Chilean architect and academic Fernando Pérez Oyarzún has been named the new director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Chile. The announcement by the Ministry of Cultures concludes the open call organized by the National Cultural Heritage Service, which drew 58 applicants.
The winners of the International Preliminary Project Competition for the design of the “Education of the Future Building” have been announced. The project will be built based on the Master Plan designed for the Innovation Park in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Organized by the Central Society of Architects (SCA) and sponsored by the Argentine Federation of Architecture Organizations (FADEA), the competition sought architectural proposals that would foster entrepreneurship, science, and technology, generating and attracting knowledge and talent to the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
The School of Architecture, Design, Art, and Urbanism at the University of Morón (UM FADAU, Buenos Aires, Argentina) concludes its academic cycles with an Integrated Final Project (PFI). Through this project, since 2016, architecture students have designed full-scale community projects—designing, managing, building, and donating their work to non-profit organizations and local municipalities. The initiative is part of the Academic Program of Federal Assistance “PAAF!!”, created by the school, which allows students to graduate by building a fully operational building and donating it to a community in need in Argentina.
The XI Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (XI BIAU) concluded last Friday, October 11, in Asunción, featuring lectures by Jorge Scrimaglio, one of the two winners of the 2019 Ibero-American Architecture Prize, and a closing lecture by Solano Benítez and Gloria Cabral, co-founders of Gabinete de Arquitectura.
Over the next five years, Bogota will inaugurate a series of public and private projects across the city, from skyscrapers to Felicidad Centers, highlighting those resulting from public architectural design competitions, legally managed by the Colombian Society of Architects.
Below, explore the main projects set to open:
During Chilean architect Felipe Assadi's course at the 2019 Summer Workshop of the Faculty of Architecture of the IUAV University of Venice, students reflected on the idea of a floating city and its inhabitants, resulting in floating architecture for a fluctuating population. To this end, the architecture students built a wooden floating pavilion as a scale prototype of a micro-dwelling, which forms part of a geometric system for expanding the city over water.
Read about the project in detail below, in the words of its designers.
For its 66th edition, the Progressive Architecture (P/A) Awards recognize unbuilt projects that demonstrate overall design excellence and innovation. The evaluations took place in December 2018, and the winners will be honored at a ceremony in New York in February 2019.
The Mexican architecture firm Comunal Taller de Arquitectura has been announced as the winner of the 2019 AR Emerging Architecture awards, alongside two highly commended practices—Estudio MMX and Estúdio Gustavo Utrabo—and the joint winners of the Peter Davey Prize, TAKA Architects and Clancy Moore Architects.
In Bogotá, the mayor's office has launched an initiative to build seven public Happiness Centers (CEFE), where residents of each sector of the city will have access to cultural spaces, Olympic and recreational pools, gyms, and leisure areas. The competitions have been managed through the Colombian Association of Architects (SCA). The CEFE Chapinero—named after the locality where it will be built—will be located in the El Retiro neighborhood.
The winners of the Richard H. Driehaus Building Arts Awards, presented annually to four master craftspeople in various traditional building trades in Spain, have been announced.
With the launch of the new Urban and Building Code, approved by the Buenos Aires City Legislature in late 2018, the city of Buenos Aires has begun to reconfigure how information is accessed in the urban and architectural fields. In line with this approach, Plano Abierto BA serves as a tool that allows any resident to access online data regarding development capacity, permitted uses, building heritage listings, maximum heights, construction records and inspections, and the current status of each individual plot in the city (including cadastral data, built area, and number of floors). This provides indicative urban planning information to facilitate the understanding of the New Urban Code of Buenos Aires.
Usina de Innovación Colectiva is a cultural initiative of the School of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism at the University of the Republic in Uruguay.
It was established to revitalize disciplines related to architecture, design, landscape, and the city by creating opportunities that foster exchange, reflection, and the dissemination of work in these areas.
A total of 1,598 legally practicing architects in Colombia participated in the study titled “Characterization Study of the Colombian Architect,” developed by the National Professional Council of Architecture and its Auxiliary Professions (CPNAA). Its president, Julio César Báez Cardoso, shared the key findings in a recent article published by the association.
Currently, project production within universities in Mexico is immense, and we believe it is the perfect time to showcase some of their best work. Many undergraduate theses—also known as graduation projects—address truly interesting and valuable topics for our country. Unfortunately, the vast majority remain stored on library shelves or in a computer folder, missing the opportunity to drive real change in our cities and the way we inhabit them.
As part of the celebrations for the Bicentennial of Peru's Independence, the Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Lima, and Grupo Centenario announced an international architecture and landscaping competition to design a metropolitan park along the perimeter of the Pachacamac Sanctuary in the Lurín district of Lima. The competition sought to encourage reflection on Lima's relationship with its historical and landscape heritage, as the Sanctuary houses some of the most important structures of the national archaeological heritage, spanning more than fifteen centuries of human occupation.
Just over a month ago, the Senate of the Argentine Nation approved the Declaration of Climate and Ecological Emergency in the country and gave partial approval to the bill for the Law on Minimum Budgets for Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change. Through this initiative, driven by youth environmental organizations, Argentina becomes the first country in Latin America to move forward with a bill of this nature.
The recent and worrying increase in fires in the Amazon, where the fires have begun to relentlessly consume our planet's most important natural lung, has brought environmental issues to the forefront. The consequences of this event will drastically alter the global climate and demand urgent action, preparing us for industrial, energy, productive, and consumption shifts.
Fifty of today's leading architects—answering the call of the Now Institute and its director, Thom Mayne—were convened to assess the architectural legacy of the last century. Their goal? To compile a definitive list of 100 buildings that represent, in their view, the 100 most remarkable architectural achievements of the 20th century. Prominent figures such as Tadao Ando, Steven Holl, Richard Rogers, Kazuyo Sejima, Toyo Ito, Rafael Moneo, Kengo Kuma, and Denise Scott Brown, among others, formed the voting panel.
The abandoned industrial building of the Clesa Factory, which closed its doors for good back in 2012 after nearly two years in bankruptcy proceedings, is set to become the "Matadero" of northern Madrid. The industrial site, located at 67 Avenida de Cardenal Herrera Oria, was designed in 1959 by architect Alejandro de la Sota and officially opened in 1962. The former dairy plant's 37,928 square meters are now being transferred to the Madrid City Council, which aims to convert the space into a major “cultural container.”
