How to visualize architectural concepts in SketchUp using D5 Lite for faster design exploration.

As a member of the Urban Design Expert Committee of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, I strongly urge an immediate increase in architectural and urban design fees. This is a matter of utmost urgency, for several key reasons:

 1. The current fee structure is a relic of China’s era of rapid, large-scale incremental construction, when design work focused primarily on spatial capacity and fees were strictly tied to project scale. Today, however, almost all cities have entered the era of existing urban stock. Moving forward, as the focus shifts to urban renewal, design work can no longer be mass-produced. Instead, architects must tackle an immense volume of bespoke, custom-tailored projects. Consequently, traditional fee metrics are completely out of sync with the actual workload;

 2. The flaw in traditional fee calculation methods is that when project scales shrink and design complexity increases, the upward adjustment coefficients for fees remain far too low. This is especially true for small-scale projects and renovations, which are incredibly time- and labor-intensive. Architects are essentially working at a loss, driven solely by passion. This leads to the absurd reality where years of design fees might not even equal the cost of a single tree. It is truly tragic when human value is deemed worth less than material objects;

 3. While the state encourages urban design—the essence of which is fostering urban diversity—achieving diversity requires architects and urban designers to invest significantly more time and labor into custom, site-specific solutions. Without a fee mechanism adapted to this level of customization, how can we support their creative work? While passion might sustain a single project or a brief moment, only a proper mechanism can ensure fair and sustainable practice. The so-called "cookie-cutter" urban landscape is, in reality, the product of a cookie-cutter fee structure.

In short, transforming Chinese cities begins with raising design fees!

Encouraging households to adopt solar power generation is essential for a cleaner future, but investing in large-scale solar applications is what will truly shift the needle toward net-zero emissions. This is revealed by a new study from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) in Australia.

Geospatial researchers used the city of Bendigo, in the state of Victoria, to conduct the case study. They estimated the solar electricity generated over a year in the city, which has 17,000 residential solar panels. In comparison, the study evaluates the solar potential of 21 government-owned airports across Australia.

“Playground, Artifacts for Interaction” by Felipe Ferrer will be featured in the Peru Pavilion in the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture. The project was the winner of the Curatorial Competition held by The Cultural Patronage of Peru that aimed to highlight how fences and gates shape our understanding of public spaces.

To provide greater safety for those wishing to enjoy nature, Urbia has marked 40 circles on the lawn of Praça da Paz in Ibirapuera Park. The concessionaire, which manages the largest park in São Paulo, adopted this measure to encourage social distancing among visitors.

Measuring approximately 4 meters in diameter, the circles were marked using organic waste from the park's own vegetation management, making them entirely sustainable. This allows visitors to remain safe within their own social distancing zones. Additionally, masks must be worn at all times while inside the park.

Titled "Mapping Festivities", the Pakistan Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, explores the national wedding hall as an architectural typology of post-colonial Pakistan. Curated by Sara M. Anwar, the pavilion will be on display on the second floor of the Palazzo Mora from May 22nd until November 21st.

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The upcoming edition of Open House Madrid, taking place from September 24 to 26, will pay tribute to Spanish architect Luis Gutiérrez Soto, a key figure and promoter of the Modern Movement in España.

The Board of Directors of the 2021 Venice Biennale has appointed Kazuyo Sejima as president of the international jury, in charge of awarding mainly the Golden Lion for Best National Participation, the Golden Lion for the Best participant, and the Silver Lion for a promising young participant. In addition, they have also selected four other jury members from Peru, Lebanon, Ghana-Scotland, and Italy. The Awards Ceremony will take place in Venice on Monday, August 30th, 2021.

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The French pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale, “aims to reflect on the meeting between architectural know-how and the inhabitants’ own experiences of their living spaces”. Curated by Christophe Hutin, the intervention entitled “Communities at Work” will provide an immersive experience with the help of images in motion. Using five specific case studies on different continents: in Europe, Asia, America, and Africa, the exhibition presents a journey into a world where communities transformations their own living spaces, without following any formal schemes designed by an architect.

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The Architectural League of New York has announced the 6 winners of 2021 Prize for Young Architects + Designers Awards, the North American annual competition that celebrates the works of young architects and designers who have completed their bachelor’s or master’s degree within the last ten years. This year's theme was Housekeeping, which asked participants to explore how the domestic settings have changed over the past couple of years, changing the definition of "ideal residence".

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The Serbian contribution to the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale explores the connection between a city's economy and its urban structure -that the curatorial team defines as the life-work relationship- investigating the prospective futures of mono-functional industrial cities. Titled 8th Kilometer and developed by MuBGD, the exhibition uses the mining town of Bor, located in eastern Serbia, as a study case for how economic activities have not only shaped the urban environment but the forms of collectivity connected to it.

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With less than half a year to go until the opening, Expo 2020 Dubai released a series of images of the venues hosting the event, which intends to bring together 192 national pavilions, as well as businesses and educational institutions. As the program was delayed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the world expo site is mainly complete, awaiting its opening on October 1st.

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Kymo’s new handwoven, high-gloss-banana-silk carpet collection channels the shimmering optics of metal, animating floors in exclusive living spaces.

Entitled Primitive Migration from/to Taiwan, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) and curatorial teams Divooe Zein Architects and Double-Grass International Co., organized an immersive exhibition for the Biennale Architettura 2021. Taiwan’s Collateral Event for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will run from 22 May to 21 November 2021 at Palazzo delle Prigioni.

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Titled "HYBRIDITY", the Armenian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, allows visitors to step into the Armenian experience of coexisting in countries across the globe. Curated by Allen Sayegh (Vosguerichian), the exhibition will be on display at Palazzo Ca' Zenobio from August 28th until November 21st, 2021.

Adjaye Associates and Studio One Eleven, along with Continuum Partners will transform an industrial facility in downtown Los Angeles into a dynamic mixed-use master plan of residential, commercial, hospitality, and retail facilities. Titled Fourth & Central, the project proposes ten buildings, ranging in heights, design, and functions, transforming the area into a pedestrian-oriented community. The project, which is expected to break ground in 2024, will reflect the area's dynamic character with uniquely designed buildings that compliment the neighboring Arts District and Little Tokyo neighborhoods.

The Croatian Pavilion for the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale explores how repurposing architectural elements reshapes the individual’s relationship with space and constructs a new place of encounter. Titled Togetherness / Togetherless, the project curated by Idis Turato is a spatial composition of ready-made elements, which are given new meanings and functions, developing a new perspective on architectural space and enabling a temporary community.

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UNStudio is part of the consortium that recently won the competition for a new congress and conference centre in the Netherlands, a project intended to further establish the Brainport Eindhoven region as one of Europe’s leading technology hubs. The Elysion Congress Centre expands an exiting, similarly programmed venue, striving for low impact on the surroundings while incorporating numerous sustainable features.

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Entitled utopias of common life, Brazil's official participation in the 17th Bienalle Architettura 2021 is curated by the collaborative studio Arquitetos Associados and the visual designer Henrique Penha. The exhibition at the Brazilian Pavilion in the Giardini, in Venice, begins by mapping utopias that exist on Brazilian soil, from the Guarani world vision of a Land Without Evil to contemporary times, highlighting a few singular moments among them.

Conceived before the Covid-19 pandemic, which has temporarily suspended the possibility of physical proximity in a large part of the world, the proposal gains new meanings in the current context and dialogues with the overall theme, by curator Hashim Sarkis: How Will We Live Together?

The 2021 Architectural League Prize has announced the selection for the Young Architects + Designers: Housekeeping category. The theme was developed by the 2021 Young Architects + Designers Committee, which included recent League Prize winners Ivi Diamantopoulou, Cyrus Peñarroyo, and Alison Von Glinow. The jury comprised the committee alongside Tatiana Bilbao, Peggy Deamer, Fritz Haeg, and Victor J. Jones. The competition is organized by The Architectural League’s Program Director, Anne Rieselbach, and Program Director, Catarina Flaksman.

The results of the International Competition for the Design of the Las Salinas Urban Park (PULS) in Viña del Mar, Chile, have been announced. Organized by the Association of Architects' Offices of Chile (AOA) and the real estate developer Las Salinas, the call invited architecture firms from all over the world to design a multifunctional green area capable of integrating the territory and becoming a social, cultural, sports, and educational meeting space accessible to everyone.

Titled "To Gather: the Architecture of Relationships", the Singapore pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, displays different ways the Singaporeans share public spaces. Curated by the National University of Singapore (NUS), the pavilion will be on display from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021.

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Japanese studio Sou Fujimoto Architects alongside Chinese office Donghua Chen Studio have designed a large scale exhibition complex in the heart of Futian District. The Shenzhen Reform and Opening-up Exhibition Hall adopts the city's characteristics as a contemporary entrepreneurial hub, welcoming innovative international businesses in a garden-inspired structure wrapped with white perforated facades. The design proposal was the winning entry of an international competition in Futian, and will be a part of the Shenzhen Ten Cultural Facilities of New Era promoted by the Municipal Government, once completed.

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RIBA and Network Rail recently announced the winner of the Re-imagining Railways design competition, which invited architects, engineers and designers to rethink small and medium-sized train stations to improve the travel experience. The winning design, signed by Edinburgh-based architectural practice 7N Architects, features a reinterpreted clock tower serving as a local landmark and a modular station layout that can be adapted to a variety of sites.

Structural timber is in the midst of a renaissance; an ironic trend given that timber is arguably the most ancient of building materials. But new innovations in structural timber design have inspired a range of boundary-pushing plans for the age-old material, including everything from bridges to skyscrapers. Even more crucially, these designs are on the path to realization, acceding to building codes that many (mistakenly) view as restrictive to the point of impossibility.

The timber structures of today aren't just breaking records - they're doing it without breaking the rules.