Articles by Rory Stott

Architecture, as all architects like to remind everyone, can be a stressful profession. Long days, late nights, indecisive clients, too-decisive clients, permit issues, legal issues, software problems, contractor problems… all combine to generate a high-pressure work environment. So, when architects get a chance to let loose and relieve some of that pressure, they really let loose. Here are a few moves to get you dancing like an architect:

Paulo Mendes da Rocha is one of Brazil‘s greatest architects and urbanists. Born in Vitória, Espírito Santo in 1928, Mendes da Rocha won the 2006 Pritzker Prize, and is one of the most representative architects of the Brazilian Paulista School, also known as “Paulista Brutalism” that utilizes more geometric lines, rougher finishes and bulkier massing than other Brazilian Modernists such as Oscar Niemeyer.

Zumtobel Group has announced the 2017 winners of its Zumtobel Group Awards for architecture, which rewards the year’s innovations which best promote “sustainability and humanity in the built environment.” Leading the awards is Los Angeles-based firm Michael Maltzan Architecture whose Star Apartments project, which provides 102 homes for previously homeless individuals in LA, was awarded the prize in Zumtobel Group’s Buildings category. Also winning prizes were UNStudio, Atelier TeamMinus, and Arturo Vittori. Read on for more details and the full list of winners and honorable mentions.

Earlier today, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May made her closing speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. In a speech which focused on the fallout of Brexit and the economy, May devoted considerable attention to the issue of the UK housing market, announcing a plan to add £2 billion to the government’s existing £7 billion affordable housing fund—a fund which local governments, private housebuilders, and housing associations can apply to for grants to subsidize construction of affordable housing.

The 4-minute film “Community by Design: Skid Row Housing Trust,” directed by Myles Kramer, has been selected by as the winner of the AIA‘s annual I Look Up Film Challenge. Winning out against 81 other entries, the film investigates the impact and approach of the Skid Row Housing Trust, which creates homes for homeless people in Los Angeles, with the help of renowned architects such as Michael Maltzan Architecture and Brooks + Scarpa Architects.

The 4-minute film “Community by Design: Skid Row Housing Trust,” directed by Myles Kramer, has been selected by as the winner of the AIA‘s annual I Look Up Film Challenge. Winning out against 81 other entries, the film investigates the impact and approach of the Skid Row Housing Trust, which creates homes for homeless people in Los Angeles, with the help of renowned architects such as Michael Maltzan Architecture and Brooks + Scarpa Architects.

The 4-minute film “Community by Design: Skid Row Housing Trust,” directed by Myles Kramer, has been selected by as the winner of the AIA‘s annual I Look Up Film Challenge. Winning out against 81 other entries, the film investigates the impact and approach of the Skid Row Housing Trust, which creates homes for homeless people in Los Angeles, with the help of renowned architects such as Michael Maltzan Architecture and Brooks + Scarpa Architects.

With the launch today of Apple’s iOS 11—and with it, the release of the company’s powerful system for augmented reality apps, ARKit—Morpholio has released a new update to their popular Trace app that allows users to sketch over photographs with perfect accuracy. While it has always been an option to sketch over photographs in Trace, the new “Perspective Finder” tool superimposes a scaled grid over the photograph that helps designers follow the perspective of the image and measure their drawings accurately.

Vincent Callebaut Architectures has released a design proposal for a new eco-tourism resort in The Philippines inspired by natural coastline forms. Making extensive use of cradle-to-cradle and other sustainable design principles, the resort features a series of spiraling apartment buildings and shell-shaped hotel buildings, themselves positioned on two Fibonacci spirals of land in a coastal lagoon. At the center of the ensemble, a mountain-like complex combines a school, recreational swimming pools, sports halls, the resort’s kitchens, and a suite of laboratories for environmental scientists.

Italian architect Renzo Piano (born 14 September 1937) is known for his delicate and refined approach to building, deployed in museums and other buildings around the world. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1998, the Pritzker Jury compared him to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Brunelleschi, explaining that “his intellectual curiosity and problem-solving techniques as broad and far ranging as those earlier masters of his native land.”