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Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
In the foyer of their London offices, architecture firm Allies and Morrison is displaying "Archiflakes," a series of snowflake designs inspired by the floorplans of famous structures from around the world. Developed by staff member Maria Spada, the series was a response to an internal competition to design the office's seasonal decorations.
As all architects know, there are few things in life more valuable than a good sketchbook. That's why the Architools Notebook, a sketchbook now raising funds on Kickstarter, was designed from the ground up to suit an architect's workflow and sense of style. From the design of the covers (which incorporates the golden ratio) to the type of binding (which allows the open book to lay flat for double-page sketching or scanning), the Architools Notebook has considered all the little things that can help make a sketchbook the perfect companion.
Foster + Partners has won the competition to design a new extension to Marseille Airport that will allow the building to process up to 12 million passengers a year. The 2-phase design will add a new central pavilion to the existing building—which comprises the original 1960s structure designed by Fernand Pouillon, and a 1992 extension by Richard Rogers—and a new pier to provide access to the planes.
This week, Zaha Hadid Design released a new platform wedge shoe and accompanying clutch bag with British shoe and accessory brand Charlotte Olympia. The limited edition pieces, which sport the familiar flowing forms perfected by Hadid in her architecture, are both constructed using a combination of transparent perspex and rose gold accents.
The drive to introduce autonomous vehicles to the roads took a blow yesterday, when a self-driving shuttle bus in Las Vegas was involved in a minor collision with a truck—just 2 hours into the vehicle's first day of operations. The bus, a 12-seat Navya Arma, was on the first day a 12-month trial covering a 0.6-mile (1-kilometer) loop in Las Vegas' Fremont East “Innovation District” when it was grazed by a reversing truck.
In a blog post by the city of Las Vegas, the blame was placed on the driver of the truck, who was cited by city officials for illegal backing. However, according to The Guardian, passengers at the time said the crash could have been avoided if the shuttle had simply backed out of the truck's way.
As architects, we've all been there: the payment for your most recent completed building comes through, and as you look around, you realize you have nothing left to spend the money on. Your subscriptions for all of your extortionately priced software are paid; you've bought all the latest trendy gadgets; your costly sartorial tastes are satisfied; and of course, you're living in a cool, spacious house of your own design. What does the architect who has everything do with their money? There's only so many bottles of wine you can send to the high school guidance counselor who introduced you to your lucrative career.
But fear not! As part of their new "Everyday Objects" range, Tiffany & Co has released a set of basic drawing tools that, purchased together, will relieve you of $1,275 in unwanted cash.
Zumtobel Group has announced the 2017 winners of its Zumtobel Group Awards for architecture, which rewards the year's innovations which best promote "sustainability and humanity in the built environment." Leading the awards is Los Angeles-based firm Michael Maltzan Architecture whose Star Apartments project, which provides 102 homes for previously homeless individuals in LA, was awarded the prize in Zumtobel Group's Buildings category. Also winning prizes were UNStudio, Atelier TeamMinus, and Arturo Vittori. Read on for more details and the full list of winners and honorable mentions.
Earlier today, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May made her closing speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. In a speech which focused on the fallout of Brexit and the economy, May devoted considerable attention to the issue of the UK housing market, announcing a plan to add £2 billion to the government's existing £7 billion affordable housing fund—a fund which local governments, private housebuilders, and housing associations can apply to for grants to subsidize construction of affordable housing.
However, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has strongly criticized the government's proposal, arguing that £2 billion will not be nearly enough to address the scale of the problem—by most estimates, the country is falling short of housing demand by hundreds of thousands of units annually, and house prices are increasingly out of reach for the young and the poor. In response, the RIBA argues for a much greater investment in social housing, highlighting its recent decision to award its Gold Medal to 20th Century social housing architect Neave Brown and stating that "we need a concerted program of public investment in new social housing across the country and that means spending a lot more than was announced today." Read on for RIBA President Ben Derbyshire's full statement:
The 4-minute film "Community by Design: Skid Row Housing Trust," directed by Myles Kramer, has been selected by as the winner of the AIA's annual I Look Up Film Challenge. Winning out against 81 other entries, the film investigates the impact and approach of the Skid Row Housing Trust, which creates homes for homeless people in Los Angeles, with the help of renowned architects such as Michael Maltzan Architecture and Brooks + Scarpa Architects.
With the launch today of Apple's iOS 11—and with it, the release of the company's powerful system for augmented reality apps, ARKit—Morpholio has released a new update to their popular Trace app that allows users to sketch over photographs with perfect accuracy. While it has always been an option to sketch over photographs in Trace, the new "Perspective Finder" tool superimposes a scaled grid over the photograph that helps designers follow the perspective of the image and measure their drawings accurately.
Vincent Callebaut Architectures has released a design proposal for a new eco-tourism resort in The Philippines inspired by natural coastline forms. Making extensive use of cradle-to-cradle and other sustainable design principles, the resort features a series of spiraling apartment buildings and shell-shaped hotel buildings, themselves positioned on two Fibonacci spirals of land in a coastal lagoon. At the center of the ensemble, a mountain-like complex combines a school, recreational swimming pools, sports halls, the resort's kitchens, and a suite of laboratories for environmental scientists.
Chinese architect Zhang Ke, the founder of the firm standardarchitecture, has been awarded the 2017 Alvar Aalto Medal. Presented by the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Finnish Association of Architects SAFA, the Architectural Society, the Alvar Aalto Foundation and the City of Helsinki, the medal recognizes an architect who, in the words of the Museum of Finnish Architecture, is "exceptionally accomplished in the field of creative architecture and has carried on Aalto’s legacy of sustainable, humane design."
Andrés Duany (born September 7, 1949) is a founding partner of Miami firms Arquitectonica and Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, and a co-founder of the Congress for New Urbanism. As an advocate of New Urbanism, since the 1980s Duany has been instrumental creating a renewed focus on walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, in reaction against the sprawling, car-centric modernist urbanism of the previous decades.
If you follow MAD Architects on social media, the chances are good that in recent months you've seen a number of updates regarding their Chaoyang Park Plaza project in Beijing. Located at the southern edge of the largest park in Beijing, the project comprises a complex of 5 buildings, including a pair of asymmetric towers that reach 120 meters tall. Now, with the building almost complete, photographer Khoo Guo Jie of Studio Periphery has provided us with this sneak peek of the project.
Completed in 2013 on the western coast of Bornholm—a small Danish island located south of Sweden—the Hasle Harbour Bath by White Arkitekter is one of a number of waterfront bathing facilities appearing in Denmark. Structures such as the Hasle Harbour Bath, the Kastrup Sea Bath, also by White Arkitekter, and the Copenhagen Harbour Bath by BIG + JDS, evoke images of a bracing coexistence with natural elements. If hygge, the Danish art of cosiness, has been one of the country's most successful cultural exports in recent years, the idea of a refreshing dip in the Baltic Sea offers a counterpart—a ying to hygge's yang.
In the past decade or so, smartphones and social media apps have revolutionized our culture's relationship to images. From Instagram to Facebook to Pinterest to Youtube, photographs and videos are now so ubiquitous that they have become literally disposable, with apps such as Snapchat trading on their promise to delete your images after a certain period of time. But while smartphones are a very visible driver of this change, what is often forgotten are the huge developments in image-editing software that have supported this revolution—from the HDR built into your smartphone's camera to the wide range of filters provided by Instagram.
Now, as reported by MIT News, Google and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory may have created another cosmic leap forward: an algorithm that can provide automatic, professional-level image retouching so quickly that you can see a preview before even snapping the photograph.
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It’s always fascinating when architecture breaks the bounds of the profession and becomes a topic of debate in the wider profession. Fortunately, thanks to the internet, there is no shortage of such occasions: whether it’s the click-seeking cluster of articles that found a client for an improbable cliff-hanging design or the forums that suddenly decided that most modern architecture looks “evil,” the viral trend treadmill ensures that there are plenty of opportunities for the layperson to offer their two cents on the output of our profession.
The flavor of the summer of 2017 is Attika Architekten’s Emoticon Facade. This thoroughly sensible and polite building has caught the public’s attention thanks to its inclusion of emoji-shaped decorative additions. While most of the internet has responded with heart-eyes, there’s no shortage of people for whom these carved emojis are a clear indication that architecture, and by extension society, and by extension all of life as we know it, is doomed, never to recover. Such an opinion is legitimized by articles like this one in Wired by Sam Lubell, who in reporting on the building found two experts willing to take a big old smiley poop on Attika Architekten’s work. Given the role that these experts play in directing the conversation among the public, their arguments bear analysis.
When he was awarded the first ever Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979, the jury described Philip Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) as someone who “produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the environment," adding that "as a critic and historian, he championed the cause of modern architecture and then went on to design some of his greatest buildings.” However, even after winning the Pritzker Prize at age 73, Johnson still had so much more of his legacy to build: in the years after 1979, Johnson almost completely redefined his style, adding another chapter to his influence over the architecture world.
