Articles by Becky Quintal

MVRDV in collaboration with local architects TUPDI has completed the Tianjin Binhai Library, a 33,700m2 cultural centre featuring a luminous spherical auditorium around which floor-to-ceiling bookcases cascade. The undulating bookshelf is the building’s main spatial device, and is used both to frame the space and to create stairs, seating, the layered ceiling and even louvres on the façade. Tianjin Binhai Library was designed and built in a record-breaking time of only three years due to a tight schedule imposed by the local municipality. Next to many media rooms it offers space for 1,2 million books.

Have you registered for your free library card? If you haven’t, you’re missing out on some serious perks! The Internet Archive has a lending feature that allows users to electronically “borrow” books for 14 days. With over 2,000 borrowable books on architecture, patrons from across the globe can read works by Reyner Banham, Walter Gropius, Ada Louise Huxtable and Jonathan Glancey. There are also helpful guides, dictionaries and history books. 

If you find yourself always looking up the same information, or if you’re just starting out and you need to have the basics handy, this post is for you. There are hundreds of these helpful guides floating around on Pinterest—and if you want to venture further into interior design or more towards engineering, you’re covered! We selected the best and most useful architecture and interior design infographics so that your next project is on point.

The exhibition Social Construction: Modern Architecture in British Mandate Palestine, tracing the influence of international Modernism on the architectural vernacular that developed in Palestine during 1917–48, is on display at the Yale Architecture Gallery from August 31to November 18, 2017. Originally organized by the Israel Museum, in Jerusalem, the show draws inspiration from the extensive research of architects Ada Karmi-Melamede and Dan Price, whose accompanying book, Architecture in Palestine during the British Mandate, 1917–1948, explores not only the functional aspects of this new architecture but also the social values that shaped the defining language of this new architectural style. The original exhibition was curated and designed by Oren Sagiv, chief of exhibition design at the Israel Museum, with Eyal Rozen.

Not many people would consider augmented reality particularly useful; it makes for fun dog selfies and other filtered images. But our tunes will probably change with the release of AR Measure™, an app that turns your phone into an accurate ruler. Using augmented reality, the app can calculate distances in 3D spaces captured with your phone’s camera.  

How satisfied are you with your city’s garbage service? Its parks? The way it handles pest control? What about homelessness? In the USA’s largest metropolis, which covers a total of 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km2) and is home to over 8.5 million people, New Yorkers’ perception of their city and the services it provides reveals the “uneven distribution of New York’s opportunities,” according to a survey conducted by The New York Times.

Moleskine notebooks, sketching, architecture photography, imagination, and Instagram—these are all curiosities that arouse the interest of a stereotypical architecture lover. So it’s hard to believe that Pietro Cataudella, author of the CityLiveSketch project, is neither a trained artist or architect, but a student of geophysics. 

In 1990, China, then a country with a population of just over 1.1 billion inhabitants, had only three metro systems—located in Beijing, Hong Kong and Tianjin. Fast forward a mere 27 years later and the number of urban transit systems has grown more than ten-fold.  

Are you planning an architectural odyssey between the months of June and August? If so, we’ve got some exciting news! We want to equip two ArchDaily readers with a full set of virtual reality products from Samsung–a Galaxy S8 phone, a Gear 360 camera, and a Gear VR headset! With this top-of-the-line, brand new technology you can record, 30 minutes of live stream, and share your site visits between a wide range of devices.

You may know about Lynda.com, the online education platform that hosts thousands of video courses for learning how to use software. But did you know that Lynda also has some great drawing, animation, and design courses? The best part (if you’re a current student or local library card owner)? Lynda can be accessed for free from many universities, colleges, and libraries! If your backpack-toting, library-visiting days are behind you, the platform offers a free 10-day trial.