Creative Strategist of ArchDaily and Co-director of the Building of the Year Awards
On November 17th, 2021, as a part of the second season of the Virtual World Tour, Architects, not Architecture had the honor to have as guest the 2013 Pritzker Prize Toyo Ito.
We all might be familiar with his works, but how much do we know about his biography and about the vicissitudes that shaped him?
The Architecture Drawing Prize is celebrating its fifth year and continues to attract outstanding entries from around the world. This year has been exceptional in the number and strength of student submissions the Prize has attracted across its three categories for entry: hand-drawn, hybrid and digital. In fact, the winning drawings for all three categories are by students.
In Chicago, black or silver-colored towers designed by Mies van der Rohe are sprinkled across the city from the north to the south. They all sprang up within a relatively short period of time and constitute — in combination with some faithful homages — what’s called the Second Chicago School of Architecture. This timeline makes it seem like Mies' strategies sprang out of nowhere and like they were born already fully developed. This video takes a look at how these tower strategies evolved from smaller projects to larger ones by paying special attention to their section. Whereas open plans promise ultimate fluidity, in section, Mies' buildings present another idea entirely. In this direction, difference and discretion dominate and symmetry rules. All of this is in service of developing a close connection between the occupant and the distant horizon.
Category winners of The Architecture Drawing Prize 2021 will be announced online on Tuesday 30 November, starting at 17:00 GMT. The announcement will be broadcast as part of the World Architecture Festival and streamed live on ArchDaily’s Facebook page.
It is a commonly held belief by non-architects (and even some architects) that gabled roofs are inherently better than flat ones. The argument typically goes that a gable demonstrates a ‘form follows function’ sensibility, easily shedding water and snow using geometry and gravity. So, flat roofs might leak. While that’s true, this video blows the roof off the topic by taking a finer look at some points that might change your mind. This includes Louis Sullivan’s original reason for writing the phrase “form ever follows function,” as well as the ability of flat roofs to offer outdoor public spaces, supporting green roofs, structural simplicity, wind considerations, among many others. There’s also another, competing functional/formal reason for why a low slope roof might be more prudent than a more aggressive slope, even in snowy areas like Chicago.
As part of Velux's Build for Life online conference, ArchDaily will be hosting the Daylight in Architecture Sessions. Today, Cristian Izquierdo Lehmann, Jose Fernando from Natura Futura, and Rick Joy will discuss how to leverage buildings to benefit the environment and improve the quality of life.
This video takes us inside a professional model-building shop in Chicago called Presentation Studios International (PSI). They make models for all kinds of clients, but mostly for developers and architects. We get a tour of the shop from Robert Becker, an architectural designer and former employee. He helps us understand how models are conceptualized a little differently here than within an architectural office or in school. Here, they are almost strictly miniature buildings with the job of faithfully depicting a building design and serving as a persuasive tool to motivate investment. Then, we hear from Martin Chadwick, a life-long model builder to talk through the process of making high-quality miniature buildings and landscapes.
TRANSFER Architecture Video Award announced the awarded entries of its second edition in the framework of the cinema encounters Ecrans Urbains 2021 at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts of Lausanne, Switzerland.
The winner is the video by Joshua Bolchover and John Lin, Split Lives, Hong Kong, 2021
This is the story of architect Grant Gibson’s journey with a house in central Missouri. Originally designed with his mentor, Doug Garofalo, the owners have recently commissioned Grant to design an addition to their award-winning structure. The problem is the original house was designed to make it difficult to add anything at all, and Garofalo passed away shortly after the original house was constructed. Now, Grant, along with his practice CAMES Gibson, needs to design an addition to this house that defiantly resists alteration and to do it in a way that respects the original design while remaining consistent with his own beliefs and design ethos. The clients work closely with Grant to achieve this new design and find a solution to this very difficult problem.
Models are useful to architects for all sorts of things, from the earliest parts of the design, all the way to marketing a building after it's built. But, what is it about models that makes them such an important and powerful tool? And, how do different architecture firms incorporate them into their own and unique design process? This video explores these questions by surveying three firms: Morphosis, MVRDV, and Herzog and de Meuron. Often firms have model shops and dedicated model teams who are responsible for everything from early design decisions to critical client presentations and even marketing the building. We hear from the folks who work in these model shops and breakdown how the three case study firms approach models in their own unique way.
Cities face enormous challenges: The energy transition, climate adaptation and, the enormous challenge to build houses for growing populations. As more and more people live in cities, we consider how architecture and landscape design can be adapted to their needs.
Architecture-in-Development (A--D) is proud to announce the six finalists of the 2021 Global Challenge. A--D will partner with these six teams in a 6-month accelerator programme aiming to match potential partners, collaborators and resources to each project’s critical needs - giving the teams the opportunity to build the necessary capacity to bring their projects to life.
The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.
The second round of voting has decided three winners of the ArchDaily & Strelka Award. The grand prize winner will be announced on September 7th at the Future Architect Conference
Readers of ArchDaily and Strelka Mag have selected a shortlist of 15 architectural projects nominated for the joint ArchDaily & Strelka Award, which celebrates emerging architects and new ideas that transform the contemporary city. The second stage of voting, which will last until August 31st, will decide the three winners.
ArchDaily, Strelka Institute, and Strelka KB have selected a long list of 50 architectural projects from Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan for the second edition of The ArchDaily & Strelka Award. The open call invited emerging architects to submit their built projects that emphasize sustainability, research-based and participatory design, and the innovative use of materials. Architects and architecture and design firms that started their practice no more than 10 years ago could apply with projects that were built in the past five years.
Until August 26th, the readers of ArchDaily and Strelka Mag can vote for the projects that will make the shortlist.
Deciding where a building should go is a complex negotiation of visible and invisible, objective and subjective forces. Architects perform site analysis in order to identify and choreograph all these factors, but which factors do they focus on? This video is a survey (pun intended) of what goes into locating where a building should go on the Earth’s surface. From legal requirements like lot lines and setbacks, to infrastructural concerns like service hookup locations and pedestrian ways, to environmental factors like sunlight and topography, the video goes through how architects and contractors position structures. In addition to reviewing general rules of thumb, the video also includes some important architectural examples like the Casa Malaparte and OMA’s Student Center at IIT to inspire unique ways to approach the subject.
ArchDaily, Strelka Institute, and Strelka KB announce the second edition of their jointly curated award and are accepting applications from the territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Submit your project by August 8th.