The A’ Design Award is an international award whose aim is to provide designers, architects and innovators from all architecture and design fields with a competitive platform to showcase their work and products to a global audience. The 2014-2015 competition awarded 836 winners from 83 countries in 89 different design, product and architecture disciplines. The sheer number of represented countries and tremendous breadth of design disciplines marks the A’ Design Award as the World’s largest design accolade bringing together enterprises, architects, and designers from across the globe. The award winning designs are granted the coveted A’ Design Prize, which not only includes the beautiful award trophy but also an unmatched publicity package to promote the selected designs. Discover the full A’ Design Prize here.

The modernist movement looked to industrial processes – factories, warehouses and silos - to enhance their designs. Their dream was to create rationalized machines for living. They thought the functional glass box could modernize everyday life. By bringing efficiency into every aspect of the city, home, and schools we would become liberated creatives and thinkers. Since then, there have been many iterations of machine-methods applied to the physical and cultural environment.

The countryside carries so much emotional weight and nostalgia through thousands of years of time. Currently, more than 100 villages disappear every day in China. On the other hand, the rise of city living standards and GDP require a more suitable tourist experience in the surviving villages. How can we combine the inheritance and preservation of villages with a countryside tourism business model? To provide a better ecosystem for lodge and inn, farm, organic agriculture and handmade crafts is the challenge that we are facing now!

Makers are the group of people who are leading us towards a future lifestyle. They make the impossible possible. Makers are affecting every field of our life, from the internet, design, products, finance, interaction, community, biology, science and all other aspects to provide us a better living quality and a whole new experience. Thus, once the countryside meets the makers, tradition meets innovation; nostalgia meets the crowd fund. What kind of spark will that make?

Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and OMA are some of 15 major practices that have been shortlisted in the second (and final) stage of a competition to design the new Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. The building will be one of four new museums being built in Hungary's 200-year-old Városliget (City Park) as part of the Liget Budapest project, which includes SANAA's Ludwig Museum and Sou Fujimoto’s House of Hungarian Music.

"For the first time since the foundation of the Museum of Ethnography that is, for over 140 years now, it has become possible to permanently place the museum in a building worthy for the collection, to be built specifically for this function. In addition, the construction of the new building of the Museum of Ethnography will solve another more than half a century problem: by relocating the institution, the Kúria (former Ministry of Justice) building, recently housing the museum, can regain its original function," says Liget Budapest.

The 15 finalists include: 

A new design competition asks participants to design a facade and street presence for a new addition to the historic 1938 County Theater in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

This international one-stage architecture competition invites all architecture students, young architects and young professionals with a degree in architecture studies (≤ 40 years old) to develop and submit compelling ideas for the design of a Site Gallery located near the River Tower (Torre do Rio) in the bank of the Guadiana River and adjacent to the fortified walls of the village of Mértola, Portugal.

The RIBA is excited to launch the recruitment process for the role of Creative Directorship of the 2016 ‘Guerrilla Tactics’ small practice conference. We are looking for a committed individual with an existing profile within the world of design or the built environment, with a proven track record for innovation, creativity and thought-leadership.

Roses are red, violets are blue; we'd love to receive a valentine from you!

We have long admired our reader's creativity, so we wanted to celebrate this Valentine's Day by featuring the most lovely, architecture-themed cards submitted by our readers. Whether you're looking for Mr. Wright or you love someone Gehry much, we hope you will share your witty and beautiful valentines with us. <3

Founded in 1950, in the city of Talcahuano, CAP Steel is the main Chilean steelmaker, offering a variety of steel products for industrial, mining and building companies across the country. The enterprise, also known as "Siderúrgica Huachipato," forms part of the CAP Group of Enterprises, the chief producer of iron minerals and pellets along the American Pacific Coast, as well as the main steel producer in Chile and the most important steel manufacturer in the Southern Cone.

The Council of the City of Ryde, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, invites submissions for an iconic gateway concept – a bold vision of insightful and creative design to guide future development of its civic site.

Oxford University has released five shortlisted proposals to overhaul and extend its St Hilda's College. Part of the invited competition Redefining St Hilda's, the concepts are designed to expand student and Fellow accommodation, while providing new social and teaching spaces, Middle Common Room, Porters' Lodge and entrance for the college.

“We are keenly aware of the legacy we give to future generations as well as the opportunity to enhance Oxford itself. This initiative is all about reimagining this beautiful site and creating an academic environment which is pleasing and satisfying to use, and which enables the College to flourish over the next hundred years,” says St Hilda’s College Principal, Professor Sir Gordon Duff.

Read on for a glance at the five shortlisted proposals...

Alejandro Aravena's proposal for the Architecture Biennale 2016, "Reporting from the front”, invites each country to share experiences and moments of crisis that architecture has experienced in recent years. The proposal calls for a reflection on the mistakes in order to share solutions that may allow other countries to anticipate and avoid similar situations.

During the last period of economic growth in Spain, construction became the main driving force of the economy. Today, reality reveals us the built presence and the unfinished remains of what once was the largest edificatory enterprise in Spanish history, leaving behind a difficult situation in which to deal with partially constructed large volumes which are not consolidated.

Under the title "Unfinished", the exhibition in the Spanish Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2016 draws attention to these unfinished architectures in order to discover virtues that can become design strategies. Robert Venturi, referring to the Farnsworth House, points out how architects are highly selective in determining those problems they want to solve often giving up solving others.

schmidt hammer lassen architects has won an international competition to design a new home for the West Shanghai Workers’ Cultural Palace. This project has been a widely popular destination for Shanghai’s Labor Union workers and local community since it opened in 1959. The new proposal will include a theater, cinema, art and exhibition spaces, as well as office, sports facilities, commercial spaces, and a transportation hub -- all settled within the eight hectare site.

Guangzhou, China's third largest city, is planning to rebuild four bridges in its region - the Renmin, Jiangwan, Haiyin, and Liede Bridges. Three teams have been shortlisted for each bridge, all of which are Chinese practices with the exception of Zaha Hadid Architects, Knight Architects and NEXT Architects. As BDOnline reports, the finalists are expected to propose a range of options, from small upgrades to complete rebuilds. A winner for each will be selected in February, after the Chinese new year.

The shortlisted practices for each bridge include...

Adjaye, Henning Larsen, and wHY are among seven practices shortlisted in an invited design competition to design the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art (LMoCA). The new museum, planned for the center of Riga, Latvia, hopes to become "the most visited art museum in the Baltic States, as well as a cultural arts center of interregional significance." It's collection will feature regional art and visual culture from the 1960s.

The seven shortlisted teams are...

Now in its fourth year, the Future of Shade competition, continues Sunbrella’s® commitment to the architecture and design community by nurturing the exploration of creative solutions in three unique categories create distinct challenges where shade plays a critical role in the response.

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The Buckminster Fuller Institue (BFI) has issued the Call for Proposals for the 2016 Fuller Challenge. Known as “socially-responsible design’s highest award,” the Fuller Challenge invites designers, architects, planners, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, activists, and students worldwide to submit original solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing problems.

The Architecture Committee of Coalition Climat Montreal invites designers, professionals and students in planning to reflect on the future of Montreal and its "Morph.o.polis" transformation. The competition is part of the "marathon créatif" activities of the public consultation conducted by the OCPM (Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal) whose objective is to identify "concrete, ambitious, achievable initiatives to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in Montreal."

The University of Oregon John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape and Design Week Portland invite proposals to define, design, and bring to life Portland’s proposed “green loop”—a six-mile pedestrian/bike urban promenade linking the city’s east and west sides.

After receiving over 350 registrations from 50 different countries at last years inaugural Dencity Competition, Shelter is pleased to invite back architects, planners, students, engineers, designers, thinkers, NGOs and organizations from all over the world to take part in designing for a better city.

Sydney-based firm Stewart Hollenstein has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the international design competition for a new 17,000 square-meter library in Varna, Bulgaria. Their design scheme focuses on Varna's rich history as a city known for its public gardens, and seeks to make the library a cultural center of the city.

Driving urban infrastructure modernization, improving citizen life by means of technology, sustainable innovation, wide band, Big Data… These are some of the subjects that will be discussed at the International Conference on City Sciences, that will take place at Santiago de Chile on the 16th and 17th of June.

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Annual AIA National Photography Competition is open to all actively registered architects in the US, AIA members, Assoc. AIA members and member of student organizations of AIA.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced the names of the 158 finalists in the Knight Cities Challenge. The nation wide call was for innovative ideas to make the 26 communities where the Knight Foundation invests more social and vibrant places to live. More than 4,500 entries were submitted proposing a range of ideas from opening the world’s largest African American history museum in Detroit to a card game that encourages residents of Charlotte to visit new neighborhoods. The winners, who will split a prize of $5 million, will be announced in the spring of 2016.