Architecture News

Today, architecture is a fertile ground for experimentation—a laboratory for testing solutions and building theory. It offers an opportunity to question paradigms, rethink contemporary ways of living, and understand our inherent cultural heterogeneity. Ultimately, it provides a space to enhance the critical value of design and investigate the current place of local practices within a global context.

With a deep understanding of their territory and an exploratory spirit, these emerging firms approach the discipline in innovative ways. Many are defined by an open and evolving character, featuring a multidisciplinary makeup where architecture, urban planning, design, and art seamlessly merge. Below, we present six architecture firms based in Argentina whose work prompts us to reflect on contemporary needs, domesticity, objects, the city, and local production:

To mark World Architecture Day, the architects' collective efimerARQ, alongside the Association of Architects and the School of Architecture of Valladolid, developed a design exercise involving collaboration between students and professionals. The activity, titled “Ephemeral Architecture as a Pedagogical Device,” took place at the Patio Herreriano Museum of Contemporary Art in Valladolid, Spain, aiming to create an open-air classroom that allowed students to study current and past trends through fieldwork, viewing the discipline as a medium for exploration, research, discussion, and collaboration. The base structure used to build the three installations was a fundamental "auxiliary" construction material: scaffolding.

Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner were selected to curate the United States pavilion for the 17th edition of the Venice Biennale. With a proposal entitled “American Framing”, the architects will try to respond to the general theme of “How will we live together?”.

Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects have broken ground on a modular design for supportive housing in South Los Angeles. Dubbed Isla Intersections, the project is part of a triangular parcel of land next to the freeway being developed as LA’s first shared street. Designed with open public space and 54 homes for some of LA's most vulnerable residents, the project was made to explore the future of housing.

In November of this year, the latest edition of the Minsk International Biennale of Young Architects was held in Belarus. The event featured the Leonardo Awards, which recognize completed projects from around the world across six categories: urban planning, public buildings, multi-family housing, single-family homes, landscaping, and interior design.

Among the award-winning projects, the prestigious "Great Grand Prix Leonardo" was awarded to the Municipal Toy Library of Dólar in Spain, designed by Carquero Arquitectura.

The winners of the Ideas Competition for the “Reserva” Master Plan have been announced. The competition sought proposals for the development of a 167-hectare site commonly known as “Camping de Ingenieros,” located along the Argentine Sea coast in the town of Mar Azul, in the municipality of Villa Gesell, Buenos Aires Province.

Hesselbrand Architects have revealed the design for Acquarossa Spa & Hotel in Switzerland, a 120 room hotel in the Swiss region of Ticino. Designed around well-being and experience-based tourism, the project utilizes a combination of traditional building materials and new construction technology to ground an environmentally sustainable approach in one of the most remote parts of Switzerland.

The Louis Vuitton Maison Seoul, imagined by architects Frank Gehry and Peter Marino has just opened in the South Korean capital. Celebrating Korean heritage and culture, the design puts in place a curved glass facade, perched atop a white cubic mass.

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Rwanda is writing a new global story for itself. Over two decades after the end of the country’s civil war and the 1994 genocide, a series of progressive visions have been the catalyst for transformation throughout Rwanda. These economic and structural reforms have redefined the built environment, and in turn, are shaping contemporary architecture across the country.

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With the current socio-economic conditions, effects of climate change, and the exponential growth of urban centers, the relationship between design and residential spaces has become the centerpiece of architecture today, so much so that The Future of Housing was the theme of this year's SkyCity Challenge.

The School of Architecture, Design, Art, and Urbanism at the University of Morón (UM FADAU, Buenos Aires, Argentina) concludes its academic cycles with an Integrated Final Project (PFI). Through this project, since 2016, architecture students have designed full-scale community projects—designing, managing, building, and donating their work to non-profit organizations and local municipalities. The initiative is part of the Academic Program of Federal Assistance “PAAF!!”, created by the school, which allows students to graduate by building a fully operational building and donating it to a community in need in Argentina.

Ondřej Císler from Aoc architects and Petr Tej from the Klokner Institute at CTU in Prague have designed a bridge over the Dřetovice stream in Vrapice, near the city of Kladno in the Czech Republic.

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The Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA) 2020 has been launched by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe. Announced during the Young Architects’ Forum in Barcelona, the award program encourages exchange between schools and seeks to improve the skills of architects from the beginning of their professional careers. YTAA recognizes the talent of recently graduated architects, urbanists and landscape architects, and provides the opportunity to work with architecture offices and institutions.

The Federal Senate has made a free e-book on the design of sustainable public buildings available on its official website. Written by Mário Hermes Stanziona Viggiano, the book presents a cultural, economic, environmental, and architectural approach to the conception and design of public-use buildings.

Within the framework of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25), the Official Association of Architects of Madrid (COAM) will host, from December 2 to 13, the conference “Architecture Facing Climate Change: Time to Act,” as part of the Castellana Verde Axis. The objective of this initiative, which stems from a collaboration between COAM, the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE), and the CSCAE's “Observatorio 2030,” is to raise public awareness about the key role cities play in the fight against climate change and to promote shared strategies within the building sector to help curb global warming.

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The Superior Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) has announced the State of Oaxaca Historical Archive Building by Mendaro Arquitectos as the winner of the 2019 International Spanish Architecture Award, which is presented to encourage and promote the global expansion of Spanish architects and architecture firms, recognizing their architectural and urban quality while consolidating a shared brand.

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Modern Moroccan architecture is reinterpreting vernacular traditions. Taking its name from the Arabic al-maġhrib, or the “place the sun sets; the west”, the kingdom is a sovereign state home to numerous examples of Islamic design, as well as detailed art and ornamentation found within geometric patterns, friezes and open courtyards.

Música para volar is the winning project of the “Micro Urban Architecture – Caminito” experience, a joint exercise conducted by the School of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design at the National University of Córdoba, Buenos Aires (Cátedra Equipamiento A, FAUD UNC) and the Politecnico di Milano.