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Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando has designed a monumental lavender-covered temple enveloping a giant statue of Buddha at the Makomanai Takino Cemetery in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo.

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Videos

After starting and stopping for nearly 20 years, a 17-story Deconstructivist tower by Eric Owen Moss Architects seems to finally be underway in Los Angeles’ Culver City neighborhood after construction permits were approved earlier this year. Originally known as the Glass Tower, the project has been revived as (W)rapper, a nod to the structure’s enveloping steel exoskeleton.

A new flythrough video of the project shows the inside and out of the 230-foot tower, including its double-height and mezzanine office levels, as well as a spacious rooftop terrace. In total, the building will offer 160,000 square feet of office space and two levels of underground parking. Located adjacent to the Expo Line’s LA Cienega/Jefferson station, the project was originally envisioned as a multi-tower development in the late 90s, before being reduced to its current form.

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A new challenger has stepped into the ring of home solar batteries, and it’s a name you may recognize: global furniture retailer IKEA.

A competitor to Tesla’s now-available Powerwall home battery and solar roof system, IKEA’s home battery will be first sold in the UK, where owners of solar-powered homes can typically only sell excess energy produced back to the national grid at a loss. The battery pack will instead allow that power to be stored for later use, helping homeowners reduce their electricity bills by as much as 70 percent.

One of the world’s tallest residential towers, Dubai’s Torch Tower, caught ablaze in the early hours of the morning, causing the evacuation of the building’s 676 units and leaving lasting damage to the building and its immediately vicinity

This is the second fire to affect the 79-story building in just two years, raising more questions about safety standards of materials used in highrise construction.

Penda, collaborating with wood consultants from CLT-brand Tmber, has unveiled the design of ‘Tree Tower Toronto,’ an 18-story timber-framed mixed-use residential skyscraper for Canada’s largest city. Drawing inspiration from the distinctly Canadian traditional modular construction, including Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67, the tower is envisioned as a new model of sustainable high-rise architecture that can establish a reconnect urban areas to nature and natural materials.

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Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, in collaboration with Places Studio, has won a competition for a new cultural center celebrating the rich food and farming culture of Denmark’s Jutland region. Located on the site of an existing farm and bakery in the town of Hjørring, the design of the Kornets Hus (Danish for Grain House) draws inspiration from the culture, architecture and landscape of Jutland, resulting in a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional baker’s kiln.

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HASSELL has unveiled the design of a striking new building to be located along Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Known as The Ribbon, the $700 million mixed-use development will rise between two elevated highways, connecting visitors between the city and the waterfront and becoming the new gateway to the western end of Sydney’s central business district.

The world’s first operational Hyperloop system, Hyperloop One, continues to push forward, testing their prototype pod in the test track environment for the first time. Travelling nearly the full length of the 500-meter-long (1640-foot-long) test track 500 meters at 310 kilometers per hour (192 mph), the successful run marks significant progress from Phase 1 testing completed in early July.

"This is the beginning, and the dawn of a new era of transportation," said Shervin Pishevar, Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Hyperloop One. "We've reached historic speeds of 310 km an hour, and we're excited to finally show the world the XP-1 going into the Hyperloop One tube. When you hear the sound of the Hyperloop One, you hear the sound of the future."

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The world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge has opened to the public in Switzerland, offering adrenaline seekers unprecedented views of Europe’s most famous mountain, the Matterhorn. Spanning 494 meters (1620 feet), the Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge cuts the 2-day travel distance between the towns of Zermatt and Grächen by nearly 3 hours. The bridge spans the country’s “deepest cut valley,” reaching a height of 85 meters (279 feet) above the ground at its highest point.

Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium has released a new video showing the structure’s unique aperture-style retractable roof closing for the very first time. Designed by 360 Architecture (now a part of HOK), the eight ETFE-clad roof “petals” slide along tracks on the stadium roof to come together at a central point, much like how a camera operates. When fully operational, the roof will be able to open and close in less than eight minutes.

The team led by US-based architects wHY has been selected as the winner of the Ross Pavilion International Design Competition, beating out proposals from Adjaye Associates, BIG, Flanagan Lawrence, Page\Park Architects, Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter and William Matthews Associates + Sou Fujimoto Architects.

Featuring an international collaboration of architects, engineers and creative agencies – including Edinburgh-based design studio GRAS, Groves-Raines Architects, Arup, Studio Yann Kersalé, O Street, Stuco, Creative Concern, Noel Kingsbury, Atelier Ten and Lawrence Barth – the team envisioned a rolling terrain for the West Princes Street Gardens site that the jury lauded as both exciting and respectful of its historic setting.

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The Getty Foundation has selected 12 significant 20th century buildings to receive 2017 grants as part of its Keeping It Modern initiative, which aims to advance the understanding and preservation of modern architecture through a focus on conservation planning and research. Since its founding in 2014, the program has supported the preservation of 45 projects from around the globe.

This year $1.66 million in grants were awarded to recognizable projects including the Walter Gropius-designed Bauhaus Building in Dessau; the Melnikov House in Moscow (the first Russian project to receive a grant); and Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper, Price Tower. 

See all 12 grantees below.

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Architectural Record has released the 2017 edition of its annual list of the “Top 300 Architecture Firms” in the United States. Compiled by Record's sister publication Engineering News-Record, the list ranks firms based on architectural revenue from the previous year (2016). This year, the top 4 firms held fast to their spots, led by Gensler with a record-best $1.19 billion in revenue. Moving into the top 5 was HOK, while the designation of biggest mover in the top 25 belongs to Dallas-based Corgan, who jumped from 22nd place in 2016 to 14th this year.

See the top 50 firms after the break.

Zaha Hadid Architects, collaborating with digital artists and computer science researchers Andy Lomas and Mubbasir Kapadia, have been selected to create a projection mapping light show at the 2017 Schlosslichtspiele Festival in Karlsruhe, Germany. Titled ‘Behaviour Morphe,’ the dynamic light display will be projected onto the city’s 18th century baroque palace, simulating how users move throughout and interact with the building’s interior spaces.

One of last year’s most long-awaited buildings may have just met its match in terms of complexity – and it comes in the form of its own LEGO replica.

Created by LEGO sculptor Brick Monkey, the LEGO version of Herzog & de Meuron’s spectacular Elbphilharmonie was constructed from more than 20,000 individual LEGO pieces, featuring point perfect scaled versions of the concert hall’s signature features, including the building’s elevated public terrace, glass facade and sail like roof, made up of hundreds of precise umbrella shaped elements. But most impressively, the model can be opened in half to reveal a detailed recreation of the structure’s main concert hall.

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Global photography community EyeEm has announced the finalists of their 2017 Photography Awards. Free and open to photographers of all skill levels and backgrounds to submit through the EyeEm web platform and app, this year’s awards received more than 590,000 submissions from users around the world across five categories: The Architect, The Great Outdoors, The Photojournalist, The Portraitist, and The Street Photographer.

The architecture category alone received over 95,000 submissions, from which 20 images were selected by a jury of photographers and editors from institutions including National Geographic and the BBC. All of the finalist images will be displayed at the 2017 EyeEm Photography Festival & Awards in Berlin from September 15-17, where each of the category winners and Photographer of the Year will be announced.

Continue on to see the 20 finalists in the architecture category.

Plans for a new iron ring sculpture located at Flint Castle in Wales have been put on hold following public outcry.

Earlier this week, George King Architects was selected as the winners of a competition held by the Welsh Government to design a signature art piece celebrating Wales’ Year of Legends with their proposal, the Iron Ring, which consists of a large circular structure embedded in the earth at just two points to create a cantilevered observation point with views of the castle and the River Dee.

But opponents of the design have claimed that the sculpture is an overt reference to the “iron ring” of fortresses used by King Edward I to “subjugate and oppress” the people of Wales during his reign from 1272 to 1307. After an online petition calling for the project to be scrapped reached over 7,000 signatures, Economy Secretary Ken Skates announced a "pause" to review the design.

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Videos

The Urban Development Corporation (SAU-MSI) has announced the seven shortlisted teams competing for the design of the latest Centre Pompidou outpost in Brussels, Belgium. The finalist teams were selected from 92 entries to the competition, which sought proposals to transform the existing Art Deco Citroën Yser garage in the heart of the city into a mixed-use museum complex focusing on contemporary art and architecture.

To be known as the Citroën Cultural Centre, the $135 Million project will consist of 375,000 square feet (35,000 square meters) of public cultural, education and recreation space, including 160,000 square feet (15,000 square meters) designated for the new Centre Pompidou Brussels. An additional 108,000 square feet (10,000 square meters) will host a museum run by Brussels’ International Centre for Urbanism, Architecture & Landscape.