1500 housing units. It is set to be one of the most sustainable apartment buildings in the Netherlands, incorporating an innovative cross-laminated timber construction and utilizing recycled materials.

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Sanjay Puri Architects has designed a new building for the Prestige University in Indore, a stepped massing with green terraces that blends with the landscape. Currently under construction within the 32-acre university campus, the project echoes traditional Indian architecture through its use of red brick and contextual adaptation to the local climate. The morphology creates an outdoor amphitheatre for students and faculty, while the interweaving of indoor and outdoor spaces is meant to foster engagement and social interaction.

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During the last quarter of 2021, Herzog & de Meuron completed the construction of three museums: M+ in Hong Kong, 433 MKM Museum Küppersmühle Extension in Duisburg, and 473 SONGEUN Art Space in Seoul. To celebrate this milestone and highlight the projects' varied approaches to the presentation of art as culturally-enriching platforms, the firm has put together a video compilation of all three projects alongside each other, showcasing the different approaches to their contexts and geographical locations, spatial requirements and materiality, and how all three of them share a collective focus to foster the exchange between people and culture.

OMA / Shohei Shigematsu, together with artists Charlotte Taylor and Nicholas Préaud, created a series of NFTs inspired by an underwater sculpture designed for the ReefLine project. Commissioned by Aorist for its climate-forward NFT marketplace, the video NFT Coral Arena unfolds a virtual narrative of the monument, simulating the evolution of the future physical artwork from an abstract object to being the support of an underwater ecosystem. The NFTs were unveiled during Miami Art Week, and proceeds from their sale will be donated for the completion of the ReefLine project.

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Organized by the Association of Architects of the Province of Buenos Aires (CAPBA) and promoted by the Ministry of Territorial Development and Habitat, the Casa Propia – PROCREAR II Housing Project Competition was launched with the goal of implementing an action plan to facilitate access to permanent housing. This initiative aims to improve the affordability of housing solutions for all social sectors in response to current demand in Argentina.

The Board of La Biennale di Venezia, has appointed Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Lesley Lokko as Curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. The 18th International Architecture Exhibition will be held from Saturday 20 May to Sunday 26 November, 2023.

The private architectural design competition for the technical laboratories of the Bogotá Water and Sewerage Company (EAAB-ESP) was held to carry out the architectural design, the architectural and technical coordination of the studies, and the engineering designs for the laboratories. Located in Bogotá, the competition was organized by the company itself with the advisory support of the Colombian Society of Architects (SCA).

The evaluation criteria considered aspects such as integration with the urban context, public-private integration, accessibility, functionality, and spatiality of the architectural components, and the implementation of bioclimatic and sustainability criteria, including solar exposure, ventilation, and noise and/or humidity control. Out of the 17 proposals submitted, three prizes and two honorable mentions were awarded. Below, we present the winning projects.

Videos

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has joined forces with technology and real estate professionals Nick Chim and Roni Bahar to create Nabr, a new housing company that offers residents custom and sustainable apartments at scale with a path to ownership. The real estate tech startup has debuted its first development SoFA One in the heart of San Jose's South of First Area (SoFA) cultural district in Silicon Valley, and will allow residents to customize their space using Nabr's digital platform, and choose between different designs and financing packages.

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noa* network of architecture has unveiled a prototype of a Centre for Culture and Community (CeCuCo) questioning "what form flexibility takes, how nature can be embedded in the project and how far the role of the architect goes, in the belief that a project only works when people make it their own". The center is a research project that explores how to create flexible and multifunctional spaces without a fixed context, giving the community the chance to decide, act, and circulate within the architecture.

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As the restoration and rebuilding of Notre Dame Cathedral progress, heritage experts are faced with essential and sensible decisions regarding the future architectural expression of the elements that need replacing. The latest developments saw France’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission approving a contemporary take on the cathedral’s interior, involving a re-arrangement of the furniture items, as well as the inclusion of contemporary artworks and light projections. The proposal was put forward by the diocese of Paris as a way of creating a better visitor experience; however, critics of the decision argue that it would diminish the architectural value of the Gothic monument.

Some years end up being cultural pivot points. 2021 was one such year, with COVID-19 as the first existential threat to our culture since World War II. Architecture will change as a result, and may evolve in public perception to value motivations as a criteria for understanding it, versus valuing outcomes as the validation of any particular aesthetic.

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On Friday, December 10, it was announced that Carme Pinós has won Spain's highest architectural honor: the National Architecture Prize, awarded by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda.

Videos

Pantone has revealed its Color of the Year for 2022; 17-3938 Very Peri, a brand new color "whose courageous presence encourages personal inventiveness and creativity". The shade falls under the blue color family but with violet red undertones, illustrating the fusion of our modern times and how the digital world has morphed with our physical one. In architecture, shades of periwinkle blue and lavender have long been used in installations, commercial spaces, and lighting, instilling an overall calming, optimistic, and positive effect on the human mind.

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Heatherick Studio has revealed the redevelopment plan for Nottingham city centre, a vision that establishes a new green core, reshapes the former shopping centre at the heart of the site, and highlights the area’s touristic potential. Centred around an ample new green area enabling citizens to connect with nature, the project proposes new social spaces, commercial, mixed-use and residential buildings while establishing street connections around the city centre. The initiative represents an expansive vision for redefining the city centre and its programming amidst the evolution of retail towards online shopping and in response to the impact of the pandemic.

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Snøhetta won the competition to redesign the Eliel and Asema Square in Helsinki, a public space neighbouring the city’s historic railway station, into a vibrant central hub. Developed together with Finnish practices Davidsson Tarkela Oy and WSP, the proposal aims to contribute to Helsinki’s strategy to increase green mobility by reconnecting the urban fabric to the rail station and framing a “porous new city block” that would foster a more diverse array of indoor and outdoor activities.

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The Board of Directors and the Strategic Council of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) have awarded the 2022 Gold Medal to Angela Brooks, FAIA, and Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA, for their lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. The jurors have also selected MASS Design Group to win the 2022 AIA Architecture Firm Award, the highest honor the AIA bestows on an architecture practice.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced that Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi will be the recipient of the 2022 Royal Gold Medal. The distinction, approved by Her Majesty The Queen and awarded each year since 1848, is given to architects or practices in recognition of a lifetime’s work and the impact on the evolution of the field and the built environment. With a career spanning over six decades, Balkrishna Doshi has had a paramount influence in shaping the architecture of India through a pioneering interplay of modernism and vernacular that translated into projects that celebrate local culture, context and craft.

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On the 30th of November, we received news of the death of Oriol Bohigas Guardiola (Barcelona, 1925), architect, urbanist, and one of the main drivers of Catalan's modern transformation.

During his Fellowship at Civitella Ranieri / WOJR Architecture Prize, Alejandro Haiek unveiled images of "Industries of Nature", the award-winning artistic narrative that explores Civitella castle's context and environment and observes how nature and industry work in parallel to form the traditional Umbrian landscape. The intervention was presented not as an art object, but as a documentation of the dynamic exchange between narratives, topographies, and shared resources, overlapping the Civitella Ranieri artist community with local farmers, automobile robotics technicians, engineers and producers.

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International acoustic solutions provider Autex Acoustics’ latest net-zero policy gives the green light to mega-construction projects, without giving up on sustainability.

The National Public Competition for the Basic Scheme and Urban, Landscape, and Architectural Preliminary Design outlines the development of the “Water Landscapes” project for the Rio Negro Linear Park, located in the municipality of Rionegro, Antioquia. Organized with the advisory of the Colombian Society of Architects (Antioquia Chapter), the competition aims to gather urban, architectural, and landscape design proposals for the urban stretch designated for the park.

The jury comprised architects Giovanna Vittoria Spera Velasquez, Jorge Pérez Jaramillo, Martha Cecilia Fajardo Pulido, John Octavio Ortiz Lopera, and Paola Catalina Castro Gomez. Out of 17 submissions, three prizes and two honorable mentions were awarded. The winning entries are presented below.

Paste Up, a festival that brings the selected works of six local visual artists to the streets of Santiago, Chile, launched an outdoor route in early December hosted on a series of iconic buildings in the municipality of Vitacura. Renowned urban artist and photographer Caiozzama, whose artistic interventions became icons of the 2019 social uprisings, curated and edited the pieces. The process of translating various sizes and techniques into large-format works also includes the subsequent recycling of the large-scale prints, which will be on display until the end of February. The artists who participated in this edition of the festival are Fab Ciraolo, Bruna Truffa, Juana Gómez, Cecilia Avendaño Bobilier, and Santiago Ascui. Learn more about the works and the urban art route below.

Architectural photographer Paul Clemence has released a new photoseries of Riken Yamamoto's The Circle project, a mixed use development at the Zurich Airport. The design was a competition entry that asked architects to create a program that offers visitors: Swissness, Surprise, and Connections to the World. Yamamoto's winning design, with its inclined facade and combination of linear and curved outlines, linked the airport to the park physically and visually, creating an architecture that highlights the Swiss identity.

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