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.

Danish architectural firm COBE has designed a new mixed-use affordable housing development in downtown Toronto. Working with architectsAlliance, the team has designed three buildings that contain over 760 market rental units, 30% of which are affordable. Sited in one of the fastest growing areas of Canada, the new community project is designed to achieve LEED Gold certification. The development aims to combine spaces for recreation, living and working.

Since 1996, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has hosted awards for exemplary buildings across the UK by RIBA Chartered Architects and RIBA International Fellows. This year, 83 projects have been shortlisted for the RIBA London Awards from a list of 200 entrants.

Each project will be visited by one of five London juries during the month of April. Winners will be announced at the award ceremony on May 20th at the RIBA headquarters at 66 Portland Place, London. News of the shortlist follows on from similar selections by RIBA South West, RIBA East, and RIBA North East.

Henning Larsen has released details of its winning design for the NØRR office and cultural center in Saint-Denis, near the French capital of Paris. The 55,000-square-meter scheme draws inspiration from rural French villages, creating an intimate setting for urban and professional life derived from Scandinavian-styled human scales.

The scheme’s design was driven by an ethos of a professional world that would not forfeit the fundamentals of human wellness, with 50,000 square meters of working space engaging in direct dialogue with lush terraces, natural daylight, and a tight sense of community.

MIPM and The Architectural Review have recognized “Wonderwoods” by MVSA Architects and Stefano Boeri Architetti as the overall winner for their Future Projects Award 2019. Developed for client G&S Vastgoed, the twin 90-meter towers in Utrecht, The Netherlands, provide a balance between nature and the city.

The defining feature of the scheme is a living green façade absorbing 5.4 tonnes of CO2 per year, behind which sits a mix of homes, offices, and public facilities. The scheme is one of several projects to win at the 2019 awards, with 16 award categories celebrating the flourishing of nature in the city, seeking to “restore our ability to connect with the natural world as our planet undergoes the largest wave of urban growth in history.”

+ 11

New York City’s long-awaited Hudson Yards has finally opened its doors to the public for the first time. Built on Midtown Manhattan’s West Side, the project is New York’s largest development to date and the United States’ largest private real estate development, covering almost 14 acres of land (more than 56,000 sqm) with polished residential towers, offices, plazas, gardens, shopping centers, and restaurants, all designed by some of the world’s most iconic architects.

+ 22

Italian practice Studio Fuksas has been selected to build the new International Congress Center of Jerusalem. Sited in the “City Gateway”, the project is part of a larger expansion of the city's central business district. The new Congress Center will be built around the existing Ussishkin Hall Building, which will be redesigned to host international shows and conferences. The expansion will make the Jerusalem ICC the largest conference center in the Middle East.

+ 2

The third Chicago Architecture Biennial will occur from September 19, 2019, to January 5, 2020, and yesterday the first group of contributors to the 2019 edition and publication was announced. This year’s theme, “...and other such stories,” will bring together a multi-faceted and international exploration of architecture and the built environment. Newly commissioned projects for the Biennial will highlight issues including public housing, social justice, and the appropriation and preservation of the natural environment.

The Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has announced that Norway's Mjøstårnet tower is, at 85.4 meters, officially the world's tallest timber building. Beyond the unique distinction, the tower is also Norway's tallest mixed-use structure and third tallest building.

Architect Rafael Viñoly has revealed new images for NEMA, a skyscraper set to become the tallest residential rental tower in Chicago. Designed to evoke the structural system of the Willis Tower, the project is sited on the southwestern edge of Grant Park. The 76-story residential tower will create 800 rental units and is designed to be LEED Silver. The new skyscraper will include expansive views of the city's skyline as it frames Lake Michigan and Grant Park.

+ 24

For its tenth year running, Hello Wood is once again hosting its popular international summer school for young architects to help foster a “thinking through making” mentality. The architecture and design studio is putting out an open call for the jubilee event, which is themed around the folklore tradition of Carnival and will give would-be attendees an opportunity to pitch what they feel are the most pressing issues facing our society and how architecture can solve these concerns. The annual event has a global reach, with the previous summer schools participated by 900 students from across 40 countries and 80 universities, including workshop leaders from notable studios such as Kengo Kuma and Urban Think-Tank.

The Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum sculpture garden will be renovated for the first time since the 1980s by Japanese artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. Currently featuring works by Auguste Rodin, Jimmie Durham, and Yoko Ono, the sculpture garden will be opened up to the National Mall and create space for large-scale contemporary works and performances. The new concept aims to raise visibility for the garden and welcome more visitors to the museum.

Safdie Architects have published an update of their iconic Jewel Changi Airport, as construction continues in Singapore. Featuring the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, a lush indoor forest, and a green trail of airport amenities, the scheme is set to open on April 17th of this year.

Jewel Changi Airport seeks to reinvent the public concourse not just as an in-between space for travelers, but as a major public attraction. Public transit form the city passes through the city and the large garden and shopping space within the central dome establishes it as a node for public gathering. In the future, an event space on the north side of the park will host public events for up to 1000 people.

+ 1

KCAP has released images of their proposed HS Kwartier urban vision for The Hague in the Netherlands. As cities such as The Hague face the challenge of providing more inner-city housing, former industrial and port areas are increasingly being reimagined as attractive areas for living and working. KCAP’s HS Kwartier scheme, situated in the post-industrial Laakhavens region, seeks to “give an impulse to both the environment around Hollands Spoor station and the connections with the center of The Hague."

Under KCAP’s urban vision, the area around the Hollands Spoor station will be characterized by excellent accessibility and a mix of various functions. A mixed-use urban program of 245,000 square meters will include large amounts of housing, offices, education, student housing, hotels, culture, restaurants, and retail.

+ 1

There are few things that fascinate us more than the sea. Its contemplation arouses a sense of peace, while its colors, textures, movements and amplitude provide a scientifically proven effect of relaxation in our nervous system. Above all, it makes us realize how small we are in the universe. It is not by chance that a house facing the sea is a dream of consumption for many, let alone with a pool right in front of it. Infinity pools play with this feeling of infinite sea and sky. Through a well-elaborated set of levels and plans, they create an optical illusion that leaves everyone speechless, making pool water appear as if merged with the horizon, overflowing at one or more edges. But before you plan your photo on Instagram with a glass of sparkling wine in your hand, let's take a look at how these pools are built.

+ 15

The Royal Institute of British Architects have announced fourteen buildings shortlisted from 48 entries for this year's RIBA South West Awards. The work includes six projects are by new and established practices based in the South West, as well as a series of new and reconfigured houses. All shortlisted buildings will be assessed by a regional jury with the winning buildings announced at an awards ceremony this May.

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is a plastic material widely used for thermal insulation (and in some cases, acoustics) in building envelopes.

So is it possible to recycle it and apply it again in other construction processes? Yes, EPS can be crushed and compacted to be used in the manufacture of new plastic products. But it can also be recycled and live again in the construction of architectural and urban projects in the form of paints and coatings.

+ 5

As part of the RIBA annual Regional Awards programme, 23 architectural works and one masterplan have been shortlisted for the RIBA East awards. These projects cover a range of types, from homes to schools to follies, and represent some of the finest work produced in Britain in the last year.

+ 21

Space Saloon has announced a new week long experimental design-build festival in Southern California. Dubbed FIELDWORKS, the festival aims to rethink design-build and hands-on education. Following the success of the first workshop, LANDING, the group is returning to Southern California and the Morongo Valley. The community-in-residence program brings teams of students and designers together to develop site-specific projects that question notions of context and place.

Barkow Leibinger has unveiled details of their competition-winning proposal for the Waterfront Hotel and Boarding House in Molenkopf, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Located at a prominent site on the city’s Molenspitze, the west-facing triangular point of land sits at the end of an industrial peninsula used for warehouses and container shipping at Frankfurt’s East Bay.

The Barkow Leibinger scheme manifests as a triangular pinwheel with offset corners defined by the depths of hotel rooms. The mass of the 60-meter-tall building is further broken down by a “folded accordion façade” to maximize the panoramic views of the European Central Bank, and Frankfurt skyline attainable from the site.

+ 11

MODUL architectural bureau has released details of their proposed transformation of an old factory building into a modern showroom in Voskresensk, on the outskirts of Moscow. The scheme, dedicated to the exhibition of stone materials, is organized around a wide-ranging series of immersive spaces, serving clients and designers with work and recreational infrastructure.

To address the existing working factory in the complex, the site has been divided into an “intervention” zone and a “production” zone, the logistics of which could not be dislocated during design and construction. Under the proposal, a large warehouse has been designed to accommodate stone slabs, freeing up the historic factory building as a place of exhibition.

+ 30

After spending countless hours in front of AutoCAD working on a project, you’re bound to have your own set of favorite commands to standardize a few steps. We also bet that you don’t have them all memorized or often forget them. To help you remember, we've made a list of 50 commands that can help you speed up your work game, discover new shortcuts, or come in use as a handy tool for when you forget what the command you need is called.

The following listing was developed and corroborated by our team for the 2013, 2014 and 2015 versions of AutoCAD in English. We also prepared a series of GIFs to visualize some of the trickier ones.

When you’ve finished reading, we would love to know what your favorite commands are (including those that we didn’t include). We will use your input to help us update the article!

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We are especially proud of our global reach. With more than 40,000 new articles and 4300 projects added to our site in the last year alone, we are committed to providing the most relevant resources to our readers to better their knowledge and appreciation for the field we all love. We are proud and excited to reach readers in every corner of the world, and we savor the opportunity to continue sharing the inspiration, knowledge, and tools needed to design a positive urbanizing world.