Architecture News

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 “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 Federal District office of Iphan did not approve the project submitted by the Federal District Department of Roads (DER-DF) for the reconstruction of the section of the Eixão Sul that collapsed in February of this year, burying two cars and the tables of a restaurant.

The agency responsible for Brazil's artistic and cultural heritage blocked the proposal, claiming that the DER-DF/Novacap project "significantly alters the original architecture and compromises the architectural and urban integrity and, by extension, that of the Plataforma Rodoviária complex and complementary road system."

Featuring references to his career, projects, and travels, the Ocupação Paulo Mendes da Rocha celebrates the 90th birthday, on October 25, of Brazil's most important living architect. Through sketches, technical drawings, models, and other materials selected from Mendes da Rocha’s personal archive, curator Guilherme Wisnik reveals some of the architect’s most radical ideas, which use ideology and technique to challenge and subvert colonial mindsets that still echo in Brazilian architectural design.

Curated by Oscar Humphries, this exhibition opened on Monday, February 5 at 11 AM, and will run from February 7 to March 24, 2018.

Sean Scully - San Cristóbal is the first exhibition presented at Cuadra San Cristóbal, and marks the first time the artist's sculptures will be exhibited in Latin America.

In the late 19th century, Santa Lucía Hill in Santiago, Chile, underwent a radical transformation, evolving from a rocky outcrop in the center of the capital into a vibrant green space. During the hill's redevelopment, the mayor of Santiago at the time, Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, converted one of its structures, Hidalgo Fort, into a castle that housed a history museum. Reduced to an administrative warehouse during the 20th century, the fort—originally built in 1816—was converted into an event venue in 1997 and is now preparing for its most significant renovation since its construction.

According to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Castillo Hidalgo will be transformed into a cultural center featuring “a convention center and a laboratory.” This will allow the venue to open its doors for more than just private events, especially since Santa Lucía Hill receives over 600,000 tourists annually, according to figures from the Municipality of Santiago.

Yesterday, the Official Association of Architects of Madrid and the COAM Architecture Foundation presented the "Arquitectura de Madrid" mobile app, developed with the support of the Madrid City Council and the Foro de Empresas por Madrid.

This is arguably one of the most important and ambitious initiatives undertaken by COAM in recent years in a clear effort to connect architecture with society. In today's fully digitalized context, this app serves as a useful and powerful tool to promote Madrid's architecture, easily accessible to any citizen, student, professional, or visitor to the Spanish capital.

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Conéntrico is an International Architecture and Design Festival that proposes to reflect on the city of Logroño (Spain) through the revitalization of undervalued public spaces. Its latest edition, Conéntrico 04, takes place between April 27 and May 1, 2018, in the Historic Center of Logroño. The festival invites visitors to explore the city through installations, exhibitions, meetings, activities, and performances that connect venues, plazas, streets, courtyards, and hidden spaces that usually go unnoticed in daily life. Jairo Rodríguez integrates the greatest number of senses in a sauna in the middle of the courtyard of the Municipal Pilgrims' Hostel.

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The 2nd Placemaking Latinoamérica Summit—organized by Lugares Públicos A.C.—took place in Mexico City during the first and second weeks of November. It featured various activities, including the rehabilitation of eight public spaces led by Mexican and Latin American participatory urban planning specialists in the boroughs of Cuauhtémoc, Iztacalco, and Miguel Hidalgo.

These interventions were carried out as part of a broader effort to reflect and act on the Placemaking methodology at a Latin American scale, fostering collaboration between organizations from different countries to improve public space. This process is detailed in the "White Paper on Latin American Placemaking: Tactical Urbanism and Innovation in Public Space Program," presented this week by the Alliance for Urban Regeneration (ARU) and Lugares Públicos.

In the presence of officials from the Ministry of Culture, Dra. Lidia Camacho, general director of the National Institute of Fine Arts, Mtra. Irene Muñoz Trujillo, director of the Mixed Fund for Tourism Promotion of Mexico City, and Maria Laura Medina de Salinas, honorary president of the Design Week México board, the general director of Design Week México and World Design Capital CDMX 2018, Emilio Cabrero, announced the details of the activity program for World Design Capital CDMX 2018.

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Through the Center for Sustainable Development Research (CIDS), Infonavit launched an open call for architecture and engineering firms to design the "Materials, Energy, and Water Laboratories" Building. Aiming to research and experiment with new materials, industrialized components, and spatial characteristics that foster the development of social housing, the building will be part of the complex named "Infonavit Housing Practical Research and Experimentation Laboratory" in "San Miguel del Arco," Apan, Hidalgo.

The brief required the proposal to be designed as a program container. Specifically, the design for this Ideas Competition had to house three major research spaces (materials, energy, and water) tailored to the specific testing and research needs of each laboratory, which will be developed in detail during the executive project phase with the winning firm. A key requirement for these spaces was spatial flexibility and versatility in both plan and section.

Exactly five months ago, residents of São Paulo witnessed the tragic collapse of the Wilton Paes de Almeida Building. Following a massive fire, the structure of the iconic 24-story modern building came down, leaving dozens dead and injured, and hundreds homeless. Located at the intersection of Rio Branco Avenue and Largo Paissandu, the collapse also affected three other adjacent buildings, including the headquarters of the Lutheran Church of São Paulo.

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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.

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.

Launched on October 16, 2018, by the Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Tocantins (CAU/TO), the National Public Architecture Competition No. 001/2018 aimed to select the best Preliminary Architectural Study proposal for its new headquarters. The building will be constructed in block ACNO 11(103N), Conjunto 02, on Pedestrian Street NO-09, Lot 37, in Palmas, Tocantins.

The Municipal Government of São Bernardo do Campo has opened applications for a public selection process with ten vacancies for architects and urban planners. Organized by the Fundação VUNESP, the exam requires candidates to hold a degree in architecture and urban planning and an active professional registration with CAU/SP.

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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.