The Revit Importer converts families and building elements to SketchUp’s native tags and components. It optimizes geometry creating a lightweight and well-organized SketchUp file that is ready-to-use.

Renderpeople, a company that produces 3D-models of people ready to be rendered in any program, has released two of their models for free, to demonstrate the effectiveness of their product. “Rosy” and “Dennis” are now available through their website, and can be used in any 3D-modeling and rendering software. Unlike other, free sites like SKALGUBBAR and Escalalatina which offer PNG images of people for use with Photoshop, Renderpeople offers detailed, life-like 3D models which can be placed directly into the modeled environments in question.

Innovation, rebellion or “the next big thing” – whatever you call it, it seems architects and designers are eternally on the hunt for the idea that will put them on the map: the original thought that is fully and unarguably theirs. In this essay by Isaac Asimov, written in 1959 but only recently published on Technology Review, the scientist and writer poses the question: how do people get new ideas? Though originally written to provoke scientists and engineers working on defense systems, the thoughts and contributions serve as a gentle reminder to all creative classes, of the role of collaboration, play and failure in the design process.

Through her project "Cities and Memory - the Architecture and the City" Architect Marta Vilarinho de Freitas has created a set of illustrations that focus on architecture and the fantasy worlds it can create. The project arose from her thesis on “Communicating Art” at the Superior Artística School in Porto, and seeks to tell stories of the “cities and the life that inhabits in each of them.”

View more images and a text from the architect after the break. 

+ 9

Argentine photographer and architect Federico Cairoli has shared photos with us of Clorindo Testa’s Banco de Londres (Bank of London) in Buenos Aires. Testa and his firm SEPRA won a competition in 1959 to design the bank and the Brutalist building was completed in 1966.

View Cairoli’s photos after the break and check out more of his work on his webpage and Facebook page.

+ 11

Ryan McAmis, an artist from Brooklyn, New York, is designing and building a miniature, scale model of a late Gothic Italian Cathedral, recreating everything from the stained glass windows to the vaulted ceiling, wall tombs and paintings. He first creates the pieces from a variety of materials, ranging from hand scribed brickwork on treated paper, to clay and wood. He then combines the materials together and creates a silicon mold, casting each piece in white plastic to be hand painted later. See more photos and read about his process after the break.

+ 8

The European University of Valencia offers a postgraduate education linked to Architecture and Design through three educational programmes. The different MArch programmes are directed by Fran Silvestre and feature influential speakers from current architecture, such as: Alvaro Siza, Souto de Moura, Manuel Aires Mateus, OAB • Carlos Ferrater and Juan Domingo Santos.

Architect David Craig and Dublin Design Studio have launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter for Scriba - a stylus designed with the input of hundreds of illustrators, designers, architects, animators, artists, mobile workers and tablet users that aims to make sketching for architects and designers more natural than ever.

The city of London has been growing rapidly in the past decade, and with the help of New London Architecture's large-scale urban model of the city, some strange and interesting trends can be seen. Since the advent of ever-taller buildings, London has put laws into place to prevent views to historically significant buildings like St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Parliament Building from being blocked. As a result, strangely-shaped designs like the Leadenhall Building, endearingly referred to as the “cheese grater” by Londoners, have emerged as a way to work around the sightlines enforced by the city. Watch the video above for more on this interesting design dilemma.

São Paulo 's famed elevated highway, the Minhocão is lauded for its dual use; during the day its serves as a highway, and at night, Sundays and holidays parts of the 2.2-mile roadway transform into a bustling public space. The Curbed reports , the densely populated space is lined with window-less towers and massive "Blind Walls," that Were once used the space for advertisement. However, since ads Were banned in 2006, artists have Begun to slowly transform these walls into beautiful art. Nitsche Architects is the latest to Intervene, exposing the inner life of one of the building's with a human-scale, monochrome wall. Read on for more images.

+ 16

Videos

The success of a design, from inception to construction, can depend on the extent to which designers can represent their intentions, but the days when architects used the drafting pencil and parallel edge to exercise physical control over their work are rapidly fading away. While computerization makes possible innovative forms and new methods of working, if not calibrated and engineered perfectly, digital technology can bring unintended consequences into the design process. Samsung’s UD970 monitor, however, resynchronizes the design process with the build environment through ultra-high definition (UHD) technology. Samsung partnered with leading designers, including Mark English Architects, to explore the importance of high-resolution detail in their work and ArchDaily has teamed up to bring these UHD monitors to our readers. To learn more, read on after the break.

Born in 1957 in Moscow, artist Nikolay Polissky creates impressive, handcrafted structures in the middle of Russia's vast landscapes. Mostly carried out in the town of Nikola Lenivets -- located 200 km from the Russian capital -- his works are built entirely by the area's residents, using local materials, such as branches, trunks and wooden tables. Traditional construction techniques are used as a starting point for the projects.

His work is inspiring not only because of its imposing form, but also because he managed to re-activate a semi-abandoned village through art and architecture, involving residents in the creative process and transforming the region into a sort of open cultural center. Since 2003, his work has been part of Archstoyanie, the largest Land-Art festival in Russia.

+ 34

Artist and architect Inés Esnal’s Prism installation uses colorful elastic rope to form triangular spaces that filter light into the lobby of a new residential building in New York.

The installation's vivid colors and optical illusions provide a bold contrast to the concrete walls.

View images and learn more about the project after the break. 

+ 12

A design team from Belgium is developing a new way to add real estate to your laptop. The Sliden’joy, founded by Charlee Jeunehomme, Laurent Wéry and Thomas Castro, is an attachment for Mac and PC that adds up to two extra displays to your laptop.

With the ability to rotate each (13”, 15” or 17”) monitors 180°, the attachment gives you 360° visibility of your screen. The thickness of the unit varies, depending on how many screens and which finish the user selects; the 2-screen unit is currently 1.7 centimeters thick, though the designers claim it could be thinner. Finishes include wood, leather and carbon.

The European parliament will vote today on an amendment to the EU’s copyright rules, which if passed would restrict Freedom of Panorama throughout the EU. This could result in thousands of building images being deleted from Wikipedia, and put restrictions on which photos people can upload and share online.

Freedom of Panorama is an exception to copyright rules, allowing photographs of public spaces and buildings to be used without restriction, while protecting the rights of the architect or artist. Currently some countries in the EU have full Freedom of Panorama, while other countries have it in place only for buildings or only for non-commercial uses -- or not in place at all.

Happy Fourth of July! In recognition of Independence Day in the United States, ArchDaily has assembled six of our favorite "American Classics." Featuring projects by Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, and Richard Meier, each of these canonical works occupies a prominent place in twentieth-century American architecture. See them all after the break.

A new project in Detroit aims to repurpose a vacant house into a public performance space – but it needs your help. House Opera is the result of a collaboration between V. Mitch McEwen and her partner at A(n) Office, Marcelo Lopez-Dinardi. After McEwen purchased a vacant, stripped down house from the city of Detroit two and a half years ago, the two began removing elements of the “house” in order to transform it into an open theater space, meant to showcase Detroit storytelling.

Joined by Detroit curators and community organizers, as well as design and art collaborators from around the country, the project has received a $10,000 Knight Arts Challenge grant to fund half of the project. But support is needed to fund the other half. They have launched a fundraiser, which ends on July 2, 2015 12:59 AM, and donations can be made here. Learn more about the project after the break.

Traces of human life lingering behind, forms carving their way through the land and sky, objects left in disuse and air that seems frozen in time -- whether morbid or sublime, abandoned buildings and settlements are an object of fascination and intrigue to architects and non-architects alike. As Shanghai-based photographer Jane Qing's photos of an abandoned village on Gouqi Island in China demonstrate, there is a rare kind of beauty to be found in the left-behind and the neglected.

See more photos after the break.

Born from the collaboration of illustrator EvilHairDay and blogger The Angry Architect, Archibeans is a look into the daily trials of architecture students with a touch of humor. Whether it's all-nighters, overdoses of caffeine, random bursts of inspiration or crushing final reviews, Archibeans shows that we’ve all been there and offers a laugh at our own expense.