Communicating ideas through imagery are central to the design process. In client presentations, site visits, or public exhibitions, we are required to represent important aspects clearly to the receiver, who is often not an architect. Furthermore, producing detailed architectural drawings can allow us to identify and modify certain aspects of the design.
Diagrams and charts, because of their non-spatial characteristics, are often neglected until the last moments of the design process, however, they can be a useful tool for analysis and organization. Taking the time to think and articulate these elements yield positive results, from understanding and organizing a design process to providing an unexpected change of idea.
In an effort to enhance the graphics and diagrams in architectural representation, check out this series of case studies to help you boost the visual, analytical, organizational power of your work.
As part of the second Bamboo Biennale held in October 2016, the city of Solo in Central Java received a public Bamboo Bridge courtesy of Indonesian Architects Without Borders (ASF-ID). Connecting the Pasar Gede market and colonial Dutch Vastenburg Fort, the 18-meter bamboo structure offers a revitalization of river life in the historic Indonesian city. Spanning across the Kali Pepe river, residents of Java can traverse the pedestrian bridge on its track that varies in width from 1.8 to 2.3 meters.
The international Prix Versailles Committee has announced the recipients of its annual awards celebrating built commercial architecture. The awards were held at the UNESCO World Headquarters, with recipients hailing from 6 regions around the world. Chaired by the Mayor of Versailles François de Mazières, the international jury included architects Manuelle Gautrand, Toyo Ito, Wang Shu, and acclaimed chef Guy Laroche.
The 12 World Titles are awarded in 4 top categories: stores, shopping malls, hotels and restaurants. The winners were selected from a diverse range of 70 regional winners already present in the ceremony.
A team of architects from Florence, Italy have won CAMBOO’s bamboo design competition showcasing the material for its strong and sustainable construction qualities. Held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the CAMBOO festival sought to find an innovative design for a landmark pavilion as a centerpiece during the event. Architects Roberto Bologna, Fernando Barth, Chiara Moretti and Denny Pagliai beat out 125 entries with their winning “Hyperbamboo” pavilion, which was chosen for its “intelligent and well thought out use of bamboo as a construction material.”
Charles Thornton, one of the world’s preeminent structural engineers, once said that the greatest challenge facing the profession of structural engineering is that “I don’t think we have enough self-esteem and enough confidence in ourselves to believe that what we do is so important... Architects are trained to present, to communicate, to sell, to promote themselves, to promote their industry, and to take credit for what they do.”
As a structural engineer with over a decade of experience, I agree with Mr. Thornton—to an extent.
Good location, harmonious growth over time, concern for urban design, and the delivery of a structure that has "middle-class DNA" are the key points of the ABC of incremental housing, developed in detail by the Chilean architects ELEMENTAL. It's a question of ensuring a balance between "low-rise high-density, without overcrowding, with the possibility of expansion (from social housing to middle-class dwelling)."
Following this line of action, the office has released the drawings of four of the projects carried out under these principles, to serve as good examples of design which have already been implemented and proven in reality. However, despite making them available for free consultation and download, the architects emphasize that these designs must be adjusted to comply with the regulations and structural codes of each locality, using relevant building materials.
First Prize: The Music Telescope / Lucia Filippini, Elisa Dellarossa & Tuana Yıldız. Image Courtesy of Bee Breeders
Bee Breeders have selected the winners of the Mango Vinyl Hub Competition, challenging entries to marry architecture, music, industry, and design in the repurposing of a decrepit tin foil factory in Cesis, Latvia. With a focus on the revival of the vinyl record industry, “successful projects temper the impulse of retrojecting nostalgic hallmark or tradition, through revitalization of purpose of an artifact and history of a bygone era.”
Here are the winning visions of the Mango Vinyl Hub:
Despite the insistence of some, vinyl records haven’t undergone a resurgence because of their supposed superior sound quality. Instead, the impractical medium remains cherished for its quirk and ambiguity. As of late, the collage has made a has made a comeback as a representational strategy for the very same reason, sparking a recent debate around the potential emergence of "post-digital drawing."
Intentionally fantastical compilations empower architects to create clear narratives to supplement their work. In response to this growing popularity, a number of websites have popped up to bolster the trend. Image hosting hub ARTCUTOUT is a curated collection of meticulously detailed, public domain .PNGs nabbed from works of art that were “mostly created several centuries ago by European painters and cartographers.” Serving as a something akin to a “post-digital” version of famed render hub SKALGUBBAR, ARTCUTOUT has the potential to be a go-to resource for the next wave of designers.
The textures, colors, and details, captured by @hernanmat in these minimalist photographs, show the vibrancy of the patterns and elements characteristic of the local, traditional and popular architecture of Argentina.
By photographing and compiling all these elements into one place, the collection becomes in a way a reflection of the different components of Argentine architecture that occupy the collective memory.
Check out below a stunning selection of minimalist photographs by @hernanmat.
Renderings have been revealed for a new 832-foot-tall skyscraper that will rise from a current vacant lot on Chicago’s historic Michigan Avenue. Known as 1000M, the tower has been designed by JAHN, the practice helmed by one of Chicago’s most prolific architects, Helmut Jahn. The 74-story building will feature a blue-green glass curtain wall subdivided with metal horizontal spandrel panels, and a metallic mesh crown hovering over a rooftop terrace.
Table, MAD Martian Collection by MAD Architects. Image Courtesy of MAD Architects
With Design Miami/ Basel 2017 well underway (from June 13-18), ArchDaily has compiled a list of the best architect-designed furniture pieces on display at the event. This year, notable items include works by MAD Architects, Christ & Gantenbien, Trix & Robert Haussman, John Lautner, Jonathen Muecke, Jean Prouvé and Sou Fujimoto.
Some unbuilt designs—the hopes they reveal and the reasons they stayed unbuilt—tell a powerful story. So it is with the home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. Or perhaps it’s what we think we know about Marilyn that makes it so poignant?
The union between a quiet-living intellectual and the world’s greatest sex symbol was baffling to the public, and the conflict between their aspirations and personalities seems to have played out in their plans for this Connecticut home. After moving into Miller’s country retreat, Monroe asked Wright to design a new house for them on this vast piece of land.
John Rhodes, a director of HOK’s Sports + Recreation + Entertainment practice, met with legendary rugby players Jamie Roberts (Wales), Tim Visser (Scotland), James Horwill (Australia) and Danny Care (England) to capture their ideas, both as players and fans. The findings were collated into a video by HOK, which you can watch below.
Rome-based firm Schiattarella Associati have unveiled the design of a new community mosque complex in the city of Ha’il in Saudi Arabia, using traditional cultural elements of Najd architecture to create a new landmark in the area. The 22,500 square meter Al Jabri Mosque accommodates 3000 people and focuses on “the principle of a people-oriented city and proposes it back again using a contemporary language respectful and attentive in the use of shapes and materials.”
The lawsuit states that the 104-story One World Trade bears a “striking similarity” to his 122-story “Cityfront ‘99” tower, which also featured a glass facade of inverted triangular planes.
https://www.archdaily.com/873750/architect-sues-som-for-stealing-one-world-trade-center-designAD Editorial Team
“The world’s most sustainable eco-city,”Masdar City, is preparing for its next phase of development, as unveiled in the award-winning detailed master plan (DMP) by CBT. Depicted in a comprehensive masterplan by Foster + Partners, Masdar was originally envisioned as a carbon-neutral elevated city without cars, instead featuring pod-based transportation located below the podium. As the first phase was constructed, including the Masdar Institute of Technology, a new vision for the city began to emerge, eventually leading to CBT’s pedestrian-oriented innovation community plan for Phase 2.
One of the world’s most recognizable landmarks, the SeattleSpace Needle, is set to undergo a $100 million renovation project focused on the structure’s preservation and the enhancement of the visitor experience by opening up spaces to dramatically improved views.
Designed by Olson Kundig with interiors by Tihany Design, the scheme will intensify the Observation Deck experience through the addition of floor-to-ceiling glass on both the interior and exterior spaces, creating unobstructed 360 degree views of the Puget Sound and Seattle skyline . The renovation will also reimagine the Needle’s restaurant level by featuring a “first-of-its-kind” rotating glass floor to offer never-before-seen downward views of the structure.
The Royal Institute of British Architects' (RIBA) new national architecture center, RIBA North, will open this week (June 17th) in Liverpool as part of the Mann Island project – a complex of waterfront buildings designed by Broadway Malyan and completed in 2013. At the core of the launch of the Institute's largest national outpost will sit an exhibition, located in the new City Gallery, exploring Liverpool’s "long, often maverick, history of architectural ambition, its willingness to take risks and consider audacious [architectural] schemes."
Imagine you’re part of a crew constructing a new office building: Midway through the process, you’re on-site, inspecting the installation of HVAC systems. You put on a funny-looking construction helmet and step out of the service elevator. As you look up, there’s a drop ceiling being installed, but you want to know what’s going on behind it.
Through the visor on your helmet, you pull up the Building Information Model (BIM), which is instantly projected across your field of vision. There are heating ducts, water pipes, and electrical boxes, moving and shifting with your point of view as you walk along the corridors. Peel back layers of the model to see the building’s steel structure, insulation, and material finishes. It’s like having comic book-style X-ray vision—and soon, it could be a reality on a construction site near you.
Mecanoo and MAYU Architects+ have begun construction on the new Tainan Public Library in Taiwan. The joint proposal was selected as a winner of a competition by the Tainan City Government held in February 2016. The proposal’s program hosting people of all ages, combined with its distinctive stepped façade will serve as a key addition to Tainan's cultural landscape. The design has gone through revisions with updated drawings released by Mecanoo.
Cocoweb - a lighting source that combines classic design with modern, energy-efficient technology.
As environmentally-conscious design becomes more and more sought after in the fields of architecture and interior design, the use of LED lights becomes an essential part of an eco-friendly building’s creation. Southern California-based lighting company Cocoweb, inspired by this notion, offers all their products integrated with LED technology. The classic light fixtures that the company started with are all customizable, so the colors of the shades, bases, and arms, as well as the arm and shade styles, are interchangeable.
The 22nd ARCH Moscow International Exhibition of Architecture and Design was held in Moscow on May 24-28. ArchDaily joined the exhibition’s partners this year for the first time, and together with speech: media-project they presented a special exposition during Arch Moscow.
Featuring the buildings that received the ArchDaily Building of the Year award in 2017. The 16 sites that received the most votes this year from visitors of the ArchDaily website became the focus of this exposition designed by the architect Sergei Tchoban (together with the architect Andrei Perlich, and curator Anna Martovitskaya – chief editor of speech: magazine). In order to best show the sites’ photographs and drawings, the installation was designed in the form of 8 double blocks, whose shape and color reference the ArchDaily logo. Before us are snow-white rectangular blocks with the recognizable blue window-niches, and it is in these niches that the photographs of the best buildings of the year are displayed.
The city of Helsinki has announced the launch of a self-driving bus line that will integrate into the city’s regular transportation service. The service, known as the Helsinki RoboBusLine, is the second phase of a three-year experimentation with autonomous buses as part of the Sohjoa project, an EU-financed venture by the six largest cities of Finland, Finnish universities, and transportation authorities to prepare for new public transit services and autonomous vehicles.
The first phase of the project, debuted in August of last year, saw the implementation of two self-driving electric minibuses capable of traveling at just 11 kilometers per hour, and with an operator on board in case of emergency. The RoboBusLine will take the next step, allowing the bus to travel like a more traditional bus.
Once largely viewed as a fringe activity belonging to passionate extremists, protest is now—in the wake of a controversial new administration’s ascension to power in the US and a heightened interest in politics globally—a commonplace occurrence, with a much broader participant base in need of places to gather and move en masse. This revitalized interest in protest was perhaps most visible on one particularly historic occasion: on January 21st, 2017, a record-breaking 4.2 million people took to the streets across the US to exercise their first-amendment rights.
Women’s marches took place on the frozen tundra (we have photographic evidence from a scientist in the Arctic Circle) and even in a Los Angeles cancer ward. But for the most part, these protests happened in the streets. In the first few months of 2017, the streets of our cities suddenly took center stage on screens across the world. From Washington to Seattle, Sydney to San Antonio, Paris to Fairbanks, broad boulevards and small town main streets were transformed from spaces for movement to places of resistance. From the Women’s March on Washington to April’s People’s Climate March, protestors are looking for space to convene and advocate for the issues that matter most to them.
https://www.archdaily.com/873608/8-ways-we-can-improve-the-design-of-our-streets-for-protestGina Ford and Martin Zogran
.jpg?1497550945 "Masdar City Phase 2. Image Courtesy of CBT")
.jpg?1497550961 "Masdar City Phase 2. Image Courtesy of CBT")
