A’ Design Award has once again launched its call for entries for Architectural Projects, Interior Design Work, Furniture Designs, Innovative Lighting Products and Building Materials. Everything related to architecture and design, including but not limited to new products, real estate, construction projects and even machinery can be submitted for awards consideration.
Misc
Call for Entries: A’ Design Award - Architecture, Interior Design, Furniture, Lighting and Building Materials
The Spirit of Cities Captured in Collage
Sweden based visual artist, Anastasia Savinova, has created a series of collages that seek to capture the spirit of cities. Titled “Genius Loci,” her collages form a big house that is composed of many buildings characteristic of each city, visualizing the way of life, the atmosphere, and the feeling of each place. Photographs of architecture are the foundational components of her art work, representing the feeling as a whole.
How Schønherr is Transforming Aarhus with Experimental Urban Interventions
Since 2010, the Danish architects from Schønherr have been developing a series of large-scale urban interventions for the Aarhus Festival, the largest cultural festival in Denmark. These temporary projects have transformed the streets and parks into extraordinary public spaces, changing the natural topography of the city to attract citizens and bring them together.
We present their last four projects: "The Forest" (2010), "The City Park" (2012), "The Plaza" (2014) and "Bishops Square" (to be completed this 2016).
ICRAVE's Ideas for the Brave Is a Brainstorming Platform for Designers
Created by designer Chanel Dehond from Manhattan-based design studio ICRAVE, IDEAS FOR THE BRAVE (IFTB) is a submission-based, open source platform for brainstorming. IFTB is open to the public, with the international design community as its target demographic.
AD Round-Up: The Best of Contemporary Chilean Architecture
Chilean architecture, having long stood in the shadow of more established design traditions in Europe and North America, has been catapulted to the forefront of global attention with the news that architect Alejandro Aravena has been named the 41st Pritzker Prize Laureate – the first Chilean to receive the award. He is also the director of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, which focuses on the role of architects in improving the living conditions of people across the globe, especially in cases where scarce resources and the “inertia of reality” stand in the way of progress.
158 Finalists Named in Knight Cities Challenge
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced the names of the 158 finalists in the Knight Cities Challenge. The nationwide call was for innovative ideas to make the 26 communities where the Knight Foundation invests more social and vibrant places to live. More than 4,500 entries were submitted proposing a range of ideas from opening the world’s largest African American history museum in Detroit to a card game that encourages residents of Charlotte to visit new neighborhoods. The winners, who will split a prize of $5 million, will be announced in the spring of 2016.
The Best Architecture Drawings of 2015
We believe good projects should be able to express and explain themselves. Architectural representation plays a fundamental role in how a project is perceived by the audience, which is why today ArchDaily is recognizing the most outstanding, original and self explanatory drawings of the year.
The selected drawings cover the diverse range of different techniques used in architectural representation today, from hand drawing images to perfectly detailed axonometrics and animated GIFs - but one thing they all have in common is the deep insights they provide into the appearance, construction or concept of the buildings they represent.
Wavelength Pictures’ Documentary Set to Revisit the Life and Work of Kevin Roche
About twenty years after the last documentary on Kevin Roche was released, London-based film company Wavelength Pictures will produce an updated look at the life and work of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, with a section of the film focusing on his projects in Columbus, Indiana, reports local paper The Republic. Wavelength Pictures plans to come to Columbus in 2016, filming buildings that Roche designed and conducting interviews.
These Colorful Illustrations Bring Curitiba’s Landmarks to Life
Artist Maycon Prasniewski has developed a series of illustrated posters featuring historic and cultural sites in Curitiba, Brazil. Important buildings in the city, such as the Oscar Niemeyer museum, the Wire Opera House, the Free University of the Environment (Unilivre), and the Botanical Garden are represented alongside other landmarks.
View the illustrations after the break.
Happy New Year to Our Readers!
Happy New Year from ArchDaily to our readers from around the globe! We had a great 2015 and we couldn’t have done it without your support. We can’t wait to see what 2016 will bring. In the meantime, check out some of our most popular projects, stories and highlights of 2015, after the break.
This Clay Brick Disperses Heat to Keep Buildings Cool
With the goal of harnessing and exploring the benefits of clay as a raw material, which is characteristic of Colombia's Cúcuta region, Architects Miguel Niño and Johanna Navarro created Sumart Diseño y Arquitectura SAS, a studio that designs and develops sustainable architectural solutions.
One of their most successful projects is the Bloque Termodisipador BT, a ceramic block designed with an irregular cross section that allows ventilation to pass through the brick, reducing the amount of heat that enters the interior of the building.
Shortlist Announced for the Wienerberger Brick Award 2016
After receiving over 600 projects from all over the world, a panel of architecture journalists and critics has selected the 50 shortlisted projects for the Wienerberger Brick Award 2016. The biannual architectural award is presented to outstanding examples of modern and innovative brick architecture.
Among the 2016 shortlisted projects are Sharon Davis Design’s Women’s Opportunity Center, Ateliers Jean Nouvel + MDW Architecture’s Police Headquearters & Charleroi Danses, O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects’ LSE Saw Hock Student Centre, BC Architects’ Library of Muyinga and Frank Gehry’s Dr Chau Chak Wing Building.
CatalyticAction Designs Playgrounds for Refugee Children in Bar Elias, Lebanon
"Within humanitarian responses, programmatically, children often become invisible." (Marc Sommers)
The Syrian crisis has forced thousands of families to leave their homes in search of safe places to continue with their lives. Many families have moved to Lebanon, where the UN has raised a series of informal settlements. While effective in providing shelter, they don't provide specific solutions for children, many of whom have had their studies interrupted and don't have public spaces equipped to play sports and interact with other kids.
In response to this situation, the architects of CatalyticAction have designed and built a playground in one of the schools developed by The Kayany Foundation and American University of Beirut's Center for Civic Engagement and Community Service, involving children throughout the entire process and allowing the structure to be easily disassembled, transported and either reassembled or repurposed.
SCI-Arc EDGE: Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture
In November, SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso announced the launch of SCI-Arc EDGE, Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture. Beginning in fall 2016, the new center is intended to serve as a platform for multiple postgraduate programs. Diaz Alonso sat down to talk about SCI-Arc EDGE, the philosophy behind it, and the fields of study it will offer.
5 Places to Download Free, Ethnically Diverse Render People
The significance of people in architectural rendering is nothing new – the added realism, and addition of narrative elements can make or break whether a render successfully sells its project. With sites like Skalgubbar, architects and architecture students have easier access than ever before to “Render People”: PNG cut-outs of people, ready to be photoshopped into buildings.
In the early years of free, online render-people databases, there was a stark homogeneity to the people represented. As the people providing the crowdsourced images were from predominantly Caucasian, Scandinavian countries, there was a surge of such people appearing in renders in projects across the world. In wake of this, other groups have worked to produce workable databases of diverse, culturally representative render people, giving architects and architecture students the freedom to accurately depict their work in its intended context.
We’ve rounded up 5 different sites that offer free render people of a wide range of ethnicities. See them all after the break.
Architects Team Up with Khmer Women to Build a Community Centre with Fabric and Concrete
Using an innovative method of casting concrete in lightweight fabric molds, the architects of Orkidstudio -- along with StructureMode -- teamed up with a group of Khmer women in Sihanoukville, Cambodia to rebuild a community centre in the city’s urban heart.
The construction technique was developed and tested by engineers from StructureMode using a combination of physical testing and computer analysis software, Oasys GSA Suite, to predict the stretch of a particular fabric when concrete is poured inside. Through three-dimensional sketches the seamstresses and building team could understand the construction sequence of the form, completing the entire project in just eight weeks.
[baragaño]’s #bh01: How to Build a House in 80 Days
Inspired by the mass production of the automotive and aerospace industries, Spanish architects [baragaño], in collaboration with ArcelorMittal, have designed a housing model that can be completely constructed in a factory. Once completed, the house is transported to the site and installed.
The basic model [#bh01] is 39 square meters, composed of two volumes and can be easily expanded both horizontally and vertically in the future. According to the architects, it’s a method that “makes construction easier, generates less waste than traditional systems and increases the safety of personnel involved in the assembly work.”
Architectural Photographers: Rodrigo Dávila
As part of our Architectural Photographers interview series, we spoke with Rodrigo Dávila, an architecture photographer based in Bogotá. When he was a teenager, Dávila inherited a Rolleiflex medium-format camera from his grandfather and never looked back. After working as an architect for two years and taking pictures of landscapes in his free time, Rodrigo moved to Melbourne, Australia to study photography at RMIT University. Back in Colombia, Dávila established a photography business through which he expresses his passion for design, Scandinavian architecture and contemporary buildings.
“Architectural photography works in the opposite way of designing a building. Instead of projecting in order to construct a building, a photographer analyzes the image in order to deconstruct the building and understand the architect’s intention," explained Dávila.
Read the complete interview after the break.