Urban infrastructures provide comfort to inhabitants and mitigate the risks of disasters such as flooding. Underground systems specifically conceal urban infrastructures from public view and are configured as real mazes under the streets. The distribution of drinking water, urban drainage, sewage, and even electrical wiring and fiber optics in some cases, pass under our feet without us noticing. To this end, the industry developed precast concrete parts for about 100 years that provided construction speed, adequate resistance to force, and durability against time. Concrete pipes with circular sections, in many diverse diameters, are perhaps the most used conduits and are ubiquitous around the world. But there are also those who use these apparently functional elements in creative architectural contexts as well.
Desplans and KooZA/rch have revealed the three final winners of the #mycityscape competition. Inviting young creatives to this conversation, the open call questions the definition of the city, by asking “What establishes the identity of a city? What distinguishes one urban environment from the other? And What defines our relationship to the built landscape we inhabit?”
Trying to find the tools to map the city of the 21st century, the competition encouraged young creatives to record the essence of their cityscape into one image. After selecting 12 shortlisted entries, the contest solicited a wider audience to decide the final winning designs, by voting for their favorites on social media. Following the release of the results, Christele Harrouk from ArchDaily had the chance to talk about the #mycityscape competition with both Desplans and KooZA/rch, discussing the theme and the whole process. Discover in this article the exchange as well as the final winning designs.
Alterity is essential to human development. If deprived of a variety of stimuli, the brain is unable to develop, losing plasticity and deteriorating like an atrophied muscle. This reasoning is widely accepted when it comes to social relations or cognitive and physical activities. But what about the stimuli promoted by the built environment?
https://www.archdaily.com/956140/the-city-as-a-tile-based-gameMarina Oba, Daniela Moro e Gabriel Tomich
Public art is an innate cultural privilege for New Yorkers. Top-notch art can be found across the city’s boroughs everywhere from parks, squares, alleys, and rooftops—sometimes to the jaded disdain of passerby. While permanent staples, such as Robert Indiana’s Love on 6th Avenue or George Segal’s Gay Liberation at the Stonewall National Monument are ingrained in the urban texture, others are more ephemeral. Public art has the power to swiftly take over Instagram feeds but also has a history of sparking polarizing interpretations at town hall hearings.
https://www.archdaily.com/956185/has-the-pandemic-changed-the-experience-of-encountering-art-in-publicOsman Can Yerebakan
Few architectural typologies are as timeless as bakeries. A practice spanning thousands of years, the art of baking has diverse roots. Today, bakeries combine areas to gather, socialize, shop, and work. While industrialization and commercialization transformed the art of baking and baked goods, bakeries remain important community spaces for gathering and defining neighborhood identity.
The state of Florida, in the United States, is bordered to the south, east, and west by the Atlantic Ocean, with a coastline of over two thousand kilometers in length, and is characterized by extensive areas of lakes, rivers, and ponds. Land booms during the early and mid-20th century resulted in the development of new communities and the expansion of low-density suburbia across many parts of the state, which frequently incorporated the abundant water resources, sometimes failing in their efforts.
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Offsite Wood software in Revit. Image Via QWEB
Quebec Wood Export Bureau is adding another tool to your arsenal: a free BIM plugin on Revit. With the help of its wood-producing members, the nonprofit group has stepped into the free software world to put a growing suite of structural wood system components at architects’ fingertips.
As we look back at the architecture projects we have published in 2020, as part of our yearly review, we were able to distinguish many recurring elements and solutions in terms of materials, programs, and functions.
Since the architecture industry moves slightly slower than others, we found that many things in the construction and design that have been building up these past years have come out making strong statements this 2020. We believe, therefore, that trends in the architecture world could be defined not only by what has been recurrent and popular but also, what has proven to be relevant and substantial.
https://www.archdaily.com/955914/construction-and-design-trends-of-2020-the-recurring-the-popular-the-relevant-and-the-substantialPaula Pintos & Clara Ott
Chicago architecture is empty without Chicago architectural journalism. From the 1880s launch of the black-and-white publication Inland Architect, which covered the rebuilding after the Great Chicago Fire, to a 1985 critique of the James R. Thompson Center by Paul Gapp in the Chicago Tribune titled “Masterpiece or Ego Trip?” which set the course for the public reception of the building, coverage, and criticism of architecture in local newspapers and architecture publications has provided a critical link to how Chicago maintains its reputation as a city of extraordinary architecture. Architectural criticism and journalism have and continue to help Chicago understand how we arrived at this built environment and what the future holds.
https://www.archdaily.com/956076/what-chicago-loses-when-it-loses-an-architecture-criticElizabeth A. Blasius
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina are joined by architect Stanley Saitowitz to discuss his design philosophy, office, upbringing in South Africa, and education and how he ended up in San Francisco, why the practice of architecture is much more challenging today, how architecture relates to cities, and more. Enjoy!
https://www.archdaily.com/955965/stanley-saitowitz-architecture-is-not-all-about-my-taste-versus-yoursThe Second Studio Podcast
In the dense urban fabric of India’s Mumbai, Studio Symbiosis upgraded the ID Origins Headquarters into a new visual marker of the city, using organic strokes to merge old and new into one revitalized project. The HQ has been under construction since October 2019 and is a historic landmark for the company, as it was where the owners first initiated their business in the 1980s. The 18,750 sqm project was awarded the WA World Architecture Community Awards for its unique design approach.
Ever wondered (or forgotten) the difference between open plans and free plans? In this video, architectural designer and professor Stewart Hicks breaks down what makes Open Plans a unique form of ‘open concept.’ It is part of a series that explores terms from real estate using contemporary, historical, and theoretical examples from architecture. In this case, the spatial strategies of Mies van der Rohe are explained, beginning with his early unbuilt houses, through the Barcelona Pavilion, to the Farnsworth House. Each one features a particular, but evolving, use of walls, columns, and roof planes that add up to what we call ‘Open Plans.’ Other videos in the series are dedicated to things like Free or Organic Plans and can help anyone sharpen their understanding of architectural concepts.
As long as cities have been around, there’s been one pressing question central to their future: “What makes urban areas desirable?” Over half of the world’s inhabitants live in cities and that number is projected to climb over the next decade with more than 5 billion people inhabiting urban cores globally. To prepare for this demand, cities are finding ways to be more desirable, draw in talent, and entice both big and small businesses, all while finding more ways to create equitable living opportunities for all.
Launched by the Goethe Institut, Habiter Dakar (Living in Dakar) is a virtual exhibition tackling Housing in the Senegalese capital. The study was led by Nzinga Mboup and Caroline Geffriaud, both Architects based in Dakar. They noticed that the current housing offer in the city was particularly far off the needs of its inhabitants, whether on the cultural, societal or environmental level.
The architects analyzed the progression through which the Senegalese capital's Urban Landscape and Housing development had passed, starting from the traditional compound living type to today’s international housing models which seem to be disconnected from the daily reality of most of the city’s inhabitants. The study is concentrated on Housing which is an essential part of the formation and evolution of Dakar and suggests important theoretical and concrete reflections for the future development of the African metropolis.
Autodesk Navisworks Manage. Image Cortesía de GoPillar Academy
Currently, specialized technical skills in the use of BIM methodology are in high demand, especially in the field of architecture. Even during the pandemic, job offers in this area have remained relatively stable, especially due to the flexibility of this methodology and the possibility of working collaboratively from remote locations. However, when looking for a new job, those interested in BIM should consider several questions: What am I specialized in? What areas are in highest demand? What type of professional BIM role is the most common?
Educational architecture is crucial for creating spaces that, not only nurture and mold the minds of the future generations, but also provide spaces for the wider public to come and share knowledge and ideas.
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Slab House Proposal / Skeleton. Image Cortesía de reBENT
The reBENT project, developed by the Research Group 9 of the March 2019-20 Program of the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), explores the interactive relationship between augmented reality (AR) and manual construction processes using PVC pipes –highly resistant and cheap– as a base research material. In addition to taking advantage of its active bending properties to interact with AR, this material provides a fast and affordable system for the creation of complex concrete structures made by weaving together a series of bent PVC pipes and reinforcing bars, which are then used as formwork for glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC).
So far, the exploration of this hybrid approach –neither purely analog nor purely automated– has led to the design of prototypes, architectural elements, and habitable structures. In addition, the team developed an augmented reality platform for Microsoft Hololens in order to guide the construction and customization process through holograms.
ArchDaily is continuing a six-year-long tradition of celebrating the best architecture drawings of the year. The 2020 edition highlights a carefully-curated collection of architectural drawings and visualizations with a wide variety of techniques and representations, all orientated towards a common goal of sharing ideas, visions, and designs.
When we talk about cities or their lesser variations – villages, towns, communities –, we are used to evoking stereotyped scenarios that relate to streets, cars, buildings, and we often end up forgetting that there are plenty of other surprisingly unique patterns.
Many people study the cities and wonder about the exact moment when they were invented, given that they are open, unfinished works in progress. Some assume that their origin was due to the need for protection, which caused humans to quit nomadic lifestyles and settle as groups in a specific land to increase their chances of survival.
In our increasingly urbanized world, everything and everyone has adopted a lifestyle of nomadism. New environmental and social constraints have forced people to have a constant "on-the-go" behavior, so much so that almost everything has acquired wheels, even the buildings. But with the rise of debates like "is humankind being replaced by robots?" and "is technology taking over?", urban mobility has helped give access to housing, healthcare, and education in places with extreme difficult conditions.
To shed the light on globally-thriving mobile activities, the France-based Institut pour Ville en Mouvement, or City on the Move Institute, is an organization that has been addressing the challenges posed by urban mobility and contributing to the emergence of innovative solutions. In a series of short Youtube clips, the organization invited experts in the fields of architecture, urban planning, and technology to share their insights on the future of urban mobility.
It’s a given that the coronavirus pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on construction projects large and small over the past 10 months. So, what about the construction of new buildings that share the defining characteristic of being superlatively tall?
As detailed in an annual report published earlier this month by the Chicago-headquartered Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), newly completed skyscrapers experienced a global decline of 20 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year due, both directly and indirectly, to the COVID-19 crisis.
The façade is one of the most important elements in an architectural project. In addition to being the building's first barrier against heat, rain, snow, or wind, it also largely determines the appearance of a building. It can make the project stand out, blend into urban context, or even manifest, at first glance, values of transparency, lightness, or simplicity that the architect seeks to convey. Accordingly, the façade also constitutes a significant portion of the total cost of the work and, therefore, must be specified very carefully, taking into account aesthetics, functionality, maintenance, and long-term behavior.
https://www.archdaily.com/948461/single-skin-metal-panels-construction-tips-and-details-for-building-envelopesSponsored Post
Imagine having a blank canvas on which to master-plan a brand new city; drawing its roads, homes, commerces, and public spaces on a fresh slate and crafting its unique urban identity. Every urban planner has fantasized about designing a city from scratch and luckily for some, this dream is morphing into concrete opportunities.
Over the last two decades, new, master-planned cities have emerged from the ground up at an unprecedented scale, the majority of which have been created in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, with currently over 150 new cities in the making. This new type of urban development has shown to be particularly seductive in emerging markets, where they are sold as key parts of the strategy to leapfrog from agriculture and resource-based systems to knowledge economies by attracting foreign capital and boosting economic growth.
Wood in architecture, when properly managed, is often associated with sustainability but also with a sense of comfort and coziness. Well-designed joinery can provide versatility and uniqueness to interior design, among so many other benefits.
https://www.archdaily.com/955092/defining-spaces-with-wood-joinery-in-brazilian-apartmentsEquipe ArchDaily Brasil
.jpg?1611288061 "The Line project in Saudi Arabia. Image © NEOM")
