New levels of competitiveness have arisen in the labor market in the field of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC), where the development of soft-skills and formal business training is essential. Traditionally, education models in the field of architecture focus on developing technical and artistic skills, leaving a gap in business skills that prove to be key amid challenging economic times. Since 2011, IE School of Architecture & Design’s Master in Architectural Management & Design has trained professionals that wish to develop their business skills and apply them to the AEC field. The program’s alumni work around the globe from Azerbaijan to Switzerland, in diverse companies such as Arup, Foster & Partners, OMA and Gensler. To learn more about their professional outlook, click here to access the Career Report from IE’s Master in Architectural Management & Design.

Meet this year’s graduates in the video above. 

The Brick Development Association, representing the UK and Ireland, has unveiled its shortlist for the 2014 Brick Awards. The awards recognize excellence in design and construction using brick in 14 different categories. Among the contenders are Zaha Hadid Architects' Serpentine Sackler Gallery , Universal Design Studio's Ace Hotel and Mecanoo's The Library of Birmingham. The winners will be announced on November 12.

See the full shortlist after the break:

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At the New Cities Summit – held last year in São Paulo – we caught up with Eric Bunge of New York-based practice nArchitects outside of Oscar Niemeyer’s Ibirapuera auditorium. The summit’s theme was centered on the future of cities and Bunge was presenting his firm’s My Micro NY project, which was the winning design of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s adAPT NYC competition. “We’re kind of influenced by New York itself as a microcosm. Our project looks a little bit like a microcosm of the skyline. We’re interested in this idea of re-inventing what micro is and how much of New York you can inhabit,” Bunge said regarding the project.

According to Bunge, housing is based on regulation and therefore one of the most constrained things to design. “I think we can reinvent housing,” he told us. 

Watch the full interview to learn more about Bunge's thoughts on reinventing housing, the inspiration behind his My Micro NY project and how he strives to address climate change in his projects.

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On August 18 Al Jazeera will launch “Rebel Architecture,” a new series featuring architects who use design as a form of resistance and activism. By designing for the majority rather than the elite, the architects in “Rebel Architecture” are tackling the world’s urban, environmental and social problems. Through six, half-hour documentaries the series will highlight architects working in Vietnam, Nigeria, Spain, Pakistan, the Occupied West Bank and Brazil.

“In contemporary architecture, people are always concerned with ‘what a beautiful building’; or ‘what a pretty project’ – architecture should be about something more,” said Spanish architect Santi Cirugeda, who will be featured in the series’ first episode. Cirugeda works in Seville reclaiming abandoned urban spaces for the public, despite the fact that self-building is illegal in Spain.

@deadprize The Mall of the World 48M SF of AC'd shopping and medical tourism in Dubai http://t.co/QWcR2JNOve pic.twitter.com/XIjyQ0gqWv

— Lloyd Alter (@lloydalter) August 6, 2014

Numerous awards recognize innovative, forward-thinking and environmentally-friendly design, yet there is no way to recognize projects that are harming the environment or detrimental to the planet – until now. Created by Cameron Sinclair, one of the co-founders of Architecture for Humanity and current Executive Director of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, the recently launched “DEAD Prize” seeks to highlight projects that have a negative impact on the planet, with the aim of inspiring designers to “see these failures as a challenge to create something new, to correct the mistakes of the past or to find the antidote for the project in question.” Tweet your nominations for the prize to @deadprize by November 1 and learn more about this tongue-in-cheek award at the DEAD Prize website.

On his recent visit to Santiago, Chile we caught up with Rahul Mehrotra, founder of Mumbai-based RMA Architects and a professor of Urban Design and Planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Mehrotra is known for his advocacy work in Mumbai and has carried out projects on a myriad of scales including interior design, architecture, urban design, conservation and planning. His projects include everything from a house on a tea plantation to a campus for NGO Magic Bus, the KMC Corporate Office in Hyderabad and housing for mahouts and their elephants. Mehrotra has also written and lectured extensively on architecture, conservation and urban planning in Mumbai and India.

Videos

After nearly eight years of design and construction, what will soon be China’s tallest and the world’s second tallest building has entered into its final phase of construction. Designed by Gensler, the 632-meter (2,073 feet) spiraling Shanghai Tower is now set to be completed in 2015, becoming the centerpiece of the city’s Lujiazui commercial district.

In light of the tower reaching its final phase of construction, Marshall Strabala, the Chief Architect of the building, has unveiled new photos of the construction process. Enjoy these photos as well as a video interview with Strabala on the construction process after the break…

With the World Architecture Festival (WAF) just around the corner, the festival's full program has been unveiled, featuring three days of fascinating talks, an impressive list of key-note speakers and networking opportunities.

"Architects and the City" is the overarching theme for this year’s main conference sessions, and the talks will focus on the contributions architects can make to cities and how they affect – and are affected by – politics, infrastructure, planning communities and technology. Conference talks include “Greening the urban landscape: strategies for environmental urbanism,” “Question time- is ‘iconic’ architecture out of control?" and “Connecting the city; regenerating communities.”

The festival also features an impressive line-up of key note speakers, including Rocco Yim of Rocco Design Associates who will speak on his involvement in the West Kowloon Cultural District, the largest arts and cultural project in Hong Kong to date, and Richard Rogers who will speak candidly about his life as one of the most influential global figures in architecture and his future agenda. Moshe Safdie will close the Festival, looking back over his extensive career to talk exclusively about the defining moments that shaped its path.

More WAF program highlights after the break...

The room dedicated to the Wall at the 2014 Venice Biennale’s “Elements of Architecture” exhibition traces the development and evolution of walls over time, starting with archaic walls and ending with Barkow Leibinger’s “Kinetic Wall.”

It was here that we caught up with the Kinetic Wall’s architects, Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger, to learn more about the vision and thought process that went into the design of this expanding and retracting elastic wall.“It’s very ephemeral, very light, but an idea of a kind of maybe not too far away future, that’s spatial. It changes the space that we’re standing in by moving back and forth. It has a kind of front, it has a back, it’s a little tongue-in-cheek,” Barkow explained.

A series of motorized points extend and retract the wall’s translucent synthetic material, creating peaks and valleys. Two layers of gridded fabric produce a moiré effect, “a second scale of movement, that is translucent/ephemeral,” according to a project description on Barkow Leibinger’s website.

If you enjoyed this video interview make sure you check out the rest of our 2014 Venice Biennale coverage, here.

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New York-based firm Biber Architects has unveiled its design for the US pavilion - "American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet" - at the Milan Expo 2015. An airy, barn-inspired structure, the design represents the pavilion’s food-centric theme, focusing on a farm-to-table food model and sustainable production.

Award-winning African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré is renowned for his cross-cultural approach to architecture. Although his office, Kéré Architecture, is based in Berlin, many of his projects are carried out in his native West African country Burkina Faso, where he is known for incorporating local materials and talent into his designs.

New images have been released of Foster + Partners’ and Heller Manus Architects’ design for “First and Mission,” a two tower, two million square foot mixed-use development project in downtown San Francisco.

The project consists of a 605-foot condominium tower -- the tallest residential project on the West Coast -- and an 850-foot hotel, residential and office tower. Together the two towers will add more than a million square feet of flexible office and commercial space, as well as 650,000 square feet of residential units to the Transbay Area.

View more images and learn more about the design of the "First and Mission" project after the break...