Recognized as the UK’s highest honor for architecture, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture is approved personally by Her Majesty The Queen and is given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence "either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture.", according to the organization. In 2024, the recognition was awarded for the first time to an African Woman, to the Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and curator Lesley Lokko.
Pirelli Learning Center / Onsite Studio
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Architects: Onsite Studio
- Area: 8500 m²
- Year: 2020
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Professionals: Deerns Italia S.p.A., Voltaire Sas, Studio Giorgetta
Building Bangladesh: A New Wave of Cultural Projects
Bangladesh has built a new wave of cultural architecture over the last decade. Tied to design influences from across the Bengal region and the broader Indian subcontinent, the country's modern buildings stand alongside monuments dating back thousands of years. With an architecture rooted in religion, history and culture, contemporary projects build upon the past to imagine a new future for Bangladesh and its cities.
Museum of the Home / Wright & Wright Architects
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Architects: Wright & Wright Architects
- Area: 2182 m²
- Year: 2021
What is Deconstructivism?
If we define deconstructivism, it literally translates to the breaking down, or demolishing of a constructed structure, whether it being for structural reasons or just an act of rebellion. It is perhaps for this reason that many misunderstand the Deconstructivist movement.
Deconstructivism is, in fact, not a new architecture style, nor is it an avant-garde movement against architecture or society. It does not follow “rules” or acquire specific aesthetics, nor is it a rebellion against a social dilemma. It is the unleashing of infinite possibilities of playing around with forms and volumes.
New Dates for Expo 2020 Dubai Announced
Expo 2020 Dubai has been postponed and will be held from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022. The decision has been declared after the two-thirds majority of the votes was surpassed within a week of voting, opening on 24 April.
Groupwork Architects Investigate the Sustainable Advantage of Structural Stone
Groupwork, in collaboration with Jackson Coles, Eight Associates, Webb Yates, The Stonemasonry Company and Polycor, is investigating the possibilities to build large commercial buildings in stone, through the Stone Tower Research project and The New Stone Age exhibition.
Asif Khan Imagines the Expo 2020 Dubai “Mashrabiya” Entry Portals
Asif khan studio has unveiled images of his first intervention for the public realm of Expo 2020 Dubai. Running from the 20th of October 2020 till the 10th of April 2021, The World Expo will have three majestic Entry Portals to welcome visitors from all over the world.
Communication is About More Than Selling
With December and January nearly behind us, many of us will have been producing reports. There is an increasing number of tools for reporting PR value sold to companies as ways to justify their worth. There is no doubt that it’s useful to regularly take stock of past and upcoming initiatives and producing a report can even be pleasurable when adding to a sense of accomplishment and direction. The bad thing is that this heavily-report-reliant culture leads to management style PR that focuses more on how something will look on paper as stats, graphs, and pics, than what is actually accomplished.
For instance, The Architecture Foundation in London is highlighting growing Biennale fatigue in its forthcoming “Bored of Biennales” event in March. One can well imagine how all-too-often such events are best experienced not in situ, but instead, through carefully-edited reports or via media coverage as suggested by the Foundation.
Atelier Monika Sosnowska / Architecture Club
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Architects: Architecture Club
- Area: 180 m²
- Year: 2019
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Professionals: Landscape Architecture Lab, Studio Profil, Transsolar
Innovative Uses of Water in Architecture
From playful indoor pools to tranquil exterior fountains to soaring waterfalls and grand lakes of enormous proportions, architecture throughout the centuries has engaged with water in endlessly innovative ways. Sometimes serving aesthetic purposes, but just as often acting as centers of activity or promoting sustainability, water features can take countless different forms and serve multiple different purposes. Below, we synthesize a series of water features espoused by innovative contemporary architectural projects, ranging from single-family residential homes to vast commercial complexes.
Studio Akkerhuis Transforms a 19th Century Flour Mill Complex into a Mixed-Use Project
Part of a bigger vision and a master plan by Peter Zumthor, Studio Akkerhuis’ new 55.000 square meter project in Leiden’s 19th-century flour mill complex is under construction. With a landscape by Piet Oudolf and Lola, the development that recently won the "Future Project - Commercial Mixed Use” at WAF, will include shops, galleries, apartments, workspaces, a hotel, and a spa.
What is Plantscaping?
Interior gardens and plants produce many day-to-day benefits, like mood boosting and memory enhancing effects. Interior landscape design, also known as "plantscaping", is much more than the act of bringing plants indoors; it's actually about the strategic placement and selection of plant species within an architectural project to highlight and enhance aspects of spatial design.
Architectural Review Announces 2019 New into Old Award Winners
The Architectural Review has announced that Sala Beckett by Flores & Prats is the winner of the 2019 AR New into Old awards. The project was selected by a panel of judges for its inventive re-use, and it was awarded alongside two Highly Commended and three Commended buildings for sustainable alternatives to building anew. The AR New into Old awards celebrate the creative ways buildings are adapted and remodeled to welcome new contemporary uses.
Nevill Holt Opera Theatre / Witherford Watson Mann Architects
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Architects: Witherford Watson Mann Architects
- Area: 816 m²
- Year: 2018
Spotlight: Zaha Hadid
In her lifetime, Pritzker prize-winning architect, fashion designer and artist Zaha Hadid (31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) became one of the most recognizable faces of our field. Revered and denounced in equal measure for the sensuous curved forms for which she was known, Hadid rose to prominence not solely through parametricism but by designing spaces to occupy geometries in new ways. Despite her tragically early death in March of 2016, the projects now being completed by her office without their original lead designer continue to push boundaries both creative and technological, while the fearless media presence she cultivated in recent decades has cemented her place in society as a woman who needs just one name: Zaha.
How Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Can Make for More Resistant and Lighter Architecture
The history of concrete dates back to ancient Rome, approximately 2,000 years ago. The so-called “Roman Concrete” is composed of limestone, volcanic ash, and seawater and it permitted the construction of aqueducts, highways, and temples; many of them still stand to this day. Some time ago, this original mix was discovered to form a mineral called aluminum tobermorite, which gets stronger as time goes by.
Spotlight: Geoffrey Bawa
Despite his late entry into architecture, Geoffrey Manning Bawa FRIBA, (July 23, 1919 – May 27, 2003), explored modernism and its cultural implications and created a unique, recognizable style of design which had a lasting impact on architects across the world. Well versed in Modernist theory, Bawa was one of the original proponents of Tropical Modernism, a design movement in which sensitivity for local context combines with the form-making principles of modernism. Bawa’s architecture led to the formation of a new architectural identity and aesthetic for many tropical environments, and won him recognition and awards, including the Chairman’s Award of the Aga Kahn Special Chairman’s Award for Architecture (2001) and the title Deshamanya, in recognition of his contributions to his country by the government of Sri Lanka.