Increasingly close collaboration between architects and engineers has caused an explosion in bridge design over the last few decades, resulting in structures that are both bold yet rational. As a result, cities have exploited bridges as great monuments of design, to foster pride in the residents and promote themselves as a destination for tourists. These ideas have inspired photographer Greig Cranna as he travels the world, capturing the elegance of today's bridge infrastructure.

Cranna has been documenting some of his stunning photography on Instagram, collating it over the past 20 months into a forthcoming book, Sky Architecture—The Transformative Magic of Today's Bridges. In capturing these entrancing structures, the photos show the impact of the bridges as an addition to the landscape and revel in their contemporary silhouettes and designs.

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The conversion of shipping containers to living spaces is not a new concept—but being able to purchase them online and have them delivered by e-commerce giant Amazon is. Deliveries by the Seattle-based (and seemingly endlessly expanding) company are becoming a staple for most American households: dogs have never barked so much at the postman, porches have never been so littered with empty boxes, and never before has almost every product on the market been available from one place without even having to leave the house.

In spite of this consumer revolution, homes on demand constitutes new territory for the platform. So what does it look like when an entire house is delivered on the back of a truck?

This article was originally published by Brantley Agency as "Must Have Technology for Architects in 2017."

2017 has been an amazing year in the field of technology for architects. Most excitingly, we’ve seen an exponential growth in our fascination with virtual and augmented reality. Various types of innovative technology for architects are rolled out so regularly, we find our architect clients wondering where to begin.

Which of the many tech developments are merely gimmicks that will disappear as fast as they arrived, and which are here to stay, becoming permanent fixtures within professional practice? We’ve compiled a list of 10 pieces of technology for architects that will differentiate your firm from the competition in the studio and on the construction site.

Architecture, as all architects like to remind everyone, can be a stressful profession. Long days, late nights, indecisive clients, too-decisive clients, permit issues, legal issues, software problems, contractor problems... all combine to generate a high-pressure work environment. So, when architects get a chance to let loose and relieve some of that pressure, they really let loose. Here are a few moves to get you dancing like an architect:

In this excerpt from Reinier de Graaf's new book Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession (Harvard University Press), the all-pervasive work and pedagogical practice of Ernst Neufert is put under the spotlight. Was he an architect, a teacher, or something larger than both? In examining Neufert's ardent pursuit of the "norm", De Graaf sheds light on the impact and enduring legacy of the author of Architect’s Data.

His built output—a few industrial complexes, some housing projects, and the Quelle Mail Order headquarters in Nuremberg—is not much to speak of, but his name is known to every practicing architect: Ernst Neufert, author of Architect’s Data, more commonly referred to as Neufert. [1] If the importance of an architect equals the extent to which his work lives on in others, Neufert is the most important of the twentieth century. There is probably no architect who has not used Neufert, whether as a didactic tool or as a volume of references. It contains all the necessary information to design and execute works of architecture. Neufert is enduringly popular. As of 2016, it is in its forty-first German edition, has been translated into seventeen languages, and has sold over 500,000 copies. [2] 

This article was originally published by Aurodesk's Redshift publication as "Norwegian Rail Project Adopts Immersive Design for Public Engagement and Buy-in."

For a disruptive, 10-kilometer-long rail project that won’t even break ground until 2019, public officials and local residents of Moss, just south of Oslo, Norway, have been given an unusually vivid preview that, in the past, only the designers would have seen at this stage.

“We set up a showroom in the city where the public can come to view the project in a theater setting, and the feedback has been quite nice,” says Hans Petter Sjøen, facility management coordinator for Bane NOR, the year-old, state-owned company responsible for developing, operating, and maintaining the Norwegian national railway infrastructure. “Project members also have been receptive. They tell us that they have seen dimensions on the big screen that they did not see in person.”

This interview was initially published in Spanish by City Manager as “Jan Gehl, ciudades para la gente.”

Jah Gehl is recognized as a follower of Jane Jacobs, the “grandmother” of urbanism and humanist planning. He has been a professor at the Danish Real Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and visiting professor in Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Mexico, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Poland, and Norway. In 2000, he created his own consultancy along with Helle Søholt, Gehl Architects, in Denmark, where he completed diverse urban projects from around the world using data and strategic analysis.

The below text comes from an interview with the Danish architect, theorist and world leader in urban development, and promoter, following Jane Jacobs, of the human scale in the design of public spaces.

Interiors is an Online Publication about the space between Architecture and Film, published by Mehruss Jon Ahi and Armen Karaoghlanian. Interiors runs an exclusive column for ArchDaily that analyzes and diagrams films in terms of space.

The first season of Stranger Things, which debuted on Netflix in July 2016, pulls its influences from the likes of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Stephen King, and stands on its own merits as a result of the inventiveness of its creators, filmmaking duo Matt and Ross Duffer.

Interiors spoke with Production Designer Chris Trujillo on the visuals of the series and several of the core spaces used throughout the first season, including Hawkins Laboratory, Will Byers’ house and, of course, the mysterious world of the Upside Down, which takes bits and pieces of the real world and twists them into a space entirely its own, one that exists both as part of, and outside of, the real world.

This article was originally published by Archpreneur as "Booming Cities: 6 European Startup Hubs for Architects."

Starting a company can be extremely stressful. Fresh graduates, freelancers and directly employed architects looking to create startups face various initial obstacles and need to have a clear view of the operating model for their businesses. They have to choose where to cut costs, which can relate to choice of location, office space and limited living expenses.

Following the guidelines of The Lean Startup method—popularized by author and entrepreneur Eric Ries—can be very beneficial for the early phase of a company’s development. This can mean focusing on budget-friendly setups, and creating businesses on the idea of developing products and productizing design services. Being part of an entrepreneurial community can also influence the way owners grow their businesses, as it provides opportunities to establish valuable contacts and partnerships.

We have compiled a list of 6 startup hubs in Europe, which includes established centers for entrepreneurship as well as cities emerging as exciting new places for experimentation at the intersection of digital technology and architecture.

This article was originally published on the blog of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest platform for contemporary architecture in North America. The 2017 Biennial, entitled Make New History, will be free and open to the public between September 16, 2017 and January 6, 2018.

In the era of the Internet every image is an advertisement. Almost every architect contributes to the limitless overabundance offered by social media by sharing instantaneous personal archives, student projects, and their own work. Each image is a miniature manifesto shared with the broader public, circulating freely and endlessly – they shape and identify the work of architects, they track and create lineages and alliances, and they also begin to form and transmit sensibilities, ideologies, and aesthetic preferences, both individually and collectively.

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If the Great Pyramid were to be built today, it would cost between 1.1 and 1.3 billion US dollars, according to a cost estimate by the Turner Construction Company—not surprising, considering how that is roughly the same amount of money that it took to build the Trump Taj Mahal or the Petronas Twin Towers. Complicated structural requirements, delayed work timelines, complex building programs, the need for good earthquake or typhoon proofing, the use of advanced mechanical and electronic systems, and costly materials and finishes can all add up to the eventual cost. But sometimes—and especially in cases in which governments or powerful clients set out to beat existing records such as the “tallest building in the world”—money is spent for no real reason except for an unabashed display of wealth, power or strength.

Emporis, the renowned global provider for building data, has compiled a list of the top 200 money-guzzlers from recent years, and not surprisingly, a lot of high-rises have made the list. Read on to see the top 20.

The bidding process for HQ2, Amazon's second headquarters in North America, reached a crescendo last week as the submission deadline drew close. While 238 American cities scrambled to submit proposals and run campaigns in the hope to woo Amazon—or as Slate witheringly described the process, "The Bachelor: Corporate America Edition"—the internet abounded with all sorts of discussions on the project. Does our city have what it takes to house the second headquarters? How would HQ2 affect the selected city? Why are smaller cities submitting proposals when they clearly don’t meet the criteria? Can we predict which cities are more likely to make the cut?

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A proposal by Adjaye Associates and Ron Arad Architects, with Gustafson Porter + Bowman, has been announced as the successful design for the UK's new Holocaust Memorial and Learning Center. The landmark will be located on the banks of the River Thames and adjacent to the Palace of Westminster, and will honor the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust, and all other victims of Nazi persecution, including Roma, gay, and disabled people.

Two honorable mentions were awarded to heneghan peng architects with Sven Anderson, and Diamond Schmitt Architects.

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All-nighters: the bane of all architecture students. The new academic year brings in an influx of fresh, enthusiastic architecture students alongside slightly more hardened veterans of the degree, and students of all experience levels are reminded of the unfortunate tendency for work to stretch through the night. It's an easy habit to slip into for both students and even those working in practice; however many times we may tell ourselves at the end of a project that we will be more organized next time, the work always piles up and it seems like the only option – but it’s not!

With architecture holding the title for the degree that works the longest hours, it is important to maintain a healthy work-life balance throughout. If you feel that you are falling into the trap of staying up until 6am every day then this article should prevent any further sleep deprivation. With advice taken from several architecture students with years of experience dodging the twilight hour, this list will guide you on your way to enough sleep and decent grades.

Even though a solid majority of architectural visualizations adhere to similar style guidelines, that doesn't mean you have to follow suit. Unless, of course, you want to (or your boss is forcing you). Either way, there are many resources out there to help you create visualizations in any style you want, and we've compiled 13 super-useful sites to help you give your unbuilt creations a human—or canine—touch. The number of sites dedicated to representing the diversity of the world's 7.6 billion inhabitants is growing, which means that our readers from outside of the Nordic countries have solid, appropriate options for populating their renderings. And if you're in the market for something edgier than the painstakingly-cut photo of a real person, sites like ARTCUTOUT and cutoutmix provide less realistic, more artistic alternatives.

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SheltAir, a pavilion developed and designed by Gregory Quinn as part of his doctoral thesis at the Berlin University of the Arts is, as its name suggests, a shelter constructed with the help of air: a meticulously devised system comprising an elastic gridshell and pneumatic falsework in the form of air-filled cushions.

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Have you ever had to create a map for your project, thinking you could get it done within 30 minutes, but then spent an entire afternoon on it? Between collecting data, creating a base map, choosing a color scheme, and finally putting together a graphic, creating a map can be a long, trying process, taking up precious time when you could be doing other work. Map-making shouldn’t be this way.

Created by Darkhorse Analytics, mapinseconds.com is a free online productivity tool which generates clear, quality maps based off of your data. Here’s how it works: collect and organize your data into two columns on either an Excel or Google spreadsheet, open mapinseconds.com, paste your data into the application’s spreadsheet, and voila! Your custom map is finished!

The history of the Qatar Peninsula—or Catara, as first labeled on an ancient map drawn by the Greco-Roman polymath Claudius Ptolemaeus—dates back to the Paleolithic Age. By the 1930s, the tiny Gulf state was struggling to maintain its position as the center of the pearl trade, but soon after, in the 1940s, it found itself at the forefront of economic growth and progress after the discovery of its vast oil reserves. Today, Qatar is the world’s richest country per capita; its capital Doha an ever-growing crop of shiny high-rises, with occasional buildings by the world's most sought-after architects thrown in for effect, its skyline flecked with tireless cranes, and its suburbs strewn with bulldozers, machinery, and endless mounds of displaced sand.

Seen in these photographs by Manuel Alvarez Diestro is a record of the country's impatient race towards an extravagant desert dream—but perhaps it can also be read as a subtle nod towards Qatar’s sheer determination to forge ahead, despite being steeped in controversies and crises during recent years.

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