As the growing complexity of our world presents us with ever-growing challenges at an unprecedented speed, our built environment has become one of our society’s most critical questions. From energy scarcity to inequality, density, diversity, waste, food production, circular economy, and identity—it all converges into the built environment. To face this, architecture needs to evolve and scale. 

During the last century, our profession has followed a linear evolution since the breakthrough of modernism, but the growing pressures have laid out the perfect scenario to push architecture to take its next leap. We see an increasing number of architects questioning the way we organize and practice, seeking to have a wider, stronger, faster, and more scalable impact. And they are choosing to do things in a new way, creating new practices, companies, collectives, or startups that are leading the revolution with their new approaches, proposals, and solutions, and inspiring others to join. 

In the complex trade of architecture and construction, you are never alone. And behind every great building there is a strong team of professionals combining their expertise. 

Hanif Kara OBE is a structural engineer and one of the founders of AKT II, one of the top engineering firms in the world. Based in London, he has been closely collaborating with some of the world’s most innovative architects, including Grafton Architects, David Chipperfield, Norman Foster, BIG, Zaha Hadid, Thomas Heatherwick, and many more.

Notable projects include the Kingston University Town House by Grafton Architects, the Bloomberg HQ by Foster + Partners and the Peckham Library by Will Alsop, all recognized with the RIBA Stirling Prize, and the recently completed Twist Museum by BIG, LSE Marshall Building by Grafton Architects, and 404 One Park Drive by Herzog & de Meuron.

To make our world a better place, everyone should have an idea of how architecture works and what it can have an impact on. 

Thinking on how to share empowering stories about women who are making an impact on the built environment through architecture, we partnered with filmmaker Boris Noir who developed the concept for the documentary “Women in Architecture”. The project has been initiated by Sky-Frame to shed more light on the role of women in architecture, by increasing their visibility and empowering them to realize their full potential.

We reached out to Toshiko Mori, Gabriela Carrillo, and Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge, three architects in three different countries, in different stages of their careers, but with a lot in common: recognized practitioners, with a passion for education, working with communities, and a sensibility towards the needs of society and the built environment.

The protagonists shared with us a variety of fundamental topics, such as their perspectives on being a woman in an industry led by men, how to balance work and private life, and the general challenges women experience in the profession. Their enthusiasm provides a space for reflection and inspiration.

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When we started ArchDaily 14 years ago, we wanted to represent it through the archetypal image of a building, in an isometric view, blue color. After a quick sketch, we had the first version of our logo, which iterated throughout the years, adapted to diverse applications from wooden trophies to stickers, becoming a staple brand among architects.

As we continue into a new era, that started in 2020 together with Architonic and that continues today with the announcement of our new group DAAily Platforms, we thought it was time for an upgrade and we started to explore what we want to represent as a symbol, connected with our mission and views about architecture.

Today we are happy to share with you the next step into the process that we started in 2020 as Architonic ArchDaily, welcoming Designboom to our group.

When we decided to join Architonic, we saw a big opportunity to combine our expertise on curating projects and products, enriching the quality of the content we deliver to millions of professionals and enthusiasts around the world, with one vision: to help everybody who is part of architecture to do a better job, having a positive impact in our environment.

As complementary platforms we look at this big challenge from each one's lenses: project inspiration, materials knowledge, product research and specification. 

After a 2020 that will be remembered as a point of inflection for our global society, 2021 only reminded us that the fast phase of change was here to stay, and that a new attitude towards the way we see and embrace the world was needed. A challenge that we took with optimism. 

During this year we continued with our mission to connect our global community through inspiration and knowledge, taking you on an endless journey around the world, through which we saw how architecture, often slow to react, was up to the challenge and architect embraced a new attitude, becoming aware of the new scenario, bringing adaptable, hybrid, scalable, reusable solutions.

As our world evolves at an unprecedented pace, the challenges that come with it are becoming more and more complex. The questions faced by the cities and networks of our global world, the physical and virtual environments where our evolution takes place, are making architecture more relevant than ever. 

The issues of the built environment are no longer exclusive to the incumbents who build and design it and have become transversal questions in our society. From the citizens who question the quality of their public spaces to the self-trained builder erecting a tiny house in the woods, to the homeowners using an app to codesign their interiors during lockdown, we want to have a saying and we want to take action. Why does architecture have to be so uncertain, so distant? 

Dear community,

As we close this crazy 2020, we look back on what happened during the year, from the buildings that left an impact, to the fast changing trends in the profession and in our built environment.

But as we prepare for a challenging 2021 I want to share our reflections on these intense moments, which are not just a consequence of the pandemic, but also of the diverse and much needed social and cultural changes that have been unfolding during the last years. As a young and diverse Internet company, with a conscious and globally distributed team, we have been working during the last years to embrace change, as we think it is one of the attitudes that can prepare us for a world that is changing fast, on the intersection of two of the industries that are shaping society today: Internet and the built environment. To be ready for change is not easy, as we need to constantly challenge ourselves and our egos, and do things in new ways, in new contexts. But as 2020 demanded, we were ready.

We spoke with Beat Guhl, CEO of Sky-Frame, during the Swiss Bau fair – one of the largest events in the materials industry. Sky-Frame produces frameless sliding window systems; vital components to achieve an effective and efficient transparency in architectural projects. The company is constantly pushing for technical innovation and works closely with architects to help achieve fluid spatial concepts.

We visited Clément Blanchet in his Paris studio, located in Villa Seurat, a small Parisian street flanked by modernist buildings. Inside a beautiful loft by Maillard et Ducamp, the team of Clément Blanchet Architecture was working hard on a master plan in China.

After going through diverse education programs, that included the AA in London, the Chulalongkorn Mahawitthayalai Architectural School in Bangkok, and the University of Illinois in Chicago, Clément started his career at OMA, “a long therapy [...] to discover who I was”. During his career at OMA, he became the director of OMA France, participating in projects such as the Caen Library, the Parc des Expositions in Toulouse, the Lab City CentraleSupélec, among others.

The practice is structured as a laboratory, researching, informing and generating architecture and urbanism in all its forms and sizes. From a series of carefully designed interiors for restaurants, playing with a diverse palette of materials, to large scale multifunctional buildings and master plans, adapting to the fast-changing needs of society. 

Dear architects,

When we started this project 15 years ago, we knew that the expansion of cities would become the biggest challenge for humanity, and that architects, with better access to knowledge, had the ability to radically improve the quality of life of billions of people. That is why we envisioned ArchDaily as a global source of inspiration, knowledge, and tools to help architects face this challenge. Our carefully curated, unbiased, categorized database of projects, materials and knowledge, paired with a stream of globally diverse content, now serves more than 650,000 people every day.

As our industry is on the verge of a rapid digital transformation, it is our responsibility to understand how technology will integrate inspiration, product sourcing, project delivery, construction and even the management of the life cycle of buildings, enabling architects to do more and better, in an efficient and sustainable way, to face the big challenges ahead. 

That is why we are happy to share the news that we are joining Architonic, the largest database of curated products, to expand both our value propositions for the architecture and interior design world.

ArchDaily has become one of the 1,000 most visited websites on the Internet, according to the latest Alexa Internet ranking -- an Amazon-owned company that measures the popularity of all Internet sites.

More than 360,000 users visit our flagship English-speaking platform every day, which when combined with our network of Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese sites, creates a daily global audience of 650,000 people: the most visited architecture network in the world. 

But why is this relevant? Why do these numbers matter?

When we started this project 15 years ago, we knew that the expansion of cities would become the biggest challenge for humanity, and that architects, with better access to knowledge, had the ability to radically improve the quality of life of billions of people. That is why we envisioned ArchDaily as a global source of inspiration, knowledge, and tools to help architects face this challenge. A carefully curated, objective, categorized database of projects and knowledge, paired with a stream of globally diverse content.

But architecture is bigger than architects, and it has become - to our joy - a transversal subject. We have all, as a society, understood the importance of our built environment, how it can shape our mindset, improve our well being, form our education, and drive opportunities and set the grounds for a more egalitarian society. Moreover, a bounty of changes in urban and economic dynamics is also molding architecture into something more relevant, more recognizable, and more democratic. That is why our profession and craft are permeating into Netflix and Apple TV shows, becoming an object of admiration on Instagram, and representing something that you can dream of, aspire to, and work towards catalogues such as Pinterest.

Dear Architects,

As we all #slowdown to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, I want to share with you how we as a global company have faced this situation, and what we are doing (together with you!) to keep us, the architecture community, informed and connected. It is our responsibility.

Chilean architecture has a strong relation to the unique geography and climate of the country. Germán del Sol is recognized as one of the most prolific Chilean architects working with these demanding conditions, with projects across the country that enhance and rediscover the natural landscape, through architecture that uses natural materials, local techniques, and a profound sense of the place.

Photographer and filmmaker Pablo Casals-Aguirre revisits the Remota Lodge in Patagonia, one of the most celebrated projects by Germán del Sol, in a video that is able to transmit not only the static relationship with nature, but also the experience of inhabiting the landscape from the building.

The wild landscape of the Patagonian plains covers also the roofs of the buildings. The roofs concrete slabs are coated with the same synthetic asphalt membrane and a carpet of wild grasses 2 feet high [...] The ever changing light of Patagonia enters the building through the sequence of vertical cuts of the windowpanes. Then it surrounds big concrete or wooden pillars, and slides along the ceilings wooden trellises that hang well under the concrete slab. - Germán del Sol

ArchDaily had a chance to visit Alfredo Thiermann (ThiermannCruz) at his Berlin studio, to learn more about his work at the intersection of practice, research, and his passion for music. Alfredo studied architecture in Chile at Universidad Católica, and received his Master's degree from Princeton. He started his practice at an early stage with a series of experimental small scale projects, the "artifacts", always in collaboration with diverse professionals. From scenographies to acoustic installations, these artifacts are structures that carry a meaning, for when "building something becomes necessary to understand a broader situation, a situation that you cannot describe through other means, you need to embody it, and therefore this construction becomes a condensation of political, cultural trajectories that each of these projects wanted to tell."

In this new podcast series, ArchDaily invites architects and interdisciplinary leaders to discuss the future of the architecture and construction industry. Welcome to Building Future. 

For its 9th edition, the Moscow Urban Forum continues to consolidate as one of the world’s most relevant urban conferences, bringing together a diverse group of architects, urbanists, city mayors, government officials, economists, developers, academics, citizens, and professionals from diverse fields and nationalities.

While Pierre de Meuron’s main keynote puts focus on ongoing developments in the city of Moscow, by showcasing the ambitious scheme to redevelop the Badaevskiy Brewery, the lectures and presentations acknowledged the diverse areas that shape the city, including topics such as mental health, lifestyle of the millennial generation, evolution of work, or delivery platforms. The evolution of the role of the architect was present, with a growing number of professionals now working on startups in the tech, infrastructure, real estate, construction, and mobility sectors, the new city makers.

During the 2019 AIA Convention in Las Vegas we invited a selected group of manufacturers and industry leaders to discuss the future of architecture and construction. Trends, technology, apps, BIM, customization, supply chain, and more insights on the first edition of Building Future featuring Morin Corp., Sto, Cosentino, panoramah!, Dri-Design, Graphisoft, Owens Corning, AkzoNobel, and C.R. Laurence.

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Google Podcasts