This article was originally published on Common Edge as "Making a Case for the Renaissance of Traditional African Architecture."

Last September, Nigerian Afrobeat musician Wizkid played to a sold-out house at the Royal Albert Hall in London, joining a growing list of illustrious African musicians, such as Selif Kaita, Youssou Ndour, Miriam Makeba and others, that have performed at that prestigious venue. This event affirmed the unfolding cultural renaissance across the continent, but it also signified the rising global influence of African music, movies, fashion, cuisine and the arts.

Sadly, traditional African architecture, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, has not profited from this renaissance and has instead steadily lost its appeal across the continent. In spite of its towering influence in the pre-colonial era, it has largely failed to develop beyond the crude earthen walls and thatch roof architecture; for this reason it has remained unattractive to homeowners who often associate it with poverty. Consequently, the neglect of indigenous architecture has resulted in the dearth of skilled craftsmen knowledgeable in the art of traditional building, a reality that has further dimmed hopes for a revival of this architectural style.

New York City’s most buzzy megaproject, Hudson Yards, may have just added two more huge names to their list of notable architects, if a new report from the Wall Street Journal is to be trusted.

According to a source the WSJ describes as “a person familiar with the matter,” Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry will both design new residential towers for the second phase of the 28-acre complex, located at the north end of the High Line in west Manhattan.

The history of Slovakia is riddled with political unrest and unwanted occupation, with the Slovak people having repeatedly been denied a voice throughout history. In the years following World War I, Slovakia was forced into the common state of Czechoslovakia; the territory was dismembered by the Nazi regime in 1938 and occupied by the Nazis for most of the Second World War, before being eventually liberated by Soviet and Romanian forces in 1945. Over the next four decades of communist rule—first by communists within Czechoslovakia itself and then later by the Soviet Union—the architecture of Slovakia came to develop into a unique form of sci-fi postmodernism that celebrated the shift in industrial influence at the time.

Photographer Stefano Perego has documented the Slovakian architecture from the 1960s–80s and has shared some of his photos with ArchDaily.

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Begin to understand the inner workings of Fumihiko Maki's architectural mind in PLANE—SITE’s latest short film from their Time-Space-Existence series. Each film focuses on the different principles which drive the practice of famous architects. Maki is known for being experimental with materials and fusing east and west culture.

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In 1998, Pritzker Prize-winning Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira completed the University of Alicante Rectory Building in Alicante, Spain. Twenty years later, ArcDog captures the building in their latest film. The Rectory Building fights the harsh Spanish heat with its fortress-like form. Two carefully proportioned courtyards become the focus of this design and, consequently, of the film.

#donotsettle is an online video project created by Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost about architecture and the way it is perceived by users. They visit buildings, make videos and write extended stories in their exclusive column on ArchDaily, #donotsettle Extra.

Yes, that library. The images of the Tianjin Binhai Library have appeared everywhere, from architecture blogs and news broadcasts to going completely viral on social media. We had to go see it and show you what the space is really like. So, we teamed up with MVRDV who sent us to Tianjin to see it up close.

Tianjin Binhai Library, designed by MVRDV, is part of the bigger master plan for the new Binhai Cultural Center (masterplanned by Germany’s GMP). The building has seen phenomenal success on social media reaching all corners of the world. Since the opening, the number of visitors has been constantly increasing, with many of them coming from way beyond Tianjin. It is a library as destination point, redefined.

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Videos

As one of Zaha Hadid's final projects, One Thousand Museum Tower in Miami, approaches completion (having topped out just last month), a new documentary on its construction has been released by PBS.

The building was the subject of the season premier of "Impossible Builds," which profiles "the creation of some of the world’s most ambitious, complex and technologically advanced construction projects." 

Described by the show as "one of the most complex skyscrapers ever to make it off the drawing board," the 62-story tower features a unique glass fiber reinforced concrete exoskeleton – a system never before seen at this scale.

The show is now available to watch in its entirety online. Check it out below!

The protective fortress, winding cobblestone streets, and medieval urban layout are all characteristics of many coastal European towns. But when exploring the French town of Saint-Malo, it is difficult to believe that this is hardly the original city. What separates Saint-Malo from many other European towns located by the sea—aside from its striking location jutting out from the coastline—is the complex history of how it was heavily destroyed in World War II, but rebuilt to its original aesthetic.

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Over the last few months, we have seen a surge in large timber structures being constructed across the globe claiming to be the biggest, the tallest, or the first of their kind—for example, plans for the Dutch Mountains, the world’s largest wooden building, have recently been revealed. Contractors Moelven Limtre are one of the key drivers of this change as the perception of timber as a load-bearing material becomes more common. Their director Rune Abrahamsen is responsible for one of the current claimants of the world record for the tallest timber building, “Treet” in Bergen, at 51 meters tall. However, the contractor’s latest project Mjøstårnet is set to reach an even taller height of 81 meters.

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The Madison Square Garden Company, the eponymous group behind New York City’s iconic concert and events venue, has revealed plans to building two new arenas on opposite sides of the world that will both be shaped like giant spheres.

To be branded as MSG Spheres, the venues will be located in Las Vegas and in London, and will be designed by Populous, the Kansas City-based firm responsible for a large number of stadia and arenas across the globe.

This article was originally published by Common Edge as "What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Buildings."

One of the last programs I attended as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial was a panel titled “Making/Writing/Teaching Contested Histories” at the Chicago Cultural Center. The panel, organized by the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (FAAC), aimed to “foreground issues of class, race, and gender, interrogating how they partake in the production of the built environment.”

The panelists, all academics in fields related to the built environment, were asked to bring in an object central to their practice or their teaching method. The objects on display were a painting, a pier, a refugee camp, and a living room.

Three or four decades ago, this array would’ve scandalized an audience of architects and architectural scholars, who might’ve been expecting, I don’t know, a photo of the Pantheon, or a plan of it, or even a piece of wood or a brick. Maybe even the choice of a piece of furniture would’ve induced some surprised gasps or confused looks.

Rolex has announced four new mentors and protégés for the prestigious Rolex Arts Initiative. In the architecture category, Sir David Adjaye was selected as mentor and Niger-based architect Mariam Kamara will be his protégée in 2018-2019.

Located on a hill in Mauer, on the outskirts of Vienna, the Wotruba Church was the culmination of sculptor Fritz Wotruba’s life (the project’s architect, Fritz G. Mayr, is often forgotten). Constructed in the mid-1970s, Mayr completed the project one year after Wotruba’s death, enlarging the artist’s clay model to create a functional walk-in concrete sculpture. As can be seen in these images by Denis Esakov, the result is a chaotic brutalist ensemble that toys with the boundaries between art and architecture.

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Spread the love! These 75 architecture valentines—handmade by ArchDaily readers from around the world—were chosen out of nearly 400 submissions. 

The message that we wrote last year is so important that we'll say it again: ArchDaily's mission is to improve the quality of life of the world's inhabitants by publishing content for architects, designers, and decision-makers. We also realize how important tolerance, acceptance, and love are to the process of building a better world. So, from us to you, and from your fellow readers to the world, may you feel a wealth of love on this Valentine's Day. <3

We live in a world that spends more time online than outside. And as architects and designers, we invest in creating a more engaging world by means of enhancing life through our buildings. However, through a perhaps unique form of tunnel vision, we are missing an incredible opportunity to leverage alternative mediums to impact more people through our design businesses.

Here are 5 ways to utilize your creativity to produce unique content that will help enhance your impact on the world of design, and in turn, push you and your design business forward:

This article was originally published by The Architect's Newspaper as "A wave of affordable and market-rate housing could soon wash ashore in California."

In recent months, legislators in California have begun a concerted effort to use state law to address the state’s ongoing housing crisis. The moves come amid worsening regional inequality that has pushed housing affordability outside the reach of many populations. Facing mounting pressure from a growing cohort of pro-housing YIMBY activists and increasingly grim economic and social impacts—including a sharp increase in the number of rent-burdened households and the number of individuals and families experiencing homelessness—state-level legislators have begun to take action where municipal leaders have thus far stopped short.

A post shared by H.Nakamura (@toilets_a_go_go) on May 25, 2017 at 12:44am PDT

When looking back on the rich history of Japanese architecture, some of the things that immediately come to mind are complex wood joinery, hipped roofs and intimate experiences with water. Today, Japan is on the cutting edge of architectural innovation in many different buildling types—skyscrapers, office buildings and micro-housing to name a few. However, this Instagram account chooses to highlight an extremely unappreciated building type—public restrooms.

Cheekily named @toilets_a_go_go, the account promises its followers the "discovery of Japanese toilets," covering everything from bathroom pavilions inspired by traditional Japanese architecture to metabolist-like toilet pods—with a few novelty structures thrown in for good measure. If the name of the account did not already reveal the identity of the structures, one might even mistake many of them for something else. We typically overlook public restrooms or even see them in a negative light, but this account showcases the power of architecture to improve a neglected building type, showing that even a trip to the toilet can (and should) be beautiful.

David Chipperfield Architects has won a competition to design the Elbtower, a 230-meter tall building in Hamburg that will be the city's tallest. Located on the eastern edge of the Hafencity, the sculptural building has a strong presence on the riverfront, forming a counterpoint to Herzog & de Meuron's Elbphilharmonie to the West. The building hosts office space in the tower, over a podium containing a bar, hotel, restaurant, retail and exhibition areas.

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