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 and Inside Outside have collaborated on the design of a vast monument in Dubai, titled “Ethar – Honoring Generosity.” The installation consists of a field of 1,680 triangular-shaped recycled aluminum columns arrayed like a magnetic field, engraved with stories from Arabic scholars, scientists, and thinkers.

The installation was designed to celebrate the “unique culture of charitable giving in the United Arab Emirates with a physical installation that is part of the urban landscape of Dubai.” Designed for a site on Jumeirah Beach, the monument’s character can also be adapted for various contexts, whether dispersed throughout the city or appearing in key urban locations as a symbol of Emirati culture.

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The 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize will be announced on Tuesday, 05 March at 10am EST. Past laureates include some of architecture's most significant names, among them Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Philip Johnson, SANAA, Oscar Niemeyer, Norman Foster, Peter Zumthor, Toyo Ito, Alejandro Aravena and, most recently, Balkrishna Doshi (full list).

With his delicate designs for spatial structures and innovative concepts, Asif Khan is considered one of the world’s most exciting architects. He constructed the VantablackPavilion for the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea – thanks to nano-technology, the building's innovative paint absorbs 99 percent of visible light, which creates an impression similar to the vastness of space.

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The human figure is fundamental in order to understand scale in illustrations, hyper-realistic renders, collages and three-dimensional representations. However, it often seems to be one of the last elements to be incorporated, when it should be a thoughtful decision, intrinsically related to the project. What do human figures transmit beyond the scale of a project?

Imagine light fixtures that act as Bluetooth beacons, allowing smartphones to help visitors find their way around a building. Imagine a lighting system which can pinpoint the location of people and physical assets within the building. Imagine an automation system which can use occupancy data and personal preferences to orchestrate an optimized and personalized building environment.

There may be times when you remember an old project you did, perhaps at uni, that you want to show someone. The one that had the amazing render that took 10hrs of Photoshopping. But no, it’s at home on hard-drive no.2 of 5. If only you had uploaded that one to SiteSupervisor, you could be showing it off right... about... now.

SiteSupervisor is your new pocket portfolio. No, not the portfolio that you keep in the drawing tube that only ever sees the light of day at a job interview, but a real, live portfolio that you can access on your phone anytime, anywhere. It's time to take pride in the work you do and have done, and really use what you have to not only bring in more work, but also solve problems.

Colonia Roma, a neighborhood in Mexico City, is well known among locals for its art galleries, restaurants, bookstores and museums - it is a hotspot of contemporary art and culture. However, this cultural tradition actually dates back to the Porfirian Era in the early twentieth century. The area was a way to present Mexico City as a modern city by creating the first colony, along with Colonia Condesa, with all basic services available to the residents. Drawn with Parisian boulevards and tree-lined streets, Roma is an exemplar of art nouveau architecture, eclectic and French-ified – an attractive area that immediately led to the arrival of wealthy families.

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With a new academic year, SCI-Arc has continued to develop its global network of Satellite Initiatives. Serving as sites of experimentation and bringing together minds from around the world for unique symposia, diverse exhibitions, and workshops, these initiatives present new opportunities for engaging and testing the Institute’s cutting-edge ideas against the backdrop of cities outside of its native Los Angeles context.

Kevin Roche, the Irish-American architect and Pritzker laureate known whose modernist sensibility transformed America’s post-war cultural and corporate institutions, has died of natural causes in his home in Guilford, Connecticut. News of Roche’s passing was first posted to the website of his office, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates late on 02 March. He was 96 years old.

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This article was originally published on CommonEdge as "An Amazon Correction: The City Won – and the Company isn't Going Anywhere."

The Amazon brouhaha needs clarification: the company is not “pulling out of New York.” It’s simply canceling the construction of a physical campus in Long Island City, the fastest growing neighborhood in the city for almost a decade. The fate of that neighborhood reflects the outsize development trend of the larger city and the erroneous assumption that construction means growth. But let’s leave the bigger picture aside for the moment.

The United States is abundant with monuments dedicated to historical figures, events, and philosophies. From Mount Rushmore to the Statue of Liberty, the symbolism behind such monuments often outweighs the expense and practicalities behind their construction.

However, the architectural history of the United States contains many monumental intentions that were never realized. To demonstrate this, CashNetUSA has teamed up with NeoMam Studios to visualize five monuments that were never built. Below, we have republished the proposals with a shortened description. For the full story, visit the CashNetUSA website here.

For a couple of years students at Belgrade’s Fakultet savremenih umetnosti have been designing posters dedicated to architectural masterpieces. The series, titled Architecture – Strictly Minimal, is part of the course Contemporary Architecture and Design and school’s Interior Design module. Presented with a template, each of the students was tasked with selecting a piece of architecture he or she found fascinating and then designing a single figure. The language applied throughout the series was formulated intentionally as a means of reducing the given piece to a single and eye-catching motif. This minimalist gesture was imagined as revealing something special about this same work of architecture.

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Studio Fuksas has won the competition to revitalize the Fontvieille site along the port of Monaco, France. The project is designed to provides answers to major commercial, urban, architectural and ecological issues. The idea draws inspiration from the water and the green slopes of the Mediterranean hills. The new project aims to create a vertical park that links the city to the sea.

Dutch design practice UNStudio has created a new urban vision to create the world's smartest neighborhood in the Netherlands. Located in Helmond’s Brandevoort District, the project was imagined as a flexible grid that will be developed per users’ demand. Dubbed the Brainport Smart District, the project explores ​​social cohesion and safety, health, data, new transport technologies and independent energy systems. The BSD is designed to be a living lab that embraces experimentation and ‘learning by doing’.

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For this year's Women in Architecture Awards, The Architectural Review and the Architects’ Journal have selected Sheila O’Donnell as Architect of the Year and Xu Tiantian to win the Moira Gemill Prize for Emerging Architecture in the 2019 Women in Architecture awards. The Architect of the Year award recognizes excellence in design specifically in the context of a recently completed project and the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture is awarded to women designers under the age of 45 who show design excellence indicative of a bright future.

C.F. Møller Architects have completed Sweden’s tallest timber building, which is now accepting its first tenants. Situated in Västerås, one hour from Stockholm, the building is constructed from solid timber in order to radically reduce CO2 emissions, positively affect the indoor climate, and enhance the interior quality of life.

The 8.5-story-high tower features an elevated ground floor and double-height top floor, with all walls, beams, balconies, lifts, and stairwells made from cross-laminated timber. The use of CNC-milled solid timber and glulam allows for an airtight, energy-efficient structure without the need for additional cladding.

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The increasing use of air conditioning is causing many cities to hit record energy consumption levels during brutally hot summer months. In populous countries like India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico, large urban centers function like ovens: buildings absorb heat that is re-released back into the environment, further increasing the local temperature. More heat outside means more air conditioning inside, which not only raises energy consumption, but also increases the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

With this vicious cycle in mind, a paint was created to protect buildings and urban structures from excessive solar radiation, diminishing the effect of the urban heat island. The innovation came from the partnership of UNStudio, a Dutch architectural firm, and Monopol Color, a Swiss paint specialist. The dark-colored materials that are used to construct the buildings in our cities are one of the main causes of heat accumulation in urban areas. While darker materials absorb up to 95% of the sun’s rays and release them straight back into the atmosphere, this value can be reduced to 25% with a normal white surface. Now, with ‘The Coolest White’, it is possible to reduce absorption and emission to 12%.

Le Corbusier’s statement, “a house is a machine for living in,” forecasted a future where the house would become an engineered product of standardized, easily-duplicable pieces for an ideal city, while also achieving its ultimate functional purpose: the well-being of its inhabitants.

The curatorial team of the fifth edition of the Tallinn Architecture Biennial (TAB), for which ArchDaily is a proud partner, has announced the winner of their installation program “Huts and Habitats”. The winning proposal, Steampunk, designed by SoomeenHahm Design, Igor Pantic and Fologram (UK), was chosen from a shortlist of more than 137 international submissions.

Photographer Sytze Boonstra has captured the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in Taiwan through a series of new images. Bringing Mecanoo's work to life, Boonstra turned his lens to the part-landscape, part-architecture building with four performance halls tucked underneath a 35-acre artificial terrain. As the largest performing-arts center under one roof, the project was made to blur the boundaries between indoors and out, solid and void.

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Architecture and design practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro have been selected to design the Hungarian Museum of Transport in Budapest. As the new home for one of the oldest transport museums in Europe, the project will be sited in a former railway yard. The project uses the idea of ground transportation as a central organizing principle, highlighting the central role of the ground in urban planning and infrastructure. The design de-familiarizes ground by excavating, lifting, and cutting to produce unexpected environments.

A revised design has been released for the Oakland Athletics baseball stadium, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, James Corner Field Operations, and Gensler. The new stadium will replace the Oakland A’s existing 51-year-old Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, which the A’s share with the Oakland Raiders football team. The mega-ballpark includes a waterfront circular stadium at Howard Terminal and would turn the current Coliseum site into a tech and housing hub.

Under the redesign, the previous “diamond box” stadium is replaced by an open, circular scheme. Encompassing the playing field, a coliseum-like seating arrangement steadily bows own to the entrance area, topped by a landscaped green roof.