Architecture News

Practice breeds true knowledge. As architectural design is a highly practical discipline, designers must continuously refine their creative philosophies through hands-on experience. With this in mind, the forum was themed “On Practice,” aiming to showcase the extensive creative work of China IPPR’s Third Architectural Design Institute over the past year—highlighting outstanding designs, refining creative methodologies, and demonstrating team vitality. We hope this forum marks a promising beginning, encouraging more architects to step away from their computers, pick up the microphone, and actively participate. By sharing their built works and welcoming diverse dialogues, they can help realize a creative vision where theory and practice complement and enrich each other.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia has announced that award-winning New York-based Selldorf Architects have been selected to develop a large-scale reinstallation of the institution’s galleries in collaboration with the museum staff. The renovation will encompass all seven of the collection areas—from Photography and European Art to Decorative Arts and Design—while emphasizing visitor experience, contemporary narratives, and the strengths of the Museum’s holdings to create a cohesive experience thats deepens engagement inside the Richard Meier and Renzo Piano-designed complex.

A portfolio is the standard way for architects to show their work  and their style, process and brand. Over the last decade, portfolios have evolved from paper to digital, primarily because it is more time and cost efficient to maintain a digital portfolio and keep it up-to-date.

Within the realm of digital portfolios, choices can range between an app, a PDF, to a web-hosted portfolio. Architects usually choose to use JPEGs as the main element of the portfolio and may add text or other digital media like video or audio.

However, with the increasing use of new technologies like Virtual Reality to present architectural work - there is a strong case for creating and maintaining an immersive VR portfolio of your work to differentiate your brand in front of your audience and embrace newer technologies.

20 finalists have been announced for the Open International Competition for Standard Housing in Russia. With the plan to provide 30 million Russian residents with new homes by 2025, the competition aims to discover new innovative solutions to improve residential design and planning for the new developments. The competition was organized by the Government of Russian Federation, the National Institute for Housing Development Foundation, and the Russian Ministry of Construction working together to create a new standard for affordable housing.

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UNStudio has won a competition to design a new, 3-kilometer long cable car in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. The cable car's route, which will connect the old city on the south of the river with three locations to the north, will feature a total of six towers which have been designed around an adaptable, asymmetrical structural system intended to mimic the cranes in the city's shipyards. The expected opening date for the cable car is in 2021, with the new transportation system being inaugurated as part of the celebrations of Gothenburg's 400th anniversary.

As part of our 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale coverage, we present the proposal for the German Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition 2018 La Biennale di Venezia. Below, the participants describe their contribution in their own words. 

For 28 years, Germany has been united – exactly as long as the Berlin Wall existed (1961–1989). On the occasion of this parallel, GRAFT and Marianne Birthler are curating the exhibition “Unbuilding Walls” at the German Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.

During the World Urban Forum 9 (WUF9) taking place this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ECLAC, UN-Habitat, and the member countries of the Forum of Ministers and High Authorities of Housing and Urbanism of Latin America and the Caribbean (MINURVI) will launch the Regional Action Plan for the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean (RAP).

Coordinated in collaboration with more than 70 regional experts from various stakeholder groups, the RAP aims to foster a shift toward a new urban paradigm that recognizes the city as a macro public good and guarantees the economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights of all. The document thus seeks to build on the momentum generated at Habitat III and serve as the regional expression of the New Urban Agenda.

Dahua 1935, a pioneer of Xi'an's modern national industry, is an 82-year-old textile mill standing adjacent to the historic Daming Palace heritage site. In 2014, the Land-Based Rational Design (LBRD) of the China Architecture Design & Research Group, in collaboration with the China Northwest Architectural Design and Research Institute, completed a series of architectural spatial renovations on the site. In 2017, Fosun Group invited Woods Bagot to undertake the commercial revitalization of the industrial complex. Through an integrated approach combining architectural preservation, interior design, and brand strategy, the design team is set to breathe new commercial life into Forte Dahua 1935.

"In this project, we integrated branding, architecture, and interior design to uncover and embed the project's unique identity and heritage throughout the entire design process," says Pearl Huang, Principal at Woods Bagot and Project Director for Dahua 1935. "Through collaboration among three distinct design disciplines, we identified precise design threads and extracted the brand's DNA. Starting with spatial programming and circulation, we crafted a holistic design from the inside out, infusing the historic structure with modern meaning and relevance. This approach not only adds value for our client but also elevates the project's overall brand profile."

As the urban planning debate in Buenos Aires over the reform of the planning code unfolds, one only needs to look at the new issue of the online magazine Notas CPAU 'Código Urbanístico' to realize that it is no minor issue.

Consequently, attention is turning to the city's historic grid. If you have already heard of superblocks—a system bounded on its periphery by arterial roads and public transit networks, with an interior designed to prioritize cyclists and pedestrians—pay attention, because Salvador Rueda was recently in the city, and this concept could soon become a reality.

Around 1 in 7 women in UK architecture practices has experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the past year alone, according to the results of the annual Women in Architecture survey conducted by The Architects' Journal. The poll of nearly 1,500 architects also found that more than half of women have experienced some form of discrimination ranging from bullying to workplace rules that leave them disadvantaged in the same period. The AJ's survey, which in previous years has largely focused on issues such as pay disparity between men and women, focuses this year more broadly on gender discrimination and sexual harassment—a response to the global shift in awareness organized around movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp.

London's Serpentine Gallery has announced Mexican architect Frida Escobedo as the designer for the 2018 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park. Escobedo, known for her work in activating public spaces, will be the youngest architect to have participated in the Serpentine Pavilion program since it began in 2000. Her design features an enclosed courtyard created by two rectangular volumes positioned at an angle. With its interplay of light and water, the design is intended to evoke the sensation of Mexican domestic architecture, while using British materials and containing references to its London context.

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The office of Santiago Calatrava, known for their incredible feats of architecture and engineering, has come under scrutiny for the failures of three cable connectors on their Margaret McDermott Bridge in Dallas, Texas, which has been delayed in opening due to the failures that occurred in Spring of 2016. However, while the office has taken heat for the malfunction, as the Dallas Observer reported, a newly released set of documents show that Calatrava’s team tried to insist on testing the strength of the cables, even going so far as offering to loan money for these tests, but these offers were declined by the city.

With nearly 100,000 votes cast during the last two weeks, we are happy to present the winners of the 2018 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards. This peer-based, crowdsourced architecture award showcases projects chosen by ArchDaily readers who filtered thousands of projects down to the 15 best works featured on ArchDaily in 2017.

Facebook is closing in on a deal to create a new London headquarters, and will be bringing along the design talents of Frank Gehry, according to reports from The Times and Architects’ Journal.

Described as a “growth space” that will allow the company to expand their European presence, the new headquarters would span four buildings in King’s Cross Central – the same part of the city where Google is building its own 11-story “groundscraper” campus designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studios.

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Asif Khan's Vantablack pavilion, the world's first super-black building, will open at the PyeongChang 2018 Opening Ceremony on 9 February 2018.

The Olympic pavilion is coated with Vantablack VBx2 carbon nanotubes and illuminated by thousands of tiny white light rods. These rods extend from the structure's parabolic super-black facade and create the illusion of a field of stars suspended in space. Looking at the building will be the closest experience to looking into space from a point on Earth.

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Each year the Vilcek Foundation selects American immigrant champions of the arts and sciences. This year the 2018 Vilcek Prize in Architecture was awarded to Guatemala-born, and now San Diego-based, professor and architect Teddy Cruz. Cruz uses his past experiences, living in Guatemala during its civil war, to focus his academic and professional career on shaping political and socioeconomic forces.

On the occasion of Pope Francis's visit to Chile, the Metropolitan Cathedral Chapter requested conservation work on the Cathedral's vaulted ceiling to improve safety and the condition of the ornamentation after recent earthquakes, aiming to safeguard the many faithful who visit the Cathedral daily.

A new National Geographic documentary is set to reveal a newly discovered Mayan "Megalopolis" in what is being called a “major breakthrough” in Mayan history. Over 60,000 homes, infrastructure systems, and man-made features that were once hidden underneath the dense jungles of Guatemala are now being revealed to the world, painting a picture of ancient cities that were both much larger and much denser than previously thought.