French artist and illustrator Vincent Mahé has shared his most recent work with us -- a series of illustrations made for a special edition of Telerama magazine that depicts the life of the renowned Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier. In just eight pages, the artist highlights the most relevant facts of this unforgettable architect's life. Expressed in green and pink tones, we can see key moments that have without a doubt shifted the course of contemporary architecture, with the extreme care and clarity that Mahé's work presents us.

View the eight illustrations after the break.

In the continuing quest for smarter cities, the White House has announced the dedication of 160-million dollars toward the integration of sensors and data collection in cities across the United States. The new initiative strives to produce better, real-time data for local organizations, companies and governments to improve responses, both in time and effectiveness. The initiative broadly covers various organizations and federal grants, but hopes to address issues like crime, traffic congestion and climate change. Read more after the break.

This summer graduate students from Massachusetts College of Art and Design transformed an unused parcel of land into an outdoor learning space for a neighborhood charter school in Boston. The Codman Academy, Charter Public School, serving students from kindergarten through high school, now has an outdoor learning space that, through its design and assembly, engages young minds to think about the built environment.

The MassArt architecture graduate students who designed the space chose to express the assembly connections, material characteristics and the dynamic geometry with a goal to excite younger students to think about design and their environment. The graduate students, guided by faculty and a structural engineer, completed every aspect of the project from proposing the concept to completing the working drawings, and installing the plantings. In fact, they even used the college’s metals shop to weld and assemble the steel supports. This project is one in a long series of community building projects that MassArt students have completed through the years and it is a required part of the Master of Architecture curriculum.

Prehype, a venture development firm, has released its latest in a series of podcasts by partner Henrik Werdelin, featuring Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Having worked with Prehype on investments into tech development, Bjarke Ingels discusses his experiences and perspectives on the industry, drawing parallels between entrepreneurship, tech development and architecture.

Taliesin (or Taliesin East, following the construction of a Taliesin West in 1937) was the lifetime home and studio of distinguished American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Designed by Wright himself, the building was built in 1911, and underwent several changes before being finalized as its current iteration in 1937. For many years, the building has been open to the public, many of whom make a trip to Spring Green, Wisconsin for Taliesin alone. However, the building is also open to those without the means to travel to see it, thanks to a virtual tour by Tour de Force 360 VR.

After a sale of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives in 2013, Frank Lloyd Wright's model of The San Francisco Call Building, originally residing at Taliesin and later, Hillside Home School, was moved to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The Organic Architecture and Design Archives, Inc. (OAD) believes that this model - a striking 8-foot tall replica built originally for the 1940 MoMA Exhibition - was "an integral part of the design of Taliesin."

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When working with clients, architects are bound to change, update and reiterate projects. Revisions are deeply ingrained into the design process, and as projects become more complex and updates become more frequent, keeping the most up-to-date versions of your designs can be a challenge.

As a part of Building Information Modeling (BIM), computational design is a burgeoning trend, based upon the idea that any design problem can be described as an abstract model with clear and logical guidelines, which can then be solved through computation. This design process is especially gaining popularity among architects and engineers who want to explore a multitude of designs and iterations to quickly discover the best solutions for their needs.

In the past, creating and updating responsive, dynamic models proved much more time-consuming and difficult than it should be. Luckily though, an industry-proven visual programming environment powered by Dynamo helps combat this problem.

For his latest project, Federico Babina teamed up with architect Federico Ortiz Sanchez to imagine, illustrate and sculpt 12 “symbolic and symbiotic micro-architectures,” each representing a different component of a house and together making up the “DNA of the House.”

The project was inspired by the Fundamentals theme of the 2014 Venice Biennale, “but instead of dissecting a catalogue of components we composed a collection of images,” writes Babina. “We wanted to highlight the specific personality of each one of the artifacts we proposed, every single one uses its own set of symbols in order to address their different issues in this diverse compendium of spaces of the intimate.”

Learn more about the project and view the 12 illustrations after the break. 

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Short answer: As long as you can claim that glass is almost nothing.

Long answer: Ever since the Gothic era, glass has scored points for its invisibility. Walls of glass are often described using words such as openness, transparency, and participation. But those words are more compelling than the reality. In practice, a glass building can be just as forbidding as a blank wall. Glass buildings are as tangible as others and must be treated as such. We used to rely on window muntins to give form and substance to glass, weaving together the wall across the window opening. If glass is going to make up the whole wall on its own, it also has to be able to be something. That requires more than just wanting to be nothing.

Short answer: Sure we can. But everything will always bear the mark of its own time.

Long answer: Sticking with something that we know works is a good strategy. Lots of old buildings and cities function extraordinarily well. As a rule it’s dumb to replace them with something else. And modern times don’t necessarily demand modern buildings. In many cases it’s easy to live a modern lifestyle in a renovated building. The problem with creating new buildings and cities that look like old ones is not imitation per se—we’ve learned to deal with much bigger lies than that. But the charm of old cities runs deep below the surface. Once we’ve learned to really understand old buildings and cities, we can recreate their qualities in other forms. Buildings are resources; projects are opportunities.

How well do you know the works of the Swiss master Charles Edouard Jeanneret (aka Le Corbusier)? Take our quiz to find out!

Short answer: No. Don’t confuse the responsibility of proposing solutions with the power to execute them.

Long answer: Few things have changed the role of the architect as radically as when many people lost faith in the idea of authority in the 1970s. Nothing was the same after that. Numerous star architects born around the turn of the last century, such as Alvar Aalto, had become a fixture in the architectural firmament, but fell hard to earth when the society that had held him aloft suddenly turned its back on all establishment figures. The revolt against the status quo changed the rules of the game for architects and politicians in particular. And the loss of authority soon led to the loss of self-confidence, but that’s nothing to grumble about now. The days when an architect could lead the way by pointing are long gone; now it’s essential to be enthusiastic and encourage everyone to come together. That works best if architects believe in themselves.

Short answer: Ceilings.

Long answer: Ceilings have devolved from being the focal point of a room to being a zone for mechanical equipment. In all the world’s greatest spaces we’ve always looked up in awe. Where our gaze was once met with fantastical vaulted ceilings, remarkable truss structures, or distinctive decorative treatments, today we typically find acoustic tiles, ductwork, and fluorescent strip lighting. Having abandoned the ceiling as a canvas for creativity with the dawn of the technological era, we’ve had a hard time taking it back. Today, it’s hard to compete with all that mechanical equipment when all you’re arguing for is a blank white surface. But a compelling vision of a space designed to make the ceiling its primary feature can enchant even the most pragmatic minds. There is good reason to be stubborn: since we seldom rearrange or redecorate the ceiling the way we do the rest of a space, what we create overhead lives a long life.

From the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Administration Building and 15-story Research Tower, to the Norman Foster-designed Fortaleza Hall, SC Johnson’s global headquarters is rich in design and history. The company’s gallery, At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright, houses an exhibit featuring lithographic plates from the Wasmuth Portfolio, a collection that has been hailed as one of the most important publications of the early modern architecture movement and established Wright as the international icon he is today.

The gallery features 43 of the Portfolio’s 100 framed lithographs as well as artifacts of Wright’s most famous work, revealing plans and perspectives of the buildings in natural landscapes. Wright’s experiences and personal struggles leading up to, and throughout, the creation of the Portfolio were the backdrop for some of his history-altering work like the SC Johnson headquarters’ Administration Building and Research Tower.

Short answer: No. Some people will always be strong enough to make it anyway.

Long answer: We can be uplifted by a beautiful and harmonious view of a city even though we know that, just like every other city, it is full of wretched, bickering, greedy, and dishonest people. But the shortcomings of its inhabitants do not spoil the joy of a divine urban scene. Likewise, you can grow up in an impoverished environment and still be an outstanding person. And even the most well-designed environment provides no guarantees about the quality of life. To believe otherwise is a form of determinism. As Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Luckily, this is not always true. We push back, suppress the dreadful, mask over it, or we rebuild. If the architecture isn’t there from the start it will come, as long as people get the chance to make their mark.

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The Solar Bytes pavilion, designed by assistant professor at Kent State University Brian Peters, is a temporary structure which highlights the potential of new techniques available to architecture: robotic arms, 3D printing, smart technologies such as lighting sensors, and solar energy.

Leveraging the strength and range of motion of a robotic arm, the pavilion was printed in three dimensions with an experimental extruder, resulting in a structure composed of 94 unique modules that capture energy during the day, and shine at night. After their initial function, the plastic modules making up the pavilion will be completely crushed and reused in a new structure.

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Short answer: The trusted, the elected, and those with the money.

Long answer: It would be nice to answer that we all do, but it’s really not that simple. In many contexts, there is someone who finally decides. Municipalities have antiquarians and architects who draw up the outlines for what deserves to be preserved and what can be permitted for construction. Despite their learned expertise, these two groups often come into conflict with each other. The antiquarians defend the tracks of history, while the architects want to make new tracks. Hopefully, both are acting in the public interest, but the architect’s reasoning is always more abstract. The challenge of coming to an agreement about what is architecture cannot compare to the question of what can become architecture. That is the core of the architect’s expertise.

Short answer: The built image of ourselves.

Long answer: In a world of fluid, virtual values, architecture endures. The images that you, your work, your city, and your country create by building will more than likely outlive you. Buildings are the most important traces we leave behind as people. Old ones were here long before we arrived and the new ones we make will be here long after we’re gone. Architecture is a collective selfie. It’s a status that can’t be updated.