Victor Delaqua holds a Master's degree from FAUUSP (São Paulo). He is an architect and urban planner from UFSC (Florianópolis) and studied at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. A contributor to ArchDaily since 2012, he is a Content and Community & Social Media editor. Professionally, he also works in exhibition and set design.
Form and function. Terms that accompany several definitions that belong to architecture, but more is needed to summarize the practice in 2023. Nowadays, building involves understanding the cycles of materials and how each action can be linked to the extraction of natural resources and their damage to the environment. We live in an urgent need to review the way we produce built space. In this search for models that move away from linear systems and provide a constant process of transformation and redistribution of matter, strategies arising from the circular economy emerge as a possible path. Its application in architectural heritage – for maintenance or restoration – can incentive the necessary changes toward a more sustainable society.
Lofts can refer to the highest story of a building, such as attics, for example, which have been converted into apartments or studios. Later on, the term loft started to be used to describe open-concept spaces, where the entire architectural program was incorporated into one large room, resulting in a market trend.
People are increasingly looking for more flexible and open spaces, so we have put together a selection of 25 lofts that provide different approaches to these environments: either by creating a mezzanine to take advantage of the high ceiling or simply by arranging furniture.
In architecture, the most common is to design for humans only. However, covering the scope of the project for other species is an exercise that has been proposed in several orders. From specific furniture to interior design planned for the animal, the possibilities of creating a more playful and comfortable ambience, both for humans and animals, are diverse.
Sheltering is a fundamental issue in Architecture. The ways of living and interacting with the space in which we spend our daily lives is an everlasting debate in the field, which is committed to providing a better quality of life, but also to developing new ways of living. By adding other aspects such as real estate speculation, high housing density in urban centers, the pursuit of nomadism, or even the sheer desire to follow a trend, the debate around small-scale houses becomes even more relevant. And so, we ask ourselves, what is the smallest area required to live in?
The fallen Christopher Columbus statue outside the Minnesota State Capitol after a group led by American Indian Movement members tore it down in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 10, 2020. Author: Tony Webster, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic via Wikimedia Commons.
What is the story that your city's public space tells? Who are the people honored in monuments scattered throughout it? Issues like these have led to a series of insurgencies in recent years in several cities. The notions of memory and representation have expanded the reflection on which narrative we build in our spaces, a fact that has triggered an urban question for the future: after all, what do we want to remember (or forget) through the symbols that we rise (or destroy) in cities?
Biophilic design is capable of improving the well-being of those who use a space through reconnection with nature. When this practice is implemented in offices and workshops, this property translates into many benefits. After all, in addition to the emotional qualities that vegetation can bring, it has the ability to filter noise, lighting and allow for a milder climate, with results in team productivity and more optimized services.
The current architectural production faces several paradigms and one of them is aesthetic. In a scenario of constant uncertainty, buildings with projections, holograms, or completely automatic ones that science fiction has shown so much, seem more and more distant from reality. Nowadays, the search for greater identification with the built space has been amplified instead of idealizing the new for the new. Therefore, looking at the past has presented different perspectives and it is in this scope that perhaps we can imagine a new futuristic aesthetic.
How might your persona or act differ if you were to put yourself before society’s expectations and limitations, embracing your queerness and preferences? Looking into the impact of individuality, we talked with Andreas Angelidakis, an architect to who refers to himself as “an architect who doesn’t build”, but views architecture as a site of social interaction, creating works that reflect on the urban culture by mixing ruins, digital media, and psychology to better understand the power of finding different design paths.
While walking through the city, have you ever felt afraid to be yourself? As strange as the question may sound to some, it is a reality for most LGBTQIA+ people, who at some point have been victims of hostility when they were noticed performing outside the "heteronormative standards" of public spaces. If violence comes from social layers that go beyond the designed space, this does not exempt the importance of thinking about projects that can integrate the physical sphere and insert a symbolic or representational factor to include and educate its citizens. This is the case of Homomonument, which for more than three decades, has become a platform for queer celebration and protest in the heart of Amsterdam.
A public program fulfills several functions that, in addition to improving the social dynamics of the surroundings, can be an important factor in increasing the feeling of belonging, the offer of jobs and services, and the quality of life in the area. Therefore, after presenting popular housing projects developed in Brazilian communities, we searched for cultural equipment that occupy rural and urban areas that are less privileged in terms of infrastructure.
A few years ago, it was more common for the bicycle to be seen as an option for leisure and sport in large Brazilian cities. Currently, in the face of the climate crisis, the price of fuel, and more cyclist-friendly planning (although far from ideal), the bicycle has gained more and more prominence and has become a transport option for the population. However, we know that it is not always easy to find a place to keep it in our homes. Therefore, we present some possibilities.
Besides thermal, acoustic and luminous comfort, colors are factors that influence the sensation we feel when in an environment and become a strong device to influence the user's behavior.
Far beyond aesthetic preferences, the use of certain colors can bring different meanings that cover other fields such as psychology or symbology. Therefore, it is known that a color does not depend only on light and environment, but also on the perception we have of it. The German Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, who has deepened his study of the Theory of Colors, points out that the identification of tones is subjective, but the effects are universal. As an example, the warm colors (red, yellow and orange) are more dynamic and cause feelings of comfort and stimulus in people, while the cold colors (green, purple and blue) have a softer, soothing and static effect. Therefore, creating a color palette is a possibility to generate different sensations in the perception of space.
"Growing up queer means experiencing the destabilizing absence of a broad and accessible queer history, most notably, in our case, in relation to spatial design". This account is what intrigued artist Adam Nathaniel Furman and architectural historian Joshua Mardell to bring together a community of contributors who bring new perspectives to the field of architecture and share stories of spaces that challenge cis-heteronormative morals, sheltering lives that seek to live their own truths. The result of this quest is a book titled Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories, which explores stories about distinct social, political, and geographical contexts within the community.
If today technologies are emerging for different forms of representation and interaction with drawing, understanding how architects communicate through hand-drawn strokes can be essential to delve into the topic of architectural visualization. Through the simplicity of gestures, small texts or a collage of references, it is possible to translate ideas in an innovative way, unlike the ways that a render can present. For this reason, we highlight here the work of great names such as Lina Bo Bardi, Renzo Piano, Pezo von Ellrichshausen and Mikkel Frost, who, using different techniques, reveal different ways of representing a project.
The Zero Carbon policy is intended to create a kind of ecological balance to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions. Several studies report that the construction sector is one of the main responsible for the unbalance in which we find ourselves today, after all, it consumes natural resources on a gigantic scale and still builds buildings that do not collaborate with the maintenance of the environment. Therefore, searching for paths towards a carbon neutral architecture has become fundamental and one of them is learning from past masters, such as the Brazilian architect João Filgueiras Lima, known as Lelé.
Based in São Paulo, Atelier Marko Brajovic was founded in 2006 by architect Marko Brajovic. With a multidisciplinary practice, the idea of the hybrid manifests itself as the conceptual north of the office that operates on several fronts: architecture, scenography, expography, creative direction, interior and product design. With a vast language that explores different areas, formats and aesthetics, its projects are, above all, recognized for breaking with the modern canon and seeking solutions in nature.
The history of architecture shows that the use of raw materials has always been somewhat common, whether in ancient vernacular techniques or within the Brutalist movement, to name a few. It is evident that the language of a project is often linked to its material, as various sensations and the perception of space are directed by the aesthetic and physical quality of the given element. For this reason, we have gathered ten buildings that highlight the quality of their materials, whether to make a statement, reinterpret a technique from the past, or to re-signify the potency of some of these elements.
Vista aérea da Av. Paulista. Imagem ilustrativa. Foto de Gabriel Ramos, via Unsplash
468 years ago, at Pateo do Collegio, the largest city in Latin America was born: São Paulo. A metropolis in constant movement that, among so many complexities and conflicts, presents both cultural and human diversity, which makes it deeply rich.
