This week on Dezeen, we compiled an explainer of all the important thing information you must know concerning the Neom improvement in Saudi Arabia and its megacity The Line, which is proving to be essentially the most controversial structure venture in current historical past.
Set to occupy round as a lot area as the whole nation of Albania, Neom will probably be cut up into 10 totally different areas together with a floating port, a ski resort within the Sarwat Mountains and a mirrored metropolis for 9 million individuals fashioned from two linear skyscrapers.
Our explainer breaks down every little thing from how the venture is financed to what structure studios are engaged on its numerous totally different elements.
Saudi Arabia additionally revealed one other strange-shaped skyscraper this week within the type of a large dice, which is about to be constructed within the capital of Riyadh.
Measuring 400 metres excessive and 400 metres lengthy on all sides, the Mukaab constructing is about to turn into the town’s tallest constructing and can home two million sq. metres of retailers alongside cultural and vacationer sights.
Because the artificially clever ChatGPT chatbot reached 100 million customers simply two months after its launch, professor Neil Leach penned an opinion piece for Dezeen on the existential menace that AI poses to architects.
“There are indicators that AI is changing into not solely good, however terrifyingly good, to the purpose that it’s starting to show our personal limitations as human beings, and placing our jobs as architects unquestionably in danger,” he wrote.
When questioned by Leach, ChatGPT itself warned that architects who ignore the potential of synthetic intelligence (AI) “threat sleepwalking into oblivion”.
As the UK gears up for the coronation of King Charles III in Could, Buckingham Palace recruited former Apple design chief Jony Ive to create the official emblem for the occasion.
The emblem, which is about to adorn bunting, banners and memorabilia, incorporates a crown fashioned from the nationwide flowers of the 4 nations – the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the daffodil of Wales and the shamrock of Northern Eire.
Elsewhere in UK politics, Conservative member of parliament Nick Fletcher took goal on the city planning technique of the 15-minute metropolis, decrying it as a “socialist idea” that might “take away private freedoms” and do “untold financial harm to any metropolis”.
The assertion was extensively dismissed as false by architects and lecturers. “Final 12 months, if I needed to guess what can be the batshit conspiracy concept of 2023, I might have by no means guessed it will be ‘city planning the place you possibly can stroll to the retailers’,” stated educational Philip Oldfield.
As Modernism Week kicked off in Palm Springs, the occasion’s CEO Lisa Vossler Smith spoke to Dezeen about how the town recognized for its mid-century homes is beginning to embrace climate-conscious design methods.
“The face of Palm Springs is altering,” she stated. “It’s getting youthful and there’s extra modern design.”
One other unique interview printed on Dezeen this week noticed John Paino dive into the method behind his set designs for the much-hyped TV collection The Final of Us, based mostly on the online game of the identical identify.
Paino stated he took hints from the DIY building of casual settlements and refugee camps to create a practical depiction of how individuals make due within the present’s dystopian world, through which a lot of the inhabitants has became zombies due to an infectious fungal outbreak.
Reader’s favorite initiatives this week included a Buddhist temple set subsequent to the Nice Wall of China, a “really extraordinary” house in Vietnam and a renovated Brooklyn townhouse with Japanese interiors.
Our newest lookbooks targeted on tidy kitchens with slick storage options and impartial house interiors that show beige does not should be boring.
This week on Dezeen
This week on Dezeen is our common roundup of the week’s high information tales. Subscribe to our newsletters to make certain you do not miss something.