Under the title “La vida de los edificios” (“The Life of Buildings”), the latest book by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo—1996 Pritzker Prize laureate—was presented in late December. The volume represents an attempt to view architecture from “within, from its very core,” focusing on three structures: the Mosque of Córdoba, the Lonja of Seville, and the Carmen de Rodríguez-Acosta in Granada. These three buildings, located in three different cities, are considered by Moneo to be essential for anyone wishing to understand Spain and its architecture.

As such, the book is structured around three essays, each dedicated to one of these buildings. Written under different circumstances, they have been compiled to shape this volume by the renowned Navarrese architect and 1996 Pritzker Prize laureate.

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Ceramic tiles are usually used in the interior wet zones of residential and commercial projects—such as kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms. However, an increasing number of architects have proven that this material has great graphic, aesthetic, and, above all, technical potential when applied to facades.

Due to its weather resistance, the material requires little to no maintenance; moreover, the variety of colors, sizes, textures, and patterns available on the market allows for countless uses and combinations.

Designed by Sebastián Simonetti, the project Todo es cancha was chosen as one of the 10 winners in the Thesis Projects category of the Concurso Arquitectura Caliente 2018 (CAC 2018), a Chilean competition organized by Grupo Arquitectura Caliente and funded by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage.

Amateur soccer, through the architectural typology of the neighborhood pitch, serves as a means of social organization and local identity. Its significance lies in the edge of the field, where the entire neighborhood surrounding this public space expresses its identity.

Some of Santiago's 207 pitches are currently falling into neglect, turning into neighborhood liabilities. They have been enclosed along their perimeters with impenetrable walls, squandering their programmatic potential. The Todo es Cancha concept critiques this potential public space and proposes combining the soccer field with architectural interventions that transform these typologies into permanently active spaces.

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Using sections, perspectives, and axonometric drawings, architect Carlos Valarezo has represented key works of contemporary Ecuadorian architecture from recent years, communicating and highlighting the main characteristics of each project and its relationship with the viewer. 

Traslaciones Sonoras is an urban installation developed by architects Mathias Klenner and Sofía Balbontín, academics at the UDLA School of Architecture, Design, and Construction, in collaboration with architecture students from the Universidad Austral de Chile.

The intervention explores the diverse soundscapes of Valdivia and its surroundings, connecting territories and communities by translating multiple overlooked sounds into the city center in real time.

Read on to discover the project in detail, described in the words of its creators.

The Official Association of Architects of Madrid and the COAM Architecture Foundation have presented the new phase of Arquitectura magazine, as well as its new editorial board, which will be responsible for editing the publication over the next two years and releasing a special issue to celebrate its centennial.

Arquitectura magazine was founded in 1918 as the publication of the Central Society of Architects under the direction of José Moreno Villa. Throughout its 100-year history, the publication has witnessed shifting contexts and circumstances, its trajectory shaped by diverse and independent editorial directions. Nevertheless, the magazine has remained one of the oldest active titles in the country, establishing itself as an enduring benchmark for debate, critical thought, and the practice of architects, urban planners, and professionals in closely related fields.

Flood-prone cities and water scarcity in the Amazon: contradictions and problems that are further exacerbated by climate change. While population resettlement is a solution in itself, it generally tends to be unsustainable, eventually evolving into a more complex issue. This stems from a lack of viable livelihoods and the limited adaptation of architectural and urban infrastructure to the specific cultural, social, and environmental realities of each context. How can sustainability be achieved? CASA [Self-Sustainable Amazonian Cities], as its name suggests, is a program whose work focuses on vulnerable Amazonian populations seeking to become sustainable and progressively resilient throughout their development.

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In Spain, a neologism has emerged to explain a rising phenomenon: touristification. As Antonio Maestre notes in La Marea, the term refers to "the impact on neighborhood residents when facilities and services shift to cater almost exclusively to tourists at the expense of locals."

Among the consequences of this phenomenon in cities like Madrid and Barcelona is the massive proliferation of tourist accommodations. These lodging options drive and facilitate speculative processes whose negative impacts ultimately fall on neighborhood residents, who are forced to leave because they can no longer afford rising home prices or rents.

The proposal Temporary Activation Circuit was awarded third place in the Pasarelas San Borja competition in Chile. The main objective of the competition was to recognize "the best urban design ideas that contribute to defining intervention criteria and generating proposals for the San Borja neighborhood."

As the authors explain, the third-place-winning proposal offers "a mutable and flexible system that reflects contemporary times."

Crucial for ensuring that urban planning fosters prosperity and quality of life for all residents, public participation must be integrated into decision-making processes. Every citizen deserves a space to contribute new ideas, establish priorities, and track the progress of municipal projects. To facilitate this exchange, Consul—a platform developed by the city of Madrid—is being made available free of charge to cities worldwide. In Brazil, a workshop hosted by WRI Brasil introduced the tool to interested municipalities that are already working to implement it.

In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, more than 150 students from 15 countries kicked off the 2018 Latin American Encounter of Architecture Students (ELEA), organized by the Latin American Coordinator of Architecture Students (CLEA) together with IBEA (Bolivian Integration of Architecture Students). As is now tradition, they joined forces with various public and private entities, architecture collectives, workshop leaders, educators, and members of civil society to think, design, and build across different points of the city under the theme "identity crisis?". 

Late last November, we published the winners of the second open call for graduation projects in Colombia, also known as theses, receiving 70 entries from 14 cities and 29 universities. Ultimately, nine projects passed the three stages of evaluation, standing out for addressing pressing systemic issues, developing deep research analyses, and posing both urban and rural challenges, just like in 2016.

In this feature, we take an in-depth look at "BHP: Bioclimatic Multi-Family Housing Prototype," developed by Natalia Carrero and Juan Celis (Universidad Santo Tomás, Bucaramanga campus) and selected for the 2017 edition of Archiprix International.

Few names fit the label of “cult writer” as perfectly as Raymond Queneau, who boasts a fanatical following of near-militant devotees of the cause: literature as a very serious game. From the outset, and even upon the most cursory reading, Exercises in Style, written by the French author in 1949, is radically different from conventional literature. The book positions itself—or pretends to—in a kind of no-man's-land between literary theory and practice, giving the impression of having been crafted based on the chapters of a style manual. Queneau rejects any preconceived schema that might have grouped the “exercises” by theme, gradual complexity, or simple alphabetical order. He does not even work from a single baseline text. At times, he opts for a purely mechanical game of textual transformation to produce a sense of sheer nonsense.

It is no wonder that this seven-decade-old book still feels revolutionary and remains an essential manual in literary programs. What Queneau showed us then—that playful, mocking creative freedom—remains difficult to match today. For this reason, such an exercise in variation, of refusing to set limits on the imagination, is and must be compatible with the craft of architectural model-making. What Queneau demonstrated, starting with an unremarkable text and transforming it 99 times, is precisely what any architect should attempt to translate into their model-making. It is the art of variation and accumulation—“difference and repetition,” as Gilles Deleuze would say. It means working 99 times on the same idea, watching it transform until, at some point, we are able to recognize its ultimate synthesis.

A Point of View

This text was written for the French edition of the exhibition catalog The Universalists: 50 Years of Portuguese Architecture, an event organized in Paris by the Delegation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to mark its 50th anniversary, in co-production with the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine. The exhibition is now being presented in Portugal, in 2018, at the Casa da Arquitectura in Matosinhos.

For ease of reading, the text has been divided into two parts. The first part was published yesterday.

'Territories and Housing' is a project by architects Alberto Kalach and Carlos Zedillo that explores large-scale visions for different regions of the country, such as Yucatan, the Oaxaca Valley, the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and the Basin of Mexico, proposing to organize the national territory into just three zones: natural, agricultural, and urban.

Today, Bustamante Park is one of the most frequented urban spaces in the municipality of Providencia. Completed in 1946, its design arose from the redevelopment of the former railway lines that once connected the old Pirque Station—the square that serves as our meeting point today—with the town of Puente Alto.

As one of the city's many linear parks, it is worth asking which qualities have turned Bustamante Park into a landmark in Santiago.

Some projects demand a clean aesthetic, free of ornament or striking features. When it comes to windows, exterior views can be completely unobstructed by minimizing their constituent components—frames, handles, or railings—without compromising strength or safety. Here are three products that reduce these elements to their simplest expression.

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 public and private archives across the city. These images reveal a deliberate, and even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers and integrated new buildings and urban spaces with the existing cityscape.

To analyze the impact of photojournalism in this era, one must look to Sady González, Manuel H., and Daniel Rodríguez. Architecture and the city serve as the backdrop for scenes of urban life, characters, events, and daily activities, making their photographs an essential visual record for understanding the city's transformation and its historical context.

In this edition of Bogotá in the Eyes of 10 Photographers, we explore the legacy of Daniel Rodríguez:

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A country's educational standards are reflected not only in students and teachers, or public curricula, but also in educational infrastructure as a space that shapes learning and experience. Technical institutes represent a vital option within the country's educational framework; however, many of these institutions have not undergone major infrastructural transformations or improvements since their founding. To address this gap, the "Institutes of Excellence" were established. These projects are part of a larger strategic plan encompassing both institutes and universities under a public higher education infrastructure investment program, proposed by the Ministry of Education (MINEDU) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Strikingly, the attribute of "quality" is rarely associated with the vast majority of institutes within Peruvian higher education, as they are often overlooked. Driven by this observation, we examine the design of a prototype institute that represents a group of several projects, which have already been approved and are ready to begin construction. To understand how the vision of a better, decentralized education is translated into architecture, the team of specialists and architects led by Ana Carlín outlines the program's and project's guidelines and scope. Read on to learn more about this exemplary practice.

After analyzing 94 undergraduate student projects 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 a wide range of typologies, from urban planning to student housing, alongside landscape architecture projects and structural initiatives for emergencies.

Below, we present the award-winning fourth and fifth-year projects:

The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photo 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 images reveal an intentional, and even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers and positioned new buildings and urban spaces in relation to the existing urban landscape.

In analyzing the impact of aerial photography, Saúl Orduz and Rudolf Schrimpff are essential figures. While the subjects captured through the lenses of these two pilot-photographers were vast and varied, their aerial views of the city are highly numerous. Together, they form a consistent body of work documenting a modern city in transformation, offering insight into its urban development, as well as how different modern buildings and urban spaces were integrated into their surroundings.

In this edition of Bogotá through the Eyes of 10 Photographers, we explore the legacy of Saúl Orduz:

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Goma Oficina is a collective of architects working across various fields, reclaiming the multifaceted role of the architect beyond housing projects and major competition entries. As a member of this collective, Maria Cau Levy has been experimenting with printmaking, stepping beyond traditional architectural boundaries. In shaping her aesthetic, conceptual identity, and visual language, the young architect has developed a series of studies exploring geometric patterns.

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On the occasion of the third edition of the EA USS Workshop, of which ArchDaily is a media partner, Ernesto Silva, Director of the School of Architecture at Universidad San Sebastián, reflects on the origins of this initiative, which held its first session in 2016 with the international participation of Juan Herreros, and a year later with Alberto Veiga, founding partner of Estudio Barozzi Veiga.

During a meeting with Juan Herreros in 2015, the idea of hosting a workshop in Chile first emerged. While initially it seemed like an extremely difficult initiative to realize, the project soon began to take shape after Enrique Walker joined the conversation. The workshop finally came to fruition in October 2016 thanks to the support and generosity of the Faculty of Architecture at Universidad San Sebastián, when Juan Herreros and Enrique Walker led the first workshop of this series at EAUSS: Typological Corrections.

Elsa Mäkiniemi – Elissa Aalto was a Finnish architect who worked alongside her husband, Alvar Aalto, from 1949 onward. Following Alvar's passing, she directed the firm Alvar Aalto & Co. until her own death in 1994. 

She completed Alvar Aalto's unfinished projects and defended his completed works against unwarranted alterations.