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On Thursday, September 5, ArchDaily México celebrated its seventh anniversary. This year, Proyecto Público Prim was chosen as the venue—an early 20th-century building of great architectural value featuring interventions by architect Alberto Kalach and the firm PRODUCTORA. The venue served as the backdrop for some of the most influential figures on the contemporary scene to connect with the ArchDaily México team.

Four episodes of the third season of “By Design”, GRAPHISOFT’s multi-award-winning digital content series have led viewers on a path of discovery. By Design: Metamorphosis, takes an unflinching look at the fear many firms have when it comes to technological change, and what it takes to overcome it to unlock their true potential, elevate their role and better ensure their future.

Everyone wants to travel the world, whether it's to meet new people, taste new food, or visit new places. Travel is consequently an extremely lucrative industry, but tourist destinations are getting more crowded than ever and associated pollution emissions are only worsening the climate emergency.

Why do we travel? In this edition of Editor's Talk, four editors from ArchDaily based in Lebanon, the United States, and Chile share their thoughts on the meaning of travel, and why tourists enjoying a beach in a location like Brazil should also care about the cities they visit.

Videos

Since its founding in 1984 by architect Richard Saul Wurman, TED has been a powerful force in the fields of technology, entertainment, design, and beyond. Architects are among the millions of people around the world who frequently tune into TED's “ideas worth spreading” including talks by architects such as Bjarke Ingels and Jeanne Gang. With over 2500 talks to choose from, we have followed on from our previous lists to provide you with 20 talks to help you work better as an architect.

Urban Brazil is deeply ugly. Why did this happen? Some blame "the absence of urban planning and zoning, manipulated height limits, and the nefarious power of contractors and builders influencing the drafting of master plans."

In the 25th addition of Mercer's ranking for the cost of living for cities, Hong Kong again took the first place spot, continuing the trend of Asian cities as being the most expensive places to live for foreign workers.

The factors determining the cost of living in this edition are food, housing, living and personal care expenses, alcohol and tobacco, clothing, housing maintenance, public services, transportation, recreation, and entertainment. 

Check out the ranking of the top 10 most expensive cities in the world for cost of living and the top 5 most expensive by region: North America, South America, Asia, Pacific, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The independent juries will evaluate entries in the 6th International LafargeHolcim Awards for Sustainable Construction in five regions of the world. Each jury consists of nine experts in sustainable design and construction. The Awards seek real projects as well as bold ideas that combine sustainable construction solutions with architectural excellence. The competition offers a total of USD 2 million in prize money and is open for entries until February 25, 2020.

Contemporary architectural production in São Paulo is as diverse as one would expect from one of the most populous cities in the world. While architecture also encompasses the outcomes of urban disorder and population growth — buildings born out of the necessity of people who, with scarce resources, build their own homes — architectural discourse often focuses on production whose genesis lies in deliberate design.

Fire doors are doors that meet fire resistance standards and can prevent fire (or smoke) from spreading through the floors or living spaces of a building, allowing people to evacuate safely from a fire.

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Reflecting on the everyday. This is the premise of the 12th São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, which opens this September in the capital. Under the theme “Everyday” (“Todo dia”), the biennial aims to address the “most trivial dimension of reality,” shedding light on the production of ordinary, common space—which is, for this very reason, fundamental to the quality of the environment we inhabit daily. Curators Vanessa Grossman and Ciro Miguel join us for a conversation about this key event, which plays a crucial role in bridging academic research, architectural practice, and society at large.

ArchDaily is working with CityMakers to publish a series of articles, conversations, and interviews with the key figures in urban co-production behind the Barcelona CityMakers Lab 2019, an event taking place from October 14 to 20, 2019.

On this occasion, we feature Jokin Santiago Elorriaga, director of Leku Studio, who will lead a masterclass at the Barcelona CityMakers Lab 2019. Jokin is the founding architect of Leku Studio and was responsible for the design and transformation of the Sant Antoni Superblock.

Once restricted to luxury or super-tech buildings, home automation is proving to be an increasingly fundamental and affordable addition to architectural projects, whether to new buildings or renovations. While understanding how they operate can be extremely complex, the primary purpose of technology is to make life simpler, safer, and easier. By definition, home automation seeks to be globally intelligent, functioning as a system that facilitates processes without unnecessarily complicating the user's life. The idea is to connect devices, which in turn connect and talk through a centralized control unit, accessible by computers, tablets, and mobile phones. These include lights, appliances, electrical outlets, and heating and cooling systems, but also alarms, doors, windows, smoke detectors, surveillance cameras, and many other sensors and devices.

What little we know about the architectural profession is broken. It is no longer applicable to the second millennium, as evidenced by the unsustainable reality facing the vast majority. The experiences of previous generations were unique, tied to a specific historical moment. Today, we must learn to read our own historical moment and reprogram our vision to find the paths forward that currently remain hidden.

In all religions, prayer halls and religious buildings aim to separate the visitor from the chaos of daily life and provide serenity and peace, even for the brief moment in time when visitors are performing their prayers. In the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa, BeOffice Architects designed a circular, unbound mosque with a focus on nature, tranquility, and accessibility.

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The Kharkiv School of Architecture is celebrating a prosperous year of academic and international achievements. In addition to hosting the nominated projects of the 2019 EU Mies Awards, the school has completed its first year of BA in Architecture. To celebrate these milestones, the school has organized a double exhibition showcasing the works of first-year students, as well as displaying the projects of Europe's most innovative architects.

By bringing together these two exhibitions, the school built a link between two generations of architects: The Mies Award, where the best works of the current European architects and designers are displayed, and the school's “Open/Work” exhibition, a glimpse into the innovations of future Ukrainian architecture.

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The relationship between the human body and architecture has always been a fundamental element of architectural design and practice, yet it was only in recent history that this connection was formally documented, let alone fully accepted. The question today is: how is the human body interpreted in the contemporary era, and how do these perceptions shape the way we design buildings and spaces? Ergonomics is often viewed as a discipline that highlights the separation between body and object; in reality, however, it not only bridges the two, but also serves as a blueprint designed to maximize and synchronize efficiency between them. At its core, ergonomics is a technical discourse concerning an increasingly mechanized human habitat.

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As part of an initiative by PienZa Sostenible, a group of architects comprising Alberto Kalach, Rozana Montiel, Tatiana Bilbao, and Manuel Cervantes joined forces with the design firm Pirwi to create a series of structures designed as bee habitats, thereby promoting population growth, care, and conservation. This project is supported by the work of Betsy de la Vega, who incorporates an interpretation of hand-woven textiles made by artisans from the León XIII Foundation, serving as a bridge connecting handmade craft with design requirements.

Cities that absorb rainwater and allow it to follow its natural course. It should be simple, yet we chose to channel our waterways, preventing nature from doing its part: absorbing and purifying. For Chinese architect Kongjian Yu, this is the key to solving one of the greatest challenges facing contemporary major urban centers: flooding. 

In the midst of today's digital revolution, architectural representation is no longer solely based on high resolution photography. Architects are now collaborating with audiovisual professionals to transform their projects into cinematic experiences.

Earlier this year, German design firm 22quadrat founded 9sekunden, a new film studio specialized in short landscape and architecture documentaries. For Tadao Ando's Conference Pavilion, the studio take their viewers on a meditative journey, portraying the concrete structure's calm and restrained atmosphere in a short film.

Architect and visual artist Mohammad Hassan Forouzanfar has been conceptually combining contemporary landmarks with traditional Iranian houses and palaces, in a photo-series titled "Retrofuturism". In his latest collection, the Persian architect chose to displace iconic structures and place them in 19th century paintings of the country by artist Eugène Flandin.

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Cities across the globe are undergoing makeovers - swapping out old, antiquated technology for new, sleek alternatives. The development and implementation of computer vision and real-time analytics are ushering in the newest wave of smart cities. The combination of cloud-based dashboards and machine learning are providing actionable data to be collected and understood regarding everything from vehicle concentration to pedestrian activity. As cities continue to push forward and develop socially and technologically, there is no doubt we will continue to see cities incorporate tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to facilitate such changes. Despite the fact that eye-popping technologies like drones and robots are at the forefront of this technological revolution, there are also a number of unexpected ways cities are becoming smarter.

The tension between modernity and tradition is the most striking feature of Hans Broos's work, as evidenced by his designs for Cia Hering, where eclectic buildings are juxtaposed with exposed concrete structures in a symbiosis of historical eras.

Herein lies the radical contemporaneity of his work: Broos understands the contemporary as the coexistence of distinct eras meeting at the same moment, shaping the wonderful entanglement of which time is made, as Lina Bo used to say.

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One of the most practical and functional spaces of any residential project is the kitchen. Its artificial surfaces – be it countertops, kitchen benches, or coverings – contain most of the space's equipment. Thus, it’s essential to build kitchens with the most resistant and hygienic materials. Aside from these requirements, it's also important to pay attention to aesthetics and profitability, while adapting the space to the dynamics of each family. 

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Fellow architects, can we talk? This is gonna hurt, but it needs saying. Were I a poet, I’d write, The end is nigh, and we are why. I’m no bard, though, so I’ll put it this way: Most of us suspect anthropogenic climate change will lead to civilization’s end. Some architects deny the science (“The climate is always changing!”), while others ignore the obvious (denial is a good coping mechanism), but buried within the folds of all angst-addled designer brains lies the fear that today’s toddlers could be the last of us.

I’ll pause here to let the weight of that thought depress you.