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.

Photographer Aldo Amoretti has captured new images of one of 2018’s most awaited projects, as the BIG designed Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy Plant takes shape in Copenhagen, complete with an SLA-designed park and ski slope. The images show to the completed power plant, which opened in March 2017, while work progresses on the 170,000-square-foot (16,000-square-meter) park and ski slope that will cap the scheme.

Initially master planned by BIG, the unique design seeks to reclaim a typically unused element of a building for the public through the introduction of the nature-filled program. During summer months, the SLA-designed rooftop activity park will provide visitors with hiking trails, playgrounds, fitness structures, trail running, climbing walls, and of course, incredible views. In the winter, the park will be joined by over 1,640 feet (500 meters) of ski slopes designed by BIG.

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During an official tour in late April, the Metro company revealed new details of the alignment for the Bogotá Metro's first line. The inaugural route will feature 16 stations, 10 of which will integrate with Transmilenio, the Colombian capital's mass transit bus system.

According to local newspaper El Tiempo, a 32-hectare site in the Bosa district will house the metro's train yard and workshop, serving as the "starting point for the 23 trains scheduled to begin operating in 2022." Currently, the site is located near the Cundinamarca canal—a stormwater reservoir that, along with a major power transmission tower, will be modified to accommodate the project.

WeWork has announced that Bjarke Ingels will be its new Chief Architect. Ingels, who has taken the architecture world by storm since founding BIG in 2005, will continue in his role as Founding Partner and Creative Director of his firm, however in his new role at WeWork he also "will offer his insights and ideas to extend and help us push the boundaries of architecture, real estate, technology, and design," explained WeWork today in a press statement.

Single-Family Residential Housing

AS Arquitectura, Xavier Abreu Sacramento, Alejandra Abreu Sacramento, and Efraín Góngora
First Place in Category and Grand Prize of the XII Yucatecan Architecture Biennial 2018
Casa del Árbol

Morpholio has released details of Smart Fill, which they describe as “the world’s first area calculator for live design sketching.” Designed for the TracePro app on iPad and iPhone, Smart Fill calculates the area of spaces in active sketches, without the need for further drawing or alterations.

The Smart Fill calculation evolves as space is altered through further sketching. As rooms are sliced in half, the area reduces, while as walls are erased, the area expands. The app also allows for the space to be filled in with color, text labels, or numerical data.

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On Sunday evening, rapper Kanye West took to Twitter to announce the creation of a new architecture wing for his popular Yeezy company. With “Yeezy Home,” West is “looking for architects and industrial designers who want to make the world better,” leading to a flurry of speculation, excitement—and a certain amount of ridicule—across the online world.

Whether or not you welcome the news, or believe it will be realized, there is undoubtedly an interesting relationship between West and architecture which merits exploration, and which may provide clues as to Yeezy Home’s future, if indeed it has one. With that in mind, we dive into three questions: How likely is Yeezy Home to happen? What might the architecture of Yeezy Home look like? And how can architects get involved?

Videos

Concéntrico is an International Architecture and Design Festival that proposes to reflect on the city of Logroño (Spain) through the revitalization of undervalued public spaces. Its latest edition, Concéntrico 04, takes place between April 27 and May 1, 2018, in the Historic Center of Logroño. The festival invites visitors to explore the city through installations, exhibitions, meetings, activities, and performances that connect the venues, plazas, streets, courtyards, and hidden spaces that usually go unnoticed in daily life. Jorge Penadés creates "Chabola" spaces, exploring how to minimize intervention using wooden boards and adhesive tape.

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On Saturday, at the opening of her latest building, Ellen van Loon sat on the terrace of BLOX in Copenhagen exuding the satisfaction and fulfillment that comes with finishing a major public building. A day of opening activities concluded, van Loon spoke with ArchDaily about the 27,000-square-meter mixed-use building. Built for client Realdania, it’s the Danish Architecture Center’s new home on the edge of the harbor, located on an incredibly challenging site that is bifurcated by a busy street.

Recently shortlisted for the 2018 Design Challenge "Design the Next-Generation Facade" by Metals in Construction Magazine, this "Pixel Facade" system is an adaptive, scalable and repeatable building system that can be applied to various building typologies. The system draws inspiration from our innate desire for nature, also known as "biophilia." The "Pixel Facade" system merges a contemporary office environment with biophilic environments to create the next generation of office design.

Encouraging and valuing those who work to preserve the country's cultural heritage is also one of the core missions of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan). With this in mind, one of Iphan's main initiatives to recognize efforts to preserve Brazilian Cultural Heritage is the Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade Award, which is now open for applications. Established in 1987 to recognize actions to protect, preserve, and promote Brazilian Cultural Heritage, the award is now in its 31st edition and was named in honor of the institution's first director.

A new property startup named Cube Haus is looking to alter the existing housing market, offering high-value homes at reasonable prices "that can be configured to fit small and awkward urban sites." To do this, Cube Haus is commissioning a team of Britain's top architects and designers: Adjaye Associates, Faye Toogood, Carl Turner Architects and Skene Catling de la Peña. The team will create a series of customizable modular homes with a focus on outstanding design.

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"The Well" is set to be one of the most ambitious urban developments Toronto has seen. Estimated to host nearly 10,000 people living and working daily, "The Well" includes over 1.5 million square feet of retail, office space and food services, as well as 1,800 residential units all spread throughout seven buildings flanked by Front, Spadina and Wellington in downtown Toronto.

Arquitetura Soteropolitana is an open course of on-site architectural experiences led by the projects' designers, exploring the architectural production of the last 20 years in Salvador, Bahia. Organized by architectural photographer Manuel Sá, the course invites architects from the Bahian capital to discuss some of the city's most iconic and significant works built over the past two decades.

Japan-based Moriyuki Ochiai Architects have designed a cluster of tea rooms located in a rural area known as Bisei, in the Okayama Prefecture. This town is known as both the place where green tea was introduced to Japan and as a "sanctuary for stargazing", which inspired the firm's design to create a strong connection between the tea rooms and the surrounding scenery.

As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage we present Public Without Rhetoric the proposal for the Portuguese Pavilion. Below, curators Nuno Brandão Costa and Sérgio Mah describe their contribution in their own words.

Public Without Rhetoric is the project selected to represent Portugal at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The curators Nuno Brandão Costa and Sérgio Mah propose a tour of the “Public Building” of Portuguese origin through 12 works created at a time when Western Europe is confronted with its limits and possibilities and as architecture manifests its nonconformist nature in reinforcing its role in political and social intervention.

Videos

This week, the latest edition of Concéntrico, the Logroño Architecture and Design Festival in Spain, came to a close. For the second consecutive year, we have participated in this initiative, which invites residents and visitors to discover and rediscover spaces of interest in the city's historic center. Over five days, a series of temporary installations by creators from around the world became resting places for pilgrims, urban stages for enjoying a glass of wine, and adventure playgrounds for local children.

International master planning and architecture specialists, Benoy won the bid for Shanghai's 367,000 square meters Yuqiao Science Innovation Centre. This technological hub will work towards Shanghai's goal to be a world-class city by 2040.

IND Architects has plans to transform the symbolic Shcherbinka water tower in Moscow, Russia into a revitalized area for residents to socialize. Since the water tower has been only slightly altered over time with the overall form and silhouette remaining the same, the design team has decided to create a place that will both aim to recall old memories and create new ones.

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The well-known saying “all roads lead to Rome” seems to be true--at least, that’s what Moovel Lab, a team from Stuttgart dedicated to urban mobility research, points out. Titled "Roads to Rome," the project has mapped out over-land routes across Europe that converge to the city.

From a grid of 26,503,452 square kilometers covering all of Europe, the researchers defined 486,713 starting points that were superimposed on the continent's street map. Then an algorithm was developed for the project that calculated the shortest route between each of the points and the Italian capital. 

The tragedy of the fire and collapse of the Wilton Paes de Almeida building in downtown São Paulo prompts this statement from the Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Brazil on the social and urban challenges affecting not only the state capital but most of the country's major cities.

At the core of this tragedy is the social drama of the victims' families and the thousands of people living in other occupied buildings under precarious conditions across major Brazilian urban centers. The loss of a modernist building of cultural value adds another layer of loss.      

By 2020, an innovation campus with offices and laboratories for young companies in the high-tech field will be developed in Suzhou, the eastern Chinese metropolis. The total of 330,000 square meters of gross floor area is provided in five building clusters of different sizes, which are arranged offset from each other around a park and lake landscape. In the spring of 2018, the design by Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) and WES landscape architects won first prize in the competition for the project.

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Landmarks Illinois has released new images of a proposed radical extension to the James R, Thompson Center in Chicago. The images seek to portray the building’s versatility to be privately redeveloped as a mixed-use hub, featuring an eye-catching “super tower” at the southwest corner of the site, as proposed by the scheme’s original architect Helmut Jahn.

The new images follow on from a previous story we covered last year, detailing a 110-story tower proposed by Jahn in response to local plans to demolish the postmodern building. The latest images underlie a similar goal of demonstrating the potential for the Thompson Center to be protected and expanded, in response to its listing on the Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois in 2017 and 2018. The Postmodernist piece lies in a precarious situation, with an administrative interest in selling the building and replacing it a high-rise development.

Last Thursday, Iphan—the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage—announced the third public competition for permanent positions in the institution's history. Authorized by the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management, the competition will fill 411 permanent positions nationwide: 104 for Analyst I, 176 for Technician I, and 131 for Institutional Assistant I.

Amanda Levete is among one of four teams to be shortlisted for a competition to reimagine the visitor experience for the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris. The four teams, chosen from 42 entries, will be tasked with rethinking the ways in which people discover and interact with the tower, working in collaboration with the City of Paris government.

Titled “Discover, Approach, Visit,” the competition site covers 54 hectares of land on both sides of the River Seine, with the Eiffel Tower site located at the center. In preparation for Paris’ hosting of the 2024 Olympic Games, the competition asks teams to spend 10 months exploring how to enhance the visitor experience at the base of the tower, strengthen existing connections across the site, reconfigure public transport routes.