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Shigeru Ban Architects have been selected to a new 420-acre campus for the owners of Kentucky Owl Bourbon just south of Louisville, Kentucky. The new project will convert the former Cedar Creek Quarry into a distillery, bottling center, and rickhouses. Working with landscape architects Design Workshop from Denver and Earthscape from Tokyo, the $150 million project will be built with three timber pyramids housing the distillery at the center of the development. The new plans come after Stoli Group purchased the Kentucky Owl brand in 2017.

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Steven Chilton Architects has released details of their proposed Puzzle Ball Theatre in the Huadu District of Guangzhou, China. The 2000-seat spherical scheme is influenced by the ancient art of puzzle balls; “intricately carved sculptural ornaments consisting of several concentric spheres, each freely rotating with the next and traditionally formed from a single block of material.”

The Chilton scheme, along with the original Yue-inspired show it will contain, seeks to evoke the characteristics and qualities of the ancient art, through a spherical massing, asymmetric overlapping patterns, and a complex surface geometry.

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Foster + Partners have unveiled details of their latest proposed tower for the City of London. “The Tulip” seeks to become a “new public cultural attraction” sitting adjacent to The Gherkin: one of Foster’s and London’s most iconic structures.

The 305-meter-high, bud-like scheme, named after its nature-inspired form, will offer an education facility operated by building owners J. Safra Group. The program, with 20,000 free places per year for London’s state school children, will feature “unparalleled vantage point to view London from a height of around 300 meters.”

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The Tallinn Architecture Biennale has announced the shortlisted schemes for their 2019 Installation Programme Competition “Huts and Habitats.” 137 worldwide submissions were received for the two-stage competition, aimed at “offering emerging architectural talents the opportunity to design and built an experimental wooden structure in the heart of Tallinn.”

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Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena shares the fundamentals of his design philosophy in a documented interview titled “To Design is to Prefer.” The Pritzker Prize winner founded his practice in 2001, committed to exploring socially conscious design practices. His firm, Elemental, first gained international recognition for its work creating social housing projects in Chile, but its portfolio continues to expand to include work from museums, universities, transportation, and urban infrastructure.

This video highlights the mental process behind Aravena’s personal practices and insights into Elemental’s unique approach to design. The interview begins discussing Aravena’s introduction to architecture as a teen and how architecture, a rather obscure phenomenon to the young Aravena, became his passion. Throughout the film, Aravena flips to the pages of his sketchbooks, illustrating the raw hand of the architect.

At IE School of Architecture and Design, we know that the world of work is changing so fast that we cannot always keep up. Industry disruptors, such as emerging technologies, are unsettling the setup of the traditional office. Workforce demands, the ongoing talent war, and the threat of job replacement by AI all contribute to a workforce under tremendous pressure, creating new dynamics at work.

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