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Creating a model for rendering does have its own set of rules. To get you up and rendering as quickly as possible, here are SketchUp's top five tips for prepping your SketchUp model for rendering.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has named the initial list of speakers for the 2018 Middle East Conference, Polycentric Cities: The Future of Vertical Urbanism. The list features men and women from some of the most influential businesses in the industry, such as HOK, Safdie Architects, Kohn Pederson Fox, Gensler, Perkins+Will, SOM and many more.

The conference will highlight a wide array of subjects and disciplines related to the conference theme, as well as other hot topics in the industry, including smart technologies, modular construction, 3D-printing buildings, net-zero skyscrapers and much more.

Read on for more about Polycentric Cities and the initial list of speakers.

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Foster + Partners will detail its vision of life on Mars and the Moon at the UK’s Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018. Forming part of the festival's Future Lab event, the vision will be presented through a range of models, robotics, and futuristic designs exploring the future of life in space.

The firm's showcase will include a virtual reality experience, allowing visitors to explore the inside of a proposed state-of-the-art habitation pod.

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Henning Larsen has released images of their proposed urban development for the historic Imperial Shipyard at Gdansk, Poland. The 4.3million-square foot (400,000-square-meter) development seeks to transform the shipyard, built in 1844, into a “powerful financial and social engine building a thriving, mixed-use, inner-city neighborhood by the waterfront that is alive around the clock.”

The old industrial site has played a central role in the economic development of both Gdansk and Poland, serving as a key shipbuilding hub on the Baltic Coast. Through creating spines of public life centered on pedestrian/bicycle-friendly streets, Henning Larsen seeks to maintain the shipyard’s strong presence through waterfront living, work, and recreation.

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Kasteel van Horst, a 17th-century castle in rural Belgium, and the raucous music festival it hosts every fall are an unlikely pair. But for the past four years, the Horst Music and Art Festival hosted at the castle just outside of Leuven, Belgium has brought together international artists, musicians, architects, and designers for a weekend of creative celebration. For the fifth and final iteration of the festival this year, Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow will join the mix.

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Portuguese architectural photographer João Morgado shared with us a series of images from Álvaro Siza's latest project, the Capela do Monte. This chapel is located in Barão de São João, in the Algarve region of Portugal. Part of the Monte da Charneca complex, Capela do Monte was commissioned in 2016 by a Swiss-American couple residing there.

Inaugurated in March of this year, the sandy colored, 10.34 x 6.34-meter structure was built at the highest point of a hill and can only be accessed by foot. Its monolithic geometry suggests, from outside, a serenity from the inner space. The wooden furniture within the chapel were all designed by Siza and manufactured by Serafim Pereira Simões Successors of Porto.

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The Fab City Global Initiative in collaboration with the City Hall of Paris and the Fab City Grand Paris Association are organizing this year’s Fab City Global Initiative in Paris, France from July 11-13. The three-day program will take place at the Parc de la Villette, and bring together 18 Fab City Members and international city leaders to discuss and imagine ways to define the future of productive cities. This global collaboration project combines innovation ecosystems, governments, and industries that enable cities to become more sustainable through 2054.

The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, curated by ​Jan Boelen with Nadine Botha ​and ​Vera Sacchetti, has just announced the participants of this year’s edition. Under the theme “A School of Schools”, it seeks to explore how design education, and education in general, can evolve and adapt in a new age of artificial intelligence.

Organized by the ​Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by ​VitrA​, the Biennial will bring together old and new knowledge, academic and amateur, professional and personal, engaging multigenerational, transdisciplinary practitioners from Turkey and abroad. The event will run for six weeks, from September 22 to November 4, and willinhabit ​six of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions​, which will play host to the biennial's many schools, exploring the multiple dimensions of design as learning.

Details about the venues and participants: