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.

Featuring varied and flexible programs, cultural centers are public buildings that play a key role in promoting, as their name suggests, local culture. Designed to encourage daily and ongoing use by residents of a specific area, their architectural programs can be highly diverse, accommodating a library, cinema, auditorium, exhibition spaces, workshop rooms, and communal areas, among other facilities.

Design:ED Podcast is an inside look into the field of architecture told from the perspective of individuals that are leading the industry. This motivational series grants unique insight into the making of a successful design career, from humble beginnings to worldwide recognition. Every week, featured guests share their personal highs and lows on their journey to success, that is sure to inspire audiences at all levels of the industry. Listening to their stories will provide a rare blueprint for anyone seeking to advance their career, and elevate their work to the next level.

In this episode, host Aaron Prinz speaks with Talmadge Smith, Principal of Page, and discusses the process of designing the new Fountain Place tower in downtown Dallas adjacent to the iconic building originally designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. He provides a detailed look into their design decisions regarding form, color, and how they paid tribute to the existing Fountain Place.

Podium construction – alternately known as platform or pedestal construction – is a building typology characterized by a horizontal division between a lower ‘podium’ and an upper tower. The podium, which is typically made of concrete or steel, is crowned by multiple light wood-frame stories. Often, the lighter upper structure contains four to five stories of residential units, while the podium houses retail, commercial, or office spaces and above- or below-grade parking. An alternative configuration sports six to seven residential stories (including the podium) and subterranean parking. Some visible examples of this podium construction style include the amenity-rich Stella residences designed by DesignArc; an attractive yet cost-effective student housing project for the University of Washington by Mahlum Architects; and the warm, modern University House Arena District also designed by Mahlum Architects in Eugene, Oregon.

Originally used to transport large cargo on ships, shipping containers feature a rigid and highly durable steel structure available in various dimensions. However, moving beyond their traditional role in storage and cargo transport, these structures have been adopted as the basis for commercial and residential modules for several years. They offer high strength, low cost, fast construction, and, above all, a sustainability-oriented system through reuse. With this in mind, and moving beyond standardized housing, several architects have developed residential projects by reusing containers as modular blocks, stacking or joining them side-by-side to suit the specific program of each client.

This article was originally published in ArchDaily en Español last October 30, twelve days after the social crisis in Chile escalated. Some ideas of the analysis may feel outdated since some structural reforms were recently announced, but the author decided to keep the original spirit of the piece.

A 4 cent fair increase for the Metro in Santiago sparked mass fare-dodging protests in Chile starting on October 6. Alongside spontaneous street demonstrations, the protests spilled into widespread violence across Santiago during the following days until October 18. That day, the Metro network collapsed, the riots multiplied across the city, and looting and fires were out of control. That night, President Sebastian Piñera declared a state of emergency.

Urban transformation and development processes can often lead to side effects or unintended consequences when these movements are organic and unplanned. These outcomes are not always positive and can trigger phenomena like gentrification, which can become a major social problem, directly impacting low-income populations. Nonetheless, it is also clear that certain transformations typically associated with this phenomenon can bring improvements and reactivate underutilized spaces in urban centers; the threshold between this scenario as a virtue or a detriment remains a subject of ongoing debate among architects and urban planners.

Audience sightlines, accessibility and acoustics all make theater seating a hugely precise art. As part of their set of online resources for architects and designers, the team at Theatre Solutions Inc (TSI) have put together a catalog of 21 examples of theater seating layouts. Each layout is well detailed, with information on the number of seats, the floor seating area and row spacing. These layouts fall under three general forms; to supplement this information, alongside TSI's diagrams we've included the pros and cons of each type, as well as examples of projects which use each format. Read on for more.

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Have you ever been stuck for hours obsessing over a font that matched your work? Before starting a project, do you already think about which font you will use? Do you get annoyed when you read an important message written in Comic Sans? Or do you feel offended when a mundane sentence is written in all caps? Rest assured, you are not alone. 

Architects and designers constantly use graphic elements as expressive means in the schematization of their works. Among them, the most common are the drawings, in a constant variety of techniques, styles, and patterns. But among the elements that make up the boards, panels and drawings, techniques and models, there is a particular fragment that helps them in composition and identity: the font. 

As extreme weather events become increasingly common worldwide, brises-soleil and perforated cladding have become effective options for creating a second skin on building facades, protecting interiors and creating unique atmospheres through the interplay of light and shadow.

Each building and facade orientation requires a distinct solution—whether fixed or operable, and in various materials. However, certain general guidelines can help streamline the selection process. We spoke with the experts at Hunter Douglas to identify the most critical considerations.

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Designing in a country with a predominantly equatorial or tropical climate requires decisions that mitigate heat gain within the building's interior. The versatility, functionality, and aesthetic appeal of the brise-soleil encourage architects—particularly within the Brazilian context—to incorporate them into residential designs. The brise-soleil, or sunshade, acts as a middle ground between openness and enclosure, controlling natural light without obstructing ventilation. Furthermore, this system strikes a balance between interior privacy and exterior views.

Tasked with mapping contemporary Brazilian production, the ​Tomie Ohtake Institute AkzoNobel Architecture Prize ​began its activities in 2013 with loosely defined horizons. While there was the expectation of creating an unprecedented initiative on the national stage by honoring projects built over the last decade, there was also the clear challenge of establishing a prize without categories, dealing with a broad universe of programs and comparing initiatives of widely differing scales.

Founder of the innovative architecture firm MAD Architects, Ma Yansong (born 26 November 1975) has helped to give China a name in the international architecture scene. The first Chinese architect to receive a RIBA fellowship, Ma explores contemporary architecture in relation to traditional eastern values of nature, resulting in buildings that are complex and contextually aware, but sometimes even surreal.

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Choosing the right lighting for any space can be a complex decision. Considerations need to be made with respect to the purpose, form and function of the lighting application. Design and aesthetics also play a role in the equation. With so many options for lighting on the market, it takes specialized knowledge and understanding to determine the best fit for your space. Even more challenging than finding lighting for a generic space, an art gallery or museum application can be difficult and even overwhelming to light properly. LED lighting has simplified a large chunk of lighting for art display.

Up until now, space architecture has been mainly focused on engineering, centered on projects like orbital space stations or Martian exploration convoys, commissioned by world space agencies such as ESA (Europe) or NASA (USA). But in recent years, an increasingly broader spectrum of professionals (e.g. architects, sociologists) as well as entrepreneurs and investors (not all well intentioned) have joined the challenge of designing extraterrestrial built environments, the new space race of the 21st century.

The fast development of technology, the increase of world population and the climate change crisis create the perfect setting to think about life outside of our planet, and as these trends continue to evolve and converge, new opportunities to explore options beyond our traditional limits appear (NEOM), as well as new organizations which support this research (like SATC, SICSA). Even though no one is currently on Mars, many ongoing projects and simulations (MARS-ONE, Mars City Science) are already exploring how we will design, build and inhabit the new realms of humanity in outer space.

In some theoretical books, architecture and the human body are more or less the same, each depending on one another. Oftentimes, however, it is the body that undergoes detrimental adjustments to adapt to the architecture, not the other way around. 

In the newly released book X-Ray Architecture, architectural historian Beatriz Colomina argues that health facilities inspired modern architecture's most dominant formal signatures. 

Architectural modernism emerged in the wake of the early 20th-century European avant-gardes. The movement was fueled by industrial capitalism and the thrilling technological progress unfolding before everyone's eyes. The break with the past had been deliberately ushered in by intellectual, artistic, and technical movements since the mid-19th century. The Crystal Palace, for instance, designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, was built in London to host the Great Exhibition of 1851 and represented a structural revolution in the use of lightweight materials such as iron and glass.

The Midnight Charette is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by architectural designers David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features a variety of creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions. A wide array of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes provide useful tips for designers, while others are project reviews, interviews, or explorations of everyday life and design. The Midnight Charette is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

This week Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet discuss strategies for acing your job interview! The two answer questions from callers and discuss preparation, the essential mentalities to have, talking and behavior tactics, what to bring and wear, asking for the right salary, finding out what the interviewers are looking for in the interviewees, and closing the interview. Call or text their Design Companion Hotline to ask your questions or to share your stories at 213-222-6950.

OPEN Architecture’s anticipated project Chapel of Sound has finally topped out on November 15th with the pouring of its broad concrete roof.

The project, which is expected to open in the summer of 2020, includes a semi-outdoor amphitheater, an outdoor stage, and viewing platforms, overlooking the mountainous rural area of the Jinshanling Great Wall. 

Encompassing a Buckminster Fuller–designed geodesic dome and an Alexander Calder sculpture, the intervention shows how the city is rethinking its world’s fair treasures.

The contemporary urban fabric of Montreal, perhaps more than any other Canadian city, was shaped by a single event in its modern history: the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, popularly known as Expo 67. With its record-breaking number of visitors, it was the most successful world’s fair of the 20th century and fueled a construction boom in the city that stretched into the late 1970s.

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Videos

India’s uprising from a dependent to an independent governance altered the way it was perceived by the world. The country’s evolution left architects and urban developers with important questions: How can they solve the economic and environmental disparities in India, and how can they implement an understanding in people about the potential of what they can achieve with their country’s culture and resources.

In a new extensive video interview by Louisiana Channel, Indian Pritzker Prize-winner Balkrishna Doshi narrates how he became an award-winning architect, his traditional Hindu beliefs and culture, and India’s juxtaposition of having nothing to keeping up with a world that is creating everything.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an increasingly common acronym among architects. Most offices and professionals are already migrating or planning to switch to this system, which represents digitally the physical and functional characteristics of a building, integrating various information about all components present in a project. Through BIM software it is possible to digitally create one or more accurate virtual models of a building, which provides greater cost control and efficiency in the work. It is also possible to simulate the building, understanding its behavior before the start of construction and supporting the project throughout its phases, including after construction or dismantling and demolition.

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In regions with high temperatures and intense solar radiation, buildings must ensure adequate thermal comfort for their occupants. To this end, the use of brise-soleils is an effective solution for projects featuring large glass surfaces, thereby reducing heat gain from direct sunlight.

Wherever there is a center, there is by necessity a periphery. This in itself should not generate any headlines; we live in a world of centers, and peripheries that continually stretch those centers, whether it be politics, countries, or societal norms. It also applies to architectural practice. In a complex, interconnected world, members of the architectural profession around the world are constantly expanding into new peripheries, generating new visions for how practice should operate, influenced by technological, political, cultural, and environmental changes.

The adaptability of architectural professionals in Brazil is indisputable. Confronted in recent years with crises of various kinds that have hindered the execution of work and, perhaps even worse, immersed in a structure that systematically undervalues the profession, the professional, and the project, the vast diversity and high quality of current production is remarkable.