Do you know a great example of high density living environments built within the last 30 years? Share your knowledge and contribute to the creation of an open repository via Crowd Creation. To be truly exemplary, the area should include a mixture of functions (at least some of them high-rise) where the physical fabric retains a human scale at street level despite the high density.
"And a window that looks out on Corcovado. Oh, how lovely." Tom Jobim's lyrics, immortalized by João Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto's voices and a soft guitar, was one of the early songs that introduced the world to the idea of a paradisaical Rio de Janeiro and a promising Brazil, with an increasingly urban population and a modern capital being built from nothing. Almost 60 years later, Paulo Mendes da Rocha casually quotes this song in an interview and points out that for him, in this scene, the most important element is the window, not Corcovado or Christ the Redeemer. That's because it frames the view and directs our eyes to what matters. It is a phrase that goes almost unnoticed, but that carries enormous poetic and artistic significance to the craft of architecture.
SCI-Edge, Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture, offers 5 postgraduate Master of Science degree programs. This year is the fourth class at SCI-Arc Edge and previous graduates are already establishing themselves as innovative voices defining what it means to be an architect in the twenty-first century. The current students have just completed the fall semester, which is the first of the three-semester sequences of the programs. The students coming into the programs represent an astonishingly wide range of backgrounds and research interests. We have asked two of them to describe their research interests and how they are beginning to bridge between their previous education and their new experiences at SCI-Arc Edge.
China: The Curtain Sales Office / Larry Wen and Yibo Wang - Aoe. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award
The A’ Design Award is an international award whose aim is to provide designers, architects, and innovators from all 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, including over 100 award categories and having honored over 12,000 designers with an award over its 11-year lifetime.
Today’s rapidly changing world calls for entrepreneurs who question the status quo and are able to leverage people, resources, and processes to produce dynamic solutions. As spatial design activities and the global construction industry experience unprecedented transformation, there are endless opportunities for those with the courage to stand up and take them.
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Neoscape NYC / Chaos Vantage. Image Courtesy of Chaos Group
This year, real-time became really important. For architects and arch-viz artists, the ability to explore and design interactively is nothing short of game-changing, drastically shortening project life cycles and making it easier to present and discuss ideas with co-workers and clients. With remote collaboration becoming a normal part of day-to-day life, real-time views of projects have become invaluable.
Courtesy of Las Salinas and AOA (Chilean Architecture Offices Association)
The international call for proposals aims to find an architecture office to design the new Las Salinas Urban Park (Parque Urbano Las Salinas), a beach-side complex in the city of Viña Del Mar, Chile. The project seeks to transform the area into a multifunctional green space for the future neighborhood with a high standard for its residents. The objective is to project a large park which will become an important integration project for the city: an open space for public use and accessible for everyone - a place for social, cultural, sporting and educational gatherings.
https://www.archdaily.com/953092/call-for-proposals-design-an-urban-park-in-chiles-coastal-region-of-vina-del-marAD Editorial Team
In 2016, the last modern masterpiece designed by world renowned architect Marcel Breuer, the Atlanta Fulton County Public Library, was slated for demolition. One of the Fulton County commissioners described the original design as looking “more like a jail” than a welcoming space for learning and productivity. To save the iconic building from the wrecking ball, changes would have to be made. This case study from cove.tool shows how energy and daylighting analysis is useful not only in new construction, but for revitalizing existing buildings as well.
UNESCO, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and the Iraqi Sunni Endowment, have committed to reconstruct and rehabilitate the Al Nouri Complex in Mosul with the generous financial support of the United Arab Emirates. In order to do so, UNESCO organized an international design competition for selecting a winning design entry to rehabilitate this important site destroyed by conflict in 2014.
https://www.archdaily.com/950756/call-for-entries-reconstruction-and-rehabilitation-of-mosuls-al-nouri-complexAD Editorial Team
Over the past decade, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted and become integrated to varying degrees into every aspect of the design, construction, and maintenance of buildings. But this isn’t where BIM stops, the future of BIM incorporates altered/virtual reality (AR/VR) and has the potential to go as far as automated and intelligent lifecycle management of assets. The concept of creating a “digital twin” to a physical building or system with the aim of making that real-world entity safer, more efficient, and more resilient begins by making our way towards fully-integrated BIM.
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Residential exterior, rendered in Lumion 11
When it comes to architectural rendering software, Lumion makes the process of rendering an integral part of the architect's craft; it emboldens design and rendering workflows and inspires creativity. With the release of Lumion 11, realizing your design vision has never been easier. Using the new orthographic view feature, you can reduce the effort needed to create visually interesting plan and section views with your own unique twist. With animated phasing, you can show how the parts of your building connect and interact, choreographing a dialogue with the viewer.
Today more than ever, architects are facing high expectations for the design, function and performance of a project. Careful building design takes the regional influences of climate into account, material origin, perhaps cultural building traditions. These are ways to lower the ecological footprint. But what do architects do to further enhance the building performance? That is an exciting element to explore. Finding out that today digital technologies are implemented in buildings in every region of the world is an interesting fact to discover!
Modular construction by Maisons Laprise, Quebec, Canada. Image Courtesy of QWEB
Proven and effective construction methods are not static, instead they're always improving. In Quebec, Canada, light wood frame and modular manufacturers are always pushing the limits of innovation. Their craft is now linked to building systems on a bold scale with offsite light wood frame construction.
On November 3rd, 2020, after successfully holding the Award Ceremony and the Shanshui City Theme Forum in Lishui, the site of the competition, the Future ShanShui City • Dwellings in Lishui Mountains International Urban Design Competition finally came to a successful conclusion after more than seven months.
TRAC – Tresoldi Academy is an innovative educational project, created by STUDIO STUDIO STUDIO of Edoardo Tresoldi and YAC Young Architects Competitions with the aim of offering workshops where young people can gain exposure to the issues surrounding contemporary art. Through the creation of site-specific installations, the participants can contribute to enhancing the value of the territories where they are installed. TRAC – Tresoldi Academy positions itself between art and architecture. Young talented people will have the opportunity to take part in the creative process of one of the most prestigious and well-regarded brands in contemporary art. It will be a cycle of training activities oriented as “know how to imagine” (concept and design of an artistic installation) and “know-how” (the production of the installation).
Building design today, and throughout the 20th century, has been significantly shaped by fire safety considerations. Architects today are familiar with the wide range of code requirements for a building to be compliant, from materials, to fire extinguisher locations, to fire-rated walls and doors. As buildings have become better-equipped to withstand fire emergencies, however, modern life has simultaneously increased the amount of fire hazards we live with.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest teaching hospitals in the country, a regional and national centre for specialist treatment, a world-renowned biomedical research facility, a leading clinical trials research unit and also the local hospital for the Leeds community. The Hospital has recently published a tender seeking talented architects to work on a world-leading development of two new hospitals in Leeds, one of the largest cities in the United Kingdom.
https://www.archdaily.com/951594/open-call-for-architects-join-the-development-of-two-new-hospitals-in-leeds-ukAD Editorial Team
The third edition of the architecture competition Re-use Italy promotes the repurpose of a forgotten church in southern Italy, in Grottole, in the province of Matera. Facing the issue of the abandonment of small towns in Italy, the contest in partnership with, ArchDaily, KooZA/rch, Graphisoft, Wonder Grottole, with the official support of the Municipality of Grottole (Matera), Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo, FAI Basilicata, Matera Art Film Festiva, ANCI Basilicata, Associazione Borghi Autentici d’Italia, Ordine degli Architetti P.P.C. della provincia di Matera, seeks to reuse the “Fallen-church” and transform the ruin into a Concert Hall.