The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rapid increase in hospitalizations for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Brazil, and is expected to severely strain the capacity of the Unified Health System (SUS). Major cities already have confirmed cases among socially vulnerable populations. In this context, it is crucial for healthcare planning to identify where socially vulnerable groups with limited access to the SUS live, and which healthcare facilities are likely to face the most severe bottlenecks in meeting the demand for hospitalizing critically ill patients.

While the first edition's theme was SHARE, and the second was CIRCULATE, the 3rd Tomie Ohtake Institute Leroy Merlin Design Award proposes REVIEW as its core concept—an opportunity to look at our social and environmental context, critically analyze it, and ask: how can a project contribute based on what is already in place? 

Current Brazilian politics is an anti-politics aimed at the annihilation of institutions, such as the notions of the public and the state. Guilherme Wisnik talks with Fernando Haddad about prospects for imagining ways out of this abyss.

In 2017, the city of Salvador, Bahia, established its Urban Afforestation Master Plan and, as part of this initiative, released a comprehensive guide for anyone wishing to plant in urban spaces.

Which species are most suitable and how to plant trees on sidewalks are some of the questions answered in the document. Although titled the “Salvador Technical Urban Afforestation Manual”, the guide can be used by residents of any city, especially those living in the Atlantic Forest biome.

Guilherme Wisnik talks with Ester Carro, a community leader from Jardim Colombo in Paraisópolis, about forms of organization in vulnerable territories in times of epidemic, as well as the importance of community-led social initiatives.

Photography researchers and enthusiasts now have another major tool at their disposal. The Photography Book Database (BDLF) has just been launched: a bibliographic reference platform exclusively dedicated to photography books. Conceived by photographer and researcher Leonardo Wen, the project began development in 2018 with funding from the Federal District's Cultural Support Fund.

What is the historical arc that traces the path from Brasília's social-democratic (and urban) utopia to today's neo-slaveholding dismantling of the democratic pact? What is this city we see today, stripped of all utopias, and with distinct regimes of vulnerability to the coronavirus pandemic?

Guilherme Wisnik talks with Raquel Rolnik, architect and urbanist, and full professor at the University of São Paulo's School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU-USP). She was the director of planning for the São Paulo Municipal Planning Department (1989–92) and National Secretary of Urban Programs at the Ministry of Cities (2003–07), among other public sector roles. The Seminar on Culture and Contemporary Reality is organized by Escola da Cidade with support from IABsp.

Atelier Marko Brajovic recently shared the design for a Floating Community Library on Lake Mamori, in the Amazon Rainforest. Developed in close collaboration with the local community, the project aims to become a benchmark for sustainable construction and environmental education.

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In this week's debate hosted by Escola da Cidade, Guilherme Wisnik talks with Nuno Ramos, a painter, draftsman, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, set designer, and composer who holds a degree in philosophy from the University of São Paulo.

The São Paulo Municipal Government launched a bidding process this week for companies interested in constructing eight pedestrian access points to the João Goulart Elevated Highway, popularly known as the Minhocão, in downtown São Paulo.

Developed by the Semeia Institute and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Parques para Todas e Todos is a tool to inspire the creation of more diverse spaces by incorporating a gender perspective into the planning and management of urban parks. It offers guidelines, suggestions, and ideas to begin designing parks that address everyone's needs.

Guilherme Wisnik talks with Bruno Dunley, a visual artist, teacher, and co-creator and member of the project ali: arte livre itinerante, a nomadic art school that bridges centers and peripheries, operating in the district of Cidade Tiradentes on the far east side of São Paulo.

The National Archives Wiki-Contest is an editing competition on the Portuguese Wikipedia that aims to improve articles related to Brasília. It is part of a series of activities throughout 2020 conducted in collaboration by the Wiki Movimento Brasil User Group and the National Archives. The Wiki-Contest aims to encourage the Wikipedia editing community to improve entries related to the National Archives' Inter-wiki WikiProject initiative, which has been active since 2017.

Nearly two years after the collapse of the Córrego do Feijão mine dam in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, the city's residents will receive a monument to honor the victims. The Brumadinho Memorial was designed by the firm GPA&A, founded by architect Gustavo Penna, and will serve to remind all Brazilians of one of the worst environmental tragedies in the country's history.

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Victoria is a Canadian city famous for its flower gardens. Its climate favors the cultivation of different types of flowers, earning the city the reputation of Canada's flower capital, or the "Garden City." However, the coronavirus pandemic has slightly changed this landscape. The city's gardening team has prioritized planting vegetable seedlings to be distributed free of charge, as public interest in growing one's own food has grown considerably during this period.

Pé na Estrada is an outreach project of the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Brasília, active since 2011 as an extracurricular activity. Its primary goal is to organize and promote study trips across Brazilian cities. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project had to adapt to social distancing, launching new heritage education initiatives and encouraging alternative ways of experiencing spaces studied in the classroom to expand the knowledge and creative vocabulary of both students and the community. 

Faced with the current emergency imposed not only by the largest pandemic in modern history but also by the complete lack of governance ruling this country, compounded by structural inequality that causes a veritable genocide of our society's most vulnerable population, we, architects and urban planners representing technical advisory groups in the State of São Paulo—with a historic trajectory of action and housing production guided by the struggle for the right to the city—believe it is essential to take a stand on the importance of effective actions by this body, which represents our profession, aimed at the needs of organized communities living in informal settlements or in situations of social vulnerability:

One of the world's most prestigious architecture-focused film festivals, the Arquiteturas Film Festival is launching a retrospective series of its seven previous editions, held between 2013 and 2019, with online screenings of some of the key films from each year. To kick off the series, the Canadian film Misleading Innocence (2014), directed by Francesco Garutti and Shahab Mihandoust, will be available between June 12 and 19 on the festival's website.

In this week's debate hosted by Escola da Cidade, Guilherme Wisnik speaks with Vladimir Safatle, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of São Paulo and a visiting professor at the universities of Paris VII, Paris VIII, Toulouse, Louvain, and Stellenbosch. Safatle is one of the coordinators of the Laboratory of Research in Social Theory, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis (Latesfip/USP).

LabCidade at FAUUSP has conducted several studies on methods for mapping COVID-19 across São Paulo.

The rethinking of public and private spaces has been considered by numerous architects and urban planners for the post-pandemic era. The gradual reopening of businesses and the resumption of other activities across the country require owners, employees, users, and customers to change habits and behaviors to ensure everyone's health.

Six commercial spaces frequently used by many people — gyms, beauty salons, offices, corporate offices, reception areas, and classrooms — have received guidelines for proper operation, developed by architects and urban planners Maria Paula Dunel and Ingrid Joyce Almeida de Jesus.

Urban precariousness, social vulnerability, racial exclusion, health crisis, environmental catastrophe, genocidal state. Growing dissatisfaction on the streets, falsification of pandemic data, economic recession. What social and political pacts will be possible to reshape democracy in a shattered country? Guilherme Wisnik speaks with Tainá de Paula, architect and urbanist, urban struggle activist, who holds a master's degree in Urbanism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, the international “Coronavirus Design Competition,” organized by the platform Go Architect, encourages students and professionals from various fields to think about how to develop products, objects, and equipment that help the population remain physically and mentally healthy in a scenario of so much uncertainty. Brazilian architect Leonardo Dias is competing, alongside more than 100 candidates from around the world, with a proposal for an urban totem that promotes hand sanitization, citizen information, and the humanization of data.

On June 18, the fifth anniversary of the publication of Laudato Si’ – Pope Francis’s encyclical calling for global unity in combating climate change – the Vatican published new guidelines containing more than 200 recommendations for environmental protection.

The document, titled “Journeying Towards Care for Our Common Home: Five Years After Laudato Si’,” suggests practical measures to curb global warming and issues stark warnings about the dangers of environmental degradation. It calls on the world to decarbonize the energy and economic sectors, making renewable energy accessible to all, and advocates for fossil fuel subsidy reform and CO2 emission taxation.