This past Monday brought with it not just a new week, but the start of the lunar new year. The start of the lunar new year brings with it another chance to review what's past and start afresh - a welcome opportunity for those of us already suffering a bit of new year blues. 

Looking back to move forward seemed to be a bit of a theme this week, with the announcement of a number of memorials and renovations on historic sites. While the spate of new projects this week is certainly a coincidence, the recent proliferation of reuse and memorial projects, in general, shouldn't come as a surprise. As the age of the icon-producing starchitect stutters to a close, the long-gestating movements in reuse and preservation will likely come to the fore as a major movement in contemporary architecture. While major works such as the LocHal Library and the Battersea Arts Centre are banner examples, this is a movement that will celebrate the small-scale and local. 

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been announced the winner of the 2019 Royal Academy Architecture Prize, an award given annually by the British arts body to recognize firms or individuals who have been "instrumental in shaping the discussion, collection, or production of architecture in the broadest sense."

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Traditionally, Chilean housing has used the kitchen as a central space in their designs, from which all other venues are deployed. Being a focal point within each project, it's important to deepen its design and occupy every available square meter in favor of its effective use. Today, we review 7 kitchens designed specifically in Chilean homes; each one with particular details and distributions, and different combinations of materials, furniture, and equipment.

In the heart of Berlin resides an architectural metaphor of invisibility, emptiness, and anarchy forged by the Second World War upon the Jewish citizens. The expansion of the original Jewish museum, which was first organized as an anonymous competition by the Berlin government, was proposed as a means of bringing back Jewish presence, retracing their culture and religion into the German city. Renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who was chosen to develop the project, used architecture as a form of expression, and created a museum that narrates the Jewish civilization before, during, and after the Holocaust.

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Lebanon is home to several outstanding structures, influenced by centuries of architectural styles. However, one of the most intriguing projects in the Middle Eastern country lies in the northern city of Tripoli, a culturally-rich historical city with structures once inhabited by Romans, Crusaders, Phoenicians, and Ottomans. The Rachid Karami International Exhibition Center, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, reflects the slow deterioration from Lebanon’s pre-war golden age to post-war depression. The country's iconic modernist site has suffered after years of neglect and reportedly will require upwards of 15 million dollars to restore.

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This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "Design Provocateur: Revisiting the Prescient Ideas of Victor Papanek".

“Today industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis,” declared Victor Papanek, design provocateur and critic, from the podium of a design-activist happening in 1968. “By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim,” he roared, “by creating a whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed.”

This Monday brings with it not just a new week, but a new year. 2019 is the year of the Pig, and as the New Year starts ArchDaily is committed to furthering its mission of fostering knowledge and inspiration for architects, helping them build better cities, and becoming a professional tool. Since Archdaily China was founded in 2015, the team has been dedicated to serving Chinese architects and promoting their works worldwide. 

To celebrate the New Year, we have collected greetings from a number Chinese architects. Through this call, we hope to extend their blessing to all architecture lovers.

"There is an existential need for simplification." - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The Father of “Less is More”

Mies espoused the concept of “less is more” long before the days of Building Information Modeling. As a director of the Bauhaus School, he sought to establish an architectural style that could serve as the Modern alternative to Classic or Gothic styles. His design focus was on clarity and simplicity.

Occidentului Street is fairly typical for Bucharest - a combination of villas, wagon-houses, inter and post-war structures. ADN BA's Occidentului 40, recognized in the EU Mies Prize's 2019 shortlist, is a masterclass in architectural detail and subtlety. The volume is composed of blocks, each responding to the heights and rhythms of the surrounding context.

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As Atlanta takes center-stage today for the 2019 Superbowl, we've compiled a list of some of the Southern City's architectural gems. The city, a hotspot for small and innovative practices today, punches well above its weight when it comes to modernist and post-modernist works in the US. Some of the city's most intriguing projects, after the break.

El Equipo de Mazzanti, led by Giancarlo Mazzanti, has developed a line of toys inspired by their playful Bosque de la Esperanza sports center on the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia. The first edition of the “We Play You Play” toy series inspired by the firm’s most recognizable architectural and social projects, the Bosque de la Esperanza toy set embodies Mazzanti’s ethos of “using the playful as a design tool.”

With more than 15 years of experience in architectural design, the Mazzanti team developed a special interest in using play as a method of involving and encouraging social behavior within the communities impacted by their designs. The Bosque de la Esperanza set therefore contains 16 modular pieces and 30 connectors, with complex geometries igniting a cognitive element, and creative challenge.

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What do Kanye West and Frank Gehry have in common?

As a first impression, not much. However, they have both engaged on stages with striking design details: the use of exaggerated scale and dimensions to manipulate visual perception, bulky concrete walls and slabs to emphasize heavyweight and grandiosity, visible scaffolding to create an industrial, unfinished feel... Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

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Skyrocketing prices of London housing have become so unbearable that many have turned to less-than-ideal compromises. Large homes can be found but come with commutes of hours; places are still available in the city, but only for those with sky-high paychecks. Unable to balance their needs, people are resorting to workarounds that disrupt the existing urban fabric and dissatisfy all involved. Surely we can do better.

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The idea of turning cold, raw materials into elegant shapes has always fascinated artists, architects, and designers. In the Carrara marble sculptures of Lorenzo Berdini and Michelangelo, human forms were carved from heavy blocks of stones with great detail and precision. There is no difference in architecture: from taking a light volume off the floor, to leaving a small indentation between a structure and a fence, to altering the lining of a block, there are several devices to make buildings visually lighter.

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Have you ever found yourself losing a good night’s sleep due to an overly warm room? Or wearing four jackets and a scarf just to tolerate your office’s frigid air conditioning? Truth be told, you can’t please everyone when it comes to adjusting an indoor climate, and there is always that one unfortunate individual who ends up sacrificing their own comfort for the sake of others.

Evidently, there are no ‘universal standards’ or ‘recommended comfort ranges’ in designing building systems, since athletes training in a gym in Mexico will not feel comfortable in an interior with the same building systems of a nursing home in Denmark, for instance. Which is why, if we were to briefly define ‘thermal comfort’, it is the creation of building systems that are adapted to the local environment and functions of the space, cooperatively.

So how can we design for optimum thermal comfort?

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Videos

If you're looking to upgrade your standard architecture presentation, SENTIO VR's tutorials can be very useful. They allow you to accurately use Revit, SketchUp, V-ray, 3Ds Max, Lumion and Cinema4D to create 360 renders and perform virtual reality experiences, with both technical and visual advice.

Below, we've compiled a list of useful videos. 

Architects no longer need to drag around giant roller drawings to a job site, now they can flip through a 3D model on an iPad. This shift in technology elevates the conversation about design and simplifies presenting design ideas from the start.

The final look of the building is determined not only by the materials, texture, colors and forms of the space, but also by lighting design. Architecture is all about vision, and lighting enhances the way we perceive architecture even more. For example, in the case of outdoor lighting design, lighting the façade will give a new opportunity for a building to showcase its nightlife “personality” by creating a completely different atmosphere in the surroundings.

Let’s see how façade lighting design can be implemented in Revit with the help of the LIGHTS add-on.