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Architects: NATURALBUILD
- Area: 426 m²
- Year: 2018
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Manufacturers: LP, TOLKO, WESTFRASER
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Professionals: AND Office, Shanghai SKF Construction Co.Ltd.





The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) celebrates transformative urban places distinguished by their economic and social contributions to our nation’s cities. Winners offer creative placemaking solutions that transcend the boundaries between architecture, urban design and planning and showcase innovative thinking about American cities. One Gold Medal of $50,000 and four Silver Medals of $10,000 will be awarded.


As the tech giant's first move into prefab construction, Amazon has invested in home-building start-up Plant PreFab. Known for smart home technology and sustainable construction, Plant PreFab is based in Rialto, California and is set to become the latest addition in Amazon's Alexa-integrated homes. As CNBC reports, Amazon's Alexa Fund invested in Plant PreFab for their prefabricated single and multifamily houses and their plan to use automation to build homes faster at lower costs.

Award-winning artist and designer Es Devlin OBE is set to design the UK Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai. The scheme, titled “Poem Pavilion” will highlight “leading British expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Space,” and will be produced in collaboration with global brand agency Avantgarde.
The Poem Pavilion will feature an illuminated “Message to Space,” with each of the Expo’s projected 25 million visitors invited to contribute.


Nonprofit MLK Boston has released the final five designs for a monument to civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. The finalists include a range of offices like Adjaye Associates, Maryann Thompson Architects and MASS Design Group, as well as artists like Yinka Shonibare, Barbara Chase-Riboud and Walter Hood. As reported by Curbed Boston, the city is working with MLK Boston to make the monument part of a larger initiative that includes an educational center in Roxbury and $1 million endowment for programming related to the Kings.



Sir Nicholas Grimshaw has been awarded the 2019 Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Having played a leading role in British architecture for more than half a century, Grimshaw’s acclaimed works include the landmark International Terminal at London’s Waterloo station and the visionary Eden Project in Cornwall.
The medal is awarded in recognition of a lifetime’s work and is approved personally by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It is given to a person, or group of people, who have had a significant influence "either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture." Previous winners include Neave Brown (2018) and Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2017).

In 1948, the architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, released one of his most famous publications titled Modular, followed by Modular 2 (1953). In these texts, Le Corbusier expressed his support of the research that Vitrubio, DaVinci, and Leon Battista Alberti started centuries before: to find the mathematical relationship between human dimensions and nature.
The research of the previously mentioned authors also represents the search to explain the Parthenon, the temples, and cathedrals built according to exact measurements that reference a code of essentiality. Knowing what instruments were used in finding the essence of these buildings was the starting point, instruments that at first glance seemed to bypass time and space. It wouldn't be farfetched to say that the measurements came from essence: parts of the body such as the elbow, the finger, thumb, foot, arm, palm, etc. In fact, there are instruments and measurements that carry names alluding to parts of the human body, an indication of architecture's proximity to it.

The Humanitarian Respite shelter in the downtown section of the City of McAllen, Texas was born as a response to families in crisis. Through its services and the work of volunteers, it successfully restores dignity to people in need, particularly Central American immigrants seeking refuge crossing the border from Mexico to the US.

In a world where autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence (AI,) Internet of Things (IoT,) virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are becoming commonplace terms across the globe, the average AEC client will soon expect consistently high-quality presentations and renderings throughout the design process.
Many people are already anticipating future demand for these technologies, but few are prepared to integrate them with each other. Enscape has developed a system combining several of these features to create lively, immersive, and unforgettable experiences for clients.
