Bustler's Top 10 Events of 2016

Bye-bye 2016, your time's up. A turbulent 366 days in so many regards, this year has certainly been packed with a plethora of exciting architecture and design events happening around the world. 

Since the redesign of the Bustler website at the beginning of the year, it's been easier than ever to submit and promote events, and we got to discover so many top notch exhibitions, lectures, talks, conferences, tours, and festivals. 

If you have a special interest in what's happening in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and (new!) Chicago, make sure not to miss our weekly Editor Picks for each metropolis.

Got something interesting going on that isn't listed yet? Go right ahead and submit it directly to our event calendar.

From the hundreds of entries that went up on Bustler this past year, we have compiled the top 10 most visited event posts. Find the list below, and also check out our previous roundups of 2016's Top Award-Winning Projects and Architects.

1. World Architecture Festival 2016

Berlin, Germany - Arena Berlin
November 16-18, 2016

"The World Architecture Festival is the largest international gathering of architects consisting of an awards, conference and exhibition. This year's festival will be held for the first time in Berlin from the 16 - 18 November. More than 2000 architects will attend to celebrate, learn and be inspired. Join the WAF community..." - more

2. Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016: After Belonging

Oslo, Norway - c/o Norsk design- og arkitektursenter, The National Museum - Architecture
September 8 - November 27, 2016

"The 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale designs the objects, spaces, and territories for a transforming condition of belonging. Global circulation of people, information, and goods has destabilized what we understand by residence, questioning spatial permanence, property, and identity—a crisis of belonging. Circulation brings greater accessibility to ever-new commodities and further geographies. But, simultaneously, circulation also promotes growing inequalities for large groups, kept in precarious states of transit. After Belonging examines both our attachment to places and collectivities—Where do we belong?—as well as our relation to the objects we own, share, and exchange—How do we manage our belongings? ..." - more

3. Model Behavior: Snøhetta’s First Concepts for SFMOMA

San Francisco, CA - SFMOMA
May 14, 2016 - January 16, 2017

"As a practice, Snøhetta architects begin each project by identifying a set of conditions inherent to the site — not merely its physical setting, but also its cultural context — with the goal of designing spaces that frame a condition, direct attention, and provide a deliberate experience. The more than fifty sketch models and five sketchbooks on view offer perspective on the design process behind the SFMOMA expansion, and a mobile app explores the museum’s built architecture, with a narrated walk-through of key design decisions in the new SFMOMA..." - more

4. Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

New York, NY - Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Februar 12 - August 21, 2016

"The fifth installment of the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s popular contemporary design exhibition series, Beauty celebrates design as a creative endeavor that engages the mind, body, and senses. With a focus on aesthetic innovation, the exhibition will feature more than 250 works by 63 designers from around the globe, and is organized around seven themes: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental, and transformative..." - more

5. AA Haiti Visiting School

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
July 30 - August 11, 2016

"‘Can bamboo alleviate some of Haiti’s problems?’ A question many ecologists, architects and engineers have asked at a time when Haiti’s forest coverage has reached 1.4%. Deforestation has destroyed rural economies and has removed lightweight timbers from the Haitian construction sector. The consequences of which were seen in the disproportionate devastation and death-toll of the 2010 earthquake. [...] For the third year we will be investigating the potential of bamboo, through experimental architectural design contextualised for the climate, culture and geopolitical complexities of this Caribbean paradise..." - more

6. AA Visiting School Mixed Matters- Concrete

Stuttgart, Germany
July 18-29, 2016

"The Mixed Matters Visiting School will be the first of its kind focusing each time on a rotating exploration of a different multi-material, as opposed to a fixed geographic location. The scope will be to explore contemporary practices of material design, moving away from explorations of single, isotropic or composite materials and towards a new field of investigation dealing with material mixtures and grading. The aim will be to discover new types of graded materials mixes through which we can begin to question ideas of tectonics, messy building processes, energy, resource and material wastage and the minimal aesthetics of sharp boundaries and uniformity..." - more

7. Zaha Hadid exhibition at the Palazzo Franchetti

Venice, Italy - Palazzo Franchetti
May 27 - November 27, 2016

"In celebration of Zaha Hadid’s career in architecture and design that spans four decades, Fondazione Berengo will host an abridged retrospective exhibition of her work at the 16th century Palazzo Franchetti on the Grand Canal, Venice, Italy. The exhibition, coinciding with this year’s Venice Architectural Biennale, showcases many of the seminal paintings, drawings and models of Hadid’s repertoire, conveying the ingenuity and dynamism of her architectural projects in a variety of media including photography and film..." - more

8. Archtober 2016

New York, NY
October 1-31, 2016

"October in New York is a time of celebration for lovers of architecture and design, thanks to the biggest annual citywide design festival in the United States. Archtober (ärk'tôbər), New York City's annual Architecture and Design Month, is is celebrating its sixth year! As always, the festival of architecture activities, programs, and exhibitions will take place from October 1-31..." - more

9. La Biennale di Venezia - 15th International Architecture Exhibition: REPORTING FROM THE FRONT

Venice, Italy
May 28 - November 27, 2016

"Open to the public from Saturday May 28th to Sunday November 27th 2016 at the Giardini and the Arsenale, the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, titled REPORTING FROM THE FRONT, will be directed by Alejandro Aravena and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta. The preview will take place on May 26th and 27th, the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on Saturday May 28th 2016. The Exhibition will also include 63 National Participationsin the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the historic city centre of Venice. Four countries will be participating for the first time: Philippines, Nigeria, Seychelles and Yemen..." - more

10. A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond

New York, NY - MoMA
March 13 - July 31, 2016

"A Japanese Constellation focuses on the network of architects and designers that has developed around Pritzker Prize winners Toyo Ito and SANAA. Providing an overview of Ito’s career and his influence as a mentor to a new generation of Japanese architects, the exhibition presents recent works by internationally acclaimed designers, including Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, and Junya Ishigami. Departing from one of Ito’s pivotal works, the Sendai Mediatheque, completed in 2001, as well as SANAA’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2004), the 44 featured designs range in scale from small houses to museums..." - more

Be on the lookout for one more 2016 year-end list on Bustler: the top 10 most visited competitions! In case you missed it, here are our lists for 2016's Top Prize-Winning Projects and Architects.