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 by the Delegation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris to mark its 50th anniversary, co-produced with the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine. The exhibition is now being presented, in 2018, in Portugal, at the Casa da Arquitectura in Matosinhos.

To facilitate reading, we have divided the text into two parts. The second part is available at this link.

Since 2016, Chile has been undergoing a gradual transformation of its building regulations thanks to the enactment of the historic Decree 50 of the General Ordinance of Urban Planning and Construction (OGUC). This decree mandates a national standard for universal accessibility, ratifying both the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008) and Law 20,422 (2010), which establishes standards for equal opportunities and social inclusion for people with disabilities.

This regulatory shift prompted the team at Corporación Ciudad Accesible to update their 14 “Accessible Fact Sheets,” now that compliance is a requirement rather than an option. "We want to achieve an accessible and universal vision where design envisions people beyond the traditional mold, so that those who do not move, see, hear, or understand the environment in conventional ways find the same opportunities and participation," explains their team.

In Mexico, INFONAVIT's Urban Redensification project aims to identify strategies to curb urban sprawl across various Mexican cities. This initiative seeks to reconfigure the urban fabric by repurposing underutilized land and abandoned housing, aiming to create compact, efficient cities that offer a better quality of life for their residents.

Do identical brick blocks confuse you? Are you unsure whether to turn at this corner or the next because all the perimeter-block buildings look exactly alike? Do you lose your way in the narrow, winding streets of the city center? As it turns out, this is a common challenge for many, which is why it is essential for cities to invest in wayfinding systems designed specifically for pedestrians.

The benefits are numerous. First, it is an excellent way to promote the cleanest form of transit: walking. The advantages of this include easing public transit congestion, reducing vehicular traffic, encouraging a deeper familiarity with the city, and revitalizing businesses on secondary streets—not to mention the positive impact on tourists and visitors. This is precisely what the #LeerMadrid project aims to achieve. The initiative is currently being developed by Paisaje Transversal in collaboration with Applied Wayfinding, Avanti Avanti, Urban Networks/CGR, and Dimas García Moreno.

Videos

The Bicentennial of Peru's independence, to be celebrated in 2021, represents not only a great opportunity to take stock of what we have built as a nation in two hundred years of existence, but also to reflect on the challenges for the next one hundred years—that is, on the road toward the tricentennial.

From the Arquia Foundation Blog, architect Adrià Guardiet shares an article reflecting on three perspectives on unfinished architecture—projects where time and their occupants play a central role.

Certain architectures work with time as a design variable. Some are conceived as open, dynamic, growing structures. Others operate around the memory of the site. To name just two examples.

In these projects, time is often introduced as an entelechy—that is, as a specifically intellectual device. Yet time appears far more explicitly when architecture is pending completion, left unfinished due to economic, political, biological, or other reasons. These are what we have come to call meanwhile architectures: projects that find fertile ground for development in unstable contexts.

Videos

Walking is the most common form of transportation in the world and a basic human right. It connects us directly with our surroundings, does not pollute the city, and offers numerous health benefits, such as reducing chronic diseases, obesity, and diabetes. This is the message that the ITDP and Streetfilms convey in the film The Right to Walk, released this year.

If walking is so beneficial, why is it so difficult to do in urban environments? Rapid urban growth and car-centric planning have increasingly restricted space and respect for pedestrians. Every year, 1.3 million people are killed in traffic, half of whom are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists. Furthermore, traffic accidents result in 20 to 50 million hospitalizations annually, making them the leading cause of physical disability worldwide. More than 90% of traffic fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil, which has the highest number of traffic deaths per capita in South America.

The Ruin Experience project, developed by architect Sergio Navarro García, proposes an intervention in the ruined buildings scattered across the countryside of Lorca, Murcia (Spain), where the local population gradually abandoned these robust houses to move to the city. The project offers an alternative approach to intervention, engaging directly with the environment and leveraging its resources to create sensory complexes where people interact with nature through architecture.

El Mesillo, the site selected for the intervention, is a unique, hidden enclave in the municipality of Lorca, defined by a direct and deep-seated relationship between its inhabitants and nature through agriculture. Historically, this bond was even closer, giving rise to the creation and use of entirely natural creams and treatments. Water, soil, air, sun, essential oils, homemade lotions and concoctions, fruits, vegetables, and, of course, a proper siesta, served as home remedies for minor ailments and daily stress.

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This week concluded the series of meetings and conferences convened by the Venice Biennale to introduce Freespace, curated by artistic directors Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. Venice, Paris, Berlin, and New York. The Irish architects presented the list of 71 participants making up the curatorial proposal, which features five Latin American participants: Elemental (Chile), Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura (Mexico), Barclay & Crousse (Peru), Carla Juaçaba (Brazil), and Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Brazil).

Experts have various visions for the future of architecture, but one thing is certain: it must evolve alongside technology, with a primary focus on efficiency. Digital architecture, for example, is already a reality, as is the use of virtual reality in architecture. As a result, competition among professionals and firms is forcing a shift in how they approach the market.

Those who only know how to work individually will be left behind. There is no room for vanity—the new era must be collaborative.

Barcelona is an ideal city, boasting a surprisingly rich cultural scene, vibrant neighborhoods full of life, miles of beaches, and an idyllic year-round climate. Yet, without a doubt, it is its architecture that stands as a must-see for visitors and residents alike. The Sagrada Família, Park Güell, and Casa Milà are some of the most famous architectural landmarks and, consequently, the most visited by the tourists arriving daily in this magnificent city.

While there is growing interest in exploring the architecture that lies beyond the city's major icons and symbols, many tourists still bypass—or are simply unaware of—brilliant contemporary works such as Jordi Badia's Can Framis Museum, or the recent restoration of Sala Beckett by architects Flores & Prats, which received a jury mention in the 2017 Spanish Architecture Awards.

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Videos

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.

Dear readers,

As the end of the year approaches, we would like to thank you all once again for making 2018 our best year yet. Thanks to your continuous support and our close connection with our readers, we now reach far more architects around the world, inspiring them to create better urban environments.

Every Sunday morning, 120 kilometers of Bogotá are transformed into an extensive cycling circuit. This is La Ciclovía, a cultural and recreational initiative in which some of the Colombian capital's streets are designated as wide bike paths, allowing both residents and tourists to travel across Bogotá by bicycle.

In a radio interview broadcast by RCN, architect Jaime Ortiz recalls the origins of the ciclovía in the 1970s, when it emerged as a proposal developed alongside other architects to open up major avenues as cycling spaces every Sunday.

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Videos

Andrés Arochi directed a video that portrays dancing bodies experiencing the space of the Luis Barragán House and Studio, a site in Mexico City famous for the introspective quality of its gardens and the characteristic mysticism of the Mexican architect. Regarding the video Dancing through the Architecture of Luis Barragán, Arochi comments:

This is not the first time that iconic works of architecture have served as a stage for dancing bodies; there is seemingly an intrinsic connection between these two art forms. Exercises like this remind us that architecture is not merely an assembly of concrete, steel, and glass ready to shelter its users, but rather a series of actions harboring a collection of breaths, moments, and movements that give meaning to a place, as Spanish philosopher Marina Garcés writes:

In contemporary urban design, spatial organization, mobility, the demand for new connections, and the boundaries established between public and private space have increasingly become the focus of discussions surrounding the future of global cities, and equally so in Brazil. Under this model of rapid growth, certain built structures have created urban barriers, presenting distinct obstacles.

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Today, August 24, architect Oswaldo Arthur Bratke would have celebrated his 111th birthday. As one of the leading figures of São Paulo's modernist architecture, he stands out alongside prominent names such as Affonso Eduardo Reidy and the Roberto brothers, among many others. He entered the School of Engineering at Mackenzie University in 1926, graduating in 1931 as an engineer-architect. Two years after graduating, he established a solid partnership with architect Carlos Botti, with whom he designed a series of collaborative projects, most notably the Grande Hotel in Campos do Jordão.

Urban form can be understood as the physical “face” of a city. The organization of public and built spaces is what determines a city's urban form. Consequently, a city can be sprawling – characterized by low population densities, a reliance on private transport, and long commutes –, or compact, featuring balanced densities and multiple centralities. Achieving this latter model requires robust land-use management closely integrated with public transit planning.

As you know, ArchDaily has joined forces with Spotify, the world's largest music streaming platform. From the very beginning, we have been sharing our own playlists for those key moments in the lives of all architects. At the same time, we have invited architects from Latin America and Spain to share the music that inspires them, or better yet, the sounds that have shaped their careers.

In this installment of ArchDaily en Español + Spotify, we share our most popular playlist: Música para Maquetear (Music for Model Making). If you have to spend your day among cardboard and renders, this ten-hour playlist will keep you company during those long late-night sessions.

“Ensuring, through built works, that those ideas explained with these words stand up will be the best proof that those ideas are valid and these words true.”
(Campo Baeza – “The Built Idea”).

The Mendoza Association of Architects CAMZA has announced a new edition of Architecture Month MDA2018 under the theme "The Built Idea," to be held from August 28 to 31 at the Nave Cultural in the city of Mendoza.

Videos

From the Fundación Arquia Blog, architect Zaida Muxí brings us an article that provides basic clarifications on gender-perspective urbanism for beginners, exploring how to build cities from and for women, but not in an exclusive or exclusionary way.

To shape humanity in its truly comprehensive capacity within the dimension of gender, women's movements and feminist philosophical analysis have ethically exposed the alienation that over-identifies women with men and their symbols, while disidentifying men from women and their symbols.

Working hand-in-hand with a wide range of product manufacturers and suppliers allows us to access valuable information to support design and construction processes using different types of materials.

To make this knowledge readily available, we have compiled a series of guides, manuals, and tips covering everything from working with laminated wood and installing cladding, to applying protective finishes and varnishes. Read 12 useful articles below.

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In late November, we published the winners of the second call for thesis projects in Colombia, which received 70 submissions from 14 cities and 29 universities. Ultimately, nine projects passed the three stages of evaluation, standing out for addressing critical contemporary issues, conducting deep research and analysis, and proposing challenges in both urban and rural contexts, just as in 2016.

Here, we take an in-depth look at CAM Marsella: Municipal Administrative Center of Marsella, a project selected in the 2016 Colombian Biennial of Architecture Students, developed by Manuel Murgueitio and Edward Zapata, both graduates of the Universidad Católica de Pereira in Colombia.

From the Fundación Arquia Blog, architect Virginia Navarro brings us an article reflecting on the reasons for and importance of bringing architecture closer to children.

Recent years have seen a notable increase in the number of architects who, occasionally or continuously, have dedicated part of their practice to conducting architecture workshops for children. Their objectives have been both educational (developing critical thinking about the built environment, understanding cultural and urban heritage, and fostering spatial intelligence and creativity...) and informative: gathering data on children's needs within larger, typically social or participatory, projects.