Articles

It is rare to find architects who engage with such a wide range of both the theoretical and practical dimensions of the profession. This is the case of Rubén Moreira [1], who approaches architectural design, research, criticism, architectural history, and teaching with equal and outstanding competence [2].

Rubén Moreira not only began his professional practice during a highly fertile period of Ecuadorian architecture, but also witnessed its key quests and transformations [3]. He was part of a generation of architects that reflected deeply on architectural processes, methods, and products [4]. His intellectual curiosity is clearly reflected in his postgraduate studies in Italy under two leading figures of architectural theory: Bruno Zevi and Manfredo Tafuri [5]. He taught design studio and history while pursuing research in architectural history. He also championed the creation of the MAE [6], as well as the Exhibition and Critical Guide of the "Architecture of Quito 1915-1985," which analyzes the context, authors, and landmark projects of each decade.

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The practice of Chilean architects Abraham Schapira and Raquel Eskenazi is notable, among many other aspects, for its use of the balcony as a defining element in facade composition. Their work, located primarily in the municipalities of Providencia and Las Condes in Santiago, and in Viña del Mar, offers a rich diversity of typologies, uses, and layouts through formal treatment, engaging with Chile's modern urban proposals.

Designed by Andrea Fuentes Núñez, the project Mixed-Use Housing was chosen as one of the 10 winners in the Thesis Projects category of the 2018 Concurso Arquitectura Caliente (CAC 2018), a Chilean competition organized by Grupo Arquitectura Caliente and funded by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage.

Today, there is a pressing need for housing to move beyond domestic specificity. National and global economic shifts have driven individuals to seek new means of livelihood, meeting their needs by clinging to what they own and utilizing their only available land—their own property. By blending work and domestic life, the question arises: to what extent does housing yield to accommodate productivity?

Biomimicry in architecture does not prescribe form, nor does it strive for literal resemblance. Rather, the goal is to develop architectural solutions that execute strategies observed in nature. It is not about form for form's sake, nor is it about copying shapes; instead, it seeks a deeper reasoning behind those forms. Indeed, it goes far beyond merely drawing inspiration from shapes. It examines context, systems, and interrelations, and the true beauty of biomimicry lies in these connections. Architectural creation remains free, as it is guided by a design principle—the strategy of how nature achieves the performance a project requires for a specific demand. It is a process of co-creation between biology and architecture, making it truly transdisciplinary.

Books help us grow, tell us things we would never otherwise think of, show us places we would never visit, and teach us. Yet, someone can live their entire life in a city without ever truly seeing or understanding it. That is where books come in. In this post, we have selected 26 titles by Brazilian and international authors—works with diverse aims, but all centering on two main themes: cities and urban mobility. Through books, we can describe every street, building, or public space, reflecting on what life is like in the urban environment, how we move, and how it is all planned (or unplanned).

'We Are an Event' is a fictional persona born from the collaboration of Quentin Laurens-Berge and Lambert Moiroux, both of French nationality. The true moral and visual identity of this project was created to address questions about the city where it is based. This character serves as a sphere of exchange and a tool for creating distance from the work produced. Quentin and Lambert's work questions the modes of architectural production within the discipline, describing their projects as an oscillation between porno-chic and class struggle, as the aesthetics of their representation allow for a deeper exploration of themes like the Saint-Étienne International Design Biennale.

Currently, 'We Are an Event' is based in the tentacular—as they choose to call it—Mexico City, where they continue their practice with a social, moral, and cultural focus that addresses urban and spatial needs. Faced with a new territory, their goal is to deepen the practice of a different architectural discipline: real-time architectural performance.

Led by Cazú Zegers and GrupoTalca, AndesWorkshop 2017 took place last May and June in Patachoique, Lonquimay (Chile), in collaboration with the Arenales Mapuche community. The project aims to design the Mirador de la Corona alongside students and local communities, a structure that has already had a significant impact on Pehuenche communities, serving as a catalyst for the macro-project Ruta Pehuenche.

2018 has been a special year for ArchDaily in Colombia: not only did we celebrate the first three years of our local site in Bogotá alongside prominent architects, and are now poised to set a new annual traffic record, but we also launched ArchDaily Colombia's Instagram account—which, thanks to you, has already reached 10,000 followers in just six months.

To wrap up this great year, we have selected the most popular projects—measured by total engagement, excluding reposts—on @archdailyco:

Fundación Arquia has published a new issue of its digital magazine Arquetipos, featuring an interview with sculptor and artist David Bestué, conducted by architect Moisés Puente with photography by José Hevia. The issue also includes articles on Olympic urban planning, the relationship between architecture and sculpture in the work of Chillida, Enric Miralles, Sert, Kiesler, and much more.

In the interview, titled "Language as Object," David Bestué (Barcelona, 1980) discusses how he approaches architectural space in his work, the influence of artists such as Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Juan Muñoz, and his interest in the formal qualities of work by architects Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós (the "local modern").

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For this feature, the Fundación Arquia Blog, alongside architect Sabrina Gaudino Di Meo, brings us a conversation with architect Nerea Calvillo on how the project "In the Air" came to be. This multidisciplinary work, bridging data and ecology, visualizes urban air components to understand the behavior of microscopic agents and the implications of their concentrations for navigating the city.

It is not common to speak extensively about these ideas in architecture, even if we have fallen back on them more than once. Diagnosis, happiness, rehabilitation, void, sadness, fear, health, patient, save... words repeated over and over, integrating ever more coherently as you read, transforming into a discourse that convinces us of these architectural utopias. It is not about who is behind this proposal, but rather about what they achieve for architecture and society through this multidisciplinary union forged from different approaches—be it philosophy, sculpture, or illustration—all of them medicine for the soul. Ultimately, they are a critique wrapped in the high spirits of the 1950s.

Dialogues of space and time converge in these projects: that a building can move from one place to another, that its atmosphere can evoke another era. It is a philosophy based on healing cities through detachment and happiness. No building belongs entirely to a territory; no spirit is inherent to an era in itself. Much like their sculptural projects, one is born in New York, another remains in Peru, and another ends up in Brazil. All of this is delivered with the cheerful 1950s aesthetic they seek to bring back and popularize through their contemporary illustrations. Here, we present DAD's philosophy and three projects that put their principles into practice.

Without further ado, they happily share the details with us.

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A Portuguese architect from a traditional aristocratic family, Fernando Távora's education was shaped by a profound discursive shift upon coming into contact with modernism. He often said that he "entered university in love with the Venus de Milo and left in love with Picasso," reflecting his intellectual brilliance in recognizing modernist initiatives as something with which he had to establish a dialogue. In 1945, he wrote for the first time about a "third way" for Portuguese architecture, a contribution that resonated both in his teaching—closely tied to the Porto School—and in his practice, finding direct and striking expression in several of his projects.

With more than 350 Colombian projects now published on ArchDaily, we celebrate this milestone with a curated selection that highlights the value of drawings in conceptualizing, designing, and constructing contemporary Colombian architecture.

While drawing is often associated with a project's earliest conceptual stages, Colombian architects continue to use sketching to explain structure, program, and even construction details in an era otherwise dominated by the efficiency of 3D modeling and rendering.

This selection ranges from single-family homes to public parks, including mixed-use facilities, kindergartens, and university buildings across Colombia.

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In this piece, Daniel Morales Escudero offers a reflection on the Terminal 2 project in Valparaíso, addressing the proposal through the lens of Chile's three legal grounds for abortion.

The team comprising Giovani Valeria, Nitzy Vera, Sofía Vargas, and Stefanía Ruiz (Universidad San Sebastián) has been awarded third place in the XXXII CAP Chile Competition. Designed for Teja Island in Valdivia, the competition jury praised the greenhouse system's "innovative and well-thought-out steel structure, with exterior and interior pathways that highlight the flora. It must, however, pay close attention to the scale of the structural elements in the smaller spaces."

On Wednesday, November 21, the verdict of the competition of the XXI Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito - BAQ 2018 was announced.

Divided into six categories, the various juries selected projects and publications that stand out for making a significant contribution to their respective fields, offering relevant lessons for the discipline.

Below, we present the winners in Category (E) Theory, History, and Criticism of Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape, and Category (F) Specialized Periodical Publications.

If tasked with synthesizing Brazilian architecture into just a few emblematic projects, we would find ourselves facing an exhausting and, in all likelihood, impossible task. The country's continental scale and countless local specificities result in such a vast array of architectural responses that selecting a handful of works to represent a single, assumed national architectural identity becomes reckless—or, at the very least, naive.

In order to shed light on a body of work that is frequently overlooked—knowing that media coverage almost always focuses on the architecture of the Southeast and South regions—we present here a sort of guide, or compilation of architectural projects, from Brazil's North region.

Architecture reveals the realization of a society's cultural processes at a specific moment in history, reflecting in its elements both the modus operandi of an economy and the dominant values governing its organization. The conceptualization of an architectural project sparks an intense, interdisciplinary process of formal development and technical verification for each construction component and its execution procedures. Architecture is tasked with transforming these diverse languages into a gestalt, or a formal reality that articulates and tests vital properties of reality.

Numerous factors introduce distortions into the architectural process in different regions of the globe. The state of architecture depends directly on the quality of professional training, interdisciplinarity, and available resources. A given context's culture and economy determine what architecture can do—and how it can operate.