This guide covers a workflow that moves from project parameters to generated floor plans, 3D perspective views, exterior design exploration, and site context visualization, using AI tools in place of preliminary CAD and rendering work.

Yesterday, July 12, a partial collapse occurred at Plaza Artz Pedregal, a high-end shopping mall in southern Mexico City. Designed by the prominent Mexican architecture firm Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos, the collapsed section appears to be an overlapping cantilevered volume, as seen in social media videos of the incident and renderings released in 2016. The cause of the collapse remains under investigation.

How many discoveries can a walk through São Paulo reveal? What if this expedition felt like a treasure hunt and was led by a friendly, highly curious dog? Inspired by the success of the Prédios de São Paulo trilogy, a project conceived by Matteo Gavazzi, comes Prédios de São Paulo para Crianças. Set to launch in July 2018, the children's book features text by journalist Tatiana Engelbrecht and illustrations by Daniel Almeida. The book is published by GAPS Editora.

The competition sought the urban, environmental, sociocultural, economic, and management design of a 514-hectare area in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. Located on flood-prone land along the Paraguay River near the Historic Center, the area features high environmental and social vulnerability, with thousands of families living in precarious settlements in high-risk zones. A total of 41 projects were submitted by participants from the United States, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Paraguay. The Brazilian team—composed of the firms TESE Tecnologia Arquitetura e Cultura LTDA and Oficina Urbana de Arquitetura (OUA)—received the only honorable mention.

The brief called for an urban design proposal, including the design of public spaces, aimed at connecting the area with the rest of the city and fostering the relationship between the city and the river, based on the principles and guidelines of the Master Plan for the Northern Coastal Fringe. The evaluation criteria focused on the need to recover and enhance the urban-environmental dimension of the intervention area, alongside developing a strategy for its connection to the city, strengthening its identity and potential, and providing physical and visual accessibility and permeability within an integrated urban intervention vision. See the overall competition results and the Brazilian team's project, along with their project description, below.

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An international consortium comprising Aedas, China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute (CSWADI), and Shanghai Civil Aviation New Era Airport Design and Research Institute has won the design competition for the architectural planning, scheme, and construction design of the Phase II expansion of Yantai Penglai International Airport.

The new 167,000-square-meter Terminal 2 (T2) is designed to handle an annual passenger throughput of 23 million. The expansion plan also includes a new close-spaced runway. Looking ahead to 2040, the terminal is projected to expand to 200,000 square meters to accommodate up to 34 million passengers annually.

The debate over the roles of architects and engineers and the perceived overlap of their professional scopes has driven a series of recent protests in Portugal, sparked by parliament's approval of a bill that allows engineers to sign off on architectural projects.

Under these circumstances, the frustration of architects and their resentment toward their engineering colleagues is understandable. However, in an article published by the newspaper Público.pt, Gonçalo Cano Moniz offers an alternative perspective. In hopes of reversing this unfortunate decision, he seeks to reunite engineering and architecture as the complementary fields they are, using historical arguments to shift the focus to the true consequence of the legislation: the weakening of both professions—architecture for having been undermined, and engineering for being assigned "responsibilities for which it is clearly unprepared."

School buildings house complex systems. From kindergarten to university faculty, the journey through the levels of learning consists of an accumulation of vital experiences resulting from the interaction between these systems.

The educational function, as functionalism termed it, now builds its environments under new paradigms that reflect and respond to an increasingly diverse and complex social agenda.

Offering a perspective unusual for locals, Instagram user Deensel photographed Santiago by drone during a visit to Chile. The results feature bucolic sunsets over Santa Lucía Hill, cool summer nights in the city's dense downtown, and unprecedented views of the so-called Sanhattan district, crowned by the Costanera Center —the tallest skyscraper in Latin America— and the Titanium Tower.

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Renowned for his work with guadua bamboo, Colombian architect Simón Vélez will build his first steel project in Bogotá, according to the local newspaper La República.

The project, named La Primera, is a residential building in the La Candelaria neighborhood of the Colombian capital, and will feature 60 one- and two-bedroom apartments. Joining Vélez on the project are the firm A Korn Arquitectos, the construction company Kandelaria, and Geografía Urbana as urban planning consultant.

São Paulo will soon have a new bike-sharing system. Developed by the company Yellow, the system will deploy 20,000 vehicles and will not feature stations—the bicycles will be left freely on the streets.

Known as "dockless," the service already operates in other parts of the world, such as China and Germany, and involves leaving bikes "free" on the streets, available to users via an app that unlocks the selected vehicle. At the end of the trip, riders can leave the bicycle wherever is convenient, and it locks itself, remaining available for the next user.

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Opened on April 29, Sesc Avenida Paulista featured an installation designed by architect and designer Guto Requena at its opening.

The project, titled Empatias Mapeadas, consists of an interactive parametric sculpture featuring pulsing lights and speakers that mix and broadcast the heartbeats of the participants who touch the piece.

The CitYzens Collective and the Arkco-CUC research group at the Universidad de la Costa (CUC) conducted a collective mapping exercise in the Plaza de la Paz, located in the historic center of Barranquilla, Colombia. The event took place on June 1, 2018, at this emblematic public square.

The initiative not only involved collaboration with urban design collectives like Colectivo 016, but also drew the participation of dozens of citizens and passersby. They made symbolic contributions to "Save Barranquilla" by mapping their experiences, identities, appropriations, uses, and collective imaginaries of the city.

Heritage-listed at both the state and federal levels, Teatro Oficina, designed by Lina Bo Bardi and Edson Elito, is at risk of having its surroundings profoundly altered by the construction of two 100-meter-tall residential towers. The project, led by the Silvio Santos Group, was approved by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan) during a meeting on May 29.

On the shores of Lake Titicaca, nearly 250 students from 15 countries kicked off TSL Puno 2018 in Peru, marking the 15th edition of the Latin American Social Workshop, led by the Latin American Coordinator of Architecture Students (CLEA) and the Peruvian Organization of Architecture Students (OPEA).

Continuing a tradition that began in 2002, architecture students from across Latin America are joining forces with public and private entities, architecture collectives, workshop leaders, faculty, and members of civil society to conceptualize, design, and build public amenities across the Spanish-speaking world.

The California Assembly voted in favor of SB 100, a Senate bill that sets the state on a path toward 100% renewable energy generation. The legislation establishes a new target of obtaining 60% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and reaching 100% clean and renewable energy by 2045. Governor Jerry Brown has thirty days to sign the bill.

A project by the Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR) is cataloging the historical heritage of Curitiba and making all the information available on the website Arquivo Arquitetura. The portal is being gradually updated with all the research conducted since 2011 by more than 560 students, led by architects Giceli Portela and Iaskara Florenzano. In the near future, the goal is to install QR codes on tiles in front of all the buildings, allowing people to access the complete history of each building in real time.

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The crowdfunding campaign to produce the 2019 Athos Bulcão Illustrated Calendar is now live. Through November 28, the public can contribute to the production and distribution of 6,000 copies of the calendar. In return, supporters will receive copies of the publication alongside rewards featuring the artist's work, such as bookmarks, postcards, books, tote bags, magnet sets, mouse pads, silver jewelry, and even framed tiles, as well as having their names printed in the acknowledgements section. Supporters can view the rewards and make their contributions on Catarse.

It is well known that Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park in New York; André Le Nôtre, responsible for the gardens of the Palace of Versailles; and Alan Titchmarsh, among others, were pioneers of landscape architecture for their ability to break the mold of traditional design. However, Latin America has produced outstanding work that deserves recognition. Such is the case in Mexico, where Pritzker laureate Luis Barragán showed the world the richness of the country's green spaces and his mastery in designing them.

Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (PCPA), San Francisco’s tallest tower and its accompanying transit center are now partially open to the public after a decade in the making. The Salesforce development comprises both the tower and the transit center, where PCPA has integrated planning, architecture, transportation, and landscape design to mark a new chapter in American urban development.

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“Earthquakes are a naturally destructive effect of our earth's constantly changing surface”
-National Geographic, “Latest Earthquakes–and How Earthquakes Work”, February 2018.

ReConstructo is a group exhibition curated by Mexican architects Luis Carbonell and Andres Souto, presented at Zuecca Project Space in parallel with the International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2018. The exhibition offers a multifaceted look at simultaneous and overlapping readings of the actions and agents of destruction that subsequently paved the way for a latent reconstruction following the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico.

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Since its founding, the National Workers' Housing Fund Institute (Infonavit) has conducted research to guide its urban, architectural, economic, and social approach to housing in Mexico. 

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The concept of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) shaped 19th-century art movements and influenced several design schools of the era—including the Bauhaus, which brought the term into the modern age. The school's unstructured architectural designs and avant-garde furniture paved the way for fields such as fashion, graphic design, and painting. At the Bauhaus, disciplines drew inspiration from one another, blurring the boundaries between art and industry. When the school closed in 1933, however, many design projects were left unfinished.

To revive some of these interrupted Bauhaus design projects, Adobe has launched the "Hidden Treasures" initiative to recreate five typefaces originally designed by five of the school's masters: Joost Schmidt, Xanti Schawinsky, Reinhold Rossig, Carl Marx, and Alfred Arndt.

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo has put up for sale a limited edition of one hundred crystal easels designed by Lina Bo Bardi. Originally introduced in 1968 and removed from the museum in 1996, the iconic easels were redesigned by the firm Metro Arquitetos and brought back to the MASP gallery in 2015. Each unit costs R$ 10,000, and the proceeds will support the museum's activities.

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Year after year, natural disasters leave thousands of people homeless, forcing them to seek shelter as their only option. In many cases, cities are unable to address these crises due to a lack of resources. Furthermore, providing aid while preserving human dignity has become increasingly complex, rendering traditional solutions completely unviable.

In these moments, innovation and creativity in hands-on construction play a vital role, ultimately yielding faster, more efficient architectural models that can be rapidly replicated following natural disasters.

When designing semi-permanent architecture, certain principles must be followed. Below, we have compiled a set of tips and examples to guide this process.

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Barça’s history is closely tied to Barcelona, the city where the soccer club was founded in 1899. Today, the reigning Spanish league champions paid tribute to the city with the launch of their third kit for the 2018/2019 season.

The third jersey features a pale pink color crossed by a diagonal sash running from the left shoulder to the bottom right. The stripe pays tribute to Avinguda Diagonal, one of Barcelona's most important avenues, and is superimposed on a reddish-toned satellite image of the Eixample district.