Tag: architectural-representation | ArchDaily

Concrete Memory: 12 Postwar Monuments Across Eastern Europe

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

A monument is usually the most conservative building a state will commission. It is expected to stabilize memory, to make history legible, and to give public form to a shared narrative. Eastern Europe's twentieth century produced an entire body of work from the Baltic to the Balkans that resisted precisely those expectations, challenging the conventional relationship between monument, memory, and representation. Commonly grouped under the name spomeniks, these architectural exercises are perhaps the best-known examples of a much broader landscape of memorial architecture that emerged across the region. These were societies emerging from occupation, civil conflict, or revolution, and none of them possessed a single symbolic language capable of accommodating the complexity of their histories. Rather than searching for new heroes or new icons, many architects and artists turned to space itself as the medium through which remembrance could be constructed.

The Architecture of Mold: What Buildings Cannot Control

Daniela Andino — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Contemporary architecture has learned to celebrate living matter. Mycelium panels, algae systems, living walls, life is now welcomed into buildings, framed as innovation. Yet the same discipline that celebrates these organisms treats mold as contamination. Both are biological. Both respond to moisture, temperature, and material conditions. The difference is not scientific. It is about which forms of life architecture is willing to accept, and which it prefers to remove.

The Lasting Impact of Architectural Education: Training Professionals to Question Convention

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:45:00 +0000

Architectural schools usually leave lasting marks on their students, shaping their style and critical inquiry long after formal education has ended. For example, SCI-Arc, founded in 1972 and based in downtown Los Angeles, is an institution recognized for its culture of experimentation, critical investigation, and creative independence, building a reputation based on the idea that architecture should be understood as a field open to dialogue with art, technology, design, and contemporary culture. The diversity of trajectories of its alumni demonstrates how this environment can generate distinct professional approaches, but united by the same willingness to explore new possibilities.

Baku Architecture City Guide: 15 Projects Reframing Azerbaijan’s Capital

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Tue, 05 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Some cities grow through continuity, others construct themselves through moments of acceleration. Baku, in Azerbaijan, seems to operate somewhere in between. Its historic core, the Icherisheher, still holds a spatial logic that resists expansion: dense, enclosed, defined by proximity and repetition. But just beyond its walls, the city begins to shift. Scale increases, distances expand, and the relationship between buildings becomes less about continuity and more about visibility.

Women in Architecture: Progress, Gaps, and the Work Still Ahead

Reyyan Dogan — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Each year, International Women's Day brings renewed attention to questions of gender within many professional fields, architecture among them. Public conversations often center on celebrating prominent figures or highlighting notable projects, moments that briefly illuminate the contributions of women within the discipline. Yet the visibility produced by these occasions sits within a longer and more complex trajectory. Over the past several decades, the architectural profession has undergone gradual shifts that have expanded opportunities and broadened participation, even as longstanding structures continue to shape how careers develop and how architectural work becomes visible.

Decomposition as Expression: Disassembled Axonometry as Design Tool

Agustina Iñiguez — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000

In the translation of three-dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional plane, axonometry stands as one of the graphic systems of representation that form the foundation of the language used by architecture and design professionals. Alongside plans, sections, and elevations, its exploded views often stand out for their ability to study the multiple layers that compose a project. Although axonometry is also employed in other disciplines such as engineering and urban planning, it consistently proves its capacity to function as more than a mere representational tool, strengthening the understanding not only of a project's construction processes, materials, and structural systems but also expanding the communication of the ideas and design processes that shape a project.

Architectural Authorship in the Age of the Collective Practices

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 07:30:00 +0000

This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

Architecture as Soft Power: Cultural Diplomacy and Its Role in Shaping Architectural Production

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Cultural diplomacy refers to the use of cultural expression and creative exchange to foster understanding and build relationships between nations. In this context, architecture has long played a distinctive role. Beyond its functional and aesthetic dimensions, it serves as a medium of communication, a language through which countries express identity, values, and ambition on the global stage.

The Continued Relevance of Models in Architecture's Digital Era

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

For centuries, models have been central to architectural design, providing architects with a tangible way to explore ideas, test concepts, and communicate their vision. From the Renaissance to Modernism, models have been instrumental in the construction and reflection processes, offering insights into form, proportion, and spatial relationships. However, in today's digital age, where 3D models and Virtual Reality (VR) have become powerful and efficient tools, the question arises: Are physical models still relevant in contemporary architecture?

The Best Architectural Drawings of 2023

Susanna Moreira — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 08:00:00 +0000

As another year draws to a close, ArchDaily's team of curators is pleased to present a selection of the best architectural drawings published throughout 2023, without which the projects' appreciation would certainly not be the same.

Meet the Category Winners of the 2023 Architecture Drawing Prize

Maria-Cristina Florian — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:30:00 +0000

The Architecture Drawing Prize, now in its 7th edition, celebrates the art of drawing in three main categories: hand-drawn, digital, and hybrid. The Prize attracted nearly 250 drawings from around the world, a record for the competition, with the majority of entries being in the hand-drawn category. The winners of each category have been announced. The winning drawings, along with the shortlisted entries will be displayed at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore from 29 November until 1 December 2023, and at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London from 31 January to 3 March 2024. The Overall Winner will announced on 29 January 2024 as part of a webinar hosted by Sir John Soane’s Museum, ahead of the exhibition.

The Structure of a People: The South African Pavilion Explores Architectural Representations at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 17 May 2023 04:30:00 +0000

For the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the South African Pavilion explores the architectural representation of social structures through an exhibition titled “The Structure of a People.” Prior to the exhibition, the pavilion curators, Mr. Stephen Steyn, Dr. Emmanuel Nkambule, and Dr. Sechaba Maape, conducted a national architecture competition titled “Political Animals,” aimed at gathering artifacts crafted by lecturers and architecture students to represent the structures of their schools or universities. The resulting models and miniature architectures, produced by ModelArt, will be exhibited within Zone III, Political Animals, as part of the South African Pavilion.

On the Latest Representation Trends and Immersive Experiences in Virtual Design Platforms: SpaceForm x CRA

Christele Harrouk — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 07:30:00 +0000

In 2021, CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati’s proposal to create sustainable alternatives for urban heating networks was selected as one of four winners of the global Helsinki Energy Challenge. The project entitled Hot Heart proposed “island-like, floating seawater reservoirs to heat the city of Helsinki in a green way”. Using Twinmotion, Epic Games’ real-time visualization platform for the architecture industry to design the intervention, the large scale infrastructural project needed a digital representation tool to possibly put scale into perspective, offer a real immersive experience to engage the client, and exhibit instant changes related to natural factors such as daylight. Come SpaceForm, a data-driven virtual presentation and design tool. Created to facilitate remote cooperation, the technology allows clients or stakeholders to be more immersed in the story of the design.

From Digital Collage to Hand Sketches: Find Inspiration for Your Next Architectural Visualizations

Brandon Koots — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 04:00:00 +0000

With an increasing amount of architectural visualizations being published on social media, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Adding this to how the famous algorithm works, we end up always being exposed to social media publications that are, in many ways, similar to each other. But for us as architects, designers, and students, social media is not only a platform for networking and sharing our works. It also serves as a source of inspiration. If the algorithm isn’t helping us to discover new and different ideas, then it’s up to us to go out of our way and look for them.

From Representation to Reality: 19 Projects that Rethink Representation Techniques

Agustina Coulleri — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Graphics, even before language and writing, were the first means of communication and significance for humanity. Drawing is the act of replacing reality with representation, that is, replacing objects with images encoded in each of the graphic representation systems.

Argentine Axonometries: 30 Works of Architecture Put Into Perspective

Belén Maiztegui — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0000

As Francis D. K. Ching explains in his book Architectural Graphics, unlike the traditional, two-dimensional orthographic drawings used to represent layouts, sections, and floorplans, which only allow a project to be glimpsed through a series of fragmented images, axonometries, or axonometric projections, offer unique, simultaneous three-dimensional views of a project with all the depth and spatiality of tried and true technical illustrations.

Silvia Garcia Camps' Collages: "Nobody Really Creates Anything, We Just Borrow and Mix"

Fabian Dejtiar — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000

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.

The Return of Superstudio and the Anti-Architecture Ideology

Kaley Overstreet — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 07:30:00 +0000

In the 1960s, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia and Adolfo Natalini, two Florence-based architecture students in their twenties, decided to undertake the substantial task of designing a new way for the citizens of the globe to inhabit the earth. Driven by the possibilities laid out in science fiction novels and the desire to prescribe design to solve the problems of their era, the duo, who dubbed themselves as Superstudio, sought to continuously reinvent their role in what it means to be an architect. Their solution was the creation of an “anti-design” culture as a means to provide commentary on politics, capitalism, and urbanism, by creating ideas in which everyone is given a functional space that frees itself of time, place, and the need for excessive objects.