Produce personalized presentation boards that distill complex concepts into simple visual representations with a few helpful tools and effects.

Italian architect and photographer Francesca Perani decided it was time to address the issue of garbled copyrights and tired stereotypes in architecture cutouts. With her site cutoutmix, she explains that she and her "creative gang" of female designers are, "improving the rendering visualization world with the help and talent of international artists." Right now users can access two of the collections for free, under a creative commons license.

With yesterday’s grand opening ceremony in the books, Times Square’s 8-year-long transformation has been pronounced officially complete.

Led by Snøhetta, the project saw the United States’ most visited destination change from a congested, horn-honking vehicular area into a world-class public plaza with the addition of over 100,000 square feet of pedestrian-exclusive space.

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TIME Magazine has named architect David Adjaye to their annual list of 100 Most Influential People, recognizing the world figures who have had the most impact on society in the past year in five categories: Pioneers, Titans, Artists, Leaders, and Icons. Unlike Bjarke Ingels and Wang Shu – who were selected under the Artist category in 2016 and 2013, respectively – Adjaye was nominated in the Icons category alongside champions including media personality RuPaul, subversive photographer Cindy Sherman, and US Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights leader who was the original advocate for a National African American Museum in Washington, which was eventually designed by Adjaye and inaugurated last September.

In the citation for the award, Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem (and currently working with the architect on an expansion project for the museum), describes Adjaye as “one of the great architectural visionaries of our time,” and lauds his work as “deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history."

A simultaneous celebration of their cultural iconicity and distillation from their various contexts, Beautified China is a photographic essay by Kris Provoost (one-half of the vlogging duo behind #donotsettle) that tracks the evolution of Chinese architectural landmarks over the course of the past 7 years. Beginning his investigation with the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Provoost considers a decade of architecture proposed for China by the profession’s biggest names, many of which have been built now with monumental reputations in rising cities.

“Most ‘starchitects’ had their chance to build, or to fulfill their wildest dreams,” explains Provoost. “Some of them became landmarks: CCTV headquarters by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren or the Bird’s Nest/National Stadium by Herzog and de Meuron for example. Others have turned a suburb into a new center, or have established a new city on its own.”

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The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have named the recipients of the 2017 Top Ten Awards, celebrating buildings that best exemplify the integration of great design, great performance and sustainable design excellence.

Now in its 21st year, the COTE Top Ten Awards program was established to honor projects that protect and enhance the environment through an integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology.

With employees beginning to move into Apple’s Campus 2 this month, the Foster + Partners-designed main building is down to its finishing touches, as shown in this drone video captured by aerial videographer Matthew Roberts.

Also nearing completion are the solar-panel-covered parking garage and the F&D facility, with the Steve Jobs Theater expected to follow sometime this summer. Landscaping, including the central pond and unprecedentedly ambitious tree planting plan (reported to have caused a shortage of nursery trees in the San Francisco area), are also moving full-steam ahead.

The 'Customer Involvement Program' of Autodesk's research department has, over the years, compiled a database of over 60 million individual commands created by anonymized users. Each reveals shortcut paths and thought flows among its customer base. The team have visualized the product usage (here described as the Command Usage Arc project) by ordering known and new commands from the most-frequently-used to the least-frequently. Revealed as a sequence of infographics, the results demonstrate how people work – and how they often deviate from prescribed usage.

Residents of London's Neo Bankside residential building—a luxury complex of apartments designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners—have launched a legal bid against the Tate Modern to close one side of a public viewing platform, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and completed in 2016, which overlooks their properties. As reported by the Architects' Journal, "the applicants say that their human rights are being breached due to ‘near constant surveillance’ from visitors to the neighbouring attraction." The claim goes as far to argue that visitors to the Southbank gallery "constantly view their flats through binoculars, and post photographs and film of their homes on social media sites."

Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) has been appointed by Kaunas City Municipality to run a one-stage design contest for Kaunas’ new Concert Centre. The substantial new building for this leading Lithuanian city, which has just won the title European Capital of Culture 2022, will encompass a world-class concert venue as well as multifunctional spaces for public and community events.

The one-stage contest will launch in early summer and conclude in the autumn. The initiative follows the success of the recent Science Island contest, which was the most popular architectural competition in Lithuania’s history.

Previously home to a beach-like ball pit, a giant maze, and sea of icebergs, this summer the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. will host the “Hive,” a 60-foot-tall domed structure made up of more than 2,700 individual paper tubes. Designed by Studio Gang, the installation is part of the museum’s Summer Block Party series, which invites architects to fill the building’s historic Great Hall with a temporary, immersive intervention.

79 shortlisted buildings have been selected as winners of the 2017 American Architecture Awards, which honor the best new buildings designed and constructed by American architects in the United States and abroad, and by international architects for buildings designed and built in the United States.

The Awards, hosted by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, were juried by a group of Greek architects, who chose from 300 buildings and urban planning projects.

The winners of the 2017 American Architecture Awards are:

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A post shared by Do LaB (@thedolab) on Apr 14, 2017 at 12:17pm PDT

Spring is finally here, which means over 100,000 people are making the trip to the California desert for the 2017 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. In addition to the top-billed musicians, the event has become known as a showcase for some of the best up-and-coming artists, designers and architects to work on a large-scale, instagram-friendly scene.

With the first weekend now in the books, we’ve rounded up some of the best art/architecture installations from this year’s festival.

The Noguchi Museum has selected architect John Pawson and painter Hiroshi Senju as the recipients of the 2017 Isamu Noguchi Award. Now in its fourth year, the annual award was established to honor individuals who “share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, global consciousness, and commitment to East/West cultural exchange.”

The award is presented each year to one architect and one artist or designer, honoring the multi-faceted career of artist/architect Isamu Noguchi. Previous winners of the award have included Tadao Ando and Elyn Zimmerman in 2016; architect Yoshio Taniguchi and industrial designer Jasper Morrison (2015); and winners of the inaugural award, Norman Foster and artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (2014).

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In celebration of the inaugural Melbourne Design Week, which took place in March 2017, Chilean design studio Great Things to People (gt2P) presented their Catenary Pottery Printer, aimed at exploring the boundaries between digital and analog machines. Throughout the design festival, local designers and students used the pottery printer to create their own custom works, with visitors welcomed to watch the craft in action.

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In today's culture of narcissism and celebrity it's an assumed expectation that faces can be put to names. Even in 16th Century Europe, the large majority of notable persons had a likeness made of themselves and displayed for posterity – save for architects, it seems. Take, for instance, Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) – the Renaissance style-setter and author of the groundbreaking treatise The Four Books on Architecture, the seminal text of which inspired the likes of Thomas Jefferson. If challenged, could you easily put a face to Palladio's name? There is no accurate, agreed-upon "official" portrait of the architect – until now, that is.

Chicago-based Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) has unveiled plans for One Bangkok, a new 16Ha mixed-use development in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand. Working in collaboration with architects, engineers, sustainability experts and landscape architects, both local and international, SOM seeks to create the single largest private-sector development in Thailand to date - a vertical village providing homes and places of work for an estimated 60,000 people. Through One Bangkok, SOM challenged themselves to translate the vibrancy and energy of Bangkok's neighborhoods into a vertical environment, whilst promoting a 'sense of place' and district-level sustainability.

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The Eames are mainly known for their furniture and their house in Pacific Palisades, which they also used as an office. Few people are aware of the Max and Esther De Pree House, a rare venture into residential architecture by the Eames.

It has been confirmed that the museum opening date for the Casa Vicens in Barcelona has been rescheduled for the second half of 2017. Originally scheduled for the second half of 2016, the reopening of Gaudi's first house was not able to be completed due to the complicated and labor intensive renovations. This will be the first time the house, declared World Heritage site, will be open to the public without it being a residential or private space.

The Casa Vicens, located on 24 Carolines Street, was the first house ever designed by Antoni Gaudí. In 1883 Manel Vicens, promoter of the project, commissioned the architect to build what would be his summer home. At that time Gràcia, now a cosmopolitan neighborhood, was a separate town. Therefore, the project did not contemplate the possibility of other buildings being built around it, and so to this day, it remains a completely freestanding building in a neighborhood characterized by its compact character, narrow streets, and high density of population.

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A luminous tetrahedral mesh spanning 10 meters, (Ultra) Light Network is the latest 3D printed innovation achieved by Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) Professors Felix Raspall and Carlos Banon, who were also behind this mesh pavilion last year. Displayed at this year’s iLight Marina Bay in Singapore, the interactive light sculpture is an exploration of how full-scale 3D printed components can create a system to “address not only structural requirements but also power transmission, and information communication within a seamless and continuous aesthetic.”

Suspended over its visitors, the display engages the public through responses to their movements below, controlled by over 50,000 distinct LED pixels and their parent algorithm. This is made possible through five Teensy microcontrollers, working in conjunction with three ultrasonic sensors at the base of the structure, resulting in a lively and illuminating experience.

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One of the great ironies of modern urban life is the underlying disconnect that exists amongst us global citizens, despite living and functioning within such dense and close proximities. In order to address this issue in the context of China’s urban landscape, New York firm NO ARCHITECTURE has proposed two alternatives to the typical high-rise – two vertical residential typologies that feature a combination of courtyards, terraces, and gardens, and could be located in a wide variety of cities.

“Conceived around a series of cascading shared walls, ventilated courtyards, stepped terraces, and wind towers, these new vertical organizations re-connect urban living to nature, suggesting how we can live in close proximity today and can continue to do so sustainably for generations to come,” explained the architects.

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