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.

The first lockdown brought most of the world to a standstill, and many were quick to point out the silver lining: the significant drop in carbon emissions. However, this pollution reduction was short-lived, and past crises indicate that we might be standing at a crossroads when it comes to our climate goals. What has this unprecedented year meant for the efforts to curb climate change and protect the environment?

The place where we are born, where we live, and our urban reference points are part of history and shape our identity. Can we decipher what these spaces tell us? Can we express our perception of them? Vale do Anhangabaú signals an essential part of São Paulo's development and is woven into the imaginary of those who have built memories there. This article is an exercise in traversing different themes to instigate multiple possibilities—collective and individual, real and utopian—of experiencing this space.

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When it comes to designing commercial gastromic spaces, aspects like space efficiency, equipment distribution, materials, and organization are essential when considering the users' experience within the space.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In 2005, while I was an architecture student at Columbia, visions of Bilbao danced through my classmates’ heads as they flocked to an architecture studio whose brief was to design an all-new Guggenheim Museum on Governors Island. I will admit that the prospect of exhibiting a spectacle for Columbia’s end-of-year show was seductive. But conducting field research for that class required only subway and ferry rides, while a studio offering in the historic preservation program promised a trip to Rome. I passed on creating another paper icon for New York and traveled to the Esposizione Universale Roma for one week that fall.

Floors, roofs, ceilings. Speaking in a very generic way, they are practically all the horizontal elements that we can find in the construction of a building. These three parts have a very similar way of modeling in Revit and this is the reason why when learning this software, they almost always appear one after the other. The order is usually a rather logical and therefore similar order: starting first with the floors, later the soffits and, finally, the ceilings. All this, clearly after having modeled the exterior and interior walls of our building.

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Caring for the earth, caring for people, and caring for the future. These are the three ethical principles that have guided the practice of permaculture since the term was coined in the late 1970s by Australian ecologists David Holmgren and Bill Mollison. This was an era when the environmental movement gained significant traction, with the emergence of various organizations and movements united in an effort to curb the destruction of the planet's natural resources.

Its three core principles embody a commitment to caring for natural resources, pursuing a social life in harmony with nature, and creating systems to share these resources.

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The state of Michoacán is located in western Mexico, bordered by the states of Jalisco, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Estado de México, Colima, and Guerrero. Covering an area of 58,598.7 km², it faces the Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Morelia, and it is the country's ninth most populous state. Furthermore, it boasts three UNESCO designations: 1) World Cultural Heritage for the Historic Center of Morelia, 2) World Natural Heritage for the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, and 3) Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity for the Day of the Dead celebration.

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For most emerging professionals, passing the Architect Registration Examination (ARE) is the final step to earning a license. Unfortunately, thousands have had to delay their career goals amid the coronavirus pandemic. Since March of this year, fewer than 1,500 licensure candidates have completed the ARE—a 45% drop compared to the same time-frame in 2019. But starting December 14, candidates will have the flexibility to take the ARE online, at Prometric centers as they do today, or a combination of both options.

Over the past decade, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted and become integrated to varying degrees into every aspect of the design, construction, and maintenance of buildings. But this isn’t where BIM stops, the future of BIM incorporates altered/virtual reality (AR/VR) and has the potential to go as far as automated and intelligent lifecycle management of assets. The concept of creating a “digital twin” to a physical building or system with the aim of making that real-world entity safer, more efficient, and more resilient begins by making our way towards fully-integrated BIM.

Newly built houses, with their sizable carbon footprints, don’t just contribute to climate change. For many Americans, they’re also too expensive—a bitter irony in cities rife with vacant buildings and record evictions.

Given the urgency of both issues, projects that retrofit livable housing into existing low-carbon shells (the initial embodied carbon was spent long ago) might be worth a closer look. We searched for them and came across a handful that promise a cure for housing insecurity and excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

Just how much things can change in 30 years can be clearly seen in the history of fashion and design. Only a few visionaries manage to outlive trends with their timeless creations, while simultaneously treading confident, new design paths. People like Dieter Sieger, for example, who revolutionised the bathroom with Duravit back in the 1980s, or Philippe Starck, who has been collaborating with the company since 1994.

Taller Síntesis, based in Medellín, Colombia, shared this article with us. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing the Colombian rural built environment—which accounts for most of the country's territory but not the majority of its architectural practice—with the aim of raising awareness of how architecture is developed and recognized in the country.

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The Un-Habitat or the United Nations agency for human settlements and sustainable urban development, whose primary focus is to deal with the challenges of rapid urbanization, has been developing innovative approaches in the urban design field, centered on the active participation of the community. ArchDaily has teamed up with UN-Habitat to bring you weekly news, article, and interviews that highlight this work, with content straight from the source, developed by our editors.

In order to support local governments in developing countries to implement the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, UN-Habitat has created the Participatory Incremental Urban Planning Toolbox, “a step-by-step methodology to assess, design, operationalize and implement urban planning processes”. The guideline proposes a timeline of phases, blocks, and activities, helping city leaders, stakeholders, and the community to have a comprehensive and strategic overview of the whole strategy.

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It’s been nine months since the world stopped spinning, only to restart at a different rhythm. And although we’d spotted this new style of work approaching on the horizon, we still weren’t prepared for it. In a blink of an eye, our work environments and lives were reduced to a screen and a keyboard. We were forced to go virtual.

The construction industry moves a huge amount of resources, employs millions of people, and is a fairly accurate gauge for the economic situation of different countries. If the economy goes down, construction shrinks, and vice versa. Members of the construction industry include mining companies, contractors, material manufacturers, architects, engineers, governments, real estate, and more. In other words, many agents participate either directly and indirectly in the industry. But construction is also considered to be one of the most backward and resistant industries to embrace new technologies, instead opting to replicate traditional ways of doing less efficient work with high rates of waste. A study by McKinsey & Company showed that, unlike other industries, industry productivity has remained stable in construction in recent years, despite all the technological progress that has occurred.

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Silvia Garcia Camps has presented a series of collages of renowned works of architecture to show that, nothing is ever really invented, it's simply borrowed and mixed. In this article, we highlight her presentation.

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Oregon holds some the most varied geography and private developments in the United States. Home to diverse landscapes and architecture, the state is defined by the Cascade mountain range, windswept coastlines, dense forests, and a high desert environment to the east. These varied geographies have shaped the state’s construction techniques and residential design. At the heart of these building efforts are timber and glass homes found throughout the state.

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In recent years, we have published many articles about wood. Addressing trends of use, possibilities for log wood, panels, curves, and finishes, innovations in tall building structures, and wood's behavior towards fire, these articles have explicated a wide variety of the material's applications and characteristics. A specific type of wood, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), has emerged as highly structurally efficient with thermal, seismic, and even sensory benefits, described by specialists as the concrete of the future. But when we post these articles on social media, we frequently encounter comments from our readers concerned about the impact of deforestation. Although we may see wood as a great building material of the future, we must ask ourselves: is it possible to continue cutting down trees and using their wood while still calling it sustainable?

Skateboarding is often associated with the use of public spaces such as streets, squares, and sidewalks and has become a sport that blends into everyday life in the cities. Although skateboarding is sometimes considered marginalized, because of the dispute over public spaces, it allows underused places such as areas under or near overpasses to be revamped for practicing sports. Many sports centers have been incorporating skate parks into their programs, showcasing very unique designs.

This article was originally published on Common Edge

I am a relative newcomer to the Midwest, and of all the things that have captured my enduring attention, one of them is water towers. In my adopted home state, Minnesota, they are everywhere. These top-heavy engineering marvels rise to well over 150 feet tall and assume all manner of shape and metallurgical prowess, from the pedesphere and fluted column structures, colloquially known as the “golf ball-on-a-tee” and “flashlight,” respectively, to the multicolumned spheroid and ellipsoid tanks that, as legend has it, were the targets of frantic gunfire during Orson Welles’ broadcast of “War of the Worlds.” I can attest that when the day’s twilight settles in, those multilegged towers—or, rather, their silhouettes—can appear otherworldly.

Bioconstruction refers to a building process utilizing materials and techniques with low environmental impact, alongside adapting architecture to local conditions and managing waste during the building's lifecycle. Consequently, building according to these principles does not necessarily mean using so-called sustainable materials—which often must be transported over long distances or undergo prefabrication before use—but rather utilizing local materials, techniques, and labor, drawing on vernacular strategies that address these very factors.

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In documenting the body of work of Miró Rivera Architects, Belgian photographer Sebastian Schutyser employs a photographic technique never before used for the presentation of contemporary architecture. The soft, pictorial imagery produced with a pinhole camera perfectly showcases the dialogue between architecture and landscape which underlines the studio’s designs.

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The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.

A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

This week David and Marina answer a hotline text asking for advice regarding attending architecture school during COVID. The two cover choosing to defer and taking a year off from school, aspects of education missing from remote learning, the differences between physical and virtual learning, how to overcome remote learning challenges, and more. Enjoy! Text or call our hotline: 213-222-6950 for any questions.

"Art at the service and disposal of the people"—this is the primary goal of Metro21, a Chilean urban art gallery dedicated to exhibiting works and managing projects for artists working in public space.

"De cancha en cancha" (From Court to Court) is their initiative to reclaim shared spaces that have fallen into disuse and disrepair across many of the country's localities—a common outcome of a lack of long-term upkeep.