AD Round Up: The Latest Architecture and News

Over time, an endless spectrum of materials has become available for use within the realm of architecture. However, one material that seems underrepresented is plastic, a versatile and malleable compound that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. In light of the many applications of plastics in architecture, we have compiled a list of 12 projects that utilize plastic: from repurposing plastic bottles to the use of translucent plastic siding, these projects represent just a few of the many ways that plastic can be used as a primary material.

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Australia-based cosmetics company Aesop is clearly dedicated to design. Over the years, the company has worked with architects such as Snøhetta, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Torafu, and Ilse Crawford to create unique stores around the world.

To pay "tribute to the creative processes, materials and features" that characterize each of its store designs, Aesop has a launched a new website called Taxonomy of Design. Inspired by the compendium, we’ve rounded up some of the best Aesop store designs, each of which is distinctly developed, largely by local designers who are inspired by the location of the store. Read on for nine Aesop shops that revitalize architectural simplicity.

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The online lecture, similar to the podcast, is an easy, often entertaining way of absorbing knowledge and the opinions of thinkers and practitioners from around the world. We've gathered together some of our favourite sources for watching architectural lectures online. Ranging from Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel's famous American Architecture Now interviews with Frank Gehry in 1980 and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown in 1984, to Sir Peter Cook speaking at Frankfurt's Staedelschule in 2012, these open-source films provide invaluable insights into architects and architects throughout recent history.

Check out our favourite sources after the break.

Deemed “the biggest architectural awards programme in the world,” the World Architecture Festival (WAF) annually awards and recognizes inspiring and innovative built projects from around the globe. The awards have been held over the past seven years, honoring buildings across 30 categories and ultimately selecting the World Building of the Year. From Grafton Architects' School of Economics at the Universita Luigi Bocconi — the first Building of the Year awarded in 2008 — to A21 Studio’s The Chapel — the most recent winner — the awarded projects have included everything from a chapel to an art gallery and even a public garden, spanning the world from South Africa to Vietnam, Italy and Spain.

This year WAF will be held from November 4-6, featuring three days of conferences, exhibitions and lectures in addition to the awards ceremony. As the 2015 award ceremony nears closer we look back at the World Building of the Year winners from the past seven years. See who has taken home the award after the break and learn how to submit your project here. Projects can be submitted for consideration until May 22nd. Use the code ARCHDAILY10 to receive a discount.

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One of the most interesting trends in architectural materials of recent years is the increase in use of weathering steel - more commonly referred to by its trademark name, Cor-Ten. Thought the material has been around for decades, first being used for architectural purposes in the Eero Saarinen-designed John Deere Headquarters in 1964, the material has seen a surge in popularity in the last decade or so, being used in everything from individual houses and tiny kiosks, to SHoP's design for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which used a staggering 12,000 weathering steel panels.

To celebrate this material we've rounded up nine of the most innovative and striking uses of weathering steel from recent years: Haworth Tompkins' tiny Dovecote Studio; Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios' offices and student housing at Broadcasting Place; the perforated facade of IGC Tremp by Oikosvia Arquitectura; the rusted ribbons of Ron Arad's Design Museum Holon; vertical striations on The Corten House by DMOA Architecten; Tony Hobba Architects' Third Wave Kiosk and its corrugated Cor-Ten walls; striking patterned facades in Santiago's Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center by Cristian Fernandez Arquitectos, Lateral Arquitectura & Diseño; weathered facades and louvers in Guillermo Hevia's Ferreteria O´Higgins; and finally the folding garage-style doors of Origin Architect's Refurbishment of the Offset Printing Factory.

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In the spirit of Easter Sunday, we've rounded up a compilation of ten glorious sacred spaces from our Religious Architecture Pinterest board. Ranging from traditional, reverent congregation halls to unexpected ultra-modern chapels, these spectacular places of worship are bound to inspire. Get a dose of these divine works after the break...

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Today, ArchDaily is celebrating its seventh birthday (check out our letter to our readers and our infographic "7 Years of ArchDaily"). Our seventh birthday is a chance to reflect on our story, and to thank the readers that have helped to shape our course over the years, but of course there is one more ingredient that has helped to make us the world's most visited architecture website: great projects from talented designers all over the world. In fact as of press time, we have published 15,942 projects in total, an astonishing number that demonstrates the sheer quantity of architects out there working for a better world.

Which of these thousands of projects have had the biggest impact on you, our readers? Join us after the break as we look back at seven buildings that rose above the fray to become the most-viewed project in each of our seven years.

February 17 is Mardi Gras, or “Fat Tuesday,” traditionally a Catholic holiday that celebrates the last night of indulging in guilty pleasures before participating in the penitential season of Lent. Celebrated around the world with elaborate parties, parades, dancing, and other frivolities, its festivities are most famously celebrated within the United States today in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, the site of the first American Mardi Gras.

It may be the world's second oldest construction material, but wood is still one of the most versatile and inspiring materials available to architects today, coveted as both a structural material and as a finish on walls, floors, ceilings and facades. In recent years it's even seen a resurgence in popularity, thanks to its sustainability credentials and its increasingly popular "natural" feel. With all this in mind, ArchDaily Materials has rounded up five recent projects that prove innovation in wood is still alive and well in the architectural world: Wilkinson Eyre Architects' Maggie’s Oxford; Shigeru Ban's Aspen Art Museum; Pushed Slab by MVRDV; MARGEN-LAB's Endesa World Fab Condenser; and finally a forthcoming building that is notable for its ambitious wooden design, the Sleuk Rith Institute by Zaha Hadid Architects.

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Today marks Canadian Thanksgiving, and to celebrate the occasion we've rounded up some of Canada's best architecture. Our five selections represent five Canadian cities, each with a unique architectural sensibility. We begin in Toronto with the Royal Ontario Museum addition by Studio Daniel Libeskind, a striking intervention using prisms of glass and steel fused to a 102-year-old museum structure; next we go to Montréal for Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdie, an interlocking modular housing project designed for the World Exposition of 1967; to Calgary for Santiago Calatrava's understated Peace Bridge, a stunning glass-encased red lightning bolt spanning the city's widest waterway; then to Winnipeg's Old Market Square Stage by emerging firm 5468796 Architecture, a chameleonic performance space wrapped by a mesh curtain of steel cubes; and finally to the outskirts of Vancouver for the Richmond Olympic Oval, a masterpiece of engineering and the centre of attention during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Enjoy, eh.

During the Soviet Union’s relatively brief and tumultuous history, the quest for national identity was one that consumed Russian culture. The decadence of Czarist society was shunned, and with it, the neoclassical architecture the Czars so loved. Communism brought with it an open frontier for artistic experimentation, particularly where public buildings were involved. It was on this frontier that Russian Constructivism was born, and some of Russia’s greatest buildings were built. This article on EnglishRussia.com compiles a list of some of the “best of the best” in Soviet architecture—and we liked it so much that we’ve compiled our own top ten list! See all of our favorite Soviet projects, after the break!

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The fourteenth of July is Bastille Day, a day that commemorates the start of the French Revolution. Named for the fortress prison that was stormed by revolutionaries on July 14^th, 1789, Bastille Day is celebrated globally both by France and her former colonies, as well as many cities in the US. In honor of this historic date, we’ve compiled some of our favorite French projects from the past few years. In this round up you’ll find classics such as the Villa dall’Ava by OMA, as well as fantastic works like Nova Green by Agence Bernard Bühler, Pontivy Media Library and Louviers Music school by Opus 5 architectes, Platform Architecture’s Aquitanis Headquarters, L’Atoll Angers by Antonio Virga Architecte and AAVP Architecture, a Parking Attendant’s Pavilion by Jean-Luc Fugier, Kengo Kuma’s Aix en Provence Conservatory of Music, and Origami by Manuelle Gautrand Architecture. Joyeux quatorze juillet!

Responding to Rem Koolhas’s theme of “Absorbing Modernity," OfficeUS, the US's National Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale, launched as an experimental architecture firm with a mission to revisit, rethink and re-evaluate one thousand American architectural projects from the last century. The Giardini Pavilion was transformed by New-York based firm Leong Leong into a multi-functioning and interdisciplinary office, run by the six “partners" who were hand-picked for the job. Assigned with the ongoing task of producing models, drawings, and engaging in workshops and lectures throughout the duration of the Biennale, the partners and their collaborators in Venice and around the world attempt "to construct an agenda for the future production of architecture."

Focused mainly on exported architecture, the projects vary from nuclear plants to US embassies, residential typologies and museums and are lined on the pavilion’s walls within research booklets, available for the use of the partners and the public.

Care to join in? Check out 15 of the projects investigated by OfficeUS, after the break…

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