Chinese Pavilion Osaka Expo 2025. Image Courtesy of China Architecture Design Group
The China Pavilion's plan for Expo Osaka 2025 was revealed at a press conference held on April 26th, 2023, by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT). Created by the China Architecture Design Group (CADG), the design revolves around "Inscribed Slips of China," resembling traditional Chinese inscribed slips and incorporating elements of bamboo, Chinese characters, and ancient books. This design showcases China's spirit and cultural essence, emphasizing the harmony between humanity and nature and China's commitment to sustainable development in the modern era.
Climate issues have been the main topic of discussions about the future of cities, but they are certainly not new. The warning about human irreversibility on the planet has been part of scientific discourse since the 1980s. Faced with increasingly frequent environmental urgencies, Donna Haraway, in her book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, suggests a change in attitude on the part of humans to ensure not only partial environmental recovery but the species' survival.
In increasingly denser urban environments, there is a new-found interest in underused spaces as opportunities for further development. Representing up to 25% of cities' land area, rooftops are among the most exciting spatial resources. From sustainable infrastructure and urban farming to social spaces and cultural venues, the article looks into the potential of creating a multi-layered city through the activation of urban rooftops.
As its full title somewhat implies, Nicholas Dagen Bloom’s new book, The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight (University of Chicago Press), tells the whole grisly story of how, in less than a century, the U.S. changed from a rail-connected nation of cities and towns to a sprawling network of increasingly congested roads. A historian and a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College, Bloom rejects the sort of conspiracy-driven narratives around transit’s demise and comes to an uneasy conclusion: America essentially chose the car for a variety of reasons, only one of which was automobile company collusion. I talked with Bloom about why transit in the U.S. collapsed, why it turned out differently in European cities, and the hopes for a transit renaissance.
Collecting samples for a project can present a huge time loss for design professionals. To solve this, Swatchbox is out on a mission to help design professionals around the world, by offering a curated selection of interior and exterior samples from global brands in one place, at no cost. The rapidly growing material platform employs a team of architects and designers to curate a range of tile, brick, carpet, and paint finishes through their website and mobile app.
As part of an initiative by the Federation of Associations of Architects of the Mexican Republic, a national competition was launched to design an affordable housing prototype in Los Pirules, Celaya, Guanajuato. The Municipal Housing Institute of Celaya (IMUVI) currently holds a land reserve in the northeast of the municipality, where it plans to develop a social housing complex. In collaboration with FCARM, they launched this competition to spark architectural reflection on the potential of social housing and the city. The prototype had to adapt to the post-2022 economic reality and living patterns, focusing on providing constructive alternatives and solutions responsive to the housing complex's urban, sociocultural, and environmental context.
Sede da Symantec. Certificado por WELL. Imagem Cortesia de Little
Na teoria, a sensação de bem-estar pode ser definida como um estado de satisfação plena das exigências do corpo e do espírito, evocando sentimentos de segurança, conforto e tranquilidade. Na prática, a sensação de bem-estar pode ser fomentada por diferentes estratégias, desde hábitos individuais até a forma como o ambiente é construído.
