“A thesis is like a pig; everything in it can be put to use,” concluded Umberto Eco in his book How to Write a Thesis. Indeed, these research projects, developed through four or five years of intense effort and sacrifice, become extraordinary tools and inexhaustible sources of information for both students and professionals looking to delve into a specific topic within their field of knowledge.

In Spain, the 2008 economic crisis triggered a notable increase in the number of architects who chose to pursue a doctoral thesis as a way to continue their academic training and expand their career options. Coupled with the rigorous training that Spanish architects typically receive, this has led to a vast body of exceptionally high-quality research, serving as an invaluable reference resource for both students and practitioners.

This article compiles 10 doctoral theses focused on major Spanish architects whose careers spanned the 20th century and who, for various reasons, left an indelible mark on the history of Spanish architecture during this period.

If Muhammad will not go to the mountain, the mountain must go to Muhammad. If the elderly do not go to city hall—sparing themselves the clear hassle of tedious paperwork—city hall goes to them. In a largely unplanned city like Lima, where design for older adults and people with disabilities is rarely prioritized, getting around or participating in social activities requires double the effort. Consequently, they often choose to stay home to avoid the hassle.

Bringing services closer through mobile architecture—going beyond static physical buildings—is an idea worth putting into practice. Under this approach, the Municipality of Miraflores is rolling out a bus equipped with diverse functions that are valuable to the neighborhood, and particularly essential for a demographic with limited mobility. Architecture in action is capable of adapting an "ordinary" bus for this "multifunctional" purpose. Once again, the profession demonstrates its power to connect, support, and bring people together...

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The LIMPAR SANTANA project involves constructing a sustainable basic sanitation system to clean up the waterways of Quilombo de Santana, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, aiming to improve the quality of drinking water in local homes.

Based on an assessment of the area's topography, geotechnics, and geography, the proposal suggests using evapotranspiration basins—a system that treats effluent through natural filtration and evaporation via banana leaves—and biodigester tank systems that convert wastewater into a usable byproduct for agriculture.

Architects Rafael Pina and Fabián B. Di Giammarino, writing for the ARKRIT Collective, offer an objective critique of a classic of Chilean architecture, the Copelec Building. As the authors of this article assert, beyond the many descriptive accounts surrounding the building, it has earned an unquestionable status precisely because it remains unquestioned.

Extensive academic literature documents the detrimental effects that massive, monofunctional public housing complexes, isolated from urban centers, impose on cities. These areas typically become highly segregated and stigmatized, often plagued by deteriorating living conditions. Once occupied, residents frequently begin to modify their surroundings—opening small businesses and adapting spaces in ways that diverge sharply from the original design. Yet, can urban design improve the quality of life within these developments? Consider this proposal developed for João Pessoa:  

At more than 3,800 meters above sea level and on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the city of Puno stands as the folklore capital of Peru, where architecture, archaeology, and dance intersect. It is not only home to the Candelaria festival—declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2014—but also sits just a few kilometers from the vast archaeological legacy of the Pucará and Tiwanaku cultures. Additionally, visitors can travel to the floating islands of Uros, Amantaní, and Taquile on the world's highest navigable lake.

Before going any further, if you are not accustomed to this altitude, we recommend drinking coca tea regularly or chewing coca leaves, which can be purchased at any local store. Furthermore, the weather can be highly unpredictable; a single day can bring sun, rain, and hail, so keep this in mind when choosing what to wear. Lastly, in Peru, streets that are at least ten blocks long, narrow, and usually one-way are called jirones (abbreviated as Jr.).

Today, companies seek to connect different generations and leverage their unique contributions to the workplace. They aim to maximize innovation through the synergy generated by combining the drive of younger generations with the experience of older workers. Given the specific characteristics of each age group—including differing values, experiences, styles, activities, and expectations—both the workspace and the way we work are being rapidly redefined.

São Paulo, a megacity of over 12 million people, hides many mysteries beneath the feet of those passing through its streets, despite the frantic hustle and bustle of daily commuters.

Unlike our guide to lookout points for experiencing São Paulo from above, we now present a selection of underground sites that are largely unknown to the general public, each preserving a piece of the city's history. Theaters, an aquarium, an unfinished subway station, and artistic and cultural institutions are among these semi-secret spaces. Explore our selection below:

What happens when we juxtapose two works by two renowned architects, Mies van der Rohe and Rem Koolhaas, completed twenty-five years apart? We find the answer in the following article by the Arkrit Collective.

As the announcement of the next Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate approaches, we interviewed economist and architecture critic André Corrêa do Lago, the first Brazilian to join the jury of the world's highest architectural honor.

Having already recognized two Brazilian architects—Oscar Niemeyer (1988) and Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006)—it is surprising that in the prize's 40-year history, no Brazilian had ever been appointed to the jury. On this, Corrêa do Lago notes that "it must be acknowledged, however, that there has always been a diverse regional representation on the jury, including from Latin America."

"I have two words to leave you with: inclusion and shine," McDormand said at the end of her speech after winning the top award for best actress. From drama to real life, what does that have to do with this? Two words from another discipline that resonate in architecture. Inclusion and shining may not seem related at first, but one way to interpret them (by combining them) is that by including ourselves as a society, we unleash the full brightness of our potential. And that is a small but powerful message for how we interact in the practice of our profession, achieving greater relevance in the pursuit of our social role.

Accordingly, this publication features women with brilliant minds who play an important role in the country, linking architecture and urbanism with other disciplines. They contribute from different angles: one from criticism, another from art, another from education, one from drawing, a few from history... further enriching a profession so deeply connected to ways of living. For Women's Month, in honor of diversity and democracy, we bring them together to share a reflection on the future of architecture in Peru. Although they are different—some opening minds, others generating knowledge, and others building—they share that spark in their eyes when they speak confidently about their work, and that is what we frame here.

Today, 470 cities across 36 countries identify as educating cities and are networked through the International Association of Educating Cities (IAEC), which, in its founding charter, argues that cities possess a raw educational potential waiting to be unlocked. Beyond the IAEC, other municipalities have also taken on the challenge of connecting spaces, people, and actions around learning processes that prioritize the holistic development of their inhabitants.

In recent decades, architecture and the built environment professions have maintained an insular attitude, separating them from relevant conversations and preventing them from identifying opportunities and new territories to conquer. The future will require leaders with a broad and refreshing vision of our field: leaders, both men and women, with the sharpness and skills to identify real problems across a wider spectrum of fields than ever before, capable of transforming them into innovative, high-impact business opportunities that connect better with society and generate greater value.

The omnipresence of technology, demographic pressure, exponential urban growth, and various environmental threats are transforming how we plan, understand, and interact with space—in short, our way of life. To face this landscape, we must evolve faster than our context. As architecture and design professionals, we possess exceptional talent as a group. We have the capacity to think in systems, naturally combining creative and proactive approaches with strong analytical skills, and we are capable of integrating highly disparate factors into a long-term vision, making us excellent strategists. Leveraging this talent from a much broader professional perspective does not mean discarding our traditional roles, but it does require questioning the status quo: like a tree, the higher we aim to reach, the deeper our roots must grow.

Keeping the following ideas in mind can serve as a valuable guide in this compelling process of redefinition:

Exorcity presents itself as the treatise on millennial architecture. It features 35 radical and subversive projects by daring students, all set within the urban context of Madrid. These are 35 projects in which the city is understood as a testing ground and a playground for thought. Elegance, violence, reason, seduction, chance, desire, emotion, power, dreams, and love come together here to challenge, alter, and stimulate the reader both visually and intellectually. It offers a fascinating, fresh vision from the young architects who will design the future of Madrid and Spain. 

As such, Exorcity represents an effort to give visibility to the necessary transformation that architecture has been undergoing in academia in recent years. This transformation is driven by a new generation of architects—defined as digital natives—who are responding and providing disruptive, intelligent solutions to the complex, difficult challenges of the urban context. 

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Presenting a project in a clear and convincing manner can be a major challenge—even a torment for many students. When you add high doses of caffeine, sleep deprivation, and a jury ready to evaluate your work, we can all agree that, once the moment arrives, it is impossible not to tremble inside (at best) and outside (in most cases).

What does it mean for an architecture biennial—especially a Pan-American one—to have reached more than 20 editions? Clearly, it represents a significant accumulation of participants, speakers, coordinators, and projects that over the years have not only showcased the sheer volume of regional production, but have also consistently reminded us of the potential of keeping both Latin American and global debate and exchange active.

For this reason, it is worth highlighting key figures and milestones. Both serve as empirical evidence of the historical development and reach of the Quito Architecture Biennial, helping us answer this initial question and understand why it is considered one of the most important architectural events in the Americas.

Writing for the ARKRIT Collective, architect Carmen Espegel presents an article that exemplifies how the home can serve as a simple refuge for the essence of life—defined by the survivor's austerity, voluntary renunciation, and a rejection of the bourgeois lifestyle.

Originally published as Collaborative Design of Public Space: The Triple Dimension, this new collaboration by Paisaje Transversal proposes a specific methodology for both evaluating the quality of public space and facilitating urban design "if we want to transform public space into a living fabric," the authors explain.

Public space is the fluid that unifies the city, the fabric that stitches buildings together and weaves social, economic, and environmental relationships. It shapes issues as crucial as mobility, coexistence, and a community's cultural exchange, as well as the environmental quality that directly impacts everyone's health.

Public space shapes our daily lives, either offering or depriving us of spaces for socialization. Consequently, it is a priority, both for the sustainability of the city and the lives of its inhabitants—a matter that demands the involvement of not only urban design professionals but also the general public. To achieve this, citizens must understand the factors that determine the livability and functionality of public space, just as they recognize the characteristics of decent housing.

In their classic setup, with a classroom consisting of a blackboard, a standing teacher, and seated students, the interior spaces of a school can easily be mistaken for prisons. Now consider the outdoor, public areas of most educational institutions in Brazil: how often can a place be recognized as a school simply by looking at it from afar?

Simply moving through Brazilian cities, wasting hours in traffic jams or waiting for overcrowded buses or subways—or ones that don't even exist!—is enough to see that they are far from functioning at a reasonable standard. And even those who, supposedly protected by walls, rarely come into contact with the precarious housing conditions of millions of families are shocked by the growing number of people living on the streets or by stark reminders of this precarity when a tragedy, such as the fire in the Wilton Paes de Almeida Building, hits the headlines. One would expect, therefore, that urban issues—housing and transportation in particular—would be prominent in the government platforms of the presidential candidates.

How many children do we see daily playing in the streets, interacting with elements of urban spaces, running in parks or plazas, or riding their bikes? These scenes can say a lot about a city—not only about how it is caring for its younger generations, but also about the quality of life it offers families; which is to say, for everyone.

The team led by Oscar Luengo and Álvaro Parraguez won first 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."

Titled Corredores San Borja, the winning proposal "proposes the walkways as connecting spatial corridors between towers, plazas, and peripheral activities, allowing for fluidity and articulation between the complex's disconnected interior and exterior spaces."

During the design process of a building, design professionals from various disciplines are called upon to propose solutions that ensure client requirements and expectations are met.

Design decisions, which until the 1980s were often not grounded in objective criteria, have gradually become more evidence-based. This shift aims to reduce design and execution errors, material waste, and operational inefficiencies, while also systemically recognizing best practices.

By Qian Qinyang