Magazine

Estimated number of villages across China: 940,000 René Ammann

Opening on April 16 at Garagem Sul / Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, At Home: Projects for Contemporary Housing follows the exhibition of the same name that opened at MAXXI in Rome back in 2019. The new iteration builds upon the predecessor's pairing of housing projects at a range... John Hill

Genevese architect/landscape architect Georges Descombes is one of three recipients of the Swiss Grand Award for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim for 2021, alongside curator Esther Eppstein and artist Vivian Suter. John Hill

London's National Gallery has announced the six shortlisted teams vying to work with the museum on "a suite of capital projects," including a reconfiguration of the famous Sainsbury Wing, to mark its bicentenary in 2024. John Hill

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has revealed plans for a major expansion designed by Safdie Architects, the architect of the original museum that opened in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2011. John Hill

Vienna's Coop Himmelb(l)au has won an international design competition to design the "SCA Arena and Park" in St. Petersburg. Their design follows follows the tradition of Russian Constructivists El Lissitzky and Vladimir Tatlin. John Hill

Paris's Bruther, the firm of Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot, is the recipient of the seventh biennial Swiss Architectural Award, as announced in early April. Three short films by Daniele Marucci show a trio of the firm's buildings in context and in use. John Hill

Swiss-Architects Editor in Chief Elias Baumgarten recently interviewed architect Saikal Zhunushova, who placed third in the 2021 Foundation Award, which annually recognizes the innovate work of Swiss architecture offices less than five years old. Born in Kyrgyzstan and now based in Winterthur,... Elias Baumgarten

The first Avenues: The World School opened in 2012 inside a former industrial building next to the High Line in New York City, setting a precedent of adaptive reuse for the international system of schools. The first piece of the Avenues Silicon Valley Campus transforms part of an old office... Efficiency Lab for Architecture

Number of skyscrapers up to 59 stories containing approximately 6,000 mostly rental apartments in the 12-acre development planned by the Canadian indigenous group Squamish First Nation in Vancouver, René Ammann

Designed and built by master's degree students at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, The Voxel is a prototype for a quarantine cabin, where an individual can live self-sufficiently for two weeks. It was made entirely from... John Hill

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has announced that Frank Gehry's renovation, reorganization, and expansion of the museum's 93-year-old landmark building will open to the public on May 7, 2021. John Hill

Following a sixteen-month closure due to restoration work and the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC is reopening with two exhibitions on Boston's MASS Design Group: Justice Is Beauty and Gun Violence Memorial Project. John Hill

The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello have announced that Francis Kéré is the recipient of the 2021 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. John Hill

"A Meeting with Architects" is a series of short films produced and hosted by Julia Zhu, featuring her interviews with Chinese architects Ma Yansong and Yung Ho Chang, European architects Álvaro Siza and Christian de Portzamparc, and Israeli-Canadian-American architect Moshe Safdie. John Hill

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has announced that architects Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe are recipients of the 2021 RAIC Gold Medal, "the highest distinction the Institute can bestow in recognition of a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian... John Hill

Consecutive months architecture billings in the United States were in decline before turning positive in February: 11 René Ammann

The Mushroom is located in a pine forest. Thus, handling the relationship between nature and the architecture became the essential approach of our design. ZJJZ

The Shanghai office Scenic Architecture was commissioned to design a rowing club for young people at an inner-city wetland park in Shanghai. The park is located in the Pudong district planned by Arte Charpentier in 1999 and ends an urban development axis that begins in the Lujiazui financial... Eduard Kögel

Anonymous Hall is the new name for Dartmouth College's former Dana Biomedical Library, which was stripped down to its steel-and-concrete frame and transformed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates into a sleek four-story building wrapped in terra cotta and glass. The architects answered a few... Leers Weinzapfel Associates

On March 20, Louis Vuitton opened its transformed Ginza Naminki store in Tokyo, where Jun Aoki has wrapped the building in wavy dichroic glass and Peter Marino has designed the interiors.  John Hill

Es Devlin's Forest of Us, made of mirrored surfaces that echo natural structures, is one of the immersive artworks that visitors will encounter next month when Superblue Miami, a new experiential art center located in a former industrial building in the city's Allapattah neighborhood,... John Hill

Barcelona's Miralles Tagliabue EMBT has been selected to design the Shenzhen Conservatory of Music, one of ten new cultural landmarks being funded by the Shenzhen Municipal Government for sites in and around the Chinese metropolis.  John Hill

Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America opened in late February at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Curated by MoMA's Sean Anderson and Columbia University's Mabel O. Wilson, the exhibition explores "how people have mobilized Black cultural spaces, forms,... John Hill

Nearly one year after Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs abandoned plans for a mixed-use "smart neighborhood" on twelve acres of Toronto's Quayside, Waterfront Toronto has launched a competition to find a development partner for the site.

This aptly named townhouse stands out from its neighbors in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood by way of a bold color choice. The same blue covers the rear elevation that faces a minimalist patio in concrete and corrugated metal, while the interior spaces are bright and white. LOT office for... LOT office for architecture

The Shenzhen Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau has announced the winners of two international design competitions: for the Shenzhen Opera House and the Shenzhen Maritime Museum, two of ten new cultural attractions in the city. John Hill

Price paid for Mars House, a purely virtual piece of architecture created by contemporary artist Krista Kim that is also the world's... René Ammann

A new short film made by Akira Koyama of Key Operation Inc. takes viewers inside the Inagawa Cemetery Chapel and Visitor Centre north of Osaka, Japan. The four-year-old building was designed by David Chipperfield Architects with Key Operation Inc. as associate architect.

Song Art Museum is an "Art Container," with "Art" as the mainstay and "Container" as the supplement. It transforms everything into geometry and purity and takes “Non-Action” from the outside to within. Vermilion Zhou Design Group

Indian architect Bijoy Jain and his office, Studio Mumbai, have won the 14th Alvar Aalto Medal, conferred by the Alvar Aalto Foundation, Museum of Finnish Architecture (MFA), Finnish Architectural Society, Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA), and the City of Helsinki. John Hill

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal talk about their partnership, the principles behind their buildings, the greenhouses they append to many of their projects, and their early experiences in West Africa, in five short films made on the occasion of being named the John Hill

A Glimpse into the Past is an art installation by Ohel Shovenko that was recently unveiled at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) in Kyiv. The glass-and-brick monument commemorates the Kurenivka Tragedy, a mudslide caused by a dam burst on March 13, 1961, that killed at... John Hill

Patrick Lüth, the managing director of Snøhetta’s Innsbruck studio, talked to Austrian-Architects about social and ecological sustainability and the digitalization of architecture. Elias Baumgarten

French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been selected as laureates of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the award given out by the Hyatt Foundation and widely considered "architecture’s highest honor." John Hill

The triangular building type creates a strong visual identity and an open character in the new city district. With its building edges of varying lengths and rounded corners, this building typology oscillates between solitaire and block. It thus succeeds in creating spatial references,...