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Liz Diller Designs Two New Pieces for Prada's 2019 Collection

DS+R partner Elizabeth Diller has designed two new pieces for Prada's 2019 spring/summer womenswear collection. Created from Prada nylon as part of the Prada Invites project, the two pieces include a garment bag with utilitarian zippers and buckles and a raincoat that transforms from the same yoke style bag. The yoke style bag was also imagined as a lighter item for women to carry sketchpads, sandwiches and lipstick. The Prada invitation was made to expand the company's fascination with multifaceted representations of contemporary femininity.

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Glenn Howells Unveils 55-story Red Brick Tower in Manchester

Housing developer Student Castle has partnered with Glenn Howells Architects to create a 55-story red brick tower in Manchester city center. Built to include 850 rooms and co-working space for students and start-up businesses, the new skyscraper would overlook Oxford Road station next to Great Marlborough Street tower. Glenn Howells says the scheme pays homage to the red brick chimneys that once dominated the city’s skyline.

Results of the CODHAB Competition for an Elementary School

CODHAB has released the results of another one of its competitions. This edition sought design proposals for an Escola Classe (EC) elementary school located in the Crixá Neighborhood development in the Federal District. The facility aims to provide public educational services, as the first phase of the social housing project is already under construction.

The objective of the competition was to select the most suitable proposal to contract the responsible technical team, who will sign an agreement with the organizing entity to develop the Complete Detailed Design (Architectural Design and Complementary Projects). See the results of the competition below:

Climate Tile Designed to Catch and Redirect Excess Rainwater From Climate Change

The Climate Tile is a pilot project designed to catch and redirect 30% of the projected extra rainwater coming due to climate change. Created by THIRD NATURE with IBF and ACO Nordic, the project will be inaugurated on a 50m pavement stretch at Nørrebro in Copenhagen. The first sidewalk was created as an innovative climate project that utilizes the Climate Tile to create a beautiful and adaptable cityscape. Aimed at densely populated cities, the tile handles water through a technical system that treats water as a valuable resource.

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Janet Echelman’s Moving Sculpture Creates a “Living X-Ray” of Philadelphia

Artist Janet Echelman has unveiled her latest site-specific work of public art, with the activation of the first phase of “Pulse” in Philadelphia’s Dilworth Park. Pulse seeks to reshape urban space “with a monumental, fluidly moving sculpture that responds to environmental forces including wind, water, and sunlight.

Inspired by the square’s history as a water and transportation hub, Echelman’s work traces the paths and trolley lines of the subway beneath, with four-foot-tall curtains of colorful atomized mist traveling across the park’s fountain surface in response to passing trains underneath.

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Sin City Embellishment: Expressive or Kitsch?

Though the Las Vegas Strip may be garish to some, with its borderline intrusive décor and “pseudo-historical” architecture, some professional architects, most notably Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, have become captivated by the “ornamental-symbolic elements” the buildings present. The two architects developed the curious design distinction between a “duck” and a “decorated shed”, depending on the building’s decorative form. In his essay for 99% Invisible, Lessons from Sin City: The Architecture of “Ducks” versus “Decorated Sheds”, Kurt Kohlstedt explores how the architects implemented their knowledge of ornamentation in their own works and began an architectural debate still ongoing today.

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Revitalization of the Albarrada of Mompox, Winner of the III Latin American Landscape Architecture Biennial (BLAP)

The landscape master plan to revitalize the western bank of the Magdalena River in Mompox—a Colombian city declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site—is the winner of the III Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture (BLAP).

Designed by the Colombian firm OPUS, the Revitalization of the Albarrada de Mompox is the grand prize winner of the competition organized by the Mexican Society of Landscape Architects (SAPM). The biennial also recognized works, proposals, and publications in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile across its six categories. Established in 2014, the BLAP seeks to highlight the role of landscape architecture in building habitats in Latin America, with a particular emphasis on the region's environmental and social challenges.

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BAF win National Library Tainan, Taiwan

Bio-Architecture Formosana (BAF) together with Carlo Ratti Associatti have won the international competition for the Southern branch of the Taiwan National Library and Repository in Tainan, Taiwan. With the concept of "Library as a Town", the team created a proposal for a new public building that will accommodate a library, book museum and a joint archives center. Selected among nine competitors, the winning design will be placed in the southern part of Taiwan in the XinYing District. The proposal is made to investigate the role of the library in the future.

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An Icon of Modernism, the Gustavo Capanema Palace Has Its Facades Restored

Once again, anyone passing by the bustling Araújo Porto Alegre Street, on the corner of Graça Aranha Avenue in downtown Rio de Janeiro, will be able to marvel at the grandeur of the Gustavo Capanema Palace and understand why it is a Modernist icon, both for Brazil and the world. More than 70 years after the building’s inauguration in 1946, all the innovative design of its facades—introduced by the masters of architecture and art of the 1930s—has been fully restored and will be unveiled by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) on September 20.

Amann-Cánovas-Maruri will design the Spanish pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020

Out of 47 submitted proposals, the firm Amann-Cánovas-Maruri has been selected as the winner of the competition to design the Spanish Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020.

According to the public agency Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the competition organizer, the project titled People and Places "was particularly valued for its iconic strength, its sustainability criteria, and a design based on the idea of total recycling of its materials," in line with the principles of the circular economy.

Studio JCW Proposes Big Shelf for Park Avenue

Studio JCW have created a proposal to revitalize the medians of Park Avenue in New York City. Founded by Chanon Wangkachonkait and Jaehong Chung, Studio JCW argues that Park Avenue’s medians have been a fixture on the boulevard for more than a century. Their Big Shelf proposal would create elevated public spaces within a grid structure for expanded programming. The design was made to echo the structural facades of surrounding skyscrapers and building grids.

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Robert Venturi Passes Away at 93

Robert Venturi, famed-postmodernist and icon of American architecture, passed away Tuesday at the age of 93. Among Venturi’s many accolades were the 1991 Pritzker Prize, a Fellowship from the American Institute of Architects, and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects. He started his firm in 1964, running it with his partner and wife Denise Scott Brown from 1967 until 2012. His legacy lives on as the firm continues under the name VSBA (Venturi Scott Brown Associates).

Sir David Adjaye Will Design Princeton Art Museum to be a "Place of Mind-Opening Encounter"

Sir David Adjaye has been selected as design architect for the new Princeton University Art Museum. Working in collaboration with executive architect Cooper Robertson, Adjaye will engage with the design of a “cultural gateway” located on the museum’s current site at the center of Princeton’s campus.

The new museum will present “dramatically enlarged space” to exhibit and showcase the institution’s extensive collections, as well as classrooms and office space for 100 staff.

Zaha Hadid Architects Presents Interweaving Carpet Collection for Royal Thai during London Design Festival 2018

As part of the London Design Festival 2018, the Zaha Hadid Gallery is presenting the new RE/Form carpet collection designed by Zaha Hadid Architects for Royal Thai. Consisting of 22 designs across four themes, the pieces showcase fluid patterns heavily reminiscent of Hadid’s architectural works.

The four themes consist of striated lines, ribbonlike projections, pixelated landscapes, and organic cellular shapes. Each pattern captures “Hadid’s signature use of interweaving, layering and play with light and shadow.”

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L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall Will Be Lit by Algorithms in Dream-Like Light Show

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is set to be transformed through digital art projections by media artist Refik Anadol and Google Arts & Culture. Created for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's centennial, the light show will be made through deep neural network connections projected as light. Designed for WDCH Dreams, the digital projections draw together the L.A.Philharmonic orchestra’s digital archives and translate them into data points.

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New Video by Spirit of Space Showcases Princeton University's Lewis Arts Complex

Opening its doors last fall, Princeton University's Lewis Arts Complex by Steven Holl Architects and BNIM created a new campus gateway and state-of-the-art facilities for the arts. Expanding performance, rehearsal and teaching spaces, the complex has now been featured in a video directed by Spirit of Space. The footage shows how the building was designed to shape campus space while maximizing porosity and movement. Welcoming its second year of students, the complex is made to take the arts at Princeton to even greater heights.

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BIG's Relocated Serpentine Pavilion Opens as "Unzipped" in Toronto

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© Derek Shapton

BIG’s “unzipped wall,” which served as the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion in London, has been opened to the public in Toronto under the new title “Unzipped.” Having been transported to the city and rebuilt in collaboration with Westbank, new photographs by Derek Shapton show the completed pavilion standing as a temporary place of showcase and events in downtown Toronto.

“Unzipped” is the first Serpentine Pavilion to embark on a multi-city tour of this kind, before ultimately landing in a permanent home on the Vancouver waterfront.

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RIBA Plan of Work for Fire Safety Announced In the Wake of Grenfell and Mackintosh Disasters

Following the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, which claimed 72 lives, the RIBA has launched a consultation for a new “Plan of Work for Fire Safety.”

Having consistently called for changes to building regulations in the wake of the tragedy, the organization has produced the document in response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, and her call for “greater transparency, accountability, and collaboration” from the industry.