A “floodscape” could be seen as a contradiction in terms: Flood spreads wherever gravity leads it, covering the familiar topography with a dark, gray, and uniform blanket. In that regard, flood is amorphous, as it can distort and temporarily erase forms and features from the visible landscape—nothing that could be described as a “scape” in the sense of articulated and meaningful scenery.

But when the boundaries of a flood are not just defined by the quantity or the velocity of water but also by landforms and structures carefully designed and placed to influence and shape the “disaster,” the result can be considered as a landscape, physically and culturally defined by flood.

NORD Architects and BBP Arkitekter recently won the competition to design and build a new public school in one of Copenhagen's most dense urban districts. The challenge of the design was to create a structure that properly fits in the already complex context, complementing the district's "high urban density, postindustrial heritage, and vital infrastructure".

GRAFT and Brandlab have created a prototype for an ultra-fast charging station for E.ON Drive in Europe. The extendable system of modules was made to adapt to different sites and parking conditions. Reimagining the stopover for the future, the project focuses on user experience and integrated design as filling stations evolve over time. The design features a steel skeleton roof structure that can be customized with diverse panel materials, photovoltaics and responsive lighting.

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According to Pliny, Roman Emperor Tiberius’s doctors instructed their charge to consume a fruit of the Cucurbits family each day. To grow these melon and cucumber fruits year-round on his home island of Capri, Tiberius directed construction of specularia: “[He] had raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of which the Cucumis were moved and exposed to the full heat of the sun; while, in winter, they were withdrawn, and placed under the protection of frames glazed with mirror-stone.”

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has won the design competition to build Tower C at Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base, in China. The winning design is a multi-dimensional vertical city of two naturally-lit towers that respond to the city's urban intersections.

The Colosseum will undergo a renovation with a new, retractable floor platform. In ancient Rome, thousands gathered to watch enslaved gladiators, criminals, and wild animals fight to the death. These fighters and caged animals would emerge from the ground through secret tunnels beneath the arena’s wooden and sand-covered floor. Colosseum director Alfonsina Russo told the Times that the plan is to host concerts and theater productions on the new floor.

Dallas is home to a high concentration of structures by world-renowned architects. With some of the most iconic architecture per square mile of any American city, Dallas boasts designs by six Pritzker Prize Laureates, all within close distance to the up and coming Arts District. From Norman Foster’s Opera House to Thom Mayne’s Museum of Nature and Science, these projects are emblematic of a larger city-wide design culture.

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Situated on Ticino's rocky peaks are the historic Medieval Castles of Bellinzona: Montebello, Sasso Corbaro, and Castelgrande. And while all three castles and their fortifications have become part of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites, it is not only the ancient walls that leave visitors enchanted, but the gateways that leads to them.

Architectural photographer Simone Bossi decided to solely capture the castle's entrance, displaying how a dialogue between the organic forms of nature and refined man-made walls can be as majestic as a historic fortress.

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Multidisciplinary design practice Weiss/Manfredi has broken ground on the reimagined U.S. Embassy campus in New Delhi, India. Designed for the U.S. Department of State with the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, the project aims to support the U.S.-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with a new chancery building for the embassy. The project includes restoring Edward Durell Stone’s early modernist Chancery Building and remaking the 28-acre compound into a resilient campus.

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San Luis Potosí has become one of Mexico's busiest destinations for both national and international tourism. Thanks to a population boom throughout the state, Mexican architects have dedicated themselves to designing residential, cultural, and recreational buildings that highlight the region's architectural style and traditions. In this article, we present a few of these projects to illustrate a portion of Mexico's vibrant and varied architecture.

The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.

A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

This week David and Marina discuss the design process. The two discuss researching, using intuition, their six different ways to test if an ‘in-progress design’ is good and how it can be bettered (the different mediums test, the abstraction test, the architectural criteria test, the development test, the conceptual sequence test, and the excitement test), why a consistent step-by-step process is problematic, how the design process if viewed differently by designers and non-designers (clients), and solving designer’s block.

Throughout history, sunshades--light-weight screens typically made of interwoven wooden reeds--have been the go-to method of sun protection and temperature control for dwellings across civilizations, especially those located in tropical and Mediterranean climates. While offering protection from the sun's heat and rays, sunshades also allow air to permeate, making them an effective and economical cooling system for interior spaces. 

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MAD Architects has just unveiled its design for the “Train Station in the Forest.” Under construction and scheduled for completion by July 1st, 2021, the project is located in the center of Jiaxing, in southeast China, in close proximity to Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou. Covering an area of 35.4 hectares, the intervention consists of rebuilding the historic station while creating a new infrastructural annex underground. It also includes the creation of plazas to the north and south and the rehabilitation of the adjacent People’s Park.

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ON-A Architecture Studio has designed a proposal to cover the FC Barcelona football stadium with a rooftop park in Spain. Converting the stadium into a 26-hectare park, the project aims to re-nature the stadium's surrounding area. Called Nou Parc, the design features a new topography that would also create a forest for the city of Barcelona.

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Alberto Campo Baeza has added another recognition to his already impressive repertoire as the 2020 winner of Spain's National Prize in Architecture, an award bestowed by the country's Ministry of Transportation, Mobility, and Urban Planning in recognition of the winner's professional as well as academic contributions to architecture. 

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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.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

I attended graduate school, in geography, in Tucson, Arizona, United States, in the late 1990s. Tucson draws fame from a number of things, including its Mexican-American heritage, its chimichangas, its sky islands, and its abundant population of saguaro cacti.

Design and the City a podcast by reSITE, on how to make cities more livable and lovable, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future. In the second episode of its second season, PAU's founder and creative director Vishaan Chakrabarti explains the possibility of creating an architecture of belonging, discussing social impact, climate change, infrastructure, and reimagining cities.

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Architecture firm Urban Agency has designed a landmark tower called Dock Mill to rise along Dublin's waterfront in Ireland. At 14 floors, the project was designed to set a precedent for future projects on a national and global scale. At the same time, the team's vision was made to be reverent of the mill’s past and grow out of this history. Dock Mill draws inspiration from both nature and the surrounding docklands.