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Saving space, reducing costs and a pleasant user experience – parking doesn’t get much better than this.

Cityscapes around the world are changing, architects face the constant challenge of integrating parking space into new or existing real estate in densely built-up urban environments. While there is a growing ambition to replace cars as a prime mobility tool, we’re far from realizing this goal. Most downtown revitalizations today require structured parking. Where space is tight, access ramp or radius of a conventional parking garage may be hard to fit. Because robotic parking systems require neither these nor access for pedestrians, they can place up to 60% more cars in the same space – increasing the RoI on parking spaces Alternatively, the same number of cars can be parked in 60% of the space of a conventional parking garage, creating significant cost savings in the construction phase. In either case, the user experience in robotic parking systems – brightly lit entrance areas, safe vehicle retrieval processes and reduced car fumes as the search for parking is effectively eliminated – is second to none.

The A’ Design Award is an international award whose aim is to provide designers, architects, and innovators from all architecture and design fields with a competitive platform to showcase their work and products to a global audience. Among the design world's many awards, the A' Design Award stands out for its exceptional scale and breadth; in 2015, over 1,000 different designs received awards, with all fields of design recognized by the award's 100 different categories.

The World Design Rankings (WDR) are sponsored by the A' Design Award and Competition, the world's leading international design accolade. The WDR ranks all the countries based on the number of designers that have been granted with the A' Design Award between the years 2010 and 2018. Highly competitive and influential, WDR is to design what the Olympics are to sports. It aims to provide additional data and insights to economists and journalists regarding the state-of-art in the design industry. The ultimate aim of the world design rankings is to contribute to global design culture through advocating and highlighting good design. The rankings aim to provide a snapshot of the state-of-art and design potentials of countries worldwide by highlighting their creative strengths and available opportunities.

The United States tops the list with 584 awards, followed by China (554), and Japan (215). Take a look at our favorite architectural projects below.

The submission period for the A' Design Award closes on February 28th. You can register here. After the winners are announced on April 15th, a selection of architecture-related winners will be featured in a post on ArchDaily.

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Oxford-born designer, Jay Osgerby has achieved virtually everything there is to achieve in the world of design. Together with his partner Edward Barber, Osgerby runs the internationally renowned Barber & Osgerby design studio. From diverse designs for well-known manufacturers such as Vitra and B&B Italia to the official torch for the 2012 Olympic Games in London and a two-pound coin commemorating the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, Osgerby and his partner have been almost restless in their creation of numerous icons. “I find it quite difficult to not think about work. I’m always thinking about what’s next. I’m terrible at stopping and just thinking.”

The 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction will be hosted by the American University in Cairo from April 4 to 6, 2019. The LafargeHolcim Forum is dedicated to the topic of “Re-materializing Construction.” Keynote speeches, workshops and site visits will focus on strategies to reduce consumption throughout the material cycle from extraction to processing, transport, installation, maintenance, and removal.

The Forum pursues the question of how the building and construction industry can adapt to be leaner: with a smaller ecological footprint and not driven by the pretense of infinitely available raw materials. Hence, the Forum seeks to suggest radical solutions in the use of building materials.

YAC - Young Architects Competitions and Arte Sella launched “Calamity Atelier,” a competition of ideas to regenerate the greatest and most prestigious art park in the world which was heavily damaged by an unprecedented storm last October. A total prize of 15,000€ will be awarded to winners selected by a renowned international jury that features Sou Fujimoto, Kongjian Yu (Turenscape), Patrick Lüth (Snøhetta) and Michele De Lucchi, among others.

Havana has often been referred to as a time machine — a city that transports its visitors to a distant moment and time in history. The capital city’s colorful Spanish colonial-style architecture has made it a go-to destination for photographers, architects, and people seeking life in a bygone era. From classic cars to “its overall sense of architectural, historical and environmental continuity makes it the most impressive historical city center in the Caribbean and one of the most notable in the American continent as a whole,” remarks UNESCO.

In the planning and construction of buildings and landscapes, it’s important to recognize the strong correlation between design and construction during the different stages of a project. In fact, these stages can best be viewed as an integrated process where one won’t work without the other.

To fully understand how these stages work together, let’s break it down. Simply put, architecture design is the process of creating the layout of a construction project. It’s usually presented through detailed plans, drawings, and specifications. On the other hand, construction planning is a process of identifying steps and resources required to turn those designs into physical reality.

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When you see new software that can speed up your workflow, it’s fun to imagine what you can do with it. But in reality, many of us don’t want to be among the first to try it out, especially if documentation is lacking. No one wants to spend countless hours fighting with mysterious features only to go back to the old workflow because you just need to get things done.

Maybe you’ve been thinking about trying out photoreal real-time rendering for your workflow, but you’re concerned that that on-ramp is too steep. Real-time rendering requires you to import your CAD scene into a game engine, and anytime you import to a new piece of software, there are going to be issues to solve. If you have to figure it out on your own, it’s going to be a long, hard road.

A team of five University of Hartford Master of Architecture (MArch) students recently won the Dream Green, Hartford EcoDesign competition sponsored by the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation and hosted by the City of Hartford Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. The competition requested proposals to improve the city through “pop-up” projects that transform underused city spaces while highlighting green infrastructure and sustainable design.

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Lumion has always set out to define what rendering should be: fast and stress-free with exceptional results. Now, with the latest version of its 3D rendering software, Lumion 9, it’s easier than ever to show off your 3D models in a living environment, with beautiful, real-life skies, an endless variety of landscapes, and exceptional lighting and materials. Oh, and rendering takes minutes, not hours.

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It’s no secret that in many parts of the country, indoor-outdoor living actually gets better when summer turns to fall. The bugs buzz off, the humidity lifts, and the cooler nights beg for the warmth of a fire. Here are five of our favorite indoor-outdoor living spaces for the fall of 2018.

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YAC - Young Architects Competitions and Mothe Chandeniers launched “Common Ruins”, a competition of ideas aiming to breath a new life into an astonishing castle in France. A cash prize of € 20,000 will be awarded to winners selected by a well-renowned jury made of, among the others, Anish Kapoor, Rudy Ricciotti, Edoardo Tresoldi, Dagur Eggertsson, Alfonso Femia, Aldo Cibic, Marco Amosso (Lombardini 22), Luca Dolmetta (LD+SR architetti).

About the Competition

Turkistan Architect Awards is an international architectural competition for the conceptual development of objects located in the historical city of Kazakhstan — Turkistan, initiated by the Governor of the Turkestan region. The main objective of the competition is to give a new impetus to the development of the Turkestan region: as a touristic hub with the unique architecture. The competition is aimed at creating equal conditions for creative competition between the participants in order to determine the most interesting and progressive solutions, both architectural and engineering, taking into account the use of innovative technologies, materials, design and methods of building structures in the project.

Are architects really turning to real-time rendering for visualization? Epic Games, the creators of Unreal Engine, decided to find out with an independent survey.

The results confirmed what many of us have suspected—real-time rendering is on the rise in architecture, media and entertainment, and manufacturing. But the survey also revealed a few surprising details about real-time rendering and its uses.

A’ Design Award & Competition, the world’s largest and most diffuse international design awards featuring 1,962 Winners from 100 countries in 99 different design disciplines. Among the design world's many awards, the A' Design Award stands out for its exceptional scale and breadth; in 2015, over 1,000 different designs received awards, with all fields of design recognized by the award's 100 different categories. This year's edition is now open for entries; designers can register their submissions here.

There are five different levels of distinction: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron A’ Design Awards, which are distributed annually in all design disciplines. Designers, companies, and institutions from all countries are invited annually to take part in the open call by nominating their best works, projects, and products for consideration.

Terrazzo flooring, with its mosaic style of pieces of marble or granite set in polished concrete or epoxy resin, is known for its flexibility and remarkable durability. So it’s no wonder the method has been around for centuries.

With proper care during installation and use, it’s also possible for terrazzo floors to last a number of decades. “There are terrazzo floors that were installed in the early 1900s that are still nice looking jobs,” says James Bateman, terrazzo division manager of Terrazzo & Marble Supply Companies. Indeed, the style is known to some as ‘forever floors,’ a nod to its history and longevity.

Walk into a room bathed in cozy, inviting light and you’ll feel instantly at ease. Walk into the same room buzzing with harsh fluorescents, and your teeth may start to grind.

Why?

In 2014, a Journal of Consumer Psychology study found that the more intense the lighting, the more affected and intense the participants’ emotions were — both positive and negative.

The study included six experiments that examined the link between emotion and ambient brightness. Feelings of warmth increased when participants were exposed to bright light with hints of reddish hues. A sensation of angst increased when bluer light dominated.

And the brighter the light, the more intense the participants’ emotions became. Both the intensity and the color of the light affected people’s moods.