Videos

Brooklyn design studio The Principals have completed the Dynamic Sanctuary, an interactive installation at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, during the 2015 NYCxDESIGN festival. Commissioned by Ford Motors, the light-based installation detects and pulses with the biorhythms of its visitors, creating a dynamic space in both name and nature.

The modular installation was manually constructed by The Principals in their Brooklyn studio. Learn more about the project and view selected images after the break.

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Discover historic New York with "OldNYC," a digital archive of the New York Public Library's "Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s" Collection. Bringing together an extensive catalogue of images from the library's Milstein Collection, OldNYC organizes photographs geographically, allowing users to view images specific to individual blocks and streets.

The project is also collaborative, asking visitors on the site to comment on photographs with "what's there now, what's changed, and what's stayed the same." Users can edit or add to captions on the back of each of the photos, creating a personal element in the latest retelling of New York's vibrant history.

Learn more about the project and view selected images after the break.

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Enter the unique realm of the "beautifully disturbing" with Project Senium, a new short film exploring the aging interiors of an abandoned mental hospital. Named for the Latin word for 'decay', the atmospheric film documents the asylum in breathtaking depth and detail, elevating material often dubbed "ruin porn" to a level of cinematic beauty.

For the next year, visitors at New York's Brooklyn Bridge Park will have the chance to interact with "Please Touch the Art", an exhibition of works by Danish artist Jeppe Hein. Playful, inventive, and immediately striking, Hein's work engages audiences as "active participants," inviting spontaneity and user interaction. Curated by Nicholas Baume, the exhibition contains three bodies of work by Hein: the soaring water jets of Appearing Rooms, the sixteen bright red benches of Modified Social Benches, and the reflective vertical planks of Mirror Labyrinth NY.

The exhibition is a project of New York City's Public Art Fund, a non-profit organization responsible for numerous free exhibitions offering "powerful experiences with art and the urban environment".

Learn more about the Mirror Labyrinth NY installation and view selected images after the break.

Videos

Santiago Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences has taken a starring role in Tomorrowland, Disney's latest blockbuster. Located in the former riverbed of the Turia in Valencia, Spain, the City of Arts and Sciences comprises a cinema (L'Hemisfèric), a landscaped walk and sculpture garden (L'Umbracle), the Príncipe Felipe Science Museum, the largest aquarium in Europe (L'Oceanográfico), and the renowned Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia. The complex was constructed in stages commencing in July 1996, and opened to the public in October 2005. Unique and strikingly futuristic, the iconic group of buildings caught the eye of Tomorrowland producer Jeffrey Chernov, who spoke effusively of the building at a recent press conference for the film.

"Calatrava's architecture is just phenomenal and inventive and exciting. It's very skeletal, like you're looking at the vertebrae of a dinosaur or prehistoric fish," said Chernov. "You walk into that place and you never want to leave. That's the vibe we wanted for Tomorrowland."

Three Harvard students have launched a Kickstarter Project to fund a short film and digital exhibition on the Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline, which runs along the historic Silk Road. "From 'Silk Road' to 'Gas Road'" will explore the "cultural, ecological and urban implications" of the 21st century intervention, following the summertime journey of Lu Xiaoxuan, Benny Shaffer, and Justin D. Stern along the pipeline. The project is being carried out through Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese studies, and the trio intends to finish filming and photographing for the project this summer.

Learn more about the project and how to support it after the break.

The BBC has unveiled a mobile recording studio designed by London architecture firm JaK Studio, in conjunction with innovation consultancy Seymourpowell. Commissioned by BBC Radio 4, the design was selected following a 2013 international design competition organized by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and will tour the country to record material for The Listening Project.

Riffing off the project's theme of conversation, JaK Studio's mobile studio converts the form of a speech bubble into a lightweight, aerodynamic booth inspired by the iconic Airstream caravan.

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SecondMedia has been selected as the winner of Storefront for Art and Architecture's 2015 Street Architecture Prize Competition. Now in its third year, the biennial international competition seeks to implement temporary outdoor installations that facilitate "new forms of collective public gathering." Participants in the 2015 competition were asked to respond to the theme of New York's IDEAS City Festival, "The Invisible City." SecondMedia's winning proposal 'Foamspace' -- which envisions creating an "urban lounge" with Geofoam blocks -- beat out over 70 submissions from teams of artists, engineers, and architects across the globe.

Learn more about the project and view selected images after the break.

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A temporary pavilion designed by London-based firm Adjaye Associates is housing a selection of works for the 56th International Art Exhibition, "All the World's Futures," in Venice. Curated by Okwui Enwezor, the exhibition explores the numerous ways in which art can be experienced in "an unfolding of typologies." Adjaye Associate's temporary museum seeks to parallel Enwezor's curatorial vision, and is nestled within a 316-meter-long, 16th-century ship-building warehouse in the Arsenale district.

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Swedish firm Studio Esinam's new print series depicts "Elevations" of architectural landmarks across the globe. Using minimalist line drawings, the illustrations attempt to "capture the unique feeling of various cities around the world".

Meticulously recreating the facades of landmarks in Berlin, Brooklyn, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Tokyo, the growing collection of prints reframes technical drawings as works of art. By distilling iconic facades to their barest and most essential elements, Studio Esinam aims to direct "attention to details that mostly pass unseen."

View selected prints from the "Elevations" series after the break.

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Finnish firm Verstas Architects has been awarded first place in a competition for the expansion of Finland's Lapland central hospital for their design of a functional complex of "healing architecture." Responding to the challenge of Finland's aging population and changes in municipal funding, the winning proposal reflects the "hospital of tomorrow," creating a flexible and functional space in conversation with its urban surrounds.

In conjunction with the release of the results of their "Design Competition Survey", the Van Alen Institute have put forward 10 propositions for the improvement of design competitions. Accompanied by a series of vibrant graphics, the propositions can be read after the break.

For years, competitions have powered the stream of architectural output, producing such icons as the Vietnam War Memorial, Sydney Opera House, Central Park, and Ground Zero memorial. One need only look to the buzz surrounding the Guggenheim Helsinki competition and ArchDaily's own amply filled tag to see that competitions are part of the very lifeblood coursing through contemporary architecture. But what do architects really think about design competitions?

With 1414 responses from 65 countries, the Architectural Record/Van Alen Institute Competition survey is one of the most comprehensive investigations of this question to date. Speaking to the Architectural Record in February, Van Alen Institute competitions director Jerome Chou said that the survey hoped to identify the pros and cons of the competitions process, and offer suggestions for its improvement. "[W]e're hoping to advance the dialogue about the future of competitions, develop new models, and reach new audience," Chou said.

Launched in February this year, the survey sought responses from international design professionals who had participated in a competition during their career. 

Read a summary of the survey's key findings after the break.