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Elon Musk’s Boring Company has unveiled the latest component of their visionary plans for a network of tunnels under Los Angeles. The new “Hawthorne” test tunnel, built at the corner of SpaceX’s parking lot, forms part of Musk’s mission to reduce traffic in cities through a dual system of boring tunnels, and fully electric, autonomous transport to operate within them.

The Los Angeles project ultimately seeks to develop a large, multi-layered network with a loop of highway tunnels seeing cars traveling at 150 miles per hour. While cars will use the superhighways for a small fee, the company will also have a fleet of Teslas operating as public transport.

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The organizers behind the FIFA 2022 Qatar World Cup have released new images of the Foster + Partners-designed Lusail Stadium. Merging contemporary and historical influences, the “sleek, bold shape” of the arena is inspired by the bowls and vessels used in the Middle East across centuries.

Foster + Partners were chosen for the scheme’s design in 2015, ahead of David Chipperfield Architects, Mossessian & Partners and Mangera Yvars Architects. Located in Lusail City, 15 kilometers north of Doha, the 80,000-seat stadium will host the opening ceremony and final match of one of the world’s biggest sporting occasions.

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Plans for a set of skyscrapers for Brisbane, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, have been scrapped following a long-running controversy. The "Grace on Coronation" scheme, lodged for application in 2014, consisted of three sculptural residential towers and sought to reinvigorate a historic site in Toowong, four kilometers west of Brisbane’s Central Business District.

However, the scheme has been criticized for a perceived lack of sensitivity to the surrounding area, with its proposed 27 stories breaching the city plan limit of 15 stories. In May 2018, a sole resident won an appeal against the development due to the height violation.

UNStudio has broken ground on their TBC Forum in Tbilisi, Georgia, exploring a “new open, flexible and interactive approach to financial institutions.” Departing from the traditional closed, introverted typology of historic banking structures, the TBC Forum is founded on the design principles of flexibility, and transparency.

Situated in the natural surroundings of the Lisi Lake resort, the TBC Forum is strategically placed to form a contemporary yet respectful interpretation of the historic highland stone-and-mortar village of Shatili.  

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The CTBUH has released its Year in Review, charting the year’s tall building developments around the world. 2018 saw a record-breaking 18 supertall buildings (over 300 meters tall) built across the world, and 143 buildings of over 200 meters in height completed.

To quantify the extent to which architecture reached to the sky throughout the year, the CTBUH estimate that if each tall building completed in 2018 was laid end to end, it would exceed the entire length of the island of Manhattan; some 13 miles (21.6 kilometers).

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Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has broken ground on its first U.S. project, a mixed-use tower and associated masterplan in Detroit, Michigan. “Monroe Blocks” will stitch together the heart of one of America’s most storied cities with a mix of modern office space, residential units, restaurants, retail, and outdoor public areas.

The 12,500-square-meter site in Detroit’s Campus Martius Park, vacant for a generation, will be activated by 4,800 square meters of outdoor space, with the design team drawing on historical influences for the form and materiality of the new masterplan.

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Italian activists RebelArchitette and VOW Architects, led by Louise Braverman, Caroline James, Arielle Assouline-Lichten and Francesca Perani, have launched a petition seeking equal recognition for Doriana Fuksas in the Lifetime Achievement Award recently given to her fellow partner and Director of Studio Fuksas, Massimiliano Fuksas.

The petition, signed by over 80 supporters on the first day of the launch, includes an open letter to INARCH (Istituto Nazionale di Architettura) in Rome, Italy, and has attracted the support of notable names such as Massimiliano Fuksas, Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas, Bjarke Ingels, Paola Antonelli, Beatriz Colomina, Gisue Hariri, and Toshiko Mori.

Laka has published the results of the 2018 edition of their annual Architecture that Reacts competition, focusing on “architectural, design, or technological solutions that are capable of dynamic interaction with their surroundings.” This year saw 200 participants from more than 30 countries submit 130 designs, following an interdisciplinary approach reaching beyond typical building solutions.

This year’s winners hailed from the USA and Austria, confronting issues such as climate change, ubiquitous computation, and new ways of perceiving space in a machine-driven future. Below, we have rounded up the winners, special recognitions, and honorable mentions from the 2018 edition. For more information on the competition, and previous results, visit the official website here.

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Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) has unveiled details of Huamu Lot 10 in Shanghai. The three-tower scheme, totaling 279,000 square meters, is dedicated to commercial offices and a future museum, positioned around a central grand plaza.

Described as a “new form of participatory urbanism,” the scheme has been designed to accommodate large-scale artwork in a public setting, thus activating the central plaza as a cultural hub.

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Stefano Boeri has used his guest speech at the New York Times Cities of Tomorrow forum to focus on the role that green and urban forests can have in improving the quality of life and air in cities around the world. Speaking at the event in New Orleans, the acclaimed architect highlighted the impact of carbon emissions produced by buildings, while also stressing the potential for architects to use the built environment as a vehicle for positive social and environmental change.

Drawing from experiences such as the Tirana 2030 masterplan and the Bosco Verticale in Milan, Boeri suggested that “cities have the resources and the potential to become protagonists of a radical change aimed at countering the dramatic effects [of carbon emissions] becoming greener, healthier, and more integrated.”

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The Dutch pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai has been unveiled, designed by a consortium, made up of Expomobilia, Kossmann.dejong, V8 Architects and Witteveen+Bos. The scheme has been designed “as a closed-loop climate system in which private and business visitors will enjoy an intense sensorial experience.”

Based on the Netherlands' chosen theme of “uniting water, energy, and food” the pavilion will be built using a construction method prioritizing closed-loop circularity, local materials, and a post-use recyclable agenda.

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Canadian Architect has announced the winners of its annual Awards of Excellence program. Now in its 51st year, the awards are “the highest recognition for excellence in the design stage in the Canadian architectural sector.” Celebrating unbuilt and student work, the awards place emphasis on design ambition, innovation, and social and environmental sustainability.

This year, fourteen entries were recognized from a pool of 190 professional and student submissions. The winners, featured below, were divided into Awards of Excellence, Awards of Merit, Student Awards of Excellence, and the inaugural Photo Award of Excellence.

A historic hotbed of architectural styles and a current architectural capital of the world, cities in the United Kingdom are awash with iconic buildings from the Georgian, Neoclassical, and contemporary era. Such buildings, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol to the Southbank in London, have come to define the cities in which they stand, drawing the eyes of tourists and designers alike from around the world.

It is therefore an interesting exercise to examine what these cities would look like if such structures didn’t exist. To this end, Neomam Studios has partnered with QuickQuid to produce a series of images demonstrating what six British cities could have looked like, resurrecting some of Britain’s most surprising unbuilt structures.

UNStudio has released images of their proposed Lyric Theatre complex in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong. Intended as a “celebration of the world of theater,” the mixed-use scheme will house three theaters, rehearsal room, and dining, retail, and entertainment functions.

Designed to be open, inclusive, and welcoming, the compact scheme is comprised of a series of stacked transparent elements making the arts accessible to the general public. Open displays draw visitors inside from a series of reactivated plazas surrounding the scheme, supported by “an additional programme for the public to enjoy that is independent of performance timetable.”

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Richard Rogers has been awarded the 2019 AIA Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architects. The world-renowned architect and founding principal of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has been recognized “for his influence on the built environment [that] has redefined an architect’s responsibilities to society.”

Honoring “an individual or pair of architects whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture,” the AIA Gold Medal is often considered the highest honor awarded in the United States for architecture.

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Tokyo-based designer monde has created a series of bookends inspired by the narrow back alleys of Tokyo. As described by My Modern Met, the bookends convey the “dizzying feeling of wandering the city’s back alleys” through a mixture of laser-cut wood and lighting.

The results of the two-year project were debuted at the Design Festa arts and crafts event, where they caught the eye of outlets across Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.

As part of a global, interdisciplinary effort to tackle climate change, architects are devoting resources towards optimizing the energy efficiency of buildings old and new. This effort is more than justified, given that buildings account for almost 40% of UK and US emissions. As awareness of the issue of climate change becomes more apparent each year, so too do the architectural responses. 2018 was no exception.

In a year that saw wildfires rage across California, hurricanes in Florida, and mudslides in Japan, the architectural community has put forward a wealth of proposals, both large and small scale, which seek to mitigate against the role the built environment plays in inducing climate change. 

Ranging from a biological curtain in Dublin to a radical masterplan for Boston, we have rounded up six developments in the architectural fight against climate change that we published throughout 2018.

C.F. Møller Architects has unveiled new images of their proposed Carlsberg Headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. Construction of the scheme is well underway, with the topping out ceremony taking place in Spring 2018.

The new renders offer an insight into the scheme’s proposed external finish and interior atmosphere, including the central atrium overlooking the historic site where the famed brewery business began.