Once seen as a strictly utilitarian service area, the kitchen has increasingly integrated into daily family life, establishing itself as one of the most used spaces in a home. To seamlessly connect it with the rest of the residence, especially in small apartments, open-plan kitchens have become a favorite choice among clients.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, educator Camila Regina and cartographer Henrique Lima have noticed a significant increase in kites in the skies over Rio de Janeiro's peripheral neighborhoods. These colorful paper diamonds and deltoids are guided by the hands of children and adults who cannot leave their homes, but can go up to their rooftops to fly kites.
Inspired by this reclaiming of the skies and their own histories with kites, the two kite flyers founded Pipasgrafias, a multimedia project about the activity. Video, text, and illustrated stories—along with an interactive map—portray what it is like to fly a kite in Rio's various peripheral neighborhoods.
The 27th World Congress of Architects UIA2021RIO will be a hybrid event, featuring virtual sessions starting in March, and in-person activities from July 18 to 22 in Rio de Janeiro, broadcast live online to congress participants worldwide.
The first UIA2021RIO World Architects Week, featuring digital content, will take place from March 22 to 25. During this week, the content will be free to access; afterward, it will only be available to registered Congress participants. The theme chosen to open UIA2021RIO in March is one of the most pressing global concerns today: social vulnerabilities and inequalities.
Considered an intangible cultural heritage by the State Council of Culture (CEC) of Alagoas, the sururu is a mollusk whose harvesting is the main source of income for several communities in the state. Around the Mundaú lagoon alone, in Maceió, five communities living below the poverty line produce approximately 300 tons of sururu shells annually—a massive amount of waste that previously had no use and ended up in the Alagoas capital's landfills.
Recognizing its significant economic and social engagement potential, designers Marcelo Rosenbaum, Adriana Benguela, and Rodrigo Ambrósio developed the Cobogó da Mundaú project, which incorporates sururu harvesting waste into the manufacturing of architectural screen blocks.
Anyone interested in urban policy will likely, at some point, come across the term “compact city.” This expression has become a staple of urban planning. Proposals associated with the concept favor denser development, with commerce and services close to residential areas, encouraging pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit mobility. Some European capitals, such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam, are often pointed to as examples of this model. Its counterpart is the sprawling city, where neighborhoods are predominantly residential, far from downtown, and require long commutes from home to work.
The winners of the 3rd Tomie Ohtake Institute Leroy Merlin Design Award have been announced. The award ceremony, which was originally scheduled to take place in person at the Tomie Ohtake Institute alongside the exhibition of the projects, was held virtually for invited guests due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
A total of 15 projects were selected from 213 entries representing 20 Brazilian states and the Federal District.
For the fifth time, we are giving our readers the responsibility of recognizing and awarding the projects that have made the greatest impact on the profession through the ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year 2021 Award. By voting, you become part of an unbiased network of jurors recognizing the most relevant projects of the past year.
Over the next three weeks, the collective intelligence of our readers will filter through hundreds of projects from Portuguese-speaking countries – Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Macau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe – published in 2020, selecting the best built works in the Portuguese-speaking world.
From hundreds of works published in 2020, readers will choose their favorites, with the 15 most-voted projects moving on to the second stage of the Award.
The 2021 Building of the Year Award is presented by Dornbracht, an internationally renowned company for kitchen and bathroom products.
With nearly fifty thousand plant species—over half of which are endemic, meaning they only occur naturally here—Brazilian flora is among the most diverse and richest in the world. This data is featured in the country's largest and most comprehensive virtual botanical library, Flora do Brasil 2020, developed by the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.
With one of the best higher education systems in the world, the Netherlands offers annual scholarships for Brazilians through the Orange Tulip Scholarships program. Applications for the 2021/2022 academic year are now open for undergraduate, postgraduate, or MBA students.
More than 20 Dutch universities participate in the program, offering scholarship options for courses in the fields of Arts, Biological Sciences, Health, Exact Sciences, Technology, and Humanities, including some focused on architecture and urban planning – all taught in English.
The University Council of the São Paulo State University (Unesp) has decided to award the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to Adélia Borges, a curator, journalist, and critic active in the field of design. The initiative for awarding the degree came from the Department of Design at the Faculty of Architecture, Arts and Communication (FAAC) on the Bauru campus. In its justification, the Council stated that the title was awarded “for her work as a critic and curator with a significant contribution to the research, dissemination, and promotion of Brazilian Design on both the national and international stages, demonstrating deep knowledge of the field and a broad socio-political and cultural vision.” The official ceremony will take place on March 8, 2021, International Women's Day, at 2:30 PM, and will be broadcast on the TV Unesp YouTube channel.
"The image provided by Brutalism, an architecture of sensual extremes, is often an extraordinary and unfamiliar experience for the city explorer. There can be something aggressive and a bold vocabulary (...) in the expressive palette that displays the truth of its materials and a disdain for the frivolous." This is how Simon Phipps [1] describes the fascination that Brutalist works still hold for us today. Yet, what does it mean to think about this architecture in 2021?
The septic tank developed by the Municipality of Uberlândia is a compelling alternative for repurposing waste materials while also addressing basic sanitation challenges common in many Brazilian cities.
The Municipal Department of Water and Sewage (DMAE) is the agency responsible for designing the system and manufacturing the sustainable septic tanks distributed in the city. To share this knowledge more widely, however, they created a step-by-step manual so the design can be replicated anywhere.
Closing out the week dedicated to publications focusing on women in architecture, as well as the week marking the posthumous recognition of Lina Bo Bardi with the Special Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale, the Virginia and Vilanova Artigas Institute shared with us a brief and touching letter sent by the Italian-Brazilian architect to Artigas on August 21, 1978.
The 8th edition of the Arquiteturas Film Festival, taking place from June 1 to 6 in Lisbon, explores the theme “Bodies Out of Space” through an exploration of the social construction of space, connected by a thread running through its own narratives of domination. These are also narratives of identity, which is often stripped away or forced to represent our bodies.
Each year, the festival is dedicated to presenting documentaries, fiction, animation, and experimental films relevant to promoting contemporary Portuguese architecture both nationally and internationally. The 2021 edition is no different, structured around three distinct pillars: the official selection, the competition program, and the guest country program.
Gathering innovative, sustainable architectural designs for social housing that enable a reduction in energy consumption is the objective of the National Competition of Architectural Ideas for Energy Efficiency in Social Housing, launched this Monday (15) by the German governmental cooperation agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Applications are open until April 26.
One hundred and twenty civil society organizations (NGOs, institutes, foundations, collectives, and social movements) advocating for the right to the city sent an open letter to the Mayor of São Paulo, Bruno Covas, demanding that the Strategic Master Plan (PDE) review process be conducted by the Municipal Government in a way that guarantees full public participation, respecting the principles of democracy, popular sovereignty, and transparency, even amid the pandemic.
With a foundational career as a professor at FAUUSP, serving for 15 years at the São Paulo Municipal Planning Department and as an urban planning consultant for municipal, state, and federal agencies, Flávio Villaça will be remembered for his professional integrity and as one of Brazil's most prominent urban theorists. His intellectual work shaped generations of architects and urban planners, fostering a critical perspective on Brazilian cities—their development, inequalities, segregation, and potential.
A Danish company named KiteX has developed a wind turbine for those seeking an “off-the-grid” lifestyle. Collapsible and portable, the turbine can be carried in a car to generate power even in remote locations.
Constructed with fiberglass rods, the turbine weighs only 10 kg and is easily transportable. When needed, users simply unpack, assemble, anchor it to the ground (using a set of high-strength nylon tension straps), and begin capturing wind energy. The company estimates that 15 minutes is enough for one person to set up all the components.
