Offsite construction is a fast-growing sector within the global building construction industry. With that growth, many challenges lie ahead for all parties involved, especially architects, who have traditionally remained at arm’s length to the means and methods of construction. Cost challenges have led many firms to want to learn more about optimizing for offsite delivery methods. To help speed up industry transformation, a cooperative and open-source initiative led by the Quebec Wood Export Bureau has been developing a suite of nonprofit and collaborative tools for architects. At www.offsitewood.org, they offer a free Revit plugin, detailed content packs, and a BIM-integrated early-phase embodied carbon estimator called Carbon Fixers.

Videos

Fazlur Rahman Khan was a pioneer in the structural engineering of tall buildings. After buildings exceed sixty stories height, gravity loads account for a smaller proportion of structural weight than wind loads. Khan developed the tubed truss tower design to stiffen the building at taller heights without adding significant weight. The tube design had the added consequence of pushing the structure out to the exterior of the building to become part of its architectural expression. However, the acceptance of visible steel trusses was a slow process that parallels the acceptance of engineering infrastructure like bridges as aesthetic productions. This video traces a lineage of this process from Eiffel — who’s pylon designs look much like the Hancock Tower — to today. 

The International Union of Architects (UIA), in partnership with UN-HABITAT, have announced the Regional Finalists of first stage of the UIA 2030 Award. The biennial award, which is in its inaugural edition, honors the work of architects contributing to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and New Urban Agenda through built projects that demonstrate design quality and alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Indiana University inaugurated a new shared facility for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, which materializes a recently rediscovered design by Mies van der Rohe. The 1952 project intended for a fraternity house on the same IU Bloomington campus was entrusted to New York-based firm Thomas Phifer and Partners to be adapted to contemporary building codes and its current academic function while preserving the intended architectural aesthetic. The two-storey, 930 square meter building has officially opened to students and faculty.

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Capturing an image has become spontaneous and immediate. While mobile photography maintains quality, it loses the ritual of taking a picture, i.e. thinking about an image while walking through a new city or the framing possibilities for a building from your point of view. In short, each image is the result of focus, aperture, exposure and the characteristics of the space. Travelling with a 35mm camera sets your limits, some say it is the closest lens to the human eye, others say it is too narrow to capture a building from the outside, but no doubt it all depends on your judgement and the capabilities of the equipment at your disposal.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Recently, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times about the causes of unaffordable housing in New York City. He blamed the crisis on a few things, including a powerful financial “monoculture” in the city, NIMBYs, and the city itself blocking new construction. That last element, however—that the city blocks new construction—is an increasingly popular myth that needs examination.

The clothes used by nomadic peoples in the desert (Bedouins, Berbers, Tuareg, among others) are usually dark, long and made of heavy fabric. Contrary to common sense, which would recommend light, pale and short clothes for a hot climate; heavy and loose clothing favors air convection, creating a constant flow of air along the body, providing thermal comfort in arid climates. For buildings, the analogy works. When approaching energy efficiency and project performance, we will inevitably talk about its envelope, among other aspects of the project. A successful solution in one location, will not always be efficient in another.

During the last 2 years we have created a series of articles on wellness and sustainability focused on the construction industry. But how do projects, according to their demands and context, apply the solutions to make them, in fact, efficient and perform well?

A corridor that is too narrow, a poorly located switch or a simple unevenness can go completely unnoticed to many, but they can also be insurmountable barriers for someone with a disability. We all have a family member or acquaintance with mobility difficulties and, possibly, we might also experience them at some point in our lives. Architecture has the power to create truly inclusive spaces so that people with disabilities can have the autonomy to perform all necessary daily tasks, without needing the help of others. Integrated into architecture, technology can play an important role in this context, making the spaces in which we live even more accessible to everyone.

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Architecture collective AKT and Hermann Czech will be collaborating on the concept and design of the Austrian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Titled "Beteiligung / Participation", the pavilion will be temporarily converted into a social experiment that explores themes such as public vs. private, accessible vs. inaccessible, and communal vs. individual through architectural interventions. The 18th International Architecture Exhibition will be held from May 20th until November 26th, 2023.

Seven decades after designing Lever House, SOM returns to the iconic modernist building to resume its restoration, continuing its long-lasting stewardship of the project. SOM previously revisited the building in 2001, restoring its façade using high-performance materials while preserving the original architectural image. This time, the intervention concerns the ground floor and the third level terrace, as well as the mechanical systems, to significantly improve the building’s energy performance. When complete in 2023, the renovation will become an important example of extending the life of the midcentury built environment.

Big cities and the troubled routine of urban life increasingly reveal the need for moments of relaxation aimed at physical and mental health. This concern has become more evident after the long quarantine periods of the Covid-19 pandemic, when disconnecting from routine became even more difficult. Thus, in recent years, more and more people have been looking for activities and places that provide this rest.

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The 2022 winter stations competition revealed its 3 winning projects, selected from worldwide submissions alongside three student designs from Ryerson University, University of Toronto, and the University of Guelph. Back for its eighth edition, after a one-year hiatus, the competition, launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio in 2015, will once again “draw people outside to enjoy the Beach in the winter” and the projects will take over the lifeguard stations at Toronto’s Woodbine Beach.

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For more than a century, a street market known as ‘The Blue’ was the beating heart of Bermondsey in Southeast London. On Saturdays gone by, hundreds flocked to the historic neighborhood, a site with roots reaching back to the 11th century when it was once a pilgrimage route to Bermondsey Abbey. Market punters used to sample goods from more than 200 stalls that famously sold everything under the sun. “You can buy anything down The Blue” was the phrase everyone went by.

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The Open International Competition for the Development of an Architectural Concept for the Galiasgar Kamal Tatarian State Academic Theatre has announced its results. The consortium including Kengo Kuma & Associates was granted the first place, while the second place went to a proposal led by Asif Kahn Studio and the third place to Coop Himmelb(l)au and his team.

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Dr Steffi Burkhart knows millennials. She knows, or at least has a very informed, deeply researched opinion, on how they want to live and how they want to work. And given that millennials – commonly accepted as those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s – will soon dominate the workforce, understanding their professional and personal needs and aspirations is very useful information. This is vital for companies, cities and countries that want to attract and usefully employ the best millennial talent.

As part of the Desert X international contemporary art exhibition, the second edition of the Desert X AlUla features 15 contextual installations across the Saudi Arabian desert that explore "ideas of mirage and oasis". This year's exhibition is curated by Reem Fadda, Raneem Farsi, and Neville Wakefield, under the theme of Sarab (arabic for 'Mirage'), and invites artists to address the history and culture of the desert, its contemporary significance, and the dichotomy between the natural and man-made world.

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Construction began at the Goethe Institute in Dakar, designed by Kéré Architecture. The project is the first purpose-built space for the German cultural association and exchange centre in its over 60 years of global activity. Located within a residential area and a lush garden, the two-storey structure is shaped by the canopy of trees on-site and is being built using bricks made of laterite, a residual local rock with insulating qualities that help to passively regulate the indoor climate. The project will provide spaces for a wide array of activities, ranging from exhibitions and language courses to concerts and gatherings, all while building on the cultural landscape of Senegal.

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