The online portal of Exame magazine published a list of professions and roles that "are on the decline in Brazil," based on hiring numbers for the first quarter of 2018. The article points to cost reductions and the introduction of new technologies as the main factors driving the decline in demand for certain professionals.

A place of reference for the memory and identity of the Guarani people, the Tava, located in the area of the São Miguel Arcanjo Historical Site in São Miguel das Missões (RS), was built and inhabited by their ancestors at the request of their deity, Nhanderu.  This sacred site has been recognized as MERCOSUR Cultural Heritage. The decision was made and announced at the XVII Meeting of the MERCOSUR Cultural Heritage Commission, held on October 30 and 31 in Montevideo, Uruguay.  

Nine of the architect's unbuilt projects, which have never been exhibited in Brazil and were only previously shown at the Venice Biennale in 2000, are featured in the exhibition, which opens in his honor a month and a half before his 90th birthday. In total, the show brings together 11 of his most radical and experimental works, which share common themes of water, nature, landscape, and territory beyond the architectural scale.

Six outstanding projects across four categories were recognized in Chile with the 2018 Urban Contribution Award (PAU), an initiative promoted by the Chilean Chamber of Construction (CChC), the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (Minvu), the Architects' Association, the Association of Architectural Offices (AOA), and the Association of Real Estate Developers (ADI).

The award was open to any company with projects in Chile. As the project owners, these companies represent the rest of the professional team and firms involved in the work, including architects, construction companies, structural engineers, and landscape architects, among others.

Ultimately, the construction concluded with a celebration. With the completion of "Not Only a Playhouse" ("Uma Casa de Brincar e Não Só..."), Casa da Arquitectura – Portuguese Centre for Architecture handed over the facility last Friday, August 10, to the residents of the Guarda Housing Complex in Perafita, Matosinhos, Portugal. Music and performances brought a lively close to two weeks of intense work during the second edition of "O Lugar de Partilha" (The Sharing Place).

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Today, we left the offices of PienZa Sostenible before dawn to head toward Tlalnepantla, in the state of Morelos—one of the many regions affected by the events of September 2017 across seven states in Mexico. After a few hours of conversation and comparing data regarding the reconstruction efforts that began almost immediately, we reached our destination, where the Rosales Milla family warmly welcomed us to show us their new home, built of adobe and wood.

In 2019, Madrid Metro (Spain) will mark 100 years since the opening of its first line, which ran between Puerta del Sol station and the station located at the Cuatro Caminos depots. Designed by architect Antonio Palacios, the depots are currently at risk of demolition.

To commemorate this milestone, Madrid Metro launched a public call for ideas last November to design a logo that will serve as the corporate image for all centennial celebrations.

Last November, the Comptroller General of Chile ordered the halt of construction of the so-called vertical ghettos in the municipality of Estación Central (Santiago). In response, on Friday, December 14, a group of real estate developers filed a series of injunctions against the resolution, while the Chilean Chamber of Construction raised concerns regarding the suspension of projects, as reported by the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio.

At the same time, the Colegio de Arquitectos de Chile (Chilean Association of Architects), the Association of Architectural Offices (AOA), the Association of Works Directors and Municipal Works Department Professionals of Chile, the Association of Independent Reviewing Architects of Chile, and the National Association of Independent Reviewers issued a document obtained by El Mercurio. In it, they claim they "have seen [their] right to practice their profession with confidence affected [...] due to the legal uncertainty currently facing our field."

As Line 3 of the Santiago Metro begins its trial run on its way to becoming the Chilean capital's sixth line, other cities are starting studies to install cable cars and improve train frequencies. Meanwhile, biodiversity is celebrating great news. This and more in this edition of La ciudad chilena en la prensa, the ArchDaily section where we bring you updates on Chile's major cities.

Under the title “More Living, More Humanizing,” the 14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BEAU) presented the winning projects of its latest edition today, Thursday the 19th, in Santander. This exhibition, housed in a temporary pavilion in Santander's Pereda Gardens, showcases the works selected in the categories of Panorama of Works, 2nd Research Exhibition, and 7th Thesis Projects Exhibition.

After nearly five years of design, plastic recovery, recycling, fundraising, and intensive collaboration, the first floating park made of recycled plastic has opened. The prototype was installed in the Port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest seaport, located in the second-largest Dutch city.

Measuring 140 square meters, the so-called “Recycled Park” demonstrates the potential of discarded materials. For this project, the Recycled Island Foundation collected plastics over a year and a half by installing “traps” in polluted rivers before they could reach the sea.

The famous and widely published Pink House, designed by Mezzo Atelier, has won the Paulo Gouveia Architecture Prize, a regional award from the Azores, Portugal, which recognizes "restoration, rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reinterpretation works whose design stands out for respecting the built heritage and prioritizing the use of local materials, without excluding the use of a contemporary language."

Works designed by renowned architects have always drawn attention, especially from tourists who, passing through new cities, seek to catch a quick glimpse of the best those places have to offer. While this phenomenon is not new, services like Airbnb, which allow short stays in rented homes, have given it a new dimension.

This is currently the case in the Bouça Neighborhood in Porto, designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira. Conceived in the 1970s as a social housing project promoted by the Local Support Ambulatory Service (SAAL), the complex—originally built as permanent housing for workers—has always attracted architecture enthusiasts and fans of Siza's work. In recent years, however, it has also begun attracting temporary residents to units listed for rent.

A few weeks ago, Sweden inaugurated a road that recharges commercial and passenger vehicle batteries while driving. Named the eRoadArlanda project, the two-kilometer route was built outside Arlanda Airport in Stockholm, the country's capital.

The Norman Foster Foundation is one of 21 institutions and individuals awarded Spain's 2018 Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts. Granted by the Spanish government through the Ministry of Culture and Sport, the distinction recognizes those globally who "have stood out in the field of artistic and cultural creation, or have rendered outstanding services in the promotion, development, or dissemination of art and culture, or in the conservation of artistic heritage."

The call for entries for the international film competition on architecture, the city, and urban life—"The city is..."—organized by the Santiago Architecture Film Festival (ArqFilmFest), closed successfully with the submission of 1,518 audiovisual productions from around the world. 

According to the organizers, they received more than 100 films from the United States (183), Iran (166), and India (160), and over 50 from Turkey (79), the United Kingdom (74), Italy (60), Brazil (58), and France (50), among many other countries across all continents.

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The National Academy of Architecture of Monterrey, the Nuevo León Association of Architects, and the Monterrey Region Urbanism Society AC presented a list of proposals for election winners to champion, promote, or implement—depending on the office to which they are elected—in order to collectively build cities where the inhabitants' quality of life is the priority. Read on for the full list.

On December 18, the winning projects of the national architecture competition for the restoration and modernization of the monument building of the Museu Paulista (MP), located in the Ipiranga neighborhood of São Paulo, were announced. The competition was launched on September 7, as part of the "Museu do Ipiranga em Festa" celebrations. Out of a total of 13 entries, nine qualified to participate. The evaluation criteria included aspects such as rationality, functionality, and technical feasibility; respect for the building's material, structural, compositional, and documentary characteristics; creativity, aesthetic solution, and design innovation; compliance with specific uses and circulation and accessibility solutions; and the adoption of environmental sustainability criteria and solutions.

The winning project was selected by a judging committee comprising 11 members appointed by the competition promoter, including representatives from federal, state, and municipal heritage preservation agencies, the Brazilian Institute of Museums (Ibram), and institutional partners such as the Institute of Architects of Brazil (IAB) and the Council of Architecture and Urbanism of São Paulo.

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Plazoleta Amo Torres is a project by Echauri Morales in collaboration with Corporación Planen. Located in downtown Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the intervention comprises a series of urban design gestures aimed at revitalizing the area along Hidalgo Avenue at its intersection with Santa Mónica Street, directly in front of the Corona Market.

The deck is finished, the beams and columns have already been painted, and construction is moving forward at a good pace at the Guarda Housing Complex in Perafita, Matosinhos, Portugal, which will very soon see the completion of Uma Casa de Brincar e Não Só… / Not Only a Playhouse, built as part of the second edition of “O Lugar de Partilha.” At the end of the first week on-site, there is still much work to be done for this Self-Construction Laboratory organized by Casa da Arquitectura (CA) – Portuguese Center for Architecture and curated by Roberto Cremascoli, but spirits are high, and by August 10th, everything will be ready for the local community to enjoy.

Born in Slovakia in 1921, architect Hans Broos began his career in Brazil in 1953, after graduating in Germany in 1949. His brief European career was marked by the reconstruction of Germany, during which he worked alongside architect Egon Eiermann as his assistant at the Technical University of Karlsruhe. During this period, Broos came into contact with Le Corbusier and his principles of modern architecture. Aligned from the beginning with the architects of the Modern Movement, Broos developed his first works in Blumenau and Florianópolis, in the state of Santa Catarina, far from major Brazilian urban centers. Throughout his professional life, the architect addressed a wide range of programs—from residential and industrial to religious, commercial, and social projects—over a career spanning more than 50 years and nearly 400 projects. Of these, approximately 100 were built in various states, including Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Pernambuco, and Goiás. The architect passed away in 2011.

Seu Acervo, a platform for architecture final graduation projects, has released the results of the "Most Popular Project of 2017" open call, launched last November. The goal of the call is to expand the reach of the material available on the platform and encourage recent graduates to engage with digital publishing media. 

The winners of this first edition of the award are Rogério Oliveira da Costa, from the Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo; Nayara de Paula, from the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi; and Hugo Rossini, from the Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie. See the winning projects below.

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Designed by the offices Flock design arquitetura e cidades and Okna arquitetura and built in the Pinheiros neighborhood of São Paulo, the Circular House is a building designed for the circular economy and inspired by cradle-to-cradle design. There are many differences between this type of construction and the traditional one, but what definitively separates these models is the question: “what happens next?”

In a circular economy, buildings are understood as material banks that can be reused for future cycles of use: whether in other constructions (assembly and disassembly), in expansions or reductions, or by dismantling and transforming their materials into new products with new uses.

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Rozana Montiel is one of the 71 architects invited by the curators of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, which opened on May 24, 2018, at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy. Her participation in this renowned festival engages with the central theme, 'Freespace,' which suggests both an imperative—'to free space'—and a resource—'having free space (to act/engage).' The Mexican architect's studio explores this theme as an imperative for action and a social resource for free agency.

Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura is an internationally recognized firm known for providing users with a sense of place and well-being, promoting habitability and spatial densification to foster active public spaces and local cultural production. Ultimately, this expands horizons of interaction, paving the way for community integration.