Dear Readers,

Last month we spoke with Kulapat Yantrasast, Co-Founder and Creative Director of the LA-based design firm wHY. On the heels of the opening of Harvard Art Museums - for which Yantrasast collaborated on the designs of the exhibition spaces - we wanted to learn more about his approach to designing the galleries for Harvard. “One of the things that I'm super sensitive about is the identify of the experience. Harvard, in particular, is a university museum. So first and foremost it's a place for students and faculty to spend time looking at things closely. Because of that, we want to make sure that a group of 15 people can sit or stand around an art object and could really have a discussion,” Yantrasast explained.

wHY has carried out a wide range of museum and gallery projects, including the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Royal/T project and the renovation of the galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago. Read the full interview with Yantrasast below to learn more about the challenges of gallery design and how technology is affecting museums exhibitions.

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Over the past seven years, Indian Architect & Builder Magazine’s (IA&B) 361° Conference has evolved into the singular most relevant platform for discussion and discourse on architecture and design in India. Since its inception, the conference has captured the progressive nature of design, creating a forum for emerging and influential practices in India. As an eclectic, thought-provoking and egalitarian platform, 361° in its eighth edition will continue to celebrate the power of thoughts and ideas and initiate a truly relevant dialogue on architecture and design.

Happy New Year to ArchDaily's readers all around the world: from the first people to celebrate in Kiribati, Samoa and New Zealand, to those in Hawaii and American Samoa - who at the time of publishing are still waiting to celebrate the new year - we wish you all the best in 2015. The past 12 months has been a fantastic year here at ArchDaily, and we can't wait to see what the next one will bring. In the meantime, make sure you've read all of our round-ups of 2014, after the break.

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It's becoming a yearly tradition for us to share the greetings we've placed on the proverbial ArchDaily mantle. We've received dozens of well wishes from architects in all corners of globe. See them all after the break (or check out our reader-submitted cards). Happy Holidays!

Have you ever wanted to see your un-built or fantasy project brought to life through the lens of a virtual reality headset? We’ve teamed up with IIDEXCanada and Invent Dev for the ArchDaily + IIDEXCanada Virtual Spaces Competition, which aims to find the best un-built and fantasy projects. Designers and architects can submit images of renderings of their un-built and fantasy projects across three square-footage categories. The winners will have their designs developed into virtual spaces by Invent Dev and exhibited using virtual reality headsets at IIDEXCanada 2015 in Toronto. Winners will also be featured on ArchDaily and flown to the 2015 awards ceremony.

IIDEXCanada and The Buildings Show are North America’s largest annual exposition, networking and educational event for construction, design, and real estate professionals.  

Learn more and find out how to enter the competition after the break.  

Black Dragon Press has shared a set of prints and a booklet on Brutalist architecture in London with illustrations by Thomas Danthony, complemented by text from "Fuck Yeah Brutalism" curator Michael Abrahamson. See Abrahamson's intro to the booklet reprinted below.

Brutalism is an unusually evocative word. Like the architecture for which it’s used as a descriptor, it can elicit a powerful, bodily discomfort or psychological repulsion. Standard dictionary definitions itemise the materials (exposed concrete, but also brick and block) and describe the physical character (forceful, unadorned, imposing) of this type of building, and would likely also mention the time frame during which it was the dominant tendency in architecture (from the late 1950s to the early 1970s).

ArchDaily is in need of a select group of awesome, architecture-obsessed interns to join our team for Spring 2015 (January - June)! If you want to spend your days researching/writing about the best architecture around the globe – and find out what it takes to work for the world’s most visited architecture website – then read on after the break…

1. When he was young he collaborated with the director Jan de Bont, whose credits would later include Speed and Twister.

2. Koolhaas dates his desire to become an architect to a speech he delivered to a group of architects at the University of Delft when he was 24.

3. The drawings from his final project at the AA are the most requested items from MoMA's Architecture and Design collection. (Smithsonian Magazine)

UPDATE: The Jury has selected Jeremy Jacinth and Luliana Teodora Amza as the winners of the £600 scholarship to participate in the GIPpy workshop at the AA Visiting School in Santiago, Chile. 

What does Soviet Union architecture have to do with Chilean astronomy? A lot more than many realize. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union manufactured three Grand Passage Instrument telescopes (GIPpy), and their accompanying domes in Saint Petersburg. Unfortunately, they fell into ruin after the Soviet astronomical mission’s departure from Chile following the 1973 military coup d-etat. Now, however, the Architectural Association Visiting School in Santiago, Chile, in partnership with the Pontifical Catholic University, will host a 10-day workshop in January on the GIPpy telescopes. The workshop is organized by the team that was recently awarded the Silver Lion at the 14^th Venice Architecture Biennale for their work on Soviet prefabricated housing in Chile, and we’ve teamed up with the Architectural Association Visiting School to give away two £600 scholarships to attend the workshop!

For more information on the workshop and to find out how to enter to win a scholarship read on after the break…

The Pantone Hotel, a seven-story hotel in Brussels with decor inspired by the famous Pantone color system, opened for business in 2010, but these candy-colored images of its multi-hued rooms were new to us. Designed by interior designer Michel Penneman and architect Olivier Hannaert, and photographed by Sven Laurent, the Pantone Hotel serves up 59 rooms in a wide variety of color schemes, perfected by Pantone's authoritative color matching system. It is the apotheosis of the company's transition into manufacturing lifestyle products, with the "Pantone Universe" range containing everything from mugs to cufflinks, all colored to an exact specification with their identifying code.

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