The Covid-19 pandemic has been going on for over a year now, so people have consequently been traveling less, and tourism has slowed down all over the world. But that doesn't mean we still can't get to visit faraway places. Since the beginning of the lockdown, several museums and organizations have been preparing virtual tours that allow users to explore their spaces through digital immersion. With that in mind, here are four different ways for you to explore places without leaving your home.
Cities we live in today have been built on principles designed decades ago, with prospects of ensuring that they are habitable by everyone. Throughout history, cities have been catalysts of economic growth, serving as focal points for businesses and migration. However, in the last decade, particularly during the last couple of years, the world has witnessed drastic reconfigurations in the way societies work, live, and commute.
Today’s urban fabric highlights two demographic patterns: rapid urbanization and large youth populations. Cities, although growing in scale, have in fact become younger, with nearly four billion of the world’s population under the age of 30 living in urban areas, and by 2030, UN-Habitat expects 60% of urban populations to be under the age of 18. So when it comes to urban planning and the future of cities, it is evident that the youth should be part of the conversation.
“Equity” is a moving target. We who create architecture want our devotion to have a true forum of objective Equity. But motivations are not outcomes. How we judge design inevitably carries the baggage of “Style” and that makes universal equity in design apprehension impossible.
The Pritzker Architecture Prize released a special ceremony video honouring the 2021 laureates Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal. Previously held in person, each time at a different architecturally significant venue around the world, this year’s ceremony is the second pre-filmed event in the history of the Prize, following the one in 2020. The ceremony features filmed remarks from various speakers, among which are several jury members, Jury Chair Alejandro Aravena, the 2020 Prize recipients Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, as well as this year’s Laureates themselves. The video also pays tribute to the achievements of Lacaton and Vassal through footage of their built work.
Work has just begun on the late Christo's unfulfilled intervention for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The first images by architectural photographer Jad Sylla highlight the wrapping up of the famous monument with 25,000 square meters of recyclable polypropylene fabric in silvery blue, and with 3,000 meters of red rope. Scheduled for September 18 until October 3, 2021, the temporary artwork ‘l’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped’ will only remain on display for 16 days.
Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava is rebuilding World Trade Center’s St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in New York City. The church, which was destroyed during the 9/11 attacks, began its reconstruction process in 2015, and is finally reaching completion in 2022. The new structure's design is inspired by a mosaic of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, formerly the Church of Hagia Sophia, which was one of the fundamental factors in defining the original architecture of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.
Henning Larsen has revealed the design for Landehof, a new office building activating an underused plot along a railway in the city of Augsburg in Germany. As part of a masterplan meant to develop the area around the city's central train station, the contemporary addition to the complex and textured urban fabric unfolds on a long and narrow plot adjacent to the railway tracks. The design takes cues from the surrounding historical architectural styles, serving as a gateway to the city centre.
Curated by Spanish architect Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Cosmowomen. Places as constellations is an exhibition currently open at La Galleria Nazionale di Roma, Italy. Reflecting on the incorporation of women into architecture, Cosmowomen displays a series of projects developed by 65 Bartlett School of Architecture-alumni women architects from over 20 different nationalities.
With Expo 2020 Dubai scheduled to debut in less than a month, new drone shots of the venue highlight water and garden features. Aiming to “explore the power of connections in shaping our world”, Expo 2020 Dubai will run from 1 October 2021 until 31 March 2022, under strict Covid regulations, after a year delay due to the worldwide pandemic.
During the first week of September, Milan Design Week opened its doors to more than 60,000 architects, designers, artists, and craftsmen from all around the world to explore new design innovations and exchange ideas about the interior design, furniture, and lighting. In parallel to the event hosted at the Rho Fiera, interventions by world-renowned architects were installed across the city as part of the Fuorisalone.
The Fuorisalone program took place under the patronage of the Municipality of Milan, and started last April with a digital edition under the theme of "Forms of Living", taking a view on the questions that inspire and influence the future of the furniture and design. Read on to discover the top 5 outdoor installations along with their description.
Choosing a home's cabinetry and furniture is not only about function and storage space but also about visual appeal. Walk-in closets, which are normally located in the master bedroom, are a good example of this. These spaces were usually used only for storing clothes, but modern closets now incorporate more unique features, transforming them into more personal and functional amenities.
As material technology becomes more advanced and the importance of health and wellbeing is taken more seriously, sculpting sound is now a consistent part of specifiers’ briefs in all sectors, from echo-free hospitality to clear and functional meeting rooms, and even transforming home offices or music rooms into headache-free sound vaults.
Five emerging architecture studio profiles from Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Austria, the UK, and Slovakia have been chosen by New Generations, a European platform that analyses the most innovative emerging practices at the European level, providing a new space for the exchange of knowledge and confrontation, theory, and production. Since 2013, New Generations has involved more than 300 practices in a diverse program of cultural activities, such as festivals, exhibitions, open calls, video interviews, workshops, and experimental formats.
Le Corbusier was a pioneer of the Modernist Movement in architecture. Throughout his career, he undertook an array of projects all around the world. See below for 17 of his works that have been named World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, as well as many more of his other popular pieces. Hopefully, someday you get to go and see them yourself!
In this video, Will Quam of Brick of Chicago takes us around the American city to question Louis Kahn’s adage that all bricks are motivated to be arches. Here, in the Logan Square neighborhood, we find bricks of all sorts, that — in addition to arches — take on other configurations and metaphors to describe their qualities; textile bricks and diapering, brushstrokes of a painting, butter joints and glazes, soldiers and bullnoses.
OMA’s mixed-use development for Morden Wharf has just been granted planning consent from the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Planning Committee. The scheme created for developer U+I is located on a 2.4-hectare brownfield site, with an industrial past, on London’s Greenwich Peninsula facing the historic Greenwich and the millennial O2 Arena.
Work on Bjarke Ingels Group's gateway for Milan's CityLife district has officially commenced. The new-generation office building marks the completion of the CityLife area in the Italian city, an urban regeneration project that has been restored to provide a livable environment characterized by sustainability, improved quality of life, and all-inclusive services. The structure is set to "stand as a new paradigm for the offices of the future, as the outcome of a new idea of workplace based on innovative design solutions that put quality of life at the center and redefine the concept of sustainability".
Vernacular techniques and local materials are becoming more and more relevant in architecture, but is it possible to bring these concepts to large urban areas?
In 1984, the Amazonian architect Severiano Porto had already pointed out the need to make architecture more connected to its location. Using local materials and techniques is becoming more important each day, considering the impacts of the commodity chain of building construction on the planet. Not surprisingly, the number of projects that use this approach is growing every day, as Severiano has already mentioned in his work since the 1980s.
.jpg?1631531492 "Courtesy of Expo 2020 Dubai")
