For decades, SketchUp has been one of the most well-known 3D modeling programs in the design world, owed to its intuitive working tools and labyrinth of user-generated accessories, from open source libraries to plugins. Quite often, SketchUp is the software of choice for engaging children with architecture, due to its availability, flexibility, and ease of use.

Later in your design career, you could be forgiven for dismissing SketchUp as a 'rookie tool', a beginner's level below the advanced stages of Revit, Rhino, and AutoCAD. However, as SketchUp has evolved throughout the years, it now contains a formidable array of functions, capable of producing complex, exportable results in an organized, efficient manner for students and senior partners alike.

From geo-location to sun-paths, here are 10 very useful tips to make you the model SketchUp user of the office.

One of architecture’s most delightful anomalies is the diversity of solutions generated by any given site. From hypothetical university projects by architecture students to professional international design competition entries, the differing perspectives, stances, and experiences brought to rest on one site by several design teams can wield a bounty of contrasting ideas.

Recently, we reported on Nestinbox, a proposal by Swedish architecture firm Manofactory to attach a series of simple, functional houses to a cliff face in Stockholm, addressing the demands of increased populations and land prices in cities across the world. Now, the cliffs of Stockholm have been the subject of an entirely different, though just as evocative concept by Swedish firm UMA. Rather than private housing, UMA proposes the Stockholm Infinity Pool, a public pool 1km along the Sodermalm cliffs of Sweden’s capital.

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The design of OMA and Mia Lehrer+Associates’ park at First and Broadway (FAB) in Los Angeles has received a green update, reports LA Downtown News, following a community feedback session in which residents voiced their desire to add additional plantings to the scheme.

In this video, West 8 co-founder Adriaan Geuze discusses the design process behind New York City’s largest private outdoor gardens, which will be located at One Manhattan Square in the Lower East Side. Currently under construction, the 800-foot-tall glass residential tower will feature more than an acre of exterior garden space designed by West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named 50 projects as winners of 2017 RIBA London Regional Awards, including the London Building of the Year, “Photography Studio for Juergen Teller” by 6a architects.

“The year has demonstrated once again the breadth of the capital’s architectural output at the very high level that the RIBA programme requires, and the juries took enormous pleasure in selecting a most exemplary set of schemes,” said Jury chair Matthew Lloyd.

Selected from a 85-strong shortlist, these 50 projects will now go on to compete in RIBA's National Awards program, the winners of which will create the shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize – the highest award for architecture in the UK.

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As founder of Robert A.M. Stern Architects and former Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert A.M. Stern is a self-proclaimed modern traditionalist – and no, in his eyes, that is not an oxymoron. When asked about the seeming contradiction in a PBS documentary, he replies by musing, "Can one speak the local languages of architecture in a fresh way?"

Herzog & de Meuron have completed construction of their latest project, a high-rise luxury residential skyscraper on 56 Leonard Street, New York City. Conceived as a stack of individual houses resembling a Jenga tower, the building is the tallest in its Tribeca neighborhood. With its tall and slender silhouette, 56 Leonard Street is the latest in a series of contemporary skyscrapers punctuating Manhattan’s skyline.

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The New York High Line is set to receive a new British sibling, in the form the Camden High Line – a conversion of the defunct railway line connecting Camden Town and King’s Cross, into an elevated public space and commuting route. The invited competition for the project was won by London-based practices Studio Weave and Architecture 00, whose proposal is one of three international designs that have followed the success of the High Line in New York, with the other two situated in Bangkok and Mexico City.

“We think the re-use of this railway line for the Camden High Line outweighs the benefits and costs of leaving it vacant,” said Simon Pitkeathley, Chief Executive at Camden Town Unlimited. “This new transport link can reduce overcrowding and journey times on the existing, cycling and pedestrian routes nearby like Regent’s Canal.”

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In this essay by the British architect and academic Dr. Timothy Brittain-Catlin, the fascinating journey that color has taken throughout history to the present day—oscillating between religious virtuosity and puritan fear—is unpicked and explained. You can read Brittain-Catlin's essay on British postmodernism, here.

Like blushing virgins, the better architecture students of about ten years ago started to use coy colors in their drawings: pastel pink, pastel blue, pastel green; quite a lot of grey, some gold: a little like the least-bad wrapping paper from a high street store. Now step back and look at a real colored building – William Butterfield’s All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, London, or Keble College, Oxford, or the interior of A.W.N. Pugin’s church of St. Giles in Cheadle, UK. They blow you away with blasts of unabashed, rich color covering every square millimetre of the space.

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced four internationally recognized names as members of the Super Jury that will judge the awards program at the 2017 Festival in Berlin this November. After the selection of winners from across 31 categories on the first two days of the event, category winners will present to the Super Jury, who will decided the winners of the World Landscape, Future Project and Completed Building of the Year Awards.

The “Never Built” world so far includes Never Built Los Angeles, a book and exhibit, and the book, Never Built New York. Now, the Queens Museum hopes to continue the exploration into the New York that might have been with a Never Built New York exhibition and has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $35,000 to make it happen. The exhibition, curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin and designed by Christian Wassmann, will explore 200 years of wild schemes and unbuilt projects that had the potential to vastly alter the New York we know today.

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Videos

Over the past two years alone, more than a million people have fled the Syrian conflict to take refuge in Europe, strenuously testing the continent’s ability to respond to a large-scale humanitarian crisis. With the Syrian Refugee Crisis still unresolved, and temporary refugee camps now firmly established on the frontiers of Europe, architects and designers are devoting energy to improving the living conditions of those in camps fleeing war and persecution.

One emerging example of humanitarian architecture is Maidan Tent, a proposed social hub to be erected at a refugee camp in Ritsona, Greece. Led by two young architects, Bonaventura Visconti di Modrone and Leo Bettini Oberkalmsteiner, and with the support of the UN International Organization for Migration, Maidan Tent will allow refugees to benefit from indoor public space – a communal area to counteract the psychological trauma induced by war, persecution, and forced migration.

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Set in a valley located 45 minutes west of Santiago de Chile, an elementary timber shed by Josep Ferrando and Diego Baloian seeks to unhinge the division between vertical and horizontal architectural elements. The scheme is the result of a private commission to build a wooden shed on a family-owned plot in the town of Curacaví, halfway between the Chilean capital and the coastal town of Valparaíso.

Drawing heavy inspiration from vernacular canopies which historically dotted the landscape of rural Chile, the scheme seeks to create a central family meeting point amongst a vast 2 hectare plot.

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Serving as a new gateway to the city through the connection of various green spaces and public programs, The Green Entrance is DELVA Landscape Architects’ masterplan for a historic district of The Hague. Given The Hague’s future inner-city densification, which involves the creation of 50,000 new houses, the Dutch firm’s aim is to aid these developments through sustainable and green urban strategies, manifested “through an integral approach between landscape design, cultural heritage, mobility, programming and technology.”

Commenting on the project’s primary function, the architects state: “’The Green Entrance’ connects areas that have been isolated over the years. It starts in the spacious and open ‘City Hall' that connects to the train station and continues to the ‘Koningin Julianaplein’. No narrow doors or gates, but a wide view over the green and lively surrounding public space.”

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Videos

German architecture firm 22quadrat was inspired by the visual effect created by soundwaves moving through water when designing “impulses,” a brick relief wall in the interior courtyard of the Pallotti Residential Complex in Freising, Germany. The architects derived the concept from a metaphor; a single brick is like a single particle, hardly noticeable on its own but capable of much greater impact when combined with others.

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You've probably used or heard of the app Shazam, used by millions of people to identify songs and song lyrics. A team of researchers from Cirad, IRA, Inria / IRD and Tela Botanica Network - had the idea of developing a similar application, but instead of identifying songs, the application identifies plant species.

Pl@ntNet is a new tool that helps identify plants using pictures. Collecting data from a large social network that constantly uploads images and information about plant species, Pl@ntNet has a visualization software that recognizes the plant photographed and links it to its plant library.

New York-based firm Laguarda.Low are set to transform the Bao’an district in Shenzhen, China with a 128-acre large-scale waterfront masterplan. Located 13 miles west of Shenzhen city center, and less than an hour’s drive from Hong Kong, OCT Bao’an will encompass dynamic spaces for business, retail, and entertainment. Designed in collaboration with landscape firm SWA, the Laguarda.Low scheme integrates nature, recreation, and culture in a new urban setting, a vision which was awarded first place in an international competition.

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