In the early 1920s, a time when women could not even work without their husband's authorization, Carmen Portinho started an engineering course at the Polytechnic School of the University of Brazil. At the vanguard of the profession, as one of the first three women to graduate as engineers in Brazil, she was opening up a field in a space dominated entirely by men.
At its heart, extreme-minimalism is a rebellion against consumerism, it’s a cathartic process of learning to live without. But it’s also a decorative style in its own right – a clean world for a clean mind.
Cities face much criticism with how they handle their car population, but have you ever thought about how much land use is dedicated to surface parking lots? In fact, it may be one of the most prominent features of the postwar city in the United States. Housing, community facilities, highway infrastructure, often garner much attention, but the amount of land dedicated just to park cars is astounding.
The fourth season of the podcast Causa Común—a co-production between Fundación Lepe and Fundación Aldea for the OH! Stgo festival, held in mid-January in Santiago, Chile—explores the past, present, and future of the capital, alongside the role of its inhabitants in prioritizing the common good and collaborative ways of making, inhabiting, and imagining our shared home.
Directed and coordinated by Francisca Cordero, Soledad Díaz de la Fuente, Magdalena Novoa, and Trinidad Piriz, the six-episode season examines the everyday stories, communities, monuments, and public spaces we inhabit from new perspectives. Featured topics range from the multiple identities of a public square, female leadership in housing projects, and the construction of urban memory, to island hills as socio-environmental opportunities, Mapuche urban dwelling, and the GAM building as an exponent of architecture and social change.
The internationally renowned art collective _marina_morón (comprising Dr. Jesús Marina, PhD in History, and architect Dr. Elena Morón, PhD) inaugurated their latest work at the Pabellón de Mixtos of La Ciudadela in the city of Pamplona.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Basque-Navarrese Association of Architects and the Pamplona City Council, and will remain open to the public until March 15, 2022.
Roofs often play important roles in a project's identity. In addition to the aesthetic aspect, they play a fundamental role in protecting and closing the building. Of the existing types of coverage, pitched roofs are the most common in homes and buildings all around the world, therefore, it is necessary to ensure that they are within the parameters set out in the technical standards.
André Ricard and Daniel Giralt-Miracle, the member responsible for ADI/FAD, proposed the island of Ibiza as the venue for the ICSID Biennial Congress in 1971. That's how the story began. At that time, the so-called "Urquinaona Open Design Group" already existed in Barcelona. From the group, and with Carlos Ferrater at the head, they offered their help to the organization of the congress. They refused, as everything seemed to have already been organised. Together with Fernando Bendito, Ferrater asks about accommodation for the students. They still had nothing. They get the opportunity they were waiting for. Thousands of invitations are sent out to students all over the world. The number of replies was greater than the number of registered students.
The built environment we inhabit can be hostile, both on an individual architectural scale and in a wider urban context. Homeless people, for instance, are dissuaded from resting on public benches by the menacing presence of spikes and other forms of exclusionary design. From a global lens, we see the impact that borders have amidst anti-immigration hostility, imposingly exemplified by the Melilla border fence on the Morocco-Spain border. This “hostility” can be found in a large number of settlements around the world, settlements that have been formed as a result of organic migration or settlements predicated on control – like company towns.
The growing consumer demand for transparency—especially around sustainability and environmental practices—has implications for industries from apparel to healthcare products. Mars Inc. recently released a cocoa sourcing map to tackle deforestation and increase accountability, and the Fashion Transparency Index pushes apparel companies to be more forthcoming about their social and environmental efforts.
Now it’s time for the building industry, characterized by a lack of information around the materials and practices used in construction and throughout a building’s lifecycle, to catch up. The cost of inaction is too high to ignore. That’s because buildings account for 39 percent of total global carbon emissions. Traditionally, most carbon reduction efforts in the building sector focus on operational carbon—a building’s everyday energy use, which accounts for roughly 28 percent of emissions. The remaining 11 percent comes from what is often ignored: embodied carbon.
Considering focal points, biomes, and resting spaces, creating rhythm alongside architecture, and facilitating the maintenance and enjoyment of spaces are just some of the challenges of landscape design. Today, rather than serving merely as an element of spatial composition, the relationship between landscape architecture and the built environment is increasingly valued as we understand how the presence of nature benefits the health and comfort of humans and other species. Consequently, thinking about and designing the landscape has become an increasingly complex and valued endeavor.
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CHINAS CHINAS is a research project conducted by FLORA. It maps a trajectory through the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, based on a typological analysis of Chinese supermarkets. Its objective is to recognize and explore the modes of appropriation and domestic micro-scales that occur within them, demonstrating that urban architecture is shaped by everyday banalities. Ultimately, architecture takes on meaning when living conditions are defined by the people themselves. Inhabiting—beyond mere functionality—is precisely about this.
Cinema is an excellent tool for stimulating discussions and reflections on the spaces we inhabit, deeply engaging with architecture and urbanism through sets and locations. Films can address current issues within these fields of study and integrate them into their narratives, opening pathways for new debates.
The 2018 feature film Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, raises a series of questions about urbanism, social relations, contemporary cities, environmental conflicts, and how new technologies can interfere with an individual's relationship with public spaces. This article explores how these factors manifest in our daily lives and shape new concepts of the city.
Digital spaces and fabrication technology have become as prominent as ever within the current state of our post-pandemic society, becoming increasingly more accessible and enabling quick and spontaneous acts of iteration and evolution. These technologies have resulted in the ability to mass-produce non-standard, highly differentiated building components within the same facility as their standardized counterpart, transforming how buildings and their respective components are conceived, designed, and represented, and how they are manufactured, assembled, and produced.
The beauty of digital fabrication is its ability to blend aspects of mass and artisanal production to the point where costs nearly disappear. Technology’s capacity to fabricate so simply and almost seamlessly raise the issues for its potential to significantly alter our current perception of architecture, thus producing the question: has the influence of mass production in architecture resulted in a loss of intentional design?
Designing a limited space like an apartment can be a genuine challenge. Creating new layouts and projects over what has already been imagined by someone else is an exercise that demands a keen eye and respect for the existing structure. In addition to this, there is the need to bring character to the space through interior design without overlooking spatial functionality, ensuring the best possible quality of life for its residents.
Wood is an incredibly common material in the construction industry, utilized across various stages and for multiple purposes. Below, we explore its potential to shape residential facades through 17 examples of Brazilian houses.
Following nearly 50 years of rapid urbanization, urban renewal has transitioned from an era of incremental growth to one of existing stock. Urban planning has shifted from expansion toward the high-quality renovation of existing assets to reactivate spaces. Looking back at recent adaptive reuse projects by Pritzker Prize laureates, we examine how these masters respond to today's challenges of urban stock renewal.
All buildings move — of course, some more than others. There are a host of design considerations that architects keep in mind that allow for, or even promote movement in almost every building. But some architects fall back on their training as broad-based thinkers and problem solvers to devise solutions that literally roam the earth. From tiny homes on wheels, to train-based educational institutions, to design programs in a truck, sometimes buildings and architecture need to travel to the people it serves or to other environments. This video features a few examples on this spectrum, beginning with how architects typically deal with movement in structures and foundations, to Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, and finally Chicago Mobile Makers, a traveling maker workshop for children founded by Maya Bird Murphy.
This article begins with the premise that cities are not neutral spaces. Territories, much like architecture, urbanism, literature, culture, and politics, are conditioned by the values of a given society at a specific point in time. Consequently, the configuration of these spaces is shaped by societal values—in this case, those of a patriarchal, racist, and capitalist society. As a result, this lack of neutrality in the production of urban space leads to different ways in which cities are used and experienced by their inhabitants. These unique experiences, in turn, are deeply intertwined with issues of social class, race, and gender.
This article by Maya Orzechowska was originally published under the title "Five Principles for a Vulnerable and Intimate Architecture: Drawing Alternative Boundaries and Openings to the Home and the Self" in the 31st issue of Dearq journal on September 1, 2021 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq31.2021.04).
This article investigates how the boundaries and openings of the home are not separate from one another; rather, they play an active role in the politics of bodily and social health. For an increasing number of people, both the idea of the home and the reality of housing fail on a daily basis; therefore, this article seeks alternatives to the narrative of the home, of a utopian internal intimacy that endorses withdrawal, and of a non-responsible relationship toward the public realm. It suggests that the result is dystopian, concealing and exacerbating vulnerability and its resistance to change. In contrast, a vulnerable and intimate architecture focuses on the vulnerable body, drawing the uncanny, repressed, and emotional into the home.
We present it below as part of a joint collaboration to contribute to the dissemination of research, analysis, and opinion produced by the national and international academic community on architecture, urban issues, and related fields.
While research seems intrinsic to the design process, architectural research is a professional path in itself, whose purpose is to highlight scientific evidence and explore alternatives outside of pre-established norms or empirical considerations. Its purpose is to create a framework of knowledge that can inform the design to reach objectively better outcomes. The following discusses the role and state of research in architecture, some prominent areas of inquiry, and the architects or institutions that dedicate their work to these subjects.
90Grados specialises in creating high-quality architectural renderings - and this time they present the virtual construction of a skyscraper that was left unfinished in New York after the Great Depression of 1929: the Metropolitan Life North Building.
In 2014, a home reconstruction program called "Dream home" was launched in China, inviting architects and interior designers to redesign some old houses that have problems. Some of these homes are oddly shaped, some are tiny, and yet others have extremely inadequate lighting. The design concepts conveyed by the designers together in this program are respect for people, understanding human relationships, and the definition of home. These renovations or reconstructions are not just home updates for clients, but a reinterpretation of "home" that gives them a new life with dignity.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
In terms of Covid, 2022 is more likely to be like 1920 than like 2020 or 2021. “Change or die” is a cliché, but often a true one. The past two years under the pandemic have forced many kinds of changes across society that may have helped prevent a lot of deaths. But many other aspects of our culture had already been changing in ways that predated the pandemic, gradual shifts that, once Covid hit, became instant and ubiquitous: remote work, remote learning, the dominance of online shopping and the death of brick-and-mortar retail, the obsessive focus on health and well-being. All of this, and more, is now a fundamental aspect of our daily lives.
Looking back at 2021, two pivotal developments exerted a transformative influence on the architectural design community.
The first was the passing of High-Tech pioneer Richard Rogers (Richard Rogers). German art historian Hans Belting once remarked: "When people call for a new art, it is architecture and design that step forward as a symbol of a new society, carrying the hope of changing living space. And as people envision changes to their living space, they themselves change as well." Rogers was among the first to step forward at the close of the 20th century. His bold, rebellious, and iconoclastic design approach unlocked a new paradigm for the urban landscape. Having practiced continuously until his retirement last year, his career was a constant testament to the critical importance of design direction. In turn, one cannot help but ask: as the giants of our era gradually depart, are we prepared to shoulder the true mission of architecture?
The second was the controversy surrounding architect Tao Lei's design on the television show Dream Home. A 1.32-million-yuan red-brick house designed for an elderly client was met with widespread online backlash, laying bare the deep friction between architectural aesthetics and daily life. It prompts us to ask: Is the aesthetic pursued by architects truly aligned with the expectations of everyday people? Can architectural design reshape public aesthetic perception? Does social class dictate design outcomes? And should a project be dismissed based on sensationalized, fragmented headlines by those who have never actually experienced the space?
"Despair, like hope, is but vanity." ArchDaily’s keyword for this year is: Cultivating internal strength and external reach. Internally (Platform Responsibility): Providing tools, inspiration, and knowledge gathered from all directions to continuously overcome, triumph, and transform, building a broader "design universe." Externally (Communication Responsibility): Stepping outside the architectural "comfort zone" to center public needs, delivering clearer insights and evidence-based processes, and crafting more creative architectural content.
.jpg?1643423986 "Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, 1929. Image © Flickr User: End User")
.jpg?1643425181 "Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, 1929. Image © Flickr User: End User")
_V%C3%ADctor_Pati%C3%B1o_George.jpg?1643424298 "Villa Stein, Le Corbusier, 1927. Image © Víctor Patiño George")
