Vivid LIVE, part of the annual festival of lights and music known as Vivid Sydney, is taking place this weekend. As in previous years, the event was launched with a mesmerizing video projection mapped onto the sails of Sydney's iconic Opera House. Titled "Audio Creatures," this year's projection was created by Ash Bolland sees the Opera House writhe and squirm to a soundtrack by Amon Tobin; at times the shells of the building crack open to reveal new life inside, at other moments, infestations crawl their way across from the building's edges.

Read on to see more photographs from the show and the full video of the event.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced 7 projects as winners of the 2017 RIBA North West Regional Awards, with top prize of North West Building of the Year going to Foster + Partners’ Maggie’s at the Robert Parfett Building. These seven buildings will now continue on to compete in the RIBA National Awards, whose winners will make up the shortlist for the prestigious Stirling Prize.

“This year’s awards represent two parallel but linked trends. One is characterised by a dominant interest in the value of re-used existing buildings that benefit from regeneration. The other is the regenerative effect of new buildings themselves,” commented Graham Morrison, North West Regional Jury Chair.

“Though ‘ordinary’ buildings such as housing or offices are coming close to an award-winning level, they are, in their nature, ‘pathfinders’ and there is an understandable caution in their level of investment. This risk pattern favours the existing buildings that more obviously benefit from previous investment but when this caution is eclipsed by confidence, the truly exceptional emerges and this is evidenced by this year’s overall winner.” 

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Completed in 2015 at the northern periphery of Madrid, the BBVA Headquarters by Herzog & de Meuron employs a complex network of passages, courtyards, and gardens to create a new corporate campus for the Spanish banking giant. Responding to local climatic needs, the building is recognized for its custom undulating brise-soleil along its facade and pebble-like central tower.

In this photoset, photographer Rubén P. Bescós turns his lens toward the new institutional landmark, capturing the building within its urban context.

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Renderings have been revealed for the upcoming apple store in Milan’s Piazza Liberty, designed by Foster + Partners in their latest collaboration with the technology giant. Following an extremely site-specific approach, the new flagship store will be located under the existing piazza, introducing a new public amphitheater and waterfall feature that will double as the store’s entrance.

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In his seminal work, Four Books on Architecture (1570), Andrea Palladio outlined the architectural elements that would make up his signature style, borrowing from the architecture of the ancient Romans and the principles directed by Vitruvius and Leon Battista Alberti. In designing his buildings, Palladio employed a full palette of motifs, from pediments to loggias to porticos, resulting in structures that followed a certain formula, while remaining individually distinct.

Recognizing the architectural patterns in his work, programmer “23” (Paul O’Leary McCann) set out to create a code project that could randomly generate Palladian-inspired facades. Adjusting the to size of your screen, the program can create facades ranging in scale from one-story temples to elaborate mega-structures that bear similarity to the magnificent toy block towers created by future-architect children.

Architecturally-trained designer KXIV has envisioned a custom pair of adidas UltraBOOST sneakers, inspired by the architecture of Herzog & de Meuron’s 2008 Beijing Olympics stadium, commonly referred to as the “Bird’s Nest.”

KXIV’s design features a unique lacing system that wraps around the sneaker, held in place with a series of 3D-printed double-loop cinch locks. Underneath, a lycra texture is covered with lace-like lines made from abrasive-resistant polyurethane, giving the shoe a layered look similar to that of the stadium. To get it to hold its form, the upper lace layer the upper lace layer was baked at 300 degrees, creating a structure that is both supportive and elastic.

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A new exhibition by OMA/AMO, lR100-Rinascente: Stories of Innovation, has officially opened in Milan’s Palazzo Reale. Marking the 100th anniversary of the classic Italian department store, la Rinascente, the exhibition commemorates the company’s long creative history and experimental spirit that has served as an influential part of Italian design, culture and commerce.

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Architectural photographer Marc Goodwin, alongside Mathieu Fiol, has recently completed the fifth collection of his "ultra-marathon of photoshoots" – this time in la Ville Lumière, Paris. Following Goodwin's insight into the spaces occupied by Nordic architectural offices, his look at studios both large and small lived in by London-based practices, his lens on a collection of Beijing-based studios and, most recently, his and Felix Nybergh's study of studios in Seoul, the project has now focused on the French capital.

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Set in a valley located 45 minutes west of Santiago de Chile, an elementary timber shed by Josep Ferrando and Diego Baloian seeks to unhinge the division between vertical and horizontal architectural elements. The scheme is the result of a private commission to build a wooden shed on a family-owned plot in the town of Curacaví, halfway between the Chilean capital and the coastal town of Valparaíso.

Drawing heavy inspiration from vernacular canopies which historically dotted the landscape of rural Chile, the scheme seeks to create a central family meeting point amongst a vast 2 hectare plot.

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Located in Tokyo's Sumida Ward, in which Sumida Hokusai (Katsushika Hokusai) was born and spent the majority of his life, this museum—completed in November 2016 to designs by Kazuyo Sejima—is a temple to the Japanese artist's work, including the likes of The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Red Fuji. Sejima, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2010, is commonly known as one-half of SANAA (alongside Ryue Nishizawa). This project, while seeking to celebrate Hokusai's work, has also been designed as a cultural beacon. In this photoset, photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu has turned his lens to the new cultural landmark.

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Commissioned for a large-scale event in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Edoardo Tresoldi in collaboration with Design Lab Experience have constructed a vast indoor "piazza" of architectural fragments. Accommodating a 7000sqm event space, each "Classical" element is built entirely from wire mesh and comprises domes, arches, colonnades, columns, and imitations of sacred spaces (namely Italian basilicas). Together they create a translucent and ephemeral sequence of indoor rooms – all layered by a strikingly contemporary aesthetic.

In the seventh episode of GSAPP Conversations Amale Andraos speaks with Hilary Sample, an academic and co-founder of MOS Architects alongside her partner Michael Meredith. They discuss the lasting influence of ORDOS 100—a collection of villas built in Inner Mongolia by emerging and renowned practices—on the firm’s thinking, the role of representation, and how Sample's practice pursues an inclusive way of working and thinking – while maintaining a purposefully small office.

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ELEMENTAL, led by Pritzker Prize laureate Alejandro Aravena, has been selected as the design team for the Art Mill project in Doha, Qatar. Following a 26-strong longlist and a shortlist of eight internationally renowned practices, including Atelier Bow-Wow and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the Chilean practice have been lauded by the jury for developing "a serene artwork, [in which] the structure is the architecture." Once complete, the project will join two other nearby cultural heavyweights: the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I.M. Pei, and the National Museum of Qatar designed by Jean Nouvel.

The object of this architectural restoration is the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Vistabella, the work of Catalan architect Josep Maria Jujol (16 September 1879 – 1 May 1949). The original design dates from 1917 with the construction completed in 1923. The building is a magnificent and personal work of Catalan architecture.

The simplicity of the materials used—basically brick, mortar, and stone—contrasts with the spectacular formal richness of the structural solutions: columns, arches, and vaults that generate a complex, rich, and surreal interior space typical of the mysticism of Jujol.

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A large-scale masterplan for Feyenoord (or Feijenoord), a suburb-city of the Dutch city of Rotterdam, has been approved by Rotterdam City Council. The successful concept design from OMA, led by Partner David Gianotten, incorporates a historically-important football stadium—for the nationally significant Feyenoord football club—which "no longer fulfills modern demands." Aligned with the football club's "expanding ambitions" both in the Dutch and European football leagues, this proposal is the latest in a string of plans to expand, but the only one to have been accepted.

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The British Council for Offices (BCO) has launched the BCO NextGen competition, this initiative advised by Malcolm Reading Consultants.

Competitors are asked to consider ‘the office of 2035: what it will look like, and how it will support the way we will work’.  The free-to-enter competition is seeking forward-thinking and innovative responses, challenging the conventionalities of today’s workplaces and anticipating future needs.

New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary has officially broken ground on its “21st Century Campus” renovation and expansion, designed by Obama Presidential Library architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

The full project will comprise a new resident hall, conference facilities, an auditorium/performing arts space, and a state-of-art library containing the world’s largest collection of Judaic and Hebraic books, manuscripts and scrolls. Advanced educational technology will be featured throughout.

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We can all recognise the great architectural landmarks of Ancient Rome: the Pantheon, the Colosseum, Trajan's Column – but do you know how they originally appeared or, perhaps more interestingly, how they sat within the context of the historic city? In this captivating 14-minute-long virtual fly-through by the Kahn Academy and Smarthistory, a YouTube channel dedicated to historical video essays, the ancient splendor of the Eternal City (at around 320AD) is presented alongside expert commentary.