Creating a model for rendering does have its own set of rules. To get you up and rendering as quickly as possible, here are SketchUp's top five tips for prepping your SketchUp model for rendering.

OMA's proposal won the competition for the new KaDeWe department store and hotel in Vienna’s Museumsquartier. Led by Ellen van Loon, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, and Laurence Bolhaar, the project will be OMA’s first venture in Vienna, upon its completion.

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Foster + Partners have released images for their proposal for the new Le Dôme winery in Saint-Émilion, the firm’s second winery in the Bordeaux area, the first being Château Margaux in 2015. Located in a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape, the design blends seamlessly with the topography.

Studio Gang and SCAPE have broken ground on the new Arkansas Arts Center (AAC) in Little Rock. The current facility will be transformed, and the project includes a landscape design that will connect the AAC with the surrounding MacArthur Park. The project was made to embrace the Arkansas Arts Center’s history and create a contemporary space for the future.

Expected to be completed in 2023, construction works have started on the campus of the Singapore Institute of Technology designed by WOHA. The 91,000 square meter project located in an existing forest, will create a “Campus in a Park” experience, where learning spaces and green spaces will be combined.

The construction industry has evolved throughout time, but always by way of builders. What happens when people are no longer part of building and construction? This is the question asked by British multinational infrastructure company Balfour Beatty, and they’ve published their answer in the 2050 Innovation Paper. The industry report has become a reference point to those looking at the evolution of buildings and design.

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For the most part, rubber isn’t considered a conventional building material – at least not to the same extent that materials like wood, concrete, or glass are. But rubber is commonly used in interiors for flooring of extraordinary color or brightness, and even more unexpectedly for exterior facades with unique aspects or upholstery effects. This functionality is motivated by unique advantages such as smoothness, elasticity, durability, and color consistency.

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Under the theme of “Science, Innovation, Art, and Creativity for Human Development. Creative Industries in Digital Convergence”, Buenos Aires will host the Expo 2023. Pablo Pschepiurca, Rodrigo Grassi, María Hojman, and Karla Montauti won the first prize in an international competition to create a bridge and a boulevard for the occasion.

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The digital revolution coupled with the unforeseen environmental, economical and social challenges our world face today, urge architecture to shake much of the traditions and basis upon which it operated for the last decades, if not centuries. 

A century on, the compelling idea that Modern architecture emerged like some blindingly white, crystalline and disruptive phoenix from the darkness, death and destruction of the First World War is, perhaps, a familiar one. And, yet, the charcoal sketches and chiaroscuro montages Mies van der Rohe made during and after the epochal competition for the Berlin Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper of 1921-22 retain the power to catch the eye, provoke and disturb in our own era of overwhelming imagery much of it produced by and with computer programs.

What is so very remarkable about these century-old visionary drawings is that they portray a future building type - verging on the ethereal and more or less impossible to realize at the time - in the earthiest of drawing materials. It had been a stroke of genius to use charcoal to evoke an architecture of lightness rising from the embers of the trenches that would revolutionize the way we shaped tall buildings and with them our city streets. Such is the power of drawing by hand.

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Commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, and designed by Snøhetta, the installation entitled The Best Weapon, was first unveiled to the public at the United Nations Headquarters’ Plaza in New York City. This urban peace bench aims to honor “the past Nobel Peace Prize laureates and their efforts to bring people together to find effective solutions for peace”.

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Videos

A new video by AERIAL FUTURES explores how New York's Stewart International Airport could become a catalyst for urban regeneration. Situated 60 miles north of Manhattan, the city is aiming to create a transformation. The video proposes ways in which the airport could positively impact Newburgh’s economy, agriculture, mobility, and civic life, and expand on its function as a travel hub.

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By now, you’ve likely heard about real-time rendering for architectural visualization and how it’s changing the way designs are presented. With real-time rendering, you can edit your design and see the changes updated instantly, at full quality, and you can produce animations and panoramas in minutes instead of days. Real-time rendering also opens the door to immersive experiences like 360° videos and virtual reality.

The Latvian city of Riga, the largest between the three Baltic states, is undergoing a cultural and urban renaissance. The city's pedestrian-only Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with several museums, cultural centers, and restaurants, attracting thousands of new visitors every year.

London-based architecture firm AI Studio have received planning approval for the development of a mixed-use tower in the Latvian capital, featuring retail stores, offices, restaurants, and public spaces.

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As California makes strides in sustainability, the Von Braun Space Station is taking rather large steps for humankind. Exploring the great unknown does not have to mean abandoning our planet — it can mean just the opposite. In fact, this space station could be our most monumental step toward a sustainable future.

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," ArchDaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT.

Nowadays materials are requested to play a more engaging role in the digital society.

They can be customized down to their molecular properties and this capacity has an enormous impact on related fields of science, but they also need to be interpreted in their meaning thanks to our ‘semantic capital’, as Luciano Floridi said.

We cannot reduce materials to their property and performances as, as humans, we use them to interpret the world, they are our continuously changing material culture to find an equilibrium between nature and built environment.

The public has often condemned urban renewal, but for the Pennsylvanian city of Pittsburgh, its revival earned a status of "renaissance". In their latest volume of Imagining the Modern: Architecture and Urbanism of Pittsburgh Renaissance, editors Chris Grimley, Michael Kubo, and Rami el Samahy explore the reasons behind the city's congratulatory rebirth.

Miami-based architecture office Arquitectonica, headed by Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia, has been selected as the 2019 winner of the American prize for architecture. The firm, known for its “Trendsetting Modernist Miami Style”, was launched back in 1977.

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Videos

Christophe Benichou's latest project is the architectural animated short film Windbracing that pays homage to a French science fiction book by Alain Damasio, entitled “La Horde du Contrevent” or Windwalkers. The movie offers “a sensory dive” in a universe freely inspired by the author of the novel, and challenges the spectators’ prejudices.

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Arquivio Architects from Spain have won the architectural competition to design the National Concert Hall in Vilnius, Lithuania. The international competition was endorsed by the International Union of Architects and organised by the Lithuanian Union of Architects and the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture. The winning design by Arquivio was selected from nearly 250 entries across the globe.

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The American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and the Center for Architecture have announced new and expanded programs for the ninth annual edition of Archtober, the official New York City Architecture and Design Month. The festival, now in its ninth year, brings together more than 80 partners throughout the city’s five boroughs to celebrate the importance of design and the built environment.

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