Thyssenkrupp Elevator, one of the world’s largest elevator companies, has revealed images of their proposed headquarters near The Battery Atlanta in Cobb County, Georgia. The headquarters will take the form of a “state-of-the-art 420-foot (128-meter)-tall elevator qualification and test tower, the tallest of its kind in the U.S. and one of the tallest in the world."

Featuring 18 shafts, the tower will be a testing ground for new concepts and product pilots, including high-speed elevators, two-cabins-per-shaft systems, and the world’s first cable-free and sideways-moving elevator systems.

A prominent shortlist including BIG, OMA, and UNStudio have revealed their visions for Melbourne’s landmark Southbank Precinct overhaul. The $2 billion project will be the largest single-phase project in the history of Victoria, Australia, intended as “a state-of-the-art, mixed-use environment” to be “centered around innovation in architecture and design.”

The six shortlisted schemes include twisting towers, interlocking blocks, and stacked neighborhoods, all focusing on the 6,000-square-meter BMW Southbank site. The designs were revealed at a public symposium on July 27th featuring speakers from the shortlisted firms.

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Apple’s Piazza Liberty Store, designed by Foster + Partners, has opened to the public in Milan, Italy. The scheme is located under an existing piazza close to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of the most popular pedestrian streets in Milan.

The store is defined by a dramatic waterfall which surrounds the entrance while forming the backdrop to a large outdoor amphitheater. Piazza Liberty is the first Apple Store to be constructed in Italy following their retail design collaboration with Foster + Partners.

The groundbreaking ceremony has occurred for MAD Architects’ China Entrepreneur Forum Conference Centre, settled in the mountains of Yabuli in Northeastern China. A snow-capped mountainous landscape known for its rugged terrain and freezing temperatures, Yabuli is home to the annual summit of the China Entrepreneur Forum (CEF) considered to be the “Davos of Asia.”

MAD’s scheme, also referred to as the “Yabuli Conference Centre” seeks to embody and showcase the “ambitions, ideologies, and forward critical thinking of CEF members” through a tent-like structure defined by soft, sloping lines.

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The Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) has selected Herzog & de Meuron and Beyer Blinder Belle as the design team for a “significant transformation” of the School’s iconic Gund Hall campus building.

The proposed expansion will include the integration of a new space into the School’s existing structure, with the goal of creating a facility which “will embody the School’s visionary and cross-disciplinary work at the intersection of design, pedagogy, research, and practice."

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Videos

In the mountains above Da Nang, Vietnam sits a unique piece of bridge design. Winding its way around a 150-meter course lined with flowers, a golden bridge shimmers against the Ba Na Hills, supported by a pair of giant hands.

The Golden Bridge opened to visitors in early June, in the tourist retreat of Thien Thai Garden. The bridge sits 1,400 meters above sea level, an altitude which creates the illusion of a silk strip hiding in the clouds above Da Nang.

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AI SpaceFactory has released details of their proposed cylindrical huts for the Planet Mars, designed as part of the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge organized by NASA. Project MARSHA (Mars HAbitat) was endorsed by NASA with a top prize of almost $21,000, one of five designs selected from a field of seventeen.

The competition asked participants to design an effective habitat for a crew of four astronauts to be located on the Red Planet, using construction techniques enabled by 3D printing. The submitted schemes were then ranked based on their innovation, architectural layout, and level of detail in BIM modeling.

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New images have emerged of the revised Foster + Partners-designed Apple Global Flagship Store at Federation Square in Melbourne after the original proposal attracted criticism and comparisons to a “Pizza Hut Pagoda.”

The revised scheme has been the result of workshops involving Fed Square Management, the Victorian Government, the City of Melbourne, and Apple, with input from Donald Bates, chair of architectural design at the University of Melbourne.

LOLA Landscape Architects, Taller Architects, and L+CC have released images of their competition-winning design for a 600-hectare forest and sports park in Guang Ming, Shenzhen, China. Commissioned in response to the exploding technology industry in the Shenzhen metropolitan area, the park will place an emphasis on health, sports, and nature to offer an ecological counterpoint to dense urban surroundings.

The winning collaboration saw off competition from JCFO, SWA, and TCL, with the competition jury praising the scheme for its “fresh approach and [for] being highly attentive to local ecology [while] meanwhile incorporating romantic techniques and realistic urban visions.”

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Facebook is moving into new offices in London’s King’s Cross. The announcement from King’s Cross details the social media giant’s commitment to take over 600,000 square feet (55,000 square meters) of office space across three buildings, namely 11 and 21 Canal Reach by Bennetts Associates, and P2 by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.

The July 23rd deal between Facebook and King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership (KCCLP) represents one of the most significant such commitments in London in the last decade, encompassing around 15% of King’s Cross’ 4-million-square-foot (370,000 square meters) commercial portfolio.

The Architectural Review has chosen a Habitat for Orphan Girls in Iran by ZAV Architects as the 2018 House of the Year. A competition staged by the publication every year, the AR House Awards identify “originality and excellence in the design of dwellings,” recognizing private houses which go beyond the core function of shelter, and become “an object of fantasy, a source of delight, a talisman, and a testing ground.

The ninth edition of the awards saw six projects chosen from a shortlist of 16, which contained schemes from the UK, Ireland, Spain, Scandinavia, Canada, Latin America, Iran, Vietnam, India, Nepal, and Japan. Previous winners have included David Chipperfield’s Fayland House in 2015, UID Architects’ Cosmic House in 2016, and the anti-seismic prototype in 2017 by Edward Ng, Wan Li and Xinan Chi.

Situated in the Loire region of France, Nantes could be regarded as a “tale of two cities” from many angles. Once a bustling node for European shipping, former vast, industrial warehouses have become a hotbed of cultural and artistic expression. Meanwhile, divided by the Loire river flowing towards the Atlantic, a maze of Haussmann-style terraces, ornate cathedrals, and monumental museums sit in contrast to an island of outlandish mechanical contraptions, and young, modern, free-spirited innovation.

The sheer variety of artistic and architectural wonders alone make Nantes a destination for architects and designers. Merged with culinary excellence, highly-instagrammable hotels, and a determination by public and private officials to maintain and expand on the city’s vibrant, playful design scene, and Nantes becomes a must-see, undiscovered architectural gem.

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The Australian Institute of Architects has announced the winners of their 2018 International Chapter Awards. Recognizing projects from beyond Australia, but designed by members of the Australian Institute of Architects, the jury has honored six projects from a shortlist of 17.

The projects span commercial, interior, public, residential, and small architecture, with winners hailing from across Asia and the Pacific, including three in Singapore.

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The iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) has announced the winners of the 2018 edition of the annual competition. Founded in 2007, the same year as the release of the first iPhone, IPPAWARDS is the first and longest running iPhone photography competition. Now in its 11th year, the awards continue to select the best images taken by iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from a variety of categories including Landscape, Animals, People, Still Life and Architecture.

This year’s architecture category was won by Massimo Graziani from Italy for a shot “Rampage,” taken at the Via Allegri in Rome. Second prize was awarded to KuangLong Zhang from China with an image of one of the oldest mosques in Iran, while third prize went to Nasra Al Sharji from Oman with an early-morning shot of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

In an effort to spark public discussion and new ideas on how sustainable design can manifest as decent, affordable housing, Yale University has collaborated with UN Environment and UN-Habitat to unveil a “tiny house” fully powered by renewable energy. At 22-square-meters, the eco-house is designed to “test the potential for minimizing the use of natural resources such as water.”

The prototype was unveiled during the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, constructed from locally-sourced, bio-based renewable materials. While the first prototype is designed for the climate and context of New York, future iterations can be adapted for site-specific conditions around the globe. Design and fabrication of the module was carried out by Gray Organschi Architecture, working in direct partnership with the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture.

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Few subjects evoke as much sensitivity and refection, both within architecture and beyond, as those of death and mortality. Frank Lloyd Wright’s timeless reflection that “youth is a quality, and once you have it, you never lose it, and when they put you in the box, that is your immortality” offers one insight into how architects place not just their buildings, but also their lives and careers in perspective.

Furthering this engagement between architecture and mortality is HofmanDujardin, a Dutch studio which has sought to “rethink the way we say goodbye” with the design of a new Funeral Centre. Placing the coffin at its epicenter, the scheme translates the memorial sequence into three moments: the gathering of friends and family, the ceremony of remembrance, and the moment of social encounter.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlist of six projects competing for the 2018 Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture, given to the building “that has made the biggest contribution to the evolution of architecture in a given year.” Selected from the list of national award winners, the finalist buildings range from a highly-innovative new workplace in central London to a rammed-earth wall cemetery in Hertfordshire.

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