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New York City’s Hudson Yards has opened its doors to the public, and the reviews are flooding in. Built on Midtown Manhattan’s West Side, the project is New York’s largest development to date and the largest private real estate venture in American history, covering almost 14 acres of land with residential towers, offices, plazas, shopping centers, and restaurants. A host of architecture firms have shaped the development, including BIG, SOM, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Rockwell Group, and many others.

Read on to find out how critics have responded to Hudson Yards so far.

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Carlo Ratti Associati has published details of their competition-winning design for the Italian Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, designed in collaboration with Italo Rota, Matteo Gatto, and F&M Ingegneria. Inspired by Dubai’s marine tradition, the pavilion’s construction sequence will see three boats arrive in Dubai by sea, before being raised and turned upside down to become the roof of the pavilion.

Titled “Sailing Beauty,” the pavilion seeks to explore new ways in which “beauty connects people,” embodying the theme of Italy’s participation in Dubai Expo 2020. The pavilion also pays tribute to the long history of explorers throughout the centuries who “sailed the seas and wove together a shared Mediterranean cultural heritage.”

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Where does originality and independent thinking come from? The answer is prosaically straight forward – from an inquiring individual, and an experimental environment wouldn’t hurt to stimulate it. Rem Koolhaas is credited with fostering such an environment, both through building his practice, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), a 300-architect network of seven global offices, and teaching at Harvard’s GSD, as well as lecturing all over the world. Koolhaas now has eight partners. One of the eight, since 2008, is Shohei Shigematsu who heads OMA New York since 2006. The studio originally numbered just a handful of people and over the years has grown into a large practice of 75 architects with a focus on projects in North America.

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Albania’s capital city, Tirana, is slated to receive the country’s first Vertical Forest in a scheme designed by Milanese architecture firm, Stefano Boeri Architetti. Originating as part of the city’s new development master plan completed by the firm 3 years ago, the building will greatly increase the amount of greenery within and around the metropolitan area. Tirana’s Vertical Forest will contain 21 floors above ground with 4 more below and will be populated by 105 apartment units above a primarily commercial ground floor.

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