It was a city of untamed rivers: they seasonally burst their banks, shaping fertile, humid floodplains. When the waters receded, the ground became firm enough for a ball to roll and feet to run after it. It was in a São Paulo without rivers buried under sad slabs of concrete that futebol de várzea—floodplain football—emerged.
Tracing the history of várzea football in São Paulo means understanding how the city was built around imposing rivers like the Tietê. In the early 20th century, immigrant populations, Afro-Brazilians, and recently freed Black people occupied these territories, giving rise to neighborhoods like Barra Funda in the city's west zone. Far more than an amateur sport, it became established as a symbol of social organization and the struggle for the right to the city, at a time when space in the capital was beginning to be contested and feel the pressures of gentrification.
'Syllogisms' is an architecture and illustration project that draws its research from archives, publications, and photographs concerning the history of modern construction in Mexico. It presents a graphic narrative on the continuity and transformation of seminal 20th-century works through the synthesis, interpretation, and juxtaposition of their ideals. These pairings confront thought and form with deductive inferences. The sum of their parts foreshadows critical meanings and architectural motifs for future reconstruction.
https://www.archdaily.com/1113889/urban-syllogisms-a-graphic-essay-on-chapultepec-heights-plus-hipodromo-in-mexicoJuan José Kochen + Ximena Rios-Zertuche
Temple of Ashes and Crematorium / Juan Felipe Uribe de Bedout + Mauricio Gaviria + Hector Mejía. Image
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:
In his monumental four-volume book, TheNature of Order, Christopher Alexander talks about an intelligent architecture, responsive to human needs and sensibilities through adaptation to existing buildings and nature. This is a new way of viewing the world—a way of connecting to it, and to ourselves—yet it is very much the same as the most ancient ways of connecting.
https://www.archdaily.com/907139/how-to-judge-a-building-does-it-make-you-feel-more-or-less-aliveNikos A. Salingaros & Kenneth G. Masden II
London architecture today, for all the big-hitters that dominate the headlines (Foster, Rogers, Heatherwick), finds its richness in small studios. Peter Barber leads one such studio, where for the past 30 years he has led the development of some of the city’s most sensitive housing and housing developments.
https://www.archdaily.com/907299/peter-barbers-adventurously-eccentric-london-architectureKatherine Allen
As 2018 draws to a close, it leaves us with a particularly interesting realization. Given its visual nature, Instagram has become a highly important tool for the dissemination of architecture in the digital era.
On our account, we share the various projects published on the site and keep track of the photographs with the most engagement. Do you know which images were our most popular on Instagram in 2018?
Throughout history, markets have provided an important function in the exchange of foods, books, spices, everyday items, and even ideas. From Mexican Tianguis to North African Souks, they played an essential element in the configuration of urban spaces.
Different architects have approached this challenge, where spatial distribution plays a fundamental role in creating adequate logistics and circulation.
We've selected 20 markets and their plan and section to inspire your next project.
Videos
Paulista para Todos Competition - Proposal by Paulo Mendes da Rocha + Nadezhda Rocha. Image via Esquina
Paulo Mendes, Nadezhda Rocha, and three other architecture firms (FGMF, Königsberger Vannucchi Arquitetos Associados, and Nitsche Arquitetos) are competing in the Paulista Para Todos Ideas Festival, an initiative by Esquina.net.br and the law firm Mattos Filho, Veiga Filho, Marrey Jr e Quiroga Advogados, which is based on Paulista Avenue. Each of them has developed a street furniture proposal for Paulista Avenue with full creative freedom. The proposals will be submitted to a three-member jury comprising architects and urban planners Carlos Leite and Sol Camacho, and Renato Schermann Ximenes de Melo, a partner at Mattos Filho. The winner will be announced on December 5th.
On a small strip of land between the Emscher River and the Rhine Herne Canal in Germany sits a rest stop whose colorful appearance belies its radical purpose. The structure’s artful design consists of pipes leading from two toilets and the Emscher (the most polluted river in Germany) that converge at a small community garden and drinking fountain. The garden is, in fact, a manmade wetland that collects, treats, and cleans the effluence from the toilets and river—making it drinkable.
While the founding of Spanish-American cities has always been linked to the availability of water sources, they have not always successfully integrated their urban development with the rivers that run through them. In the case of Córdoba, this is evident in its relationship with the Suquía River, which the city turned its back on during the twentieth century, treating it as an industrial boundary.
Conversely, the partial channelization of the La Cañada stream is perceived almost as an inherent element of the city, becoming a defining feature of the urban landscape both as a structuring, organizing axis and as a major scenic and tourist attraction.
In March 2016, when world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid died of a heart attack at age 65 in a Miami hospital, the news sent shockwaves through the architecture community.
The flamboyant British designer—born on October 31, 1950 in Iraq, educated in Beirut, and known as the “Queen of the Curve” for her swooping, elegantly complex designs—was a legend in her time. She had design commissions around the world, been awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2004 and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ gold medal in 2016, and transcended the old-guard strictures of a staunchly male-dominated profession.
Architectural visualization has been around for centuries, with drawings and paintings depicting finished structures before they were built. In the 1990s, the movement of the industry from paper to CAD saw video added to the mix, with the new ability to produce walk-throughs and fly-throughs from design.
It was only a matter of time before architectural visualization professionals discovered real-time rendering, which can produce finished videos in a fraction of the time of traditional rendering processes. Initially intended for game development, real-time render engines have now reached a level of quality and photorealism that makes them ideal for presenting architectural designs.
With real-time rendering comes an unexpected bonus: new types of presentations for clients. Architectural visualization can now include immersive experiences like virtual reality tours, interactive, game-like projects, and cave automatic virtual environments (CAVEs) to present design in ways never seen before.
Alvaro Siza orchestrates, like no other, the experience of the visitor in his works. By means of compressions and decompression, openings and closings, volumes, voids and light, the Portuguese architect marks the paths, points of view, and perspective of the passage of time. In this photo essay, Ronaldo Azambuja photographed the Iberê Camargo Foundation ten years after its inauguration.
Using coiled wire fabric to divide interior spaces allows for both open and non-invasive partitioned areas. The installations add texture but maintain a soft, semi-opaque appearance. These functional room dividers are composed of coiled wire fabric woven into different thicknesses, which provide a flexible design and moldability.
Today we will highlight its use as an operable room divider, but coiled wire fabric can also be used as a ceiling treatment, exhibit and retail displays, wall coverings, artistic elements, and much more.
Since the end of World War II, Russia’s cities have grown in a Modern Soviet style. This prolonged use and application of the principles of architecture’s modern movement heavily affected the country’s development and urban expansion. But now, the new generations of architecture professionals are seeking to make a change.
Architecture is powerful, and like nuclear energy, it all depends on how it is used. While it can create uninhabitable municipalities, it can also create safer cities that improve quality of life.
In various examples, urban design has provided a response to deteriorated or abandoned public spaces. It has shown that distribution and lighting are essential, but that it is also necessary to consider who will be using the space and how to make it an environment that generates community.
Cuernavaca, located just a few hours from Mexico City, is one of the most visited places in the country thanks to its history, weather, and architecture. The city has eleven declared historical sites, such as the Cortés Palace, the Cuernavaca Cathedral, the Borda Garden, the Calvario Spire, Teopanzolco, Chapultepec Nature Park, the Cuernavaca Kite, and the Hotel Casino de la Selva, among others. For the past few years, Cuernavaca has experienced a boom in contemporary architecture, starting with the Tallera building which was built in 2010 by Mexican architect Frida Escobedo. The project gave life to the Siqueiros murals and all the history behind them.