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.

Porto Alegre will host the 21st Brazilian Congress of Architects in October 2019. Organized by the Institute of Architects of Brazil, the event will serve as a preparatory meeting for the 27th World Congress of Architects (UIA2020RIO), which will take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2020. The theme of this edition is Space and Democracy.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha is currently the most admired and respected figure in Brazilian architecture. However, his extensive list of works narrowly missed including an intervention project for the work of another master, Oscar Niemeyer. Commissioned in 2015 by São Paulo's previous municipal administration to develop a redesign project for Ibirapuera Park, the proposal by the 2006 Pritzker Prize laureate was shelved in December of last year.

"Architectural competitions represent the combination of the art of choosing and the craft of being chosen," says Roberto Fernández about an area of our discipline that is widely recognized as an excellent platform for firms and independent professionals to present their ideas as true manifestos. Meanwhile, in academic circles, competitions often serve as tools for formal, conceptual, and graphic experimentation.

These types of commissions undoubtedly inspire not only architecture and urban planning professionals but also the public as a key player in their evaluation. Whether or not these proposals are built, they demonstrate that we must constantly champion innovation, recognizing the immense effort behind these results. With this in mind, we have selected six award-winning projects that reflect the value of architectural competitions in Colombia.

To mark the commemoration of the February 27 earthquake and tsunami, the creation of “Rubble Hospitals” is being promoted, drawing on recent earthquake experiences in Chile and Mexico.

A new guide for creating these spaces was announced in Concepción by Chile's Proyecta Memoria Foundation, coinciding with the anniversary of the February 27 earthquake and tsunami. The guide compiles experiences from earthquakes in Chile and Mexico, while promoting Rubble Hospitals as spaces to safeguard and reuse debris from large-scale seismic events.

The document is the result of three years of work and details memory rescue initiatives during the 2010 and 2015 earthquakes in Chile and the earthquakes in Mexico.

The official results for the National Competition for the Requalification of the Public Space of the Monumental Axis of Maringá have been released. This central urban area lies between Cathedral Square (Praça da Catedral) and the Vila Olímpica sports complex. Totaling approximately 169,000 square meters, the Monumental Axis includes gardens, public spaces, parking areas, and perimeter paving along the building facades. Due to the site's vast scale, proposals had to be presented in seven sectors to facilitate phased bidding and construction. The winning project was designed by a team comprising Pedro Paes Lira, Manoela Muniz Machado, Julia Marini, Laura Figueiredo, and Juliette Tellier from the firm Natureza Urbana, with landscape consulting by Bianca Vasone, Gabriella Ornaghi, and Lilian Dazzi, and engineering consulting by Alexandre Horiye Ferreira and Felipe Macedo Barbosa.

The jury, composed of architects and urban planners Haroldo Pinheiro, José Gilberto Purpur, Mario Figueroa, Orlando Busarello, and Renato Leão Rego, selected the following winners:

The “Welcome Mother Nature” project, winner of the June 2016 international competition to redesign Madrid's Plaza España, will ultimately not be allowed to alter the position of the Cervantes monument as initially planned.

The Community of Madrid announced at the Local Heritage Commission its intention to fast-track the declaration of the complex as an Asset of Heritage Interest (BIP). Consequently, the project designed by architects Fernando Porras Isla-Fernández, Aranzazu La Casta Muñoa, and Lorenzo Fernández-Ordóñez Hernández will not be allowed to rotate the statue of the Spanish writer to face the Edificio España, as reported by the Spanish newspaper El País.

The Dolmen Collection is based on an exploration of balance between elements of different materialities. This exercise highlights the physical properties of stone and wood, creating tension between the suspended and supporting elements. Designed by Héctor Esrawe, Manuel Bañó, Federico Stefanovich, and Alejandro Ramírez, it comprises a dining table with chairs and a cabinet.

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Dampness from water ingress, condensation, or leaking and burst pipes; cracks and fissures in partition walls, facades, columns, or beams; corrosion, deformation, and spalling are some of the most common building pathologies that can affect a structure throughout its lifespan. Detecting these issues is essential to address them, keep the building in good condition, and prevent accidents or structural failures.

To address this, the Official Association of Architects of Madrid (COAM) has launched its first public awareness campaign, titled ‘Arquitecto de la Casa’ (House Architect). The initiative aims to raise awareness about the necessity and benefits of ongoing building maintenance, highlighting specialized architects as the most qualified professionals for the job.

An inseparable figure from Brasília, Athos Bulcão is responsible for works that bring color and geometric patterns to the purity of the federal capital's architecture. To promote the artist's work, the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) launched the book Athos, Colorindo Brasília, the first volume of the Patrimônio para Jovens collection, an initiative by Iphan's Federal District office and the Federal District Department of Education (SEDF).

Yesterday, Monday (September 10), the 3rd Latin American Landscape Architecture Biennial announced the finalists for the competition, which will take place in Mexico City on September 26 and 27. Organized since 2014 by the Mexican Society of Landscape Architects (SAPM), the biennial seeks to highlight the role of landscape architecture in shaping the habitat in Latin America, with a particular emphasis on the environmental and social challenges facing the region.

"We seek to encourage participation in landscape construction to showcase the broad and diverse panorama of local interventions that ultimately help define a region sharing common challenges and solutions," the organizers state in the biennial's guidelines.

The 19 built works, unbuilt projects, and research papers meet the biennial's criteria, focusing on projects that respect the landscape and its values, demonstrate a commitment to sustainability, and integrate and address social issues, among other criteria.

Discover the finalists below:

Registration is now open for the 1st National Public Photography Contest organized by the Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Goiás (CAU/GO), under the theme “Historic Heritage in Architecture and Urbanism.” Submissions will be accepted until 4:00 PM on September 24 at the CAU/GO headquarters.

The Housing Development Company of the Federal District (CODHAB/DF) continues to release the results of design competitions, establishing itself as a benchmark for institutions across the country by holding competitions to ensure high-quality construction through a clear and democratic selection process for the most qualified technical, scientific, or artistic proposals. This latest edition features the National Public Urban Planning and Architecture Design Competition for the QNR 06 Housing Sector, in the Administrative Region of Ceilândia.

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A new interactive museum is opening its doors at the Mexican Stock Exchange. The Mexican Stock Exchange Museum, “MUBO”—inaugurated in May 2018—is a space dedicated to a historical narrative focused on the country's financial market culture, utilizing interactive modules to enhance the understanding of the curatorial script. Through this new space, the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores Group brings together efforts initiated just over a year ago alongside the "Escuela de la Bolsa" to disseminate financial topics and foster an understanding of the country's history and development.

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SketchUp is one of the most widely used digital modeling software programs in both professional practice and academia—and undoubtedly the most intuitive. However, the ease of creating orthogonal geometries can quickly turn into a nightmare when the goal is to design curved and organic shapes and objects.

With this in mind, Gabriel Chahoud of Chahoud Cursos released 30 video tutorials for what he called "SketchUp Month," sharing tips on how to model objects that, at first glance, seem complex to create in this software.

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Alongside an archaeologist and a visual artist, the team led by architect and University of Chile academic Claudia Torres has documented a series of industrial ruins in rural areas throughout Chile. These are structures where geography and nature have played a fundamental role, both as a productive resource and as witnesses to their progressive deterioration after being abandoned decades ago.

Titled “From Noise to Silence: Valuing Industrial Ruins in Rural Areas,” this research, funded by Fondart 2017, selected nine cases across Chile: from the historic use of the coastline associated with mining in the northern desert (Caldera) to logging in the Patagonian forests of the far south (Contao). Each site features unprecedented photographic and audiovisual documentation that showcases the rich natural environment where they were built to spark or secure productive processes that have shaped the socioeconomic and cultural history of each region.

On August 6, the NOVA Design Award 2018 announced its competition finalists. The NOVA Design Award 2018 is the inaugural edition of the NOVA Design Award (NDA). Under the theme of "Future Living Space," the competition explores the possibilities of residential living over the next decade within a residential space of under 50 square meters with a ceiling height of no more than 6 meters in a first-tier Chinese city, aiming to build a physical prototype of "future living."

The competition selected five finalists from 131 submissions across more than 20 countries to enter the final round of judging.

In interior design, striking a balance between aesthetic style and the functional needs of a project is essential. In this regard, it is fascinating to see the diverse solutions that Colombian architects and designers have recently proposed. We have selected eight local projects that demonstrate a compelling balance between functionality and aesthetics in interior design.

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Can you imagine arriving at a bus stop in the early hours of the morning—after a party, work, or school—and knowing the exact minute your public transit will arrive? Cities like London, New York, Madrid, and Melbourne have successfully implemented night transit systems with fixed schedules, yielding various financial and safety benefits for residents while boosting tourism and encouraging sustainable mobility. What would happen if this system were applied to the second-largest avenue in the Americas, after Buenos Aires' Avenida 9 de Julio? 

Mexico City already has a night transit service: the Nochebús. With 11 routes operating between midnight and 5:00 a.m., it serves late-shift workers, night-lifers, and others needing late-night transportation. However, the service faces several challenges, many of which stem from uncertainty around arrival times—largely due to a much lower frequency than daytime public transit. 

Yesterday, the citizen forum "Modern Landscape, Transforming Territories" began in Chillán, an event that aims to reflect on the city's architectural and cultural heritage through various actions in the city.

Three main venues have been chosen to host all of the event's activities: the Municipal Theater, the Escuela México, and the iconic Copelec building, a landmark of modern Chilean architecture.

Twenty proposals for informal settlements from Brazil to Bangladesh have been awarded in Confronting Informality, the first edition of the competition organized by TU Delft's Department of Urbanism, alongside universities from around the world.

Launched last April, this ideas competition addresses the challenge of urban settlements based on the principles of the New Urban Agenda. Through their projects, architecture and urban planning students from all over the world answered the following question: how can we create healthy, safe, and resilient environments in informal settlements while simultaneously preserving social networks and a sense of community?

"We live in an urban world, but explosive, unplanned urbanization processes in developing countries mean that new informal settlements are growing in population and size—often without infrastructure, access to sanitation, or quality public spaces," the organizers explained in the competition brief.

Discover the winning projects below:

The city of Barcelona remains firm in its fight against speculation and gentrification, which are currently widening the inequality of opportunity for residents seeking access to decent and affordable housing.

To address this, Barcelona's Commission for Ecology, Urbanism, and Mobility has initially approved two new urban planning tools to tackle the housing accessibility crisis and protect the social balance of its neighborhoods. These measures respond to the demands of organizations such as the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Barcelona (FAVB), the Mortgage Affected People's Platform (PAH), the DESC Observatory, the Neighborhood Assembly for Sustainable Tourism (ABTS), and the Tenants Union. 

The millions of cars, trucks, and buses on São Paulo's roads account for over 90% of all air pollution. With residents spending up to five hours a day commuting, the metropolis is constantly gridlocked. To address this, What Design Can Do and the IKEA Foundation are calling on creative professionals from around the world to develop radical, innovative solutions for more sustainable flows of people and goods in the city.

The first American Institute of Architects Committee on Design (AIA COD) Conference in South America will take place in the cities of Santiago and Valparaíso, Chile, from October 20 to 27, 2018. The event is organized by the Copperbridge Foundation in collaboration with the Chilean organizations Constructo and Massantiago.

The architecture of Santiago, Chile—inherited from the colonial era but connected to a contemporary design vision—will take center stage at the conference, providing a global perspective on “Blueprint for Better Cities,” the AIA's theme of the year chosen by its president, Carl Elefante.

With the proposal 'Phytoremediation Machine for Mining Tailings,' the Chilean team won first place in the 11th Alacero Steel Design Competition for Architecture Students 2018 in Colombia.

The team, comprising Universidad Finis Terrae students Diego Concha, Tomás Aguirre, and Trinidad Hermosilla, presented a project that seeks to "recover and reuse mining waste through the use of plants with high mineral resistance to reduce and mitigate the site's environmental risks," as the authors explain in their project description. Their advisors were professors Andrés Echeverría and Cristián Lecaros.