This week, Virtual Design Festival came to an end

This week on Dezeen, we rounded up the highlights from Virtual Design Festival as the programme of events drew to a close, including eight ways VDF set the agenda for architecture and design.

To mark the end of the festival we rounded up the most popular videos, which included a documentary on Beatie Wolfe, footage of a Studio Drift installation and interviews with Harriet Harriss and Kengo Kuma.

We also looked back at the highlights from the student shows, trailblazing collaborations and best product launches that happened during the festival.

In architecture news, Australian architecture studio Bates Smart revealed a skinny skyscraper in Melbourne that's 184 metres tall, but only 11.5 metres wide at its slimmest point.

Over in Italy, architects Massimo Gnocchi and Paolo Danesi revealed their design for a prefabricated cabin-style micro-home named Mountain Refuge.

Charmaine Chan picked five of the most interesting courtyard homes from her book Courtyard living: Contemporary houses of the Asia-Pacific.

"What fascinates me is that courtyard houses can be found throughout the world – in the Middle East, China, north Africa and elsewhere – and that the typology has survived since antiquity," Chan told Dezeen.

This week also saw the news that influential architecture and design magazine Blueprint has published its last print edition after 37 years and 369 issues.

The once-influential publication had been a mainstay in the design and architecture world for almost 40 years, but will now focus on its digital offering.

"I like to think we would have moved to a digital version ages ago if we'd still been running it," the publication's co-founder Peter Murray told Dezeen.

Concrete proved popular this week, as Hungarian design brand Sekhina revealed a series of light switches and plug sockets made from the material.

On a much larger scale, architecture firm Productora created a pair of pink-concrete playgrounds in Tlalnepantla de Baz and Tultitlán, Mexico. The concrete was used to make seats, steps and climbing walls within the parks.

Dezeen and Samsung revealed the 15 designs that make up the shortlist for the Out of the Box Competition.

The shortlist include a vast array of innovative storage solutions, children's toys and a music amplifier all made from repurposed cardboard.

Popular projects on Dezeen this week included a pair of matching houses in Mexico City designed by PPAA, a house designed by Zeller & Moye to avoid existing pine trees in a German forest and a beachside house divided into four to take advantage Pacific Ocean views.

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

The post This week, Virtual Design Festival came to an end appeared first on Dezeen.