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.

Kengo Kuma & Associates have been tapped to design a new high-rise residential complex on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow, adjacent to the new business district of Moscow City. The project will be the first urban plan in Moscow to take the form of superstructures rather than individual buildings, and will be Kuma’s first project in the Russian Capital.

Public spaces, squares, and parks in New York City are administered by the city’s Department of Parks & Recreation (NYC Parks).

In recent years, the agency has been responsible for creating new programs to help children, youth and adults be aware of the importance of caring for their urban landscape.

One of these programs is a TreesCount! which in 2015 gathered 2,300 volunteers to learn about the trees in their environment, what state they are in, what care they need, what their measurements are, and how they benefit the surrounding community, etc.

For months, they walked the streets of the five boroughs together with a group of monitors who previously trained them to recognize what trees they were studying and their characteristics. 

Mola, creator of the Mola Structural Kit, is back at it with a second interactive structural kit aimed at changing the way people study and teach structures around the world. Mola sold over 4000 of their first kit across more than 50 countries in 2014, and now you can back the newest expansion on Brazilian crowdfunding website Catarse.

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Realrich Architecture Workshop's Brava Casa 99 Percent Sumarah was inspired by an Indonesian form of meditation centered on the philosophy of life. Sumarah is defined as a "total surrender," allowing the partial ego to give way to the universal self.

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After 21 years of playing in St. Louis, the Rams are moving back to Los Angeles — and a new stadium will greet them. Slated to open in 2019, HKS's new LA Stadium will be the largest in the NFL (covering three acres) in addition to the home of the Los Angeles Rams. Beyond sports usage, the structure will also host a performing arts center and sweeping public gardens.

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Dutch firm Studio Anne Holtrop has won the 2016 Challenge of The Time, an international architectural prize named by architect and artist Iakov Chernikhov. Now in its fifth iteration, the prize honors young architects up to 44 years old for the “best architectural project concepts that [feature an] innovative approach” and face “challenges to the future.”

Studio Anne Holtrop’s work varies from spatial temporary models and pavilions to extensive public buildings. For instance, over the past several years, the studio has designed the Museum Fort Behten near Utrect, and the National Pavilion of Bahrain for the EXPO exhibition in Milan, as well as for the Venice Biennale.

Cannon Design has unveiled its proposal for a mixed-use Cancer Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Originally envisioned as a “private hospital serving patients that can afford a high quality of health care,” the project transformed into a partnership between the public and private sector after preliminary feasibility studies determined the price of the site to be prohibitively high.

Thus, the project expanded to become a mixed-use complex with ownership shared between socially minded city government and private investors.

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Seattle-based firm LMN Architects have won an Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Award for Excellence for its Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio, Texas.

“Designed by LMN Architects in partnership with executive architects Marmon Mok Architecture, the $150 million expansion and renovation project embrace the multi-faceted cultural identity of the city with a distinctive tapestry of form, materiality, light, and landscape" stated Mark Reddington, FAIA, lead designer and partner at LMN Architects.

Completed in 2014, the project incorporates a metallic veil that wraps program elements in programmable LED lighting, in order to create a variable play of light on the city’s skyline.

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White Arkitekter has teamed up with the City of Stockholm to redevelop Södra Skanstull, a neighborhood characterized by obstructive overland infrastructure bridging the south of Stockholm to the island of Södermalm.

In order to reclaim these underused areas of the city, the revitalization project will create pedestrian and cyclist boulevards, as well as 65,000 square meters of space for culture, sports, and offices, 22,000 square meters for commerce, and 750 new apartments. The project will additionally identify, map, and upgrade existing facilities.

Architectural photographer Rod Edwards specializes in 360º virtual reality imagery and virtual tours of iconic buildings. Having spent the last decade producing this type of media, Edwards was recently commissioned by Visit Britain to shoot his “More London” project as part of the global campaign for the 2015 James Bond film “Spectre.”

Read on to see “More London” and more projects by Edwards.

Last year Monoskop delighted the architecture and art community by making many of the Bauhaus publications available to freely download. As a perennial fan of all types of architecture communication, I had previously written about the exceptional qualities of Bauhaus-produced books and journals and how these visual teaching tools ultimately influenced more recent, canonical publications. Below we share an edited excerpt from “Architects’ Books: Le Corbusier and The Bauhaus,” a chapter from the larger research project, Redefining The Monograph: The Publications of OMA and Rem Koolhaas.

To access Monoskop’s treasure trove, which includes titles by visionaries such as Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and others, visit Monoskop's Bauhaus archive.

As the Bauhaus operated in a generally experimental and revolutionary status, the information taught was not unified in any particularly accessible form. The Bauhausbücher were produced in order to expose the elements of the Bauhaus education to the original, small student body. These books later proved invaluable when the school was closed by the National Socialist Government in 1933, their contents holding authentic records of Bauhaus education. Merging theory and practice, the books, designed by Moholy-Nagy, are a testament to his creative ideas. He saw traditional forms of information dissemination as supplying information to students without stressing the relevance and relationship to the world in which they were living. His books sought to clarify these relationships through stimulating images and insightful (though at times lengthy and ethereal) text.

Videos

After the success of its 6th edition in 2007, Sketchup became one of the world's most widely used 3D modeling software products. This is thanks to its intuitive toolbar, interdisciplinary use within the creative industry (not just architects) and having a free version that doesn't use watermarks.

Its open source library helped the software to provide a wide range of 3D objects, while hundreds of users developed their own plugins not only to solve the problems of each version but also to exploit the potential of their tools.

We’re going to introduce you to 10 of the plugins shared by Sketchup Tutorials Facebook page using their demonstrative GIFs. If you don’t know how to add a SketchUp plugin, don’t worry! You can learn in this video also posted by them.

In a comment to the Architects' Journal, Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa has expressed concern over the Guggenheim's plans to build a new museum in the city of Helsinki.

The project emphasises a consumerist and touristic view of art at the expense of the cultural and humane task of art. instead of strengthening local artistic traditions and practices, the project strengthens the already doubtful globalisation and commercialisation of art. The public funds could clearly be used in a more innovative and efficient manner to support Finnish artistic culture. 

Pneumatic Vacuum Elevators, LLC has created a series of air-powered, space-saving, “plug & play” elevators designed to be easily installed into home environments.

Ranging from a single-passenger to a three-passenger, wheelchair accessible model, the elevators—called Pneumatic Vacuum Elevators (PVE)—are self-supporting, and do not require equipment rooms or other additional spaces above or below the shaft. Similarly, the elevators are completely enclosed and are not built into the framework of the home around them, and thus it can easily be relocated.

Last week ArchDaily attended the 2016 World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Berlin. Following his opening keynote address, we talked to Ben van Berkel of UN Studio who spoke of his interest in using technology in architecture to improve not only user experience, but to affect qualitative aspects of design itself. Together with his partner Caroline Bos, Van Berkel recently published Knowledge Matters, a book positioned "to help architects to run a better studio and to share knowledge."

A photo posted by Manifesta Biennial (@manifestabiennial) on Nov 23, 2016 at 8:05am PST

OMA, led by partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, have been chosen as the "Creative Mediators" for the 12th edition of Manifesta, which will be held in Palermo in 2018. The practice will assemble an interdisciplinary team to investigate the role of governance in the Italian city, and address how contemporary urban centers are affected by tourism, gentrification, migration and climate change. They will also work "with specialists from the fields of contemporary art, sociology, music, cinema and architecture" to develop a series of "interactive, interdisciplinary, performative and artistic interventions."