Magazine

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named Lesley Lokko the 2024 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal, given annually “to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence on the advancement of architecture.” John Hill

The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the 40 shortlisted works selected by the jury for the 2024 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. John Hill

Finnish architect Juha Leiviskä, known for a series of stunning churches with light-filled interiors in his native country, died on November 9, 2023, at the age of 87. John Hill

Point of Origin – Building a House in Austria documents the construction of an alpine house designed by Rem Koolhaas that is notably the Dutch architect’s first house realized since the House in Bordeaux 25 years ago. With apparently unfettered access to architect, client, and... John Hill

The ten “regions” of NEOM, the new urban plan in northwestern Saudi Arabia, were unveiled over the course of the last three years, from The Line in January 2021 until Aquellum just this month. Ten short films reveal the preliminary imagery and themes for each region. John Hill

Last week Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) announced that the “Millennium Park 20th Anniversary Celebration” will take place July 18–21, almost exactly 20 years after 24-acre park opened to the public. John Hill

Nine years after winning the competition to design a new shared learning building (BEM) at the École Polytechnique in Paris-Saclay, France, construction of the building designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects, OXO Architectes, Nicolas Laisné Architectes, and DREAM is complete. John Hill

Swiss-born architectural historian Kurt Forster, who held positions at the CCA, Getty Center, and ETH Zurich, among other institutions, died at his home in New York City on January 6 at the age of 89. John Hill

Terminal 2 at Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru (BLR), which was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and opened to passengers last year, recently received a special prize from Prix Versailles for its stunning bamboo-lattice interior. John Hill

In a short film from Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (Flanders Architecture Institute), curators Bie Plevoets and Sofie De Caigny describe As Found. Experiments in Preservation, the exhibition focusing on contemporary approaches to renovating existing buildings that is John Hill

Madeline Beach Carey's latest installment in her “Building Novels” series, which focuses on works of fiction where buildings and architecture play integral roles, delves into Time Shelter, the Booker Prize-winning novel by Georgi Gospodinov in which the different floors of a Zurich... Madeline Beach Carey

Six years after its launch, number of the anticipated 270,000 homes to be “unlocked” by £4.2 billion ($5.34 billion, or €4.88 billion) in spending promised by Britain's major housebuilding infrastructure fund René Ammann

Last month New York City opened the East Midtown Greenway, an eight-block-long link in a loop of pedestrian and bike paths around Manhattan, located along the East River between 53rd and 61st Streets. World-Architects visited the project to take a closer look at the design by Stantec. John Hill

Listen to Ben van Berkel talk about his travels to China, the theater UNStudio is building in Hong Kong, projects in Australia, Germany and Spain, the recently completed John Hill

The project titled “Becoming, Architectures for a Planet in Transition” has been chosen for the general commissioning of the UIA World Congress to be hosted by Barcelona in 2026. Seven architects — Pau Bajet, Mariona Benedito, Maria Giramé, Tomeu Ramis, Pau Sarquella, Carmen Torres, and José... Madeline Beach Carey

In 2023 we presented just shy of 40 Buildings of the Week, featuring short Q&As with architects about recently completed buildings in the United States. It's your turn to help us crown a US Building of the Year by voting for your favorite. The winner will be announced at the end of... John Hill

Architect Patrick Keane of Enter Projects Asia shared with me his fascination with basketry and weaving patterns, his commitment to working with local economies and progressive engineers to push for optimizing structures and invent construction details, and starting every day with a blank... Vladimir Belogolovsky

Italian architect, engineer, and educator Carlo Ratti has been selected as curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale's 19th International Architecture Exhibition, which is set to open in May 2025. John Hill

David Lake and Ted Flato, founder partners of San Antonio, Texas's Lake|Flato Architects, are winners of the 2024 AIA Gold Medal, the highest honor given by the American Institute of Architects. John Hill

As 2023 draws to a close and our thoughts linger on what transpired over the last twelve months, World-Architects is taking a month-by-month look at some of the stories we covered: awards, competitions, buildings, books, exhibitions, and passings. John Hill

The white exterior of Promenade, a new commercial development in suburban Houston designed by Brooklyn's MODU, is made with “self-cooling concrete walls” developed in consultation with Transsolar — the white, corrugated surfaces aim to cool the tenants' interior and exterior spaces in the... MODU

Variations on our reality are currently on display at the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel. The curators of “What if” have given a stage to entries from architectural competitions that will never be realized. It is a look into the past that is sad, albeit briefly, but with positive... Katinka Corts

Estimated number of housing units being created by office-to-residential conversions in the United States right now: 21,000 René Ammann

Ahead of construction set to start soon, Google has released renderings of the renovation of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, the postmodern “spaceship” that was designed by Helmut Jahn in the 1980s and recently John Hill

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban studies have announced that Miami's Chad Oppenheim is winner of “the highest honor for architecture in the United States.” John Hill

The latest video tour by Akira Koyama, founder and owner of KEY OPERATION INC. / ARCHITECTS, goes inside the new headquarters the studio designed for Juzen Chemical Corporation near the Jintsu River in the city of Toyama. John Hill

Dogma, the Brussels-based practice of Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara, is the 2023 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award, named for the influential architecture critic and landscape designer.  John Hill

A highlight of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, the comprehensive retrospective on Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha now on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, is Chocolate Room, a gallery covered in more than 500 sheets of paper screen-printed with chocolate. John Hill

Number of homeless kids in San Francisco, California, waiting for shelter ahead of Christmas: 363 René Ammann

Amy Hau, who began her career as artist Isamu Noguchi's assistant in 1986 and for the last eight years has been a principal at New York's WXY Architecture and Urban Design, has been appointed director of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum. John Hill

Brett Steele, who moved from the Architectural Association in London to the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in 2017, has been named the new dean of the USC School of Architecture, a post he'll assume in February 2024. John Hill

Japanese architect Toyo Ito is donating a portion of his archive, documenting projects spanning the years 1971 and 1995, to the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal.  John Hill

Rotterdam's Studio RAP recently completed Ceramic House, a new facade on Pieter Cornelisz Hooftstraat, Amsterdam's famous designer shopping street. Algorithmic design and 3D printing combined to create a contemporary riff on traditional masonry architecture. John Hill

The latest architecture-related filmed interview from Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Louisiana Channel features Reinier de Graaf, partner at OMA in... John Hill

The Center is a combination Central Kitchen, Instructional Farm, and Education Center that supports daily food production for every student in the Oakland Unified School District in West Oakland, California. The design of The Center by Palo Alto's CAW Architects features shaded outdoor spaces,... CAW Architects

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) returned to Singapore last week, crowning the Huizhen High School in Ningbo, China, designed by Approach Design Studio and the Zhejiang University of Technology Engineering Design Group, as World Building of the Year 2023. John Hill