Magazine

Concrete's high carbon footprint has led to many calls for alternative materials. It might also be possible to keep using concrete, but do more with less. Researchers at ETH Zürich are exploring a significant reduction of the material through optimized shapes, as illustrated by a new... John Hill, Elias Baumgarten

NOWNESS, in the latest installment of its "Constructed Views" series, presents a profile of Etsuro Sotoo, the sculptor who left Japan in 1978 for Barcelona and has since devoted himself to the completion of Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Familia. John Hill

BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group has unveiled its design of "the world's most sustainable furniture factory" for Vestre, the Norwegian manufacturer of urban furniture. John Hill

The University of Southern California School of Architecture and Getty Research Institute have announced the joint acquisition of the archive of architect Paul Revere Williams, "the most significant African American architect of the 20th century." John Hill

The Jewish Museum Berlin is reopening its core exhibition on August 23 after a nearly two-and-a-half-year redesign. It replaces the exhibition that was on display from the opening of the building designed by Daniel Libeskind in 2001 until December 2017, having attracted 11 million visitors in... John Hill

An online exhibition of photographs by Camilo José Vergara shows residents in and around New York City adjusting to the "new normal" of social distancing, wearing face masks in public, waiting in long lines for basic services, and making ends meet when so many are out of work. John Hill

The American Society of Landscape Architects has announced the recipients of this year's Honors, which are selected by ASLA’s Board of Trustees and "represent the highest recognition ASLA bestows each year." John Hill

Ma Yansong's MAD Architects have revealed their masterplan and architectural design for Shenzhen Bay Culture Park, a cultural complex planned for a waterfront site in Shenzhen, China. John Hill

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that the city will move its government offices from the 18-year-old City Hall designed by Foster + Partners to The Crystal, an 8-year-old building designed by WilkinsonEyre. John Hill

The American Institute of Architects has launched this year's AIA Film Challenge, asking filmmakers, architects, and storytellers in the United States to submit mini documentaries (60- to 90-second videos) that can be during stay-at-home orders. John Hill

The semi-annual Vectorworks Design Summit allows Vectorworks users the opportunity to connect with other users, interact with the company’s software developers, and hear about new developments for future updates. This year’s Design Summit was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, John Hill

The 19-year-old A+D Museum is closing its physical space in Los Angeles's Arts District and moving to an exclusively virtual, internet-based platform for its exhibitions of avant-garde architecture and design. John Hill

The exhibition spaces of the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Germany, sit behind a facade of stacked precast elements, but architect Heike Hanada didn't originally plan it that way. John Hill, Martina Metzner

The World as an Architectural Project is a recently published book written by Venice Architecture Biennale curator Hashim Sarkis and Roi Salgueiro Barrio with Gabriel Kozlowski. It details 50 projects over more than 100 years, all of them seeing architects thinking at the scale of the... John Hill

The broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States since the murder of George Floyd has extended to schools of architecture, which are voicing their support for change in the face of structural racism. John Hill

Raffles City Chongqing, a mixed-use project in the center of Chongqing, China, recently opened the skybridge that caps four of the project's eight towers. John Hill

The Fundació Mies van der Rohe is launching the second edition of the Lilly Reich Grant for Equality in Architecture today, June 16, on the 135th anniversary of Lilly Reich's birth. John Hill

The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) reopened on the Lisbon waterfront on June 10 with Beeline, a museum-wide architectural intervention by SO-IL, the Brooklyn practice of Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu. John Hill

Amnesty International and SITU Studio, an architectural practice based in Brooklyn, have released Choking Dissent: How Tear Gas is Used to Crush Protests, a video analysis that explores the mechanics of tear gas and how the "less lethal" munition interacts with spaces of protest. John Hill

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced the theme for 13th edition taking place in December in Lisbon: "Greening the City." John Hill

The School of Architecture at Taliesin, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1932, is parting with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and moving to Cosanti and Arcosanti, the campuses started by Paolo Soleri in Arizona in the 1960s. John Hill

Swiss furniture company Vitra is making the 90-minute film from 2018 Chair Times: A History of Seating – From 1800 to Today available to watch for free on its website, alongside sixteen short "Chair Stories." John Hill

The second Architecture & the Media conference, organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, took place May 11 - 14, 2020, two years after the inaugural event was held at the... John Hill

Dutch photographer Iwan Baan headlined the second Architecture & the Media conference, which was organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe and took place online over four days in May. World-Architects spoke one-on-one with Baan after the conference to dig deeper into some of the... John Hill

A new short film by Jim Stephenson and Laura Mark mixes visits to some of Zaha Hadid's buildings — Vitra Fire Station, MAXXI, London Aquatics Centre — with remembrances of the late architect by Eva Jiřičná. John Hill

Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are designing a slender 87-story mixed-use tower on Toronto's Mink Mile that would be the tallest building in Canada if completed. John Hill

As is tradition with the MPavilion commissions installed in Melbourne's Queens Victoria Gardens each summer, Glenn Murcutt's recent iteration is being given a second life. John Hill

Details on the nominees for the Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA) 2020 are now available. Now in its third edition, the biennial award recognizes the best graduation projects by students from European schools of architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture. John Hill, Miriam Giordano

The artist Christo, who long collaborated with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, on major public artworks around the world, died on May 31 at his home in New York City. He was 84. John Hill

Preservation efforts to save MARABAR, a site-specific artwork by Elyn Zimmerman in Washington, DC, took a positive step forward, when DC's preservation review board determined it would revisit its 2019 decision that paved the way for its demolition. John Hill

Every Friday the Swiss Architecture Museum is holding "S AM Calls," in which S AM director Andreas Ruby talks with architects, urbanists, and others about the significance of the "coronavirus condition" on architecture and cities. John Hill

Europe's largest green facade — 8 kilometers of hornbeam hedges, more than 30,000 plants — was recently completed in Düsseldorf's city center. Kö-Bogen II was deigned by ingenhoven architects, who assert the hedges are the ecological equivalent of 80 fully grown deciduous trees. John Hill

The National Building Museum in Washington, DC — home to the recently refurbished Great Hall, a popular event venue and scene of summer installations — has laid off two-thirds of its staff, according to reports. John Hill

The Chicago Plan Commission voted unanimously in favor of Related Midwest's two-tower residential development for 400 North Lake Shore Drive, the site of Santiago Calatrava's proposed Spire. John Hill

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have revealed the ten projects for 2020 that meet the committee's "rigorous criteria for social, economic, and ecological value." John Hill

After March saw a historic drop of the American Institute of Architects' Architecture Billings Index to 33.3, the ABI score dropped further in April to 29.3, "a new all-time low for the index." John Hill