In his talk at TEDx Vilnius, Koen Olthuis compares the cities of today with those at the turn of the 20th century: "cities are not full, we just have to search for new space... they made elevators and built a vertical city. We have to do exactly the same, but our generation has to look at water." With that in mind he looks at the top 10 reasons that floating cities are becoming a more popular idea, including: they provide solutions for topical issues such as flooding and sustainability; they can be used as 'plug in' travelling global amenities, useful for things like Olympic Stadiums; or could even allow us to rearrange urban areas.

Today, TIME unveiled "Top of America," a multimedia site relaying the gripping story of One World Trade, the David Childs-designed skyscraper that stands 1,776-feet tall within Daniel Libeskind's masterplan. Beyond providing interesting tidbits of information (did you know that both an 18th century boat and an ice-age formation were found while digging out the building's foundations?), the article, written by Josh Sanburn, is a fascinating and often deeply moving account -- one that gets across the sheer force of will and the extraordinary amount of collaboration it took to raise this building into the atmosphere:

"Nine governors, two mayors, multiple architects, a headstrong developer, thousands of victims’ families and tens of thousands of neighborhood residents fought over this tiny patch of real estate…. Almost 13 years later…. America’s brawny, soaring ­ambition—the drive that sent pioneers west, launched rockets to the moon and led us to build steel-and-glass towers that pierced the clouds—is intact. Reaching 1,776 ft. has ensured it."

TIME's investment into the story was considerable (and, one can speculate, motivated by a desire to rival the fantastic multimedia features of The New York Times). The site is accompanied by a special issue of TIME, a documentary film, an unprecedented 360-degree interactive photograph, and - come April - even a book. Sanburn was not only granted exclusive access to the project for about a year, but photographer Jonathan Woods is the only journalist to have ascended to the skyscraper's top. Woods, start-up Gigapan, and mechanical engineers worked over eight months to design (on AutoCAD no less) a 13-foot long, rotating jib that could sustain a camera in the harsh conditions at the top of the tower’s 408-ft. spire; over 600 images were then digitally stitched together to create the 360-degree interactive photograph (which you can purchase here. A portion of the proceeds go to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum).

You can explore TIME's interactive at TIME.com/wtc . Click after the break to watch some incredible videos from the project & read some particularly moving quotes from Sanburn's article.

Envisioned as a three-and-a-half-meter wide “wound” within the landscape, Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg’s powerful monument to those lost in the 2011 Utøya terror attacks has won Oslo’s July 22 Memorial competition.

“My concept for the Memorial Sørbråten proposes a wound or a cut within nature itself. It reproduces the physical experience of taking away, reflecting the abrupt and permanent loss of those who died,” described Dahlberg.

In this article, originally published by Metropolis as "Houses Without Windows: Meditative Respites or Architectural Straightjackets?", Komal Sharma looks into the architectural oddity that is the completely enclosed house. While many would shudder at the idea, there is a rich history of houses which, in exceptional circumstances and with exceptional clients, make sense without windows.

The Vertical Glass House by Chinese architects Atelier FCJZ is disingenuous to say the least. Its name suggests a vertical derivative of Philip Johnson's canonical house, and in fact its architects describe it as a 90-degree rotation of the typical modernist glass house. Instead, what welcomes visitors at Shanghai's Xuhui waterfront is a four-story concrete house without any windows. Where is all that promised glass, you might ask?

The answer is inside. The house's textured concrete walls give it the appearance of a bunker, but the interiors are actually light-filled. The architects accomplish this through an inverted sense of space. Where one expects walls of glass, yielding a platonic prism that brazenly exposes inhabitants to the outside world, the house instead delivers a surprising twist: the 7-cm-thick floor slabs are completely transparent, endowing users with a Superman-like sense of see-through vision. The experience of looking up through all of the house's spaces, even the most private spaces like the bathroom, is breathtakingly novel.

Read on for more about the phenomenon of window-less houses

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Federico Babina has unveiled yet another playful collection of architecturally inspired illustrations: Derived from the "symbiotic relationship and implicit partnership" between art and architecture, Archist reinterprets the expressive language and aesthetic of prominent artists as built form.

“Art and architecture are disciplines that speak and lightly touch each other, the definition and function of the architecture are changing constantly with the development of contemporary art,” described Babina. “I took pleasure imagining architecture steeped of art, designed and constructed through the interpretation of an artist’s language.”

Just imagine, what if Dalí designed a house or Miró a museum? See what Babina envisioned, after the break...

Construction is officially underway on 610 Lexington Avenue, a 700-foot ultra-thin condominium tower designed by Foster + Partners in New York City. Designed as a contrast to its neighboring landmark, Mies van der Rohe’s midcentury Seagram Building, the slim 61-story tower will feature 91 luxury units encased within a pure white glass facade.

In case you missed it, we’re re-publishing this popular post for your material pleasure. Enjoy!

To celebrate the recent launch of our US product catalog, ArchDaily Materials, we've coupled six iconic architects with what we deem to be their favourite or most frequently used material. From Oscar Neimeyer's sinuous use of concrete to Kengo Kuma's innovative use of wood, which materials define some of the world's best known architects?

David Adjaye and Daniel Libeskind are among six interdisciplinary teams competing to design Canada’s National Holocaust Monument. Planned for an empty, triangular site adjacent to Ottawa’s Canadian War Museum, the monument designs are currently undergoing public review before a final decision that will be made by an international jury of design and art professionals this spring. Construction is expected to begin in 2015.

Review the proposals, after the break...

Whenever I see sensational exposes on the supposedly sublime spatial intensity of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City (demolished in 1994), they strike me as nothing more than colonial fantasies that have little to do with the reality of living in the midst of one of the world’s cruelest slums. You see the Walled City pop up constantly like it’s still a valid or even interesting subject. This informal settlement has been diagramed, photographed, and written about for decades from an aesthetic point of view, rendering its victimized and oppressed inhabitants all but invisible. Not to say that this wasn’t home to a lot of people and that no “fond memories” were formed there, but still, like all slums, it was a tough place to live, fraught with contradictions in the haze of hope for a better life.

Building off of the success of their crowdfunded BD Bacatá building in Colombia, the real estate group Prodigy Network has announced a plan to bring this same funding method to New York, with an apartment hotel in Manhattan named 17 John.

The project, a glassy rooftop extension to the existing art deco building at 17 John Street, has much in common with Prodigy Network's past projects: the same funding method as their skyscraper in Bogotá as well as the same designer, Winka Dubbeldam, head of the New York practice Archi-Techtonics. Dubbeldam also previously helped them to crowdsource ideas for the future development of Bogotá in the "My Ideal City" project.

However, when applied to the USA, this funding paradigm - which is so promising in Colombia - becomes twisted beyond recognition. Upon close inspection, 17 John more resembles the standard developer's model than anything else - and the claims of ethical superiority begin to melt away.

Interiors is an online film and architecture journal published by Mehruss Jon Ahi and Armen Karaoghlanian. Interiors runs an exclusive column for ArchDaily that analyzes and diagrams films in terms of space. Their Official Store will carry exclusive prints from these posts.

Spike Jonze’s fourth feature film, and his fourth feature film collaboration with production designer K.K. Barrett, creates a future world that is both intimate and immersive.

Her (2013), which was filmed in Los Angeles and Shanghai, uses the architecture of both cities to construct a world of its own. Jonze and Barrett, however, chose not to approach the film from a design or architectural perspective; rather, they were interested in reflecting the emotional qualities of their protagonist Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) through the production design. Barrett points out that although the future feels distant and foreign for us, “The future is also someone’s present, our character’s present.” Thus, science fiction elements are grounded in reality, and the future world of Her was designed with those ideas in mind.

In an exclusive interview with Interiors, K.K. Barrett discussed his approach as an artist to both the medium of cinema in general and Her in particular. Learn more after the break. 

In case you missed it, we're re-publishing this popular post for your material pleasure. Enjoy!

To celebrate the recent launch of ArchDaily Materials we've brought together five projects with fantastic façades, from Viñoly's Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building in San Francisco to Holzer Kobler's PALÄON in Schöningen, Germany. A building's envelope is often people's first impression and, in recent years, have been one of the focuses of innovation in the design and construction industry. The projects we've collated show a glimpse at what's possible with façades and wall finishings.

After an open competition that sought to attract "the very best British architecture can offer," six architects - including Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers - have been selected as the potential architects of the project to rebuild the Crystal Palace in south London. See the full shortlist after the break.

In this article, originally published on the Australian Design Review as "Longing For a Greener Present", Ross Exo-Adams examines the fear that lies behind the trend toward sustainable urbanism, and finds that the crisis we find ourselves in might not only be confined to an ecological one.

Over the past decade, architects have found themselves increasingly commissioned to design districts, neighbourhoods, economic free zones and even entire new cities: a phenomenon that has been accompanied by a commitment to ‘sustainability’, which now seem inseparable from urban design itself. While ‘sustainability’ remains a vague concept at best, it nonetheless presents itself with a sense of urgency similar to that which galvanised many of the great movements of modern architecture vis-a-vis the city. Underlying such urgency is a rhetorical reference to a collective fear of some palpable sort, whether it be fear of revolution (Le Corbusier), fear of cultural tabula rasa (Jane Jacobs, Team X) or our new fear: ecological collapse. It is obvious that the myriad ‘eco’ projects that have popped up all around the world would not be viable if not for the fact that they appear against a background of imminent catastrophe – a condition of terrifying proportions. Yet the essence of this fear is far from clear. Indeed, in light of ecological catastrophe and amidst any fetish for windmills or vegetation, architects have cultivated what seems to be a curious nostalgia for the present – a pragmatism whose lack of patience for the past seeks a kind of reconstitution of the present in imagining any future. So if not for climate mayhem, what is the true nature of fear that lies at the core of today’s urban project, ‘ecological urbanism’?

Find out after the break

The developers behind Studio Gang's Solar Carve have withdrawn their request for a zoning variance that would have allowed for an increase in the tower's rentable space. The Board of Standards and Appeals rejected the solicited exception, despite the developer's claim that the expensive pilings necessary for the sandy, non-bedrock site adjacent to New York's High Line posed a "financial hardship."

Studio Gang's 213 foot tower was slated for completion in 2015. Although "the bid for additional floor has been dropped from the application," said the project's land use attorney, a hearing for special permitting that will allow for a modified setback is scheduled for March. 

In this article, originally published by Arup Connect as "Anthony Townsend on Smart Cities", Townsend discusses his book "Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia" and explains how, in his view, the push towards smart cities is being led by the wrong people - namely technology companies with short term goals; the architects, planners and scientists who should be leading this change, however, often struggle to share their knowledge.

Your book argues that there's a need for grassroots action rather than top-down, corporate-led implementation of smart cities. How do you see architects and engineers fitting into this picture?

Architects and engineers for the most part have to serve the interests of their clients. There's a balance that has to be struck, almost on a project-by-project basis, about how much they can push back in saying a piece of technology related to the business model for the project, or even a placemaking strategy, has unintended consequences, or that there may be a more democratic or innovative approach.

A lot of the vision of smart cities has been shaped by IT engineers and marketers. The problem there is not just that it's sort of a naïve vision being pushed by companies with very short-term sales goals. It just doesn't appreciate the complexity of good urbanism, and the role that both communications and information play in creating good places that people want to buy, work, live in.

Read more about the challenges facing smart cities after the break

In this interview, originally published in Metropolis Magazine as "The Charms of Suburbia", Martin Pedersen interviews Robert A.M. Stern about his new book, "Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City". Pedersen's interview delves into the history behind the Garden Suburb - a typology that is distinct from the stereotype of suburban sprawl.

Robert A.M. Stern is nothing if not counterintuitive. How else do you explain—in an increasingly digital and urban-centric world—his recently released book, a 1,072-page tome, containing more than 3,000 images, on the history of the garden suburb? Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City (the Monacelli Press, 2013) was written with longtime, in-house collaborators David Fishman and Jacob Tilove, who also worked with Stern on the fifth volume of the architect’s epic New York series.

Paradise Planned is similarly expansive. “The book grew like Topsy,” Stern says. “We’d think we had all the examples down, and a new one would pop up. So it just got bigger and bigger. And I thought: if we’re going to do this book, we really ought to do it as the definitive text. Now, it’s not forever text. People will always be adding things. But this is a pretty comprehensive view.” I recently talked to Stern about his new book, the folly of “landscape urbanism,” and the lessons learned from the garden suburb.

Read on for the rest of the interview

The winners of the 2014 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards represent not just an amazing group of buildings, but the best architecture of today. Over four weeks, over 60,000 ArchDaily readers selected 14 stunning winners by up-and-coming architects, like FT Architects, who constructed an intricate Sports facility from locally sourced timber, leaders in community design, like Auburn University’s Rural Studio, who designed and built a civic space for an Alabama community, internationally recognized offices such as BIG, WOHA, and Aires Mateus, and more.

Learn more about this year's winners, and the BOTY Awards in general, by checking out our AD original infographic, presented by ArchDaily and our partners at HP, after the break.