A guide from Graphisoft on how to create powerful design presentations with Archicad through the use of Archicad version 25.

In both of ArchDaily's last two major website redesigns, one idea was central to our thinking: Mies van der Rohe's aphorism "less is more." These redesigns added new features, sure - but more importantly, they identified extraneous features on the site and removed them. Today, on February 9th 2017, we are removing one more feature that we no longer believe to be necessary on ArchDaily: comments on certain articles.

All comments previously left on our articles will still be visible, preserving the many positive contributions left by our readers over the years. But from today, we will be gradually shifting the discussion to social media, leaving comments open only on News and Editorial articles while the option to comment on Projects, Events, Competitions and Publications articles will be removed. Instead, we encourage readers to take part in the discussions happening on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or to get in touch through our contact form for direct feedback or substantive comments about our articles. Read on to understand the reasons behind our decision.

It is difficult to understand and quantify the importance of design in our lives. However, when we take a closer look at the pieces that inspire and transform our daily life, innovative furniture brings us new ways of seeing the world, further enhancing the meaning of simple concepts like beauty, comfort, and quality.

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Benjamin Bratton, Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Design at the University of California, San Diego, is the new Programme Director at Moscow's Strelka Institute. The New Normal is based on the premise that "something has shifted. [...] We are making new worlds faster than we can keep track of them, and the pace is unlikely to slow."

Have our technologies have advanced beyond our ability to conceptualize their implications? "One impulse," the course advocates, "is to pull the emergency brake and to try put all the genies back in the bottle." According to Bratton, this is hopeless. "Better instead to invest in emergence, in contingency: to map The New Normal for what it is, and to shape it toward what it should be."

Artist Rachel Whiteread has won the 2017 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize, which recognizes individuals working in the wider architectural industry who have made a significant contribution to architecture and the built environment. Whiteread was selected by respondents to the Architectural Review’s Women In Architecture: Working in Architecture survey.

Some of Whiteread’s notable work includes her 1993 Turner Prize-winning House, her collaboration with architects like Caruso St John on the UK Holocaust Memorial International Design Competition, and her participation on the RIBA Stirling Prize 2016 jury.

Modernisation de Roland-Garros by FFT

Stade du Roland Garros, home of one of tennis’ four grand slam tournaments, the French Open, has revealed animations of the two new stadia planned for the historic park grounds. The renovations will include a $400 million redesign of the event’s main stadium and a brand new greenhouse-inspired court, the first of its kind at a major tournament.

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The Office for Creative Research's winning design for the 2017 Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition, We Were Strangers Once Too, has officially opened in New York City's Times Square. A celebration of New York City’s rich immigrant culture, the sculpture takes the form of 33 metal poles inscribed with the origins of foreign-born NYC residents. As visitors travel around the sculpture, the red and pink blocks come together to create an iconic Valentine’s Day heart.

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As the finishing touches are applied to the long-awaited Apple Campus 2 (due to be completed in spring of this year), a new report from Reuters has revealed the fantastical strive for perfection demanded by Apple’s in-house project management team. Compiled from interviews with over 20 current and former workers on the project, the piece delves into the exceptional level of detail to which they have held their construction team, which is said to have been the cause of the delay from the project’s original 2016 completion date.

"Rethink the City; New Approaches to Global and Local Urban Challenges" is a free online course given by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, starting on March 28, 2017.

The course aims to address urban challenges in emerging countries to provide a new perspective in understanding and analyzing the southern hemisphere. For this reason, the content is structured in the following three thematic axes: "Spatial Justice," "Housing Provision and Management," and "Urban Resilience".

Enrollment is now open through the Edx.org online education platform. The course has a duration of six weeks between 3 to 4 hours per week and is aimed especially at undergraduate students, especially those in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, according to the course content.

Denise Scott Brown has won the 2017 Jane Drew Prize, an award that recognizes an architectural designer who has “raised the profile of women in architecture” through their work and commitment to design excellence, as a part of The Architectural Review’s (AR) Women in Architecture Awards.

Scott Brown’s receipt of the prize is a culmination of the grassroots drive to see her contribution to the profession adequately recognized – a movement that sprung from the Women in Architecture campaign in 2013–a quarter of a century after her partner Robert Venturi was awarded the Pritzker.

“Things have happened which have made me very happy in my old age and one of those is this prize,” said Scott Brown.

Previous winners of the Drew prize, named after advocate Jane Drew, include Odile Decq, Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara, and Zaha Hadid.

One of the United States’ most recognizable skyscrapers, the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), is set to receive a $500 million renovation designed by the Chicago office of Gensler. Announced by Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel with real estate holders Blackstone and Equity Office, the project will transform and reinvigorate the 43-year-old building, which held the title of world’s tallest building for nearly a quarter century.

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Located along banks of the Tagus in the Lisbon neighborhood of Belém, AL_A's recently completed Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology (MAAT) has brightened up the Lisbon waterfront with its sleek form and glimmering materiality since its opening last October. These qualities have now been captured in a 4K timelapse video by photographer and filmmaker Alejandro Villanueva. The video shows how the building’s presence transforms throughout the day, as the sun reflects off of its unique ceramic facade.

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The Architectural Review (AR) has announced the shortlist of 9 female architects in the running for its 2016 Woman Architect of the Year and the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture awards. This year’s candidates come from a wide range of backgrounds, operating in UK, Mexico, France, the USA and Canada, and have been lauded by the AR for their “projects demonstrating exceptional design and awareness of geographical and political contexts.”

To most people, Facebook is simple. They use it as a survival tool during never-ending university lectures. They use it to distract themselves during arguments at the family dinner table. They use it to ‘research’ that new person in the office. But when the architect signs in, everything changes. To us, Facebook is an ‘archi-forum’. Every passionate, powerful sketch of ours is uploaded. Every deep, reflective, opinion of ours is posted. Every non-architectural event is advertised with the intensity of an adventure to Narnia. Happily, we know our audience – other architects...

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The first 3D printed pedestrian bridge in the world opened to the public on December 14 in Madrid. Led by the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in a process that took a year and a half from its conception, the structure crosses a stream in Castilla-La Mancha Park in Alcobendas, Madrid.

Although similar initiatives have already been announced in the Netherlands, this is the first to have finished construction. The structure is printed in micro-reinforced concrete, and measures 12 meters in length and 1.75 meters wide.

One of architecture’s greatest tales – the commission of Mies van der Rohe’s seminal Farnsworth House – is set to receive the Hollywood treatment. As reported by Showbiz 411’s Roger Friedman, the story of the home’s construction will be taken on by actors Jeff Bridges (as the architect) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (as Dr. Edith Farnsworth), who last teamed up for 2009’s acclaimed Crazy Heart.

AART Architects has won a competition to design a significant new residential and commercial complex in the heart of Aarhus Ø, the newly developed port district of Aarhus, Denmark. The winning proposal, dubbed the Nicolinehus, focuses on “injecting life and authenticity into the new port district and [paving] the way for the unique opportunities the setting provides.” Its design draws inspiration from the old residential blocks of the city center, rethinking the courtyard block typology into a “hybrid of classic residential block and terraced landscape.”

An eclectic stacked skyscraper may become downtown Los Angeles’ newest landmark. Designed by Gensler, the 52-story tower at 1600 South Figueroa would add to Central LA’s current development boom, contributing a mix of housing, retail, offices and a hotel to the area located near the Staples Center and LA Live Entertainment district.

A little over two years since a fire devastated parts of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art, which was deemed to have been caused by fumes from a can of spray foam entering a projector fan, appointed architects Page\Park are making headway in their restoration of the building's iconic library. As part of the project, and alongside Edinburgh-based joinery firm Laurence McIntosh, the practice will create a full-scale prototype of one of the library bays in order to "test the materials and techniques used to construct the original library."

The results of a competition to propose an openable roof over the Arena di Verona, Italy have been announced. Three winners were chosen out of eighty-seven proposals to cover the famous amphitheater, a defining symbol of the city of Verona. The competition was announced in March 2016 in order to protect the Roman monument from the elements and to ensure that it continues to provide quality entertainment to spectators two thousand years after its construction.

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