8 years ago today, ArchDaily launched with a daunting mission: to provide inspiration, knowledge and tools to the architects tasked with designing for the 3 billion people that will move into cities in the next 40 years. This mission has captured the imagination of architects worldwide, leading us to become the world's most visited architecture website – serving over 400,000 visitors daily in English, Spanish, Portuguese and now Chinese. In our 8th year, we've made great strides towards this goal: from conveying information in another language through ArchDaily China to finding new ways to transmit information such as our ArchDaily Essentials series; from better ways to engage readers such as our #YourArchDaily Instagram campaign to presenting more of an editorial voice through articles such as our selection of most inspiring leaders of 2015; and from a better way to display our site with our new redesign to a better way to manage our database with our custom publishing platform.

Of course, the most important part of this progress is the continued support and engagement of our ever-growing readership. By sharing our content on social media or discussing it with friends and colleagues, you're helping us to reach more and more architects, and thus helping us to fulfill our goal – thank you for joining us on this mission. Read on after the break for a round-up of our highlights from the past year.

At a press conference earlier today, the director of the 2016 Venice Biennale Alejandro Aravena revealed more details about his plans for this year’s event. Alongside announcing the proposal and invited teams for Aravena’s own central exhibition titled “Reporting from the Front,” which will occupy all of the Biennale’s main venues, the Biennale announced the full list of participants in the 62 national pavilions, including 5 first-time participants: Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Philippines, the Seychelles, and Yemen.

These participants will be tasked with responding to Aravena's prompt to highlight "architectures that despite the scarcity of means intensify what is available instead of complaining about what is missing." The national pavilions will highlight the social, environmental and economic challenges prevalent in each of the participating countries, and the ways in which architecture all over the world has been used to alleviate these problems. Read on for the full list of participants, and don't forget to check out all of our Venice Biennale coverage here.

From heart-shaped plans to sweet "buttresses," we're really feelin' the love! Out of over 250 submissions to our Valentine contest, these are our favorites. (Beware, puns ahead!)

Happy Valentine's Day from the ArchDaily Team!

Following an exciting week of nominations, ArchDaily’s readers have evaluated over 3,000 projects and selected 5 finalists in each category of the Building of the Year Award.

Over 18,000 architects and enthusiasts participated in the nomination process, choosing projects that exemplify what it means to push architecture forward. These finalists are the buildings that have most inspired ArchDaily readers.

This diverse group of projects hail from all corners of the globe and from firms of different sizes and style. This year's selection includes some Building of the Year stalwarts alongside a healthy selection of lesser-known and emerging practices - but most importantly, they all capture architecture's capacity to spark positive change in the environment.

Roses are red, violets are blue; we'd love to receive a valentine from you!

We have long admired our reader's creativity, so we wanted to celebrate this Valentine's Day by featuring the most lovely, architecture-themed cards submitted by our readers. Whether you're looking for Mr. Wright or you love someone Gehry much, we hope you will share your witty and beautiful valentines with us. <3

Alejandro Aravena's proposal for the Architecture Biennale 2016, "Reporting from the front”, invites each country to share experiences and moments of crisis that architecture has experienced in recent years. The proposal calls for a reflection on the mistakes in order to share solutions that may allow other countries to anticipate and avoid similar situations.

During the last period of economic growth in Spain, construction became the main driving force of the economy. Today, reality reveals us the built presence and the unfinished remains of what once was the largest edificatory enterprise in Spanish history, leaving behind a difficult situation in which to deal with partially constructed large volumes which are not consolidated.

Under the title "Unfinished", the exhibition in the Spanish Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2016 draws attention to these unfinished architectures in order to discover virtues that can become design strategies. Robert Venturi, referring to the Farnsworth House, points out how architects are highly selective in determining those problems they want to solve often giving up solving others.

2015 was an excellent year for ArchDaily. As we've continued to grow, we've delivered more information and tools to more people all around the world, leveling access to architectural knowledge and encouraging an exchange of ideas from professionals of diverse backgrounds, opening architectural up to everyone rather than just the privileged few.

Now for the 7th consecutive year, we are tasking our readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that are making an impact in the profession with ArchDaily's 2016 Building of the Year Awards. By voting, you are part of an unbiased, distributed network of jurors and peers that has elevated the most relevant projects over the past six years. Over the next two weeks, your collective intelligence will filter over 3,000 projects down to just 14 stand-outs - the best in each category on ArchDaily.

This is your chance to reward the architecture you love by nominating your favorite for the 2016 Building of the Year Awards!

Full rules after the break.

Since the foundation of ArchDaily in 2008, our goal has been to build a large database of projects, news stories and articles in order to give our readers the inspiration, knowledge and tools they need to do their best work. But just because our database is becoming increasingly complex, that doesn't mean that your interaction with it has to be overwhelming.

Seven months ago we introduced our new, custom-built publishing platform - a largely behind-the-scenes change which allowed us to bring you new organizational tools such as our faceted search for projects, events and competitions as well as an improved version of My ArchDaily to let you create your own architectural library. Since then, our development team has been working hard on a new front-end design that is worthy of the changes we have already made under the surface.

With the new design, we have sought to simplify the ArchDaily site, re-emphasizing our "less is more" motto from the last design by organizing the layout into just two main columns: one for our stream of articles and one which helps you navigate the site by suggesting related content and popular articles. In addition, our developers have updated the website technology to improve loading speeds and bring you a seamless experience on our site. Read on to find out more details about the updated site!