The OMA-Designed CMG Qianhai Global Trade Center has broken ground in Shenzhen. Unveiled during the inauguration ceremony for Qianhai Significant Projects in China, the mixed-used 360,000 square-meter development will create a Micro-City environment, blurring traditional boundaries between building and city.

The Fundació Mies van der Rohe is proposing more than a hundred activities to enjoy at home part of this year’s Barcelona Architecture Week 2020. Designed with and for everyone, the fourth edition of this event starts on Thursday 7 May and offers over a hundred activities adapted into a virtual format. Events include including streamed talks and meetings, debates, and virtual tours of various spaces in the city, to name a few.

X-Architects’ entry for the Desert Resort Competition, generated a luxury 60 keys desert hideaway resort, in an ultra-harsh and empty environment. Placed in Rub’ Al Khali, the world’s biggest sand sea located in the KSA, the project addresses the challenging design in desert-like surroundings.

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Expo 2020 Dubai has been postponed and will be held from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022. The decision has been declared after the two-thirds majority of the votes was surpassed within a week of voting, opening on 24 April.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) has just announced the groundbreaking of Platform 16, an office campus in Downtown San Jose, California. Comprising three-buildings, the 1,200,000-square-foot project is an innovative complex that favors indoor and outdoor connections.

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Paris, just like Milan, is planning on keeping its streets car-free after the coronavirus lockdown. Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced plans to maintain the anti-pollution and anti-congestion measures introduced during the confinement period, as the city reopens.

Paul Clemence has just released his latest photographs of the Studio Gang-designed 11 Hoyt tower in Downtown Brooklyn, New York. Almost completed, the residential development is characterized by an eye-catching crafted precast concrete and glass façade.

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P&T Architects and Engineers have designed a free zone development, “dedicated to the growing e-commerce market in the Middle East”. Entitled Dubai CommerCity, the award-winning project puts in place three main clusters spread over 530,000 square meters: business, logistics, and social.

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Foster + Partners has created a series of architectural challenges for kids, to learn and have fun during the lockdown. Available templates and activities include making paper skyscrapers, creating your own city, drawing trees, and imagining the future.

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Architects around the world have put their knowledge to use in the fight against the coronavirus. While some designed alternative facilities to increase the capacity of hospitals, others imagined different types of face protection gears to help with the world-wide shortage of masks. Using 3d printing technology, easy to assemble techniques, and low-cost material, firms, universities, and individuals have mobilized their expertise to create face shields for citizens and medical staff.

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The Lithuanian capital Vilnius has decided to allocate its public spaces to bars and cafes, to encourage the reopening of restaurants under required physical distancing measures. Turning the outdoor space into one vast open-air café, the city is taking new safety measures to step into the next phase of the lockdown.

HUA HUA Architects has imagined a proposal that can reconcile people and public spaces, post Covid-19. The Gastro Safe Zone program aims to awaken stagnant gastronomic businesses by regulating outside eating and ensuring the required social distancing measures. The first prototype has been already installed in the streets of Brno in the Czech Republic.

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The Finland Pavilion for Expo Dubai 2020 draws inspiration from Finnish nature, design, and innovation. Imagined by JKMM Architects, the project also takes on elements from the local context, with tent-like features.

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The Citizens’ Brigade to Save LACMA, had organized a competition entitled “LACMA Not LackMA”, in order to collect ideas “that could contribute to an alternate design for a new Los Angeles County Museum of Art”. The selected six designs are from renowned international firms: Barkow Leibinger, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Kaya Design, Paul Murdoch Architects, Reiser + Umemoto, and TheeAe.

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The Victorian State Government has given official approval for the Southbank project, in Melbourne, with construction scheduled for next year. Set to become Australia’s tallest tower, the building is conceived by Dutch firm UNStudio and local firm Cox Architecture.

As social distancing becomes the new norm in the fight against COVID-19, people are finding it harder to keep up with the six-foot rule in dense cities. Urban Planner Meli Harvey developed a map of New York that shows the width of sidewalks in the city, aiming to highlight public areas where social distancing can be maintained.

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UNStudio has just completed the remodeling works of the Hanwha headquarters building in Seoul, while the building remained fully occupied. The refurbishment operations have created a modern establishment that meets the current sustainability requirements.

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