This week on Dezeen, we revealed the Saudi Arabian government’s plans to build a 170-kilometer-long city, which will be called The Line.
Designed to house nine million people, the 500-metre-high skyscraper will stretch 170 kilometres across northwest Saudi Arabia.
The rectilinear megastructure will include residential, retail and leisure areas as well as schools and parks.
We also published a video detailing the plans, while the project caused a stir with readers. One commenter said they would “eat everybody’s hat” if the city gets built.
In other architecture news, Chinese studio MAD unveiled its first completed project in Europe, a Passivhaus residential block called UNIC in Paris.
The building features a striking curved structure that houses a mixture of private and affordable apartments.
“The envelope of UNIC is defined by a series of non-repeating, undulating terraces that offer its residents multiple dynamic views of the city of lights,” said MAD.
Climate action group ACAN accused RIBA of shortlisting “architecture that pollutes the planet” for this year’s Stirling Prize.
ACAN took aim at 100 Liverpool Street by Hopkins Architects and Orchard Gardens by Panter Hudspith.
“Labelling these projects as sustainable when they clearly aren’t is an attempt to pull the wool over our own eyes over the negative impacts that our industry continues to have on people and planet,” said the group.
As the UK and western Europe experienced record-breaking temperatures, architect Smith Mordak offered 10 principles for designing cool spaces for hot weather.
From external shading to air cooling and exposed thermal mass, Mordak suggested ways to design buildings that would also minimise architecture’s environmental impact.
Elsewhere across the Atlantic, Dezeen asked 10 leading architects from the US to select the country’s most influential buildings.
Among the architects’ choices were Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Automatic houses and Wexner Center for the Arts (pictured) by Peter Eisenman.
In design news, musician Kanye West, now officially called Ye, launched his latest fashion collaboration with Gap and Balenciaga.
Garments from the much-anticipated second edition of Yeezy Gap engineered by Balenciaga were stuffed into waste bins and bulk bags at various locations in a surprise launch that displayed the clothes in an unconventional way.
Popular architecture projects this week include a modernist-informed house in South Africa’s Mossel Bay and a family home in Amsterdam by Studio Modijefsky.
Our most recent lookbooks showcased living rooms with cool stone surfaces and homes that use colour to turn stairs into statements.
This week on Dezeen
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