Update: Unfortunately this free online viewing was only intended for a limited time and National Geographic has now removed the video. If you didn't catch the documentary in time, you can still watch it on DVD. In place of the full documentary, we have now included the trailer above.

As a group, architects are without question among the most enthusiastic supporters of sustainable initiatives around. It should therefore be welcome news to many architects that National Geographic has released its latest documentary on climate change, Before the Flood, for free on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter—pretty much everywhere.

Presented by Hollywood superstar and recently-appointed UN Climate Ambassador Leonardo DiCaprio, the documentary is perhaps the most ambitious film about climate change since Al Gore's 2006 An Inconvenient Truth. Throughout the course of the 90-minute film, DiCaprio travels the globe to see the damage wrought by the early signs of irreversible climate change, from melting glaciers, to dying coral reefs, to flooding cities. Speaking to world leaders including Barack Obama and The Pope, as well as a whole host of climate scientists, DiCaprio's aim is not so much to convince viewers of the existence of climate change, as with An Inconvenient Truth, but instead to investigate just how far down the wrong path we've traveled, and whether there is any hope for humanity to save itself.

Today, Microsoft announced the latest in their Surface family of personal computers. Called the Surface Studio, the device is essentially a 28-inch touchscreen drawing board which the company is targeting specifically at creative professionals, potentially placing it at the top of many architects' wish lists.

Recent years have seen a rapidly increasing interest in the architecture of the former Soviet Union. Thanks to the internet, enthusiasts of architectural history are now able to discover unknown buildings on a daily basis, and with the cultural and historical break caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, each photograph of a neglected and decaying edifice can feel like an undiscovered gem. However, often it can be difficult to find more information about these buildings and to understand their place in the arc of architectural history.

That was the reason behind the creation of Socialist Modernism, a research platform started by BACU - Birou pentru Artă şi Cercetare Urbană (Bureau for Art and Urban Research) which "focuses on those modernist trends from Central and Eastern Europe which are insufficiently explored in the broader context of global architecture." Socialist Modernism already consists of a website on which BACU has cataloged a number of remarkable and little-known buildings. However, now the team is raising funds on Indiegogo's Generosity platform for the next step in their research project. With this money they hope to create an app on which users can add new sites and buildings to the database.

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OMA has unveiled its first residential tower for New York. Located at 121 East 22nd Street, the building sits at the intersection of two neighborhoods, with the busy Madison Square area to the North-West and the relative tranquility of Gramercy Park to the South. The building's facade reflects this duality, with a striking "prismatic corner" of glass contrasting the rest of the building's more conventional window layout. The corner element is designed to frame views, in some places directing users' attention up towards the sky and in others along the busy streets below.

Metropolis Magazine has released their 2016 rankings of the world's most "livable" cities. Acknowledging that what makes a city "livable" can often be subjective, the team at Metropolis emphasizes that in creating the list they "focused on the concerns at Metropolis’ core—housing, transportation, sustainability, and culture." The result of this research was last year's top prize-winner Toronto dropping to the number 9 spot and Copenhagen, which last year took the number 4 spot, jumping to the top. Rounding out the top three are Berlin and Helsinki.

Today, Morpholio has unveiled a new addition to their flagship Trace app. The new addition, called simply “Stencil,” offers a quick way to add figures and annotations to your Trace sketches using a tool that has been familiar to architects for years. The update to the app features a number of pre-loaded stencil designs, but thanks to its new digital twist, the act of stenciling is also augmented through the ability to take any image you can find or photograph and turn it into a stencil in seconds.

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At just 1,310 feet (400 meters) across at its widest point, Fire Island, a barrier island to the south of Long Island in New York, may not seem like an ideal place to host a community. Nonetheless, the island is home to a number of small villages, whose seclusion and proximity to the ocean make them popular getaway locations. With its beach atmosphere (the community is only accessible by ferry) and its growing reputation from the 1960s onward as a safe space for the gay community, Fire Island Pines is one such popular summer destination. As the village grew in the post-war years, the care-free recreational lifestyle encouraged by Fire Island Pines' setting was an ideal proving ground for many of the ideals of mid-century modernist house design, with architects such as the prolific Horace Gifford—who designed 40 homes in Fire Island Pines alone—answering the call.

In its recent issues, The Architectural Review has been on a mission, highlighting a phenomenon that they have named "Notopia." Characterized by a "loss of identity and cultural vibrancy" and "a global pandemic of generic buildings," Notopia is - in overly simplistic terms - a consequence of the cold logic of market forces combined with a disinterested populace. The AR's campaign therefore aims to analyze this "thing of terror" and push back by raising public awareness and by proposing alternatives. And they need your help.

#firstsevenjobs
photography sales
pot washer
bartender
urban planner
professor
author
architect

— Vishaan Chakrabarti (@VishaanNYC) August 10, 2016

Last week, the latest craze to hit the Twittersphere was #FirstSevenJobs. An interesting mix of nostalgia and self-congratulatory posturing, the hashtag had seemingly everybody on the social media site sharing how they took their first seven steps to where they are now. For architects though, whose path to their ideal job is often long and torturous, the hashtag may have offered a little solace: with notable and successful architects, educators and critics sharing how they took their first tentative steps into the profession, those still working towards their goals can be reassured that, no matter where they are now, success could be on the horizon.

With that in mind, we wanted to extend the hashtag to our users: what were your first seven jobs, and what did you learn while doing them? What was your experience like in getting to where you are now? And do the jobs that many architects have in their early years reveal anything about the architecture profession?

Videos

At this year's reSITE conference in Prague, speakers attended from around the globe to present differing perspectives on the challenges of migration, with topics of interest ranging from economics, to city planning to architecture. But as revealed by the following presentations, migration is a topic that requires interrogation on a number of different scales and in a number of different contexts: from the global economic focus offered by Saskia Sassen in her opening keynote lecture, to the focused challenges of designing micro-apartments shown by Mimi Hoang of nArchitects; and even to the unusual case presented by Krister Lindstedt of White Arkitekter, when a migration is undertaken not by individual people but by a whole town at once.

Videos

Online model sharing site Sketchfab last week announced three new features intended to solidify its position as one of the web's foremost platforms for sharing VR-viewable 3D models online. Originally launched in January of this year, the virtual reality features of Sketchfab's platform have proven to be popular and has even led to Sketchfab being referred to as "the Youtube of VR."

However, with its initial launch Sketchfab's VR capabilities clearly privileged simplicity and a low barrier for entry—the platform was viewable using just a smartphone web browser and basic VR headset such as Google Cardboard, and models required no extra work to make them VR compatible. As a result, Sketchfab's VR platform lacked the features of more high-end systems of viewing VR. With their latest update, Sketchfab has added useful features while keeping barriers to entry low.