For thousands of years, nomadic Mongolians have lived in gers – circular ‘yurt-like’ structures made of timber, felt, and canvas that are ideal for moveable life on the Steppe. Since 1990, due to major political, social, and climatic upheaval, hundreds of thousands of people have abandoned nomadic life and moved to the country’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar. The gers, cheap and easily moved, are now grounded, exacerbating the extraordinary growth of the city, which has increased its size 35 times in the last thirty years. The living situation in these ger districts is increasingly unsustainable and detrimental to the health and well-being of those that live there.
'City parks' takes a stroll around the world’s most beautiful public spaces. A visual celebration of park life around the world, from the author of Lido, Christopher Beanland explores what city dwellers have come to appreciate more than ever over the last few years: parks are an essential part of modern urban life.
The winners of the German Design Awards 2023 approach design in ways that are both clever and sustainable, with a focus on ground-breaking product solutions and visionary ideas. The cradle-to-cradle principle, modular construction methods, sustainable use of materials and energy efficiency have long been mainstays in manufacturing and the construction process. But real estate branding is also increasingly coming into focus and becoming an important instrument in architectural communication and marketing.
Of the 4,200 submissions that the German Design Awards 2023 received, 98 projects in total were honored with the highest ‘Gold’ distinction. The German Design Awards are one of the most well-recognized international design awards, distinguished by its diversity and the quality of the projects. The awards are given to companies whose products stand out in the categories of ‘Excellent Product Design’, ‘Excellent Communications Design’, and ‘Excellent Architecture’. In the three different design disciplines, this year’s winners include companies such as Duravit, Mono and WMF, as well as the architecture firm MVRDV and start-ups such as nevi and X Shore AB.
The search for the world’s best building continues as the World Architecture Festival extends the entry deadline for its annual global awards programme to Monday 22 May. The 16th edition of the festival is open for award entries in 44 categories across architecture and interiors.
World Architecture Festival (WAF) is where the world architecture community meets to celebrate, learn, exchange and be inspired. This year, for the first time since 2015, the festival returns to Singapore on 29 November – 1 December.
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WasteBuild Zero will take place at the NDSM in the heart of Amsterdam’s architectural and circular economy hotbed
WasteBuild Zero is a 2-day event that unites the built environment to showcase the latest materials, techniques, solutions and innovators that are helping to deliver low carbon and circular construction schemes today. Our aim is to support the transition towards a circular and regenerative built environment and in the process to tackle the climate emergency.
The city is the largest human artifact. It is made by us, yet simultaneously it makes us, as well as all other nonhuman entities. The particular discourse to which this book on the city contributes is the discipline of architecture. It explores a simple question: How does the city effect the mode of existence of its buildings? The tradition within architectural history that identifies the city as the origin of our buildings poses a challenged to us, as architects, to theorize about the city’s form and use in order to rationalize our own actions. In opposition to other disciplinary approaches to the city and its architecture, however, the book argues not for type (Rossi, Ungers) as the deepest aspect of the architecture of the city. Neither will it be the function (Venturi & Scott Brown, Koolhaas) of the city to explain its material organization, nor is matter considered (Jacobs, Banham) to be deeper than the real city. Instead, this books argues that the mode of existence of architecture is inherent to the city itself, which originates its architecture as part of its being as a technical object.
The book examines the contemporary Asian city through the prism of urban design in assimilating new and established drivers of growth. This includes intensified forms of residential development, specialized commercial centers and technology parks, that drive the momentum of the contemporary city, while acting to restructure and reshape forms of capital investment. New spatial patterns are facilitated by tranches of urban expansion, redevelopment, regeneration and suburbanization that have emerged as by-products of both formal and informal development processes. The book also examines the Asian city language embodied in the local morphology—the essential values of the street, block, temple precinct and monument, and how these can be incorporated as drivers of new urban identities that relate to the changing culture and configuration of city neighborhoods. All of these continue to impose different levels of impact on the creation of livable cities and the quality of life for their inhabitants. In this way urban design can look to the future while respecting the past.
The photography collected in A View from the Top may have arisen out of a desire to document a singular body of work—the Viewpoint Collection. Through Kelley’s eye, lens, and postproduction choices, however, it advances the very way that buildings can be photographed and understood, allowing us to visit residences that most of us will never see in person.
Experiential Design Schemas presents a new theoretical and practical framework for designing architectural experiences developed by two seasoned researchers, an architect, and a building scientist.
Hillier: Selected Works presents the design work of the husband-and-wife team of J. Robert and Barbara A. Hillier during the last 25 years coupled with a brief graphic retrospective of the Hillier practice of architecture over 57 years of operation. Despite taking unconventional paths to architecture, both Hilliers enjoyed exhilarating careers growing the firm to 500 people and executing nearly 4,000 projects in 27 U.S. States and 34 Foreign Countries. The quality of the firm’s work has been honored by over 350 design awards. The selected projects in this monograph are driven by strictly disciplined programing and then conceived by bringing into balance all the forces at work on a project: culture, climate, site, economics, market, and even politics. The resultant architecture is distinctive of its time, its place, and its client, rather than of a particular language or style.
Silt Sand Slurry is a visually rich investigation into where, why, and how sediment is central to the future of America’s coasts. Sediment is an unseen infrastructure that shapes and enables modern life. Silt is scooped from sea floors to deepen underwater highways for container ships. It is diverted from river basins to control flooding. It is collected, sorted, managed, and moved to reshape deltas, marshes, and beaches. Anthropogenic action now moves more sediment annually than ‘natural’ geologic processes — yet this global reshaping of the earth’s surface is rarely-discussed and poorly-understood.
On April 6, SPACE10 will introduce a global design competition to reimagine home — using AI. Over the past year, generative AI tools have enhanced imaginative and creative capabilities, allowing millions of people to visualise worlds beyond those we ever thought possible. In a first of its kind competition, SPACE10 challenges participants to apply new AI tools to future homes and cities. Regenerative Futures is part competition, part open-source research, and open to everyone. The competition encourages play and imagination to create visual concepts of future homes, communities, and cities that help address some of the biggest challenges facing everyday life.
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Homo Urbanus – A Citymatographic Odyssey by Bêka & Lemoine
For fifteen years now, Bêka & Lemoine have been investigating how people relate to space: how they inhabit it, how they appropriate it, and how they shape it. Their extensive, and still ongoing, film project ‘Homo Urbanus’ depicts the peculiar species of the urban dweller by exploring the daily life of ten world cities.
REAL MATTER is an annual summer workshop in Raleigh, NC, hosted by in situ studio and organized around a collaborative urban project, a robust lecture series, and building tours. Information about the workshop is available here: https://insitustudio.us/real-matter/
Please join us on an excursion to Finland in the 1970s! This was a decade when the Finnish nation dreamed of economic growth, prosperity and equality. The suburbs became the new home for many of those who had moved to the city in search of work. They were able to enjoy the increasing amount of free time sat in their modern living rooms, watching television. In architects’ studios, society’s dreams were given a concrete form – and more effectively than ever before.
Please come to the Mumford Lecture in-person or virtually!
Emily Badger, the New York Times urban policy writer, will deliver this year's Lewis Mumford Lecture at The City College of New York on Thursday, April 27. Her talk, 6 - 7:30 p.m. in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture's Sciame Auditorium, is entitled, "Pressing Change in the Increasing Inflexible City." It will focus on how cities must change as the nation emerges from the pandemic. To watch virtually, a Zoom link is available. Badger writes about cities and urban policy for The Upshot from the Times' Washington bureau where she covers the interconnections between housing, transportation, and inequality. Her Mumford lecture discusses how cities will respond to the changing dynamics of urban life. Buildings that once housed businesses will have to be modified to accommodate the needs of those who will soon live there. Hotels, once temporary lodgings for people on the road, will have to be adapted as single-room-occupancy spaces for those who need permanent addresses. Sidewalks will turn into eateries, and parking lanes will become bus corridors. Increasingly, roads dedicated to cars will be adapted as bicycle paths and walkways for pedestrians.
