We are pleased to announce the call for submissions for GROUND UP, Issue 07.

277 obelisk monuments mark the US–Mexico boundary line. Constructed in three distinct phases (1849–1856, 1891–1912, and 1964–1968), these monuments were the product of territorial negotiations, disputes that were settled ranging from the violent expansion of sovereign limits to the shifting course of a historic boundary river. Commissioned, inscribed, and placed by both the United States and Mexico, they served as unique bilateral artifacts that operated across and reflected on separate territories, forms of settlement, and philosophies of nationhood. Attending Limits: The Constitution and Upkeep of the US–Mexico Border presents the international boundary through a history of its material artifacts and the modes of representation they have motivated. Through the display of original text, animation, photographs, scale models, and maps, the exhibition theoretically frames an evolution of the US–Mexico border from single line to geopolitical territory.

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Today, the construction industry is faced with increasingly challenging demands in terms of safety, energy saving and aesthetics. In fact, very strict energy and safety regulations and standards have been put in place to make sure new buildings, but also renovated ones, are fire and earthquake resistant while safeguarding the environment. At present, the ventilated facade is one of the most widely used and most innovative systems, in both residential and production sectors: it is an excellent vertical closing system characterised by fire-retardant and anti-seismic elements, which can insulate a building both thermally and acoustically, reducing the impact of weathering on masonry structures (UNI 11018).

Cities around the world are growing at an unprecedented rate, and for the first time in recent history represent the preferred place for people to live. Urbanization has historically aided millions in escaping hardship through increased employment opportunities, better education and healthcare, large-scale public investments, and access to improved infrastructure and services. The city has been the ideal for heightened livability for people worldwide.

The City of Atlanta Department of City Planning is seeking proposals to address challenges such as increases in land and construction cost, as well as demand for affordable housing outpacing supply in heavily-populated areas. The competition will use Santa Fe Villas, a 4-acre 147-unit supportive housing development along a commercial corridor, as the pilot project site.

In this book, stories portray the production of our built environment, guided by three characters: Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria. Having developed its long neck to reach the leaves of high trees, the giraffe represents the vernacular approach to architecture, in which construction follows forces of nature. The telegraph, in contrast, embodies the modernist paradigm, in which technology reigns supreme and forces nature to adapt. Inspired by Hero of Alexandria, we subscribe to a third paradigm – using technology to optimize nature and, inversely, nature to assimilate technology.

Detroit is a long-standing symbol of innovation in America, especially in the production of automobiles, music, and, at one point in history, airplanes. It has, correspondingly, been called the Motor City, Motown, and the Cradle of Democracy. Over the last half-century, racial tension, urban migration, and disinvestment have shifted the city’s identity, causing it to become a symbol of post-industrial America and the attendant urban deterioration. Together, these elements render Detroit’s more recent nickname—the Renaissance City—tragically ironic.

The Adelaide Contemporary International Design Competition is a global search for an outstanding design team to create a new cultural destination for Australia. Adelaide Contemporary will showcase an exceptional collection of international and Australian, including Aboriginal, art. It will benefit from a strategic site on the city’s cultural boulevard and combine a contemporary gallery with a public sculpture park and meeting place. Adelaide Contemporary will extend the concept of an art destination and combine new public and cultural features, creating an accessible community meeting place and integrating art, education, nature and people.

SCI-Arc's B.Arch thesis students recently presented projects in progress at midterm reviews aimed at fostering discussion, debate, and direction. The culmination of the school's five-year B.Arch curriculum, the year-long thesis program challenges the next generation of designers to take firm positions, form fresh perspectives, and conceive solutions for issues that architects will face in the future.

The Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum had done its duty. Opened in 1972 in Uniondale, N.Y., the Coliseum not only had honored the military sacrifice of local veterans in Long Island’s Nassau County but had served as home to the one-time American Basketball Association’s New York Nets and the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders as well as hosted major events and concerts, including performances by Elvis Presley, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. 

But after more than four decades of dedicated service, the Coliseum was showing its age and in need of a major facelift.

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These days architecture is both a weapon and a victim of intolerance. Historic buildings are destroyed for what they symbolize, and there are calls for the building of walls and the construction of refugee cities. These actions are symptoms of the global preoccupation with fear of others and the attempt to keep people “out.” The Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) community rejects these injustices and has built the architecture department on the principle that the purpose of architecture is to support the social good.

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Submit your works for the festival!

Global design firm, Hart Howerton, is now accepting applications for its 2018 Travel Fellowship Program. Open to undergraduate and graduate students in planning, architecture, landscape architecture or urban design, Hart Howerton’s Fellowship program offers students the advantages of professional office experience, collaborative interdisciplinary design and global travel and research. Fellows receive a competitive salary during their internship and a generous stipend for housing assistance along with living and travel support.

Chicco and Desall invite you to design a new transformable system to meet the needs of parents and children during their activities outside home.

If you are or have been enrolled as an architecture student during 2017 this is your chance to win some amazing prizes for work you’ve already done. The WAS awards are free to join and will not only give you the opportunity to win some really cool prizes but they’ll also allow you to see where your work stands against other students from other schools in different countries and get feedback from industry professionals outside of your school.

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The exhibition "Gothic: The Age of the Great Cathedrals" will begin in Switzerland in December 2017 in the choir of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Fribourg. It will go to the Cathedral of Bern (Berner Münster, Cathedral of Bordeaux and Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris. The idea of this project is a journey through the extraordinary saga of these great medieval buildings. This adventure begins with the construction of the Basilica Cathedral of Saint-Denis, the place where Gothic art was born. Throughout the exhibition, the visitors will discover secrets of 17 monuments chosen among the most beautiful, the most emblematic. They will encounter this medieval art movement that has overwhelmed Europe and wished to build always higher, larger and more beautifully!

CR.UX - Cultural Reflux, Unravel the Experience.

Urbanization and transformation of urban cultures are the two key phenomena taking place in the Indian sub-continent. This has been intensified by currents of globalization and migration between rural and urban areas. This poses both an opportunity as well as vulnerability to cities and the urban fabric: opportunity through spatial immersion, creating networks in the social and cultural sphere, and vulnerability manifested in gentrification and obsolescence of the same.

Urbanism in a Digitalizing World.