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Pioneering experiment in affordable housing in the downtown area: Japurá Building

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The Armando de Arruda Pereira Housing Complex, known as the Japurá Building, submitted to the IAPI in 1945 by architect Eduardo Kneese de Mello, stands out as a pioneering experiment in affordable housing in the central area and represents one of the earliest applications of the Corbusian unité d’habitation concept in the country.

Brincreto, the initiative that transformed a vacant lot in Paraisópolis into a play space

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In 2018, anyone who passed by an empty lot in the heart of Paraisópolis—São Paulo's second-largest community—on Mondays and Thursdays encountered children with dirt-dusted knees, playing with objects like tires, paper boats, and twigs in endless games. This was the Brincreto project, an initiative by the Coletivo LUB – Laboratório de Urbano de Brincadeiras.

CANOBARDIN designs a public umbrella in the center of Bilbao

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Located in the historic neighborhood of San Ignacio in the city of Bilbao, Spain, Levante Square is a prominent gathering point for residents and visitors alike. To address the lack of covered spaces protecting from the heavy rain, Spanish architecture office CANOBARDIN has designed a solution for users: a concentric structure titled "A Piece of Sky in Levante Square" that allows people to inhabit the public space and find shelter without losing touch with their surroundings, acting as a piece of the sky by day and a reflection of the square by night.

Obra Blanca EXPO: The meeting of construction ideas celebrates its first edition

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Designed to meet the construction sector's growing demand for finishes, Obra Blanca is a new event launched as a meeting point for professionals looking to showcase their products and those seeking to compare various finishing options. As a specialized exhibition, it focuses on the visitor experience and the professionalization of an increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated industry.

Metal Facades in Buenos Aires: How to Provide Privacy and Openness at the Same Time?

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Siting a building in a city is no easy task. The quest for isolation and privacy within a complex, heterogeneous, and constantly changing urban space creates a dual condition during the design process. How can an urban building offer privacy and openness at the same time? Consequently, there arises a need for various control mechanisms to mediate between exterior and interior spaces, filtering sound, screening views, managing intimacy, and ensuring anonymity without losing the connection to the city.

University teams from Construye Solar 2019 showcase their innovations

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Construye Solar 2019 will exhibit eight sustainable social housing units in Santiago, designed and built by universities from across Chile. The initiative, according to the organizers, aims to "spark innovation in social housing construction, addressing the inherent challenges of pursuing sustainable innovation on a limited budget."

URLO Studio, winner of the master plan ideas competition for Quito's southern railway axis

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Ecuadorian firm URLO Studio has been selected as the winner of the ideas competition for the southern articulating axis of Quito, a contest aimed at urban renewal in the Ecuadorian capital through the development of micro-centralities along the 13-kilometer tourist route.

Transversal / Architecture Landscape Urbanism Creates 'Urban Agriculture Laboratory' in Chihuahua, Mexico

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The Urban Agriculture Laboratory is designed by Transversal / Arquitectura Paisaje Urbanismo, located at the Semilla Museum in Chihuahua, Mexico. This project is the result of a civic initiative that combines landscape, architectural, and exhibition design elements centered around urban agriculture, permaculture, and the observation of natural phenomena. In doing so, it redefines the traditional "white box" exhibition space, transforming it into a hands-on pedagogical space, civic gathering point, and laboratory.

How to Build on the Built? Examples of Preexisting Buildings in Buenos Aires

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The new and growing demands for change driven by urban population growth mean that, when designing, we face a highly heterogeneous and constantly transforming fabric.
Increased urban density directly impacts the open space available for new, standalone construction, leading to a juxtaposition of buildings where the simultaneity and coexistence of individual pursuits result in a varied fabric.

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The Best Universities to Study Architecture in Latin America and Spain in 2019

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Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) presented the 2019 edition of its annual ranking of the world's best universities in the field of architecture, in which UCL (University College London) dethroned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, which had led the list for four consecutive years.

Within the Ibero-American region, the list has not changed significantly compared to 2018: Spain maintains a strong presence, while Chile leads Latin America. Discover the top-ranked institutions below!

Who has won the Ibero-American Prize for Architecture and Urbanism?

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In each edition of the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BIAU), the event honors masters of Ibero-American architecture with the Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Prize.

The Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Prize recognizes work "directly related to architecture and/or urbanism, highlighting its aesthetic, functional, technical, social, economic, and environmental aspects. This may include built work, planning, heritage conservation and restoration, knowledge production, or social commitment," as outlined in the competition guidelines.

Iku Hábitat, a modular home in Colombia assembled with screws

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Presented at the recent edition of the Feria del Diseño 2019 in Medellín, Iku Hábitat is a modular architectural construction system developed in Colombia that aims to streamline construction processes using designed and prefabricated components assembled with screws.

Strategies for the sustainable and safe building certification of the city of Cuenca, Ecuador

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The following analysis was developed within the research project “Sustainable and Safe Building Certification,” funded by the Research Directorate of the University of Cuenca and led by Dr. Felipe Quesada Molina. This research addresses the sustainability assessment of residential buildings in the city of Cuenca.

Eco(im)mobilism: Urban Mobility and Cultural Immobilism

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André Gorz wrote in 1974: «Ecology is like universal suffrage and the Sunday day of rest: at first, all the bourgeois and all the proponents of order tell you that you want their ruin, and the triumph of anarchy and obscurantism. Then, when circumstances and popular pressure become irresistible, they grant you what they denied you yesterday and, fundamentally, nothing changes».

Discover the 3 projects built by 200 students and architects at the XVI TSL Costa Rica

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Following ten days of analysis, design, community engagement, and construction, more than 200 students and architects from across Latin America inaugurated three public amenities in late April, marking the 16th edition of the Latin American Social Workshop (TSL Costa Rica 2019) in the city of Santa Cruz.

Urban Development Plan for the Northwestern Area of the City of Mar del Plata

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The recent book 'Plan de desarrollo urbano de la zona noroeste de la ciudad de Mar del Plata' by Guillermo Tella, Beatriz Cuenya, Martín Delucchi, and Laura Corbalán Vieiro synthesizes the results achieved through the technical assistance and institutional coordination experience carried out during 2017-2018 for the Municipality of General Pueyrredón (province of Buenos Aires, Argentina) by the Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CEUR-CONICET) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

These 6 megaprojects are transforming mobility in our cities

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Today, discussing infrastructure means discussing geopolitics and connectivity as a key driver of global competitiveness. Connectivity, however, should not be understood solely as physical infrastructure, even if we are talking about roads for autonomous vehicles or hyperloop tunnels.

The Service Stations That Forged Modern Argentine Architecture

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It seems almost impossible to imagine that a single public initiative could have spawned most of the national highways we have today in Argentina, established tourism as an economic driver for the country, consolidated the national oil company YPF against foreign competition, and driven a large part of the development of Argentine modern architecture.

Yet it is entirely plausible when we look at one of the largest territorial interventions in the country's history—a vanguard of modernity that established the automobile as a mass means of transportation in our region.