Articles

On July 2, Brazil celebrated Hospital Day. The date commemorates the founding of the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Santos Hospital, in the state of São Paulo, in 1945—considered one of the largest in the country—and today serves as a way to honor healthcare professionals, from doctors and nurses to social workers, technicians, and administrative staff. 

Naturally, in the current context, this date takes on an even deeper layer of meaning, becoming also an opportunity to celebrate the immeasurable efforts of healthcare professionals who fight daily to ensure the survival of hundreds of thousands of people infected by the coronavirus. To mark the occasion beyond national borders, we have gathered ten Latin American hospital projects here. 

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Squares are open spaces within the urban fabric, defined by buildings or streets, that facilitate a variety of gatherings and social and cultural activities. Whether intentionally planned or remnants of the urban layout, squares are fundamental to the life and culture of the community, and they proved even more vital following the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we present nine small-scale squares that demonstrate the diverse uses and functions these spaces can assume in contemporary cities.

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Economic crises, health emergencies, and natural disasters, followed by social conflicts, political instability, and the search for new places to live, have historically driven the displacement of hundreds of millions of people. Consequently, entire populations have had to adapt to changes in residence, habitat, and culture.

Under construction since 2014 and scheduled for completion in 2022, the TransBrasil BRT has the potential to become one of the highest-capacity BRT corridors in the world. The corridor could redefine the land use and occupation of Avenida Brasil, one of Rio de Janeiro's main thoroughfares, which last year led the ranking of traffic collisions involving casualties. The avenue cuts through and divides several predominantly low-income neighborhoods, segregating them and hindering access between both sides of the roadway. Completing the TransBrasil corridor is an opportunity for the urban restructuring of these neighborhoods and the improvement of public spaces for residents, workers, and visitors in the region.

Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean architects Matías González Ulloa and Sofía Carrión Bobadilla, creators of Área Verde and leaders of ⁠Arquitectura Maulina⁠, a digital platform focused on the architecture, territory, and reflections of Chile's inspiring Maule region.

Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean architect Germán Valenzuela about the book ⁠Del territorio al detalle⁠ (Bifurcaciones), a selection of the most interesting contemporary architects in Latin America, from Al Borde to Rozana Montiel, including Mauricio Rocha, Inés Moisset, and Solano Benítez.

Houses are the most intimate structures we as architects can design. It is no coincidence that intimacy, security, and privacy are recurring concepts in residential architecture. Yet, like all architecture, houses are inevitably embedded in a context—an environment with which they must engage. There are many ways to achieve this, particularly within highly dense urban fabrics, as is the case in many Brazilian cities.

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What happened at the conventual Church of Saint Francis of Assis in Salvador is yet another sad chapter in a process afflicting Brazilian cultural heritage, which has intensified in recent years with the fires at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the Cinemateca, and the Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo. Consequently, over the last few days, there has been intense debate regarding who is to "blame" for what occurred in Salvador, or who bore the "responsibility" to prevent this disaster, which also claimed the life of a young tourist: whether the church administrators, IPHAN (the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage), or local cultural and heritage agencies. This is a difficult and indeed important issue to discuss, demanding careful investigation into the causes of the incident. Yet the debate must be broader, aimed above all at considering how we can prevent such events from happening: greater investment, greater appreciation of artistic and architectural heritage, stricter and more effective safety protocols, preventive conservation, and heritage education. In the days following the incident in Salvador, numerous colonial-period buildings were closed across the country under the claim that they, too, might collapse. Our heritage demands attention—in many cases, urgently.

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"There is coconut candy and peteca
Let the child play
Today is a day of celebration
The ibejada comes to bless."
— Song for the erês

Streets come alive when they belong to the erês and die when they belong to cars. I dream of a project that I intend to put into practice when time allows: writing a manual of the fabulous rules of hopscotch, carniça, button football, preguinho, capture the flag, ring-around-the-rosy, lenço-atrás, slope soccer, dodgeball, and the variations of marbles. The title is already set: "The Loving Ecology of Street Games."

“Waking up early, waking the kids, making and serving breakfast, showering, bathing them, heading to the bus stop. The bag drops, the child throws a tantrum, the bus is late. Arms, backpack, child... you lose track of the order. First task of the day: the first bus and the kids arrive at school; then, rushing to another stop and another wait until the second bus arrives. Boarding, standing, dodging fatigue and harassment on the way to work. At lunchtime, a quick run to the pharmacy, and maybe the nearby open-air market. Or is today the day to stop by the butcher? Heading home from work: bags, purse, and exhaustion. A stop along the way to pick up the kids, and an inconvenient reminder of what's missing at home drives a detour to the grocery store before finally arriving back home as the day ends—though not before making dinner. Phew!”

This excerpt recounts a fictional day. However, this routine is the daily reality in many households, especially low-income ones, in peripheral areas, and in single-parent homes headed by women, where the drama of constant back-and-forth travel can be intensified by intersectional factors such as gender, race, social class, generation, territory, physical ability, and sexual orientation.

The administration of the Pontifical Catholic University of Goiás intends to dissolve the Professor Edgar Albuquerque Graeff School of Arts and Architecture. 

The justification for this unexpected move is institutional cost-cutting. This argument might even be acceptable; managing or reducing expenses is standard practice, and not only for philanthropic universities. What is neither clear nor reasonable, however, is why reducing ordinary operating costs requires dissolving one of its oldest and most recognized divisions. This is a School that has stood out exceptionally on the national stage, with a history that must be recalled here to fully grasp the tragic nature of this unfolding decision—one made without dialogue with the professors, artists, and architects currently there, and without considering the identity and memory of the thousands of architects, artists, and designers who have passed through its doors over the last 70 years.

Cities that are good for children are good for everyone. They are more humane cities, building stronger and more sustainable communities. Therefore, urban mobility and early childhood are deeply interconnected. They are intrinsic, inherent to one another. Children and their caregivers—whether parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, or nannies—experience the city more deeply than many adults caught in a daily home-to-work routine. And they need the city to grow well, both physically and socially. Cities must foster this necessary, holistic development. Without active participation in urban life, this development cannot occur as it should, resulting in the confinement of childhood—an outcome that benefits neither people nor cities.

Nothing represents this change better than the habitat humanity has created for itself. The generation before Toffler knew an eminently rural world, of humans bound to the land, born and dying within their communities. The generation yet to be born will inherit an already urbanized, hyper-connected world, characterized by extreme mobility between cities and countries. We, who live today, have both the privilege and the responsibility of watching this urban phenomenon reshape the face of the planet.

Half a century ago, when Future Shock was published, just over a third of the world's population lived in cities. Today that figure stands at 55%, a share projected to rise to 70% by 2050. Nearly 90% of this growth will occur in Africa and Asia. The number of people living in informal settlements has already reached one billion worldwide, and the UN estimates that, by 2030, about three billion people will need adequate housing.

In July of this year, UNESCO designated the Roberto Burle Marx Site as a World Heritage site. As a result, Brazil now has 23 sites and practices inscribed on the World Heritage List, which brings together properties, ensembles, and practices of tangible and intangible value.

According to UNESCO, the 23 listed properties and practices in Brazil can be divided into Cultural Heritage—"composed of monuments, groups of buildings, or sites that have outstanding universal historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnological, or anthropological value"—and Natural Heritage—"outstanding physical, biological, and geological formations, habitats of threatened animal and plant species, and areas of outstanding scientific, conservation, or aesthetic value." 

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Designers and architects are looking to the future, challenged to think about how to create safe, functional, and comfortable environments. From more open floor plans to materials that help mitigate the spread of disease, professionals are looking ahead, considering what gives us room to breathe and live together. 

Environment and Health

The 9th edition of the ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year Award has arrived, and once again, we need your help to select the best architecture projects of the year. By voting, you become part of an unbiased network of jurors recognizing the most relevant projects published over 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 2024, selecting the best built works in the Lusophone world.

Non-Visual City: An Audio Guide to Downtown São Paulo is an auditory and acoustic project essay exploring urban relationships and their events. Centered on how visually impaired people perceive the city, the proposal seeks to challenge and engage with their urban experiences to enhance their right to the city, autonomy, and citizenship. The spatial focus of this case study is the area where the open streets project for pedestrians was implemented in São Paulo's Centro Novo (República district). 

Videos

Transforming cities built for cars into environments that prioritize the well-being and mobility of all people can make urban centers more resilient and inclusive. Changing ideas and practices so deeply ingrained in city planning is no trivial task. However, a new report by WRI Brasil, "Complete Streets in Brazil – Promoting a Paradigm Shift", shows that the seeds of change have been sown and are already bearing fruit.

The publication documents the results of four years of work by the National Network for Low-Carbon Mobility, an initiative by WRI Brasil and the National Mayors Front (FNP) that brought together 21 Brazilian cities committed to shifting the paradigm of street and city design.

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