As Venice Architecture Biennale presents its 18th edition titled "The Laboratory of the Future", it centers on Africa as a place of exploration that will offer a template for solutions to the world. According to its curator Lesley Lokko, the Biennale explores entrenched concepts such as climate, land rights, decolonization, and cultures. It challenges us to question how Africa's history can be a radical tool for imagination and reminds us of Stephen Covey's statement: “Live out of your imagination, not just your history.” The biennale's title is probably the most ambitious question in years. It forces us to revisit all boundaries of the continent's historical societies, explore the influence of imposed colonial borders on them, and examine the dual identities they gave birth to. We must consider how these identities can be instruments of creativity, and, more importantly, recognize that every African society has a unique point of view. This viewpoint yearns for cross-cultural collaboration as a powerful tool for imagination.
The role of a school is to prepare children for life. But with life-changing faster than ever, schools need to change just as quickly. Recent additions to school curriculums reflect the complexities of modern life, with environmental crises, societal injustices, and the dangers of social media now major parts of the syllabus.
Although it’s often said that long-term change begins at ground-level, change is never easy, wherever it starts. For example, a curriculum that responds to environmental issues is said to cause growing instances of eco-anxiety in children, one of a number of causes of another crisis, in children’s mental health.
In these fast-paced and constantly evolving times, architecture has been adapting to new building technologies and complexities to serve today’s world needs. Teams of experts from all areas, architecture, engineering, construction, and a long list of professionals, come together to bring these solutions to our built environment. At ArchDaily we have been highlighting these actors in the architecture we curate and publish every day, but we often come across other types of projects, in which we spot different needs, and ways of building in certain places and communities, that equally require a highly qualified team, specific local techniques, and knowledge that are worth sharing.
UNStudio and Bjarke Ingels Group have partnered up with Squint/Opera to develop SpaceForm, a virtual, cloud-based platform that facilitates design, review and collaboration processes for architects and developers. The new virtual workspace explicitly developed for the architecture and construction industry aims to fill a gap by creating a viable and sustainable way of collaborating and designing remotely across global teams, thus reducing the need for travel.
The role of an architect has not always been what it is today. Historically, and almost since its inception, it was viewed as a “one-man show”, where the architect was the artist, the sculptor, and the visionary of a structure. As the practice has continued to evolve, it has become a much more collaborative, and much less individualistic profession in nature, continuously understanding the importance of considering outside perspectives- even those not traditionally trained in design.
My decision to study architecture was a naive one, made after having taken several vocational tests I found on Google. When I found out it was one of the toughest courses in Brazilian public universities, I thought about giving up. But I was already hooked by the history of architecture and its social role.
However, nothing is perfect. Architecture and Urban Planning is one of the most elite courses in the most renowned Brazilian universities, something that is reflected outside of the classroom as well. The architects went on to serve the rich, casting aside the needs of the cities and the poor.
HomeTown is a new stay-home international drawing challenge!
A free, open-to-all, collective drawing challenge that aims to create a giant tessellated isometric drawing from creatives around the world!
Draw your insight into staying at home during lockdown and join this international collaboration!
The challenge aims to show how we can remain connected in these unprecedented times and that whilst we’re all ‘only a room away’, regardless of the country or distance apart, we are united by creativity.
Inspired by MC Escher’s incredible isometric drawings we want to collectively build HomeTown, a new virtual city. Using the template provided, we want
The Architects’ Journal's AJ Specification Awards returns for a 2nd year, celebrating successful collaborations between suppliers, manufacturers, and architects. The awards celebrate how exceptional working relationships between architects and suppliers and manufacturers lead to successful projects, showcasing standout examples of the creative use of products and materials in making great buildings. Be it to find solutions to particular design challenge, or simply to bring joy to a project, the intelligent integration of products into the design process – from the taps in a bathroom to the finishes on a façade – is an aspect of architecture that the AJ has long championed.
This is just one of the many questions we architects frequently ask, and get asked. But how much easier it would be if there was a foolproof way to manage revisions and know that everyone else is on top of it too.
https://www.archdaily.com/913919/the-foolproof-way-to-manage-revisionsRachel Hur
You're an architect so you know organization is key. You think you’re on top of all the categories, rules and folders in Outlook that you've created to get by. You file away all of your emails by project and category, but time and again, your email search function fails you and finding any file is a nightmare.
https://www.archdaily.com/913000/how-to-streamline-the-design-processRachel Hur
Federation Square, near the head office of SiteSupervisor, Melbourne, Australia
As architects, we often find ourselves as defacto Project Manager on site throughout construction. Whether it’s a small or large project, many of us find ourselves going from documentation to construction. SiteSupervisor provides a seamless transition from design to build that can be easily set up at the beginning of a project without costing your team more transition time, effort and money. The architect can set up the hierarchy of the project and share relevant details with assigned consultants and contractors, who can then easily pass on information to the subcontractors without breaking the communication protocols in place. So, don’t worry, you still remain in control of your project at all times.
https://www.archdaily.com/911556/how-to-make-end-to-end-design-build-easier-for-architectsRachel Hur
Communication is key. As architects, clear communication is possibly the most vital part of our role. It enables us to share our ideas with clients and is crucial in getting that vision built exactly how we want it. Starting with the parti diagrams through to intricate construction details, we know by now (many, many years post-architecture school) that we’re pretty darn good at communicating our ideas across. But have you ever thought about managing communications?
Wait. Hold on… Managing... Communications? Don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as you might think. This is just about keeping everything organized, such as your correspondence with a builder/general contractor or client. SiteSupervisor can help make this an easy process with its user-friendly interface for project communication. Here are some of the communication benefits I have found with SiteSupervisor.
https://www.archdaily.com/915149/why-managing-communications-is-essentialRachel Hur
We all get 24 hours in a day. Sometimes we feel like the clock is overtaking us with each new day adding more and more to the list that we can never seem to quite get to the end of. If only there was a way that each task could be made efficient, manageable, then the process of checking things off would be so much easier.
https://www.archdaily.com/914287/do-yourself-a-favor-and-save-timeRachel Hur
It’s a tale as old as time. The architect slaves away night after night designing the most beautiful architecture. The people are raving, excited to see what new and impressive building will go up this time. The render looks amazing!
https://www.archdaily.com/915907/realize-your-visionRachel Hur
There may be times when you remember an old project you did, perhaps at uni, that you want to show someone. The one that had the amazing render that took 10hrs of Photoshopping. But no, it’s at home on hard-drive no.2 of 5. If only you had uploaded that one to SiteSupervisor, you could be showing it off right... about... now.
SiteSupervisor is your new pocket portfolio. No, not the portfolio that you keep in the drawing tube that only ever sees the light of day at a job interview, but a real, live portfolio that you can access on your phone anytime, anywhere. It's time to take pride in the work you do and have done, and really use what you have to not only bring in more work, but also solve problems.
https://www.archdaily.com/912085/access-your-portfolio-anytime-anywhereRachel Hur
The awards celebrate how exceptional working relationships between architects and suppliers and manufacturers lead to successful projects, showcasing standout examples of the creative use of products and materials in making great buildings.
Be it to find solutions to particular design challenge, or simply to bring joy to a project, the intelligent integration of products into the design process – from the taps in a bathroom to the finishes on a façade – is an aspect of architecture that the AJ has long championed.
In Dnipro, Ukraine, sits a unique multi-purpose pavilion rich with historical roots and design influence. Stage is a collaborative project between architects from Ukraine, Poland, Denmark and Italy, crowdsourced and crowdfunded by the citizens of Dnipro. The site for the pavilion has been centered around community involvement throughout the complex history of Dnipro, but it has laid unused for over 70 years.
Stage is an emanation of the rich and vibrant culture and was built to accommodate the needs of dozens of artists, poets, painters and musicians, who previously relied on various spaces scattered around the city. Their "collective creative energy" was used to reactivate the lost community space. Stage was recently awarded Special Mention in the 2018 European Prize for Urban Public Space.
A +100 meter stretch of land beneath a train overpass in Koganecho, a district of Yokohama, Japan, underwent a progressive refurbishment in which seven different types of community space, each designed by a different architect, were built within a pre-set spatial grid. Historically there were many social issues in the area, largely in relation to its profitable but dangerous black market and red-light district. Once the illegal activity was eradicated in 2005, the underpass presented a great opportunity for social re-development, and the resultant project - the Koganecho Centre - emphasized an age-old Japanese cultural commitment, where what was once broken is used to make something new.
