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Residents of a unique south London housing scheme are hosting a free event to celebrate the work of the architect who designed their street. Walter Segal, who died 30 years ago, will be remembered at a special Celebrating Segal day on Saturday 19th September 2015, 11am-3pm.

The day of talks, films, art and tours will take place in Walters Way, South London, which was designed by Segal, built by residents, and is one of two streets named after him (the other being Segal close). The event, which is part of Open House London, will highlight Segal’s achievements and his relevance to today’s housing situation. The Berlin-born modernist invented the Segal self-build method that enabled ordinary people to build their own homes. His most famous houses were built in partnership with the London Borough of Lewisham.

The day will include
John Segal - Segal son
John McKean – Segal’s biographer
Jon Broome – architect who worked with Segal
Dave Dayes - self-builder
BBC Documentary film; “The House That Mum and Dad Built (1982)
Segal-inspired art
Tour of Walters Way - see inside a self-build home

WORKac has begun crowd-funding for the 3rd Edition of their book, “49 Cities”. As the title implies, the book follows examples of urbanism throughout several centuries, from the ideal Roman city to the 21st century visions of utopia. 49 Cities looks at sustainability beyond the notion of the “Green Building”, serving as a catalyst and fertilizer for discussion and ideas on the design of the City of Tomorrow. Going out of print in 2010, demand for the book has continued, and it may now finally be available once again thanks to partnerships by WORKac with Inventory Press and Project Projects.

When: 11:00am - 12:00pm, Tuesday August 25, 2015

Where: This is a free online seminar, but you need to register to participate

Credit: Microsol Resources is an Approved Provider through the AIA/CES and will provide Certificate of Completion for 1 AIA LU and PDH for this seminar.

N°4 smooth plane by uWood on Sketchfab

Sketchfab, an online database for 3D-models, has announced that they will soon begin implementing support allowing users to showcase not only their 3D models, but accompanying animations as well. The site, likened to a “Youtube for 3D models”, has grown tremendously in the short time it’s been active, and the new step adds many possibilities for both new users and veterans of the platform (read more about Sketchfab here).

After spending five-figure sums on their education, you might think that architectural students would, at the very least, continue in the architectural profession. However, as investigated in a new BBC Business article, many students of architecture “are using their newly-learned digital animation and design skills to break into the world of film.” With a growing demand for both architectural and all other kinds of animations, the number of film careers built from architectural foundations seems to be burgeoning. Architects-turned-filmmakers now work on a wide variety of projects, from special effects in Beyoncé videos to Oscar-winning films, to visualization films of future architectural projects.

The nation’s largest film festival celebrating architecture and design will return to NYC in two brand new locations in Chelsea. Opening night will be held at the SVA Theatre, and the duration of the ADFF, from October 14-18, 2015, will be held at the Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas - a newer, bigger and more central location to accommodate a large expected audience and allow for exciting new programming. The seventh edition of the festival will present a curated selection of 30+ intriguing feature-length and short films in addition to panel discussions and Q&As with design thought leaders and filmmakers from around the world. The films explore the human elements of art, fashion, architecture and design in our everyday lives, while making the topics relatable, entertaining, and engaging for a broad audience.

Exhibition Paul Schneider von Esleben – The Legacy of Postwar Modernism M:AI exhibitions and events to mark the 100th anniversary of the architect’s birthday. For this exhibition, Thomas Mayer photographed 5 of Paul Schneider von Esleben’s projects in Dusseldorf.

On 23 August, 2015 Paul Schneider von Esleben would have turned 100. With his projects he emphatically shaped the post-War architecture of West Germany until well into the 1970s. In North Rhine-Westphalia in particular he left behind a series of buildings that reflect the developments in architectural history in the first 20 years after the war. Von Esleben viewed buildings as gesamtkunstwerke, which he designed down to the last detail, be it art on the buildings or the furnishings inside.

As part of an ongoing series of articles for Guardian Cities, architect Finn Williams uses the Cities: Skyline Simulator to ask whether "the game’s growth-driven model proves incompatible with a post-growth strategy" — ultimately narrating its response to this challenge in the form of a "resounding no." The game, which is designed to "realise the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city," allows for players to deal with infrastructure issues, housing problems, and budgetary matters on a large urban scale.

Unique in the world, Berlin's new Museum for Architectural Drawing, designed by architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, brings some of the finest 20th and 21st century architectural drawings together in a building provocatively tattooed with its own drawings.

Should architects and designers take control of the development, financing and investment process to both achieve breakthrough designs and to take control of their futures?

This panel of distinguished experts says yes, and they discuss the steps required to develop properties and interiors with their own designs. The main benefits of this challenging dual approach is that the designer is able to "invest" in better designed results. Program includes case studies on new building projects.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government has announced its Sejong-daero Historic Cultural Space Design Competition, which seeks creative designs for the site of the former National Tax Service Building, as well as a greater conceptual blueprint for the central Seoul area.

The goal of the competition centers on the idea of “creating a space for integration of existing historic cultural heritages and contemporary urban space” via a restoration of the historic essence of the building site, but also with a focus on its future uses.

With a goal to double the amount of its renewable energy power sources by 2030, Japan has begun to transform abandoned golf courses into massive solar energy plants. As Quartz reports, Kyocera, a company known for its floating solar plants, has started construction on a 23-megawatt solar plant on an old golf course in the Kyoto prefecture (scheduled to open in 2017). The company also plans to break ground on a similar, 92-megawatt plant in the Kagoshima prefecture next year. Pacifico Energy is also jumping on the trend; with the help of GE Energy Financial Services, the company is overseeing two solar plant golf course projects in the Okayama prefecture. The idea is spreading too; plans to transform gold courses into solar fields are underway in New York, Minnesota and other US states as well.

British writer and curator Justin McGuirk has joined London's Design Museum as their new chief curator. The former editor of Icon, design critic of The Guardian and director of Strelka Press was also named head of Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven earlier this year. As you may remember, McGuirk was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Biennale for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank. He is also the author of Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture.

McGuirk will be responsible for coordinating the museum's new program after its relocation to Kensington in 2016.

The latest episode of KCRW's podcast, “Design and Architecture” (DnA), explores whether the Baugruppen, a co-housing model in Berlin, could work in Los Angeles. Produced by Frances Anderton and Caroline Chamberlain, the episode looks at how LA residents and Berliners have approached the same problem of affordable living space. The Baugruppen (“building groups”) are communities of homes where you can choose who to live with and share the development costs. After visiting R50, a Baugruppe complex by firms Heide & Von Beckerath and IFAU, co-principals Christoph Schmidt and Verena von Beckerath explained the process of collaborative design that came with building the 19 households of R50. Listen to the whole podcast here.

Sleep, an international hotel design event, is working with Snoozebox to host a competition to design a new portable hotel room. Snoozebox has produced unique, and award-winning portable hotels for major events and festivals worldwide. This competition is an opportunity for designers to lend their ideas, and make a mark in the international hotel design industry. The winning team will work with Snoozebox and contractors to fully realize their idea in time for an exhibition at Sleep in November.

In many western countries, the demographic pyramid is beginning to look inverted, as elderly populations grow and increasingly few children are born at the other end of the scale. How, asks Metropolis Magazine, does society provide for the growing ranks of the retired and newly elderly? Elderly care scandals and and discomfort with the idea of retirement communities has led to a search for ways to care for senior citizens in their own homes. Urban planning expert Deane Simpson, however, warns against accepting the idea of what he calls "aging in place" entirely uncritically: his exploration of the way current retirement communities function goes into the social motivations behind care homes and the United States' elderly communities, and discusses the future of retirement for the emerging baby-boomer generation of retirees. Read the full story over at Metropolis Magazine here.

Gallaudet University, the world’s only university for deaf and hard of hearing students, has launched an international competition to re-design its historic Washington DC campus. Participants will be challenged to "create a new campus gateway and redefine the University’s urban edge as a vibrant, mixed-use, creative and cultural district." Design proposals are not required during the competition's first stage; teams will be shortlisted based on their "understanding of the institution and project, team composition and past experience."

Up to five teams will be shortlisted in the competition's second (and final) stage, where they will receive an honorarium of $50,000 each to craft design proposals.