Articles

Almost two years ago, South America was hit by a public health crisis that affected hundreds of thousands of women. In Brazil, more than 2,600 children were born with microcephaly—a congenital condition in which the skull is smaller than normal—and other complications resulting from the Zika virus infection. Brazilians quickly became accustomed to the unfamiliar name of the disease, which rapidly spread through the northeastern region of the country and crossed borders into Colombia and Venezuela. However, as the disease became an international concern, it also became clear that it was a much greater problem for some groups than for others.

A few days ago, the “la Caixa” Banking Foundation presented the design for CaixaForum Valencia, a project led by Enric Ruiz-Geli and his studio Cloud 9. The foundation's ninth cultural venue in Spain will be located inside the Ágora in the City of Arts and Sciences, designed by Santiago Calatrava.

CaixaForum Valencia will have an area of 6,500 square meters, housing two exhibition halls, a 300-seat auditorium, two multipurpose classrooms, a bar-restaurant, a bookstore, and a family and educational space called CaixaForum Familia, as well as reception areas, offices, storage, and technical zones.

On this occasion, we present the proposal by MIAS Architects, a firm led by Josep Miàs and one of the nine offices invited by the foundation to participate in the competition. “The new CaixaForum [must] actively engage with the Ágora building, establishing a relationship that is not only volumetric but also perceptual,” the architects explain.

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Most architects tend to begin explaining their projects by pointing to the entrance. "You enter here," they usually say. As if nothing had happened or existed before entering. As if the user's life, or that of the building itself, began at that very threshold which many assume separates the exterior from the interior. A strange conception of time.

Enric Miralles made an interesting observation regarding this: it is not about entering, but about accessing—something that will also be marginalized later. We must assume that in architecture, accessing means "to enter a place or pass into it," as the dictionary explains. Yet we also find other, more compelling interpretations, such as "to gain access to a superior situation, condition, or degree; to attain it," which imbue the act of accessing with meaning and time.

Organized by INTBAU and the Rafael Manzano Prize for New Traditional Architecture, the most recent edition of the Summer School of Traditional Architecture focused its work on the Baztan Valley (Navarre, Spain). The program studied traditional construction, architecture, and urban planning to produce a manual for conservation and new traditional construction in the area. In addition, hand drawing and building surveys were the primary activities carried out by the participating students.

Although the scope of work extended to the entire Baztan Valley, the bulk of the study was carried out in Amaiur, the town that hosted the group during those two weeks. Articulated around the branch of the Camino de Santiago that passes through it, the town's urban layout is structured almost as a linear development. Along this axis, the richness, diversity, and versatility of its architectural tradition unfold, presenting a showcase of solutions from different eras that have adapted to multiple trends and functions without ever losing their essence. Accordingly, the study examined the architecture of the town center in its entirety, from fine details to the broader urban structure.

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Documenting the urban landscape is a task photographers have undertaken almost since the birth of photography in the second half of the nineteenth century. Inexhaustible, the city continues to serve as raw material for photography, which, in turn, offers an image of the city that is simultaneously identical to and distinct from what is felt when experiencing the urban space.

Mauro Restiffe is perhaps one of the photographers who most deeply experiences the city and its residual spaces—an aspect that becomes immediately apparent upon viewing the selection of photographs chosen for the exhibition São Paulo, Out of Reach, on display at the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, curated by Thyago Nogueira. Bringing together photos that record moments of urban transformation and decay in places such as Cracolândia, Bom Retiro, Luz, Itaquera, and Ipiranga, among other neighborhoods, Restiffe composes a fragmented image of São Paulo between 2012 and 2014. Yet—partly due to his technique and, above all, his gaze—it also represents other eras of this metropolis.

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In 1988, upon the death of Luis Barragán, a process began to manage the assets he bequeathed to a group of architects based in Guadalajara, Jalisco. This led to the creation of the Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán, established to safeguard a portion of his real estate, his library, and certain personal belongings. Consequently, the foundation secured the necessary funding to acquire the Luis Barragán House and Studio, preserving it as the house-museum it is today.

We spoke with architect Salvador Macías, co-founder of Estudio Macías Peredo, who now directs this venue, which aims to provide a public space for reflection and the dissemination of architecture.

The lessons that can be drawn from visiting or studying a work of architecture are both many and varied. Whether we focus on programming, construction details, material solutions, relationship to context, siting, or any other aspect, these considerations yield clear concepts that can later be applied to our own projects.

With this in mind, and recognizing that there are multiple ways to approach an architectural problem, we have compiled a list of design strategies that define specific spatial qualities in classics of Chilean residential architecture, grouping together some of the most remarkable design moves from each case.

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For optimal and wider propagation of TV and radio frequencies, antennas must be positioned in strategic and, above all, elevated locations. When the local topography is unfavorable, the construction of broadcasting towers and masts becomes essential. Yet, beyond serving a crucial function, these structures stand as visual landmarks, offering an extraordinary opportunity to transform urban infrastructure into pieces of unique aesthetic value. Renowned architects and their teams have designed radio and television towers that marry rigorous structural engineering with the plastic inventiveness of their chosen design solutions. We have selected a brief collection of television and radio transmission towers. See them below:

Walking through São Paulo without seeing cars and trucks brings me an almost surreal happiness, imagining for a moment that the city actually worked, that Jane Jacobs's dream has come true. Simultaneously, another aesthetic sentiment inevitably emerges—a feeling of the "end of the world." This second impulse materializes as a constructive thought that has nothing to do with moral fatalism, let alone tragedy. It is simply the end of a world that the Industrial Revolution, alongside liberal capitalism, has "schooled" us to accept for two centuries. This was the world of infinite natural "resources," of the dream of endless energy abundance, and of voracious consumption desires. Dreams that were not even ours.

Revit templates are the starting point for working in Revit, as they contain the basic elements and settings required to work on any project type. Consequently, each architecture firm creates different templates for its various projects.

Whether you are just starting to work in Revit or looking to supplement your existing templates, we present two templates containing everything you need to successfully begin in the BIM world, available in 2017 and 2018 versions.

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Some urban changes go deeper than the surface. These are transformative projects with the power to generate an impact far greater than aesthetic or infrastructural updates. They are initiatives that positively influence the economy, the environment, and the host community—in unexpected or even unprecedented ways.

América Economía magazine has published its most recent ranking of Chilean universities, just a few months ahead of the upcoming 2019 higher education admission process. In addition to the general evaluation—in which the Universidad de Chile remains in first place for the fourth consecutive year—the publication features the specific ranking of the 16 "most in-demand or highly regarded and prestigious" programs in Chile, including Architecture.

With our commitment to providing the most comprehensive information for university applicants, in this article we share the ranking of the best universities to study Architecture in Chile. This list includes technical data on average admission scores, faculty specialization levels, annual tuition costs and variations, and first-year post-graduation employability rates, among other key metrics.

The city of Lima and the Rímac River seem to be at odds, despite the river crossing (and nourishing) the city from east to west. This is why we highlight the word “friendship” as an added value for addressing this issue: a way of understanding this relationship with the solidity and integration it deserves. This is the premise of the project presented here, which we have retrieved from our archives to bring to light. As summer begins and the El Niño phenomenon approaches, bringing inevitable rising water levels to the Rímac, it is impossible not to recall the mudslides (huaycos) that caused disaster a year ago. Little to nothing has been done to address this disconnect between the city and the river; thus, let us take a fresh look. 

After analyzing 94 projects by undergraduate students from 20 architecture schools across 8 regions in Chile, the jury of the 2018 Arquitectura Caliente Competition has announced the winning projects of its latest edition.

These projects span the entire country and encompass diverse typologies, ranging from urban planning to student housing, as well as landscape designs and structural emergency initiatives.

Below, we present the award-winning third-year projects:

The team led by architect and University of Chile academic Claudia Torres has documented a series of industrial ruins in rural areas throughout Chile for the project “From Noise to Silence: Valuing Industrial Ruins in Rural Areas,” a research initiative funded by Fondart 2017.

On this occasion, the project team —Claudia Torres, Sandro Maino, Ricardo Labra, Valentina Soto, and Laura Gallardo— share the story of the mechanized pier of Caldera, a symbol of the iron ore mining boom in Chile.

In the 1950s, small- and medium-scale copper mining went through a period of depression, giving rise to iron mining, which grew exponentially in the Atacama and Coquimbo regions. Many of the copper and saltpeter miners left unemployed by the crisis were absorbed by the flourishing iron mining industry.

The Architectural League of New York is an independent architecture forum that aims to "stimulate thinking and debate about the critical design and architectural issues of our time." Each year, through the 'Emerging Voices' competition, they recognize the work of various North American architectural practices with the potential to positively influence how architecture is conceptualized and built across the continent.

This year, they highlight the work of three Mexican firms: Comunal Taller de Arquitectura, Fernanda Canales, and Luis Aldrete. Learn more about their work below:

Porcelain tile is a ceramic material composed of clay and other rock minerals, characterized by negligible water absorption. In other words, a ceramic material can be classified as porcelain tile if its water absorption rate is below 0.5%. Manufactured from a finely atomized mixture of clays, feldspars, feldspathic sands, and sometimes kaolin, phyllites, and coloring additives, porcelain tile can be installed on interior and exterior surfaces, including floors, walls, facades, and, in some cases, ceilings.

Its high resistance to wear and breakage, minimal maintenance, and vast diversity of finishes, colors, and formats make it an excellent material for use throughout almost an entire architectural project, from furniture to exterior cladding. Below, find everything you need to know to incorporate porcelain tile into your designs, based on the comprehensive information shared by CHC.

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The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photographic essays, has been documented in various books, magazines, and photobooks of the era, as well as in images from the city's public and private archives. These photographs reveal a deliberate, and even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers, bringing new buildings and urban spaces into relation with the existing cityscape.

When analyzing the impact of street photography, it is essential to discuss Leo Matiz, Armando Matiz and Hernán Díaz. These three photographers captured the people, events, and daily urban life of Bogotá. From their extensive bodies of work, we have selected shots of streets, plazas, intersections, and representative buildings—both iconic and anonymous spaces that, through photography, anchor modern heritage in the collective memory, with architecture and urban spaces taking center stage.

In this edition of Bogotá in the Eyes of 10 Photographers we explore the legacy of Armando Matiz:

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