This guide covers a workflow that moves from project parameters to generated floor plans, 3D perspective views, exterior design exploration, and site context visualization, using AI tools in place of preliminary CAD and rendering work.

In September, we launched the fourth edition of our open call in Colombia, inviting architects to submit their undergraduate thesis projects. In this edition, the call received 104 submissions from more than 15 cities and 25 universities across the country, marking an 11% increase in proposals compared to 2018.

Following an exhaustive evaluation, and to celebrate Architects' Week in Colombia, we present the 13 thesis projects selected as winners by our editorial jury (Fabián Dejtiar, Mónica Arellano, and Santiago Baraya). The evaluation criteria prioritized projects that directly addressed current issues, such as urban, local, social, and environmental contexts.

Today, discussing infrastructure means discussing geopolitics and connectivity as a key driver of global competitiveness. Connectivity, however, should not be understood solely as physical infrastructure, even if we are talking about roads for autonomous vehicles or hyperloop tunnels.

Located in the historic neighborhood of San Ignacio in the city of Bilbao, Spain, Levante Square is a prominent gathering point for residents and visitors alike. To address the lack of covered spaces protecting from the heavy rain, Spanish architecture office CANOBARDIN has designed a solution for users: a concentric structure titled "A Piece of Sky in Levante Square" that allows people to inhabit the public space and find shelter without losing touch with their surroundings, acting as a piece of the sky by day and a reflection of the square by night.

Designed to meet the construction sector's growing demand for finishes, Obra Blanca is a new event launched as a meeting point for professionals looking to showcase their products and those seeking to compare various finishing options. As a specialized exhibition, it focuses on the visitor experience and the professionalization of an increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated industry.

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Proyecto Panorama is a civil association made up of a diverse group of young people from Cancún, who have been actively working for more than two years on public space interventions in Quintana Roo through urban art. These interventions have proven to generate a positive impact on the residents' environment, strengthening the sense of identity and belonging in one of the country's most important developing regions. Since its founding in 2016, and thanks to collaborations with renowned national and international artists, Proyecto Panorama has intervened in more than 30 public spaces, as well as an elementary school in Cancún and another in the Riviera Maya, resulting in 116 murals.

ArchDaily is working with CityMakers to publish a series of articles, conversations, and interviews with the various actors in urban co-production behind the Barcelona CityMakers Lab 2019, an event taking place from October 14 to 20, 2019.

CityMakers promotes the transformation of cities and territories by connecting professionals from around the world with benchmark cities to learn about their practices in global positioning, mobility, the built environment, economy, and governance, inspiring change in their own communities. 

For this first installment, we have compiled excerpts from a conversation with architect and urban planner Camilo Osorio, Executive Director of CityMakers, who discusses a paradigm shift in urban planning and the birth of CityMakers as a community that seeks to inspire change through the on-site study of exemplary cities around the world.

Construye Solar 2019 will exhibit eight sustainable social housing units in Santiago, designed and built by universities from across Chile. The initiative, according to the organizers, aims to "spark innovation in social housing construction, addressing the inherent challenges of pursuing sustainable innovation on a limited budget."

The new and growing demands for change driven by urban population growth mean that, when designing, we face a highly heterogeneous and constantly transforming fabric.
Increased urban density directly impacts the open space available for new, standalone construction, leading to a juxtaposition of buildings where the simultaneity and coexistence of individual pursuits result in a varied fabric.

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The Urban Agriculture Laboratory is designed by Transversal / Arquitectura Paisaje Urbanismo, located at the Semilla Museum in Chihuahua, Mexico. This project is the result of a civic initiative that combines landscape, architectural, and exhibition design elements centered around urban agriculture, permaculture, and the observation of natural phenomena. In doing so, it redefines the traditional "white box" exhibition space, transforming it into a hands-on pedagogical space, civic gathering point, and laboratory.

Presented at the recent edition of the Feria del Diseño 2019 in Medellín, Iku Hábitat is a modular architectural construction system developed in Colombia that aims to streamline construction processes using designed and prefabricated components assembled with screws.

The following analysis was developed within the research project “Sustainable and Safe Building Certification,” funded by the Research Directorate of the University of Cuenca and led by Dr. Felipe Quesada Molina. This research addresses the sustainability assessment of residential buildings in the city of Cuenca.

André Gorz wrote in 1974: «Ecology is like universal suffrage and the Sunday day of rest: at first, all the bourgeois and all the proponents of order tell you that you want their ruin, and the triumph of anarchy and obscurantism. Then, when circumstances and popular pressure become irresistible, they grant you what they denied you yesterday and, fundamentally, nothing changes».

To showcase the valuable output of Argentine universities, for the third consecutive year we launched an open call inviting our Argentine readers to submit their final thesis projects, sharing the work that launched their careers as newly minted architects.

After receiving more than 60 submissions from various Argentine architecture schools and cities, our editorial team selected nine projects, focusing on those that demonstrated critical thinking toward contemporary issues, formal resolution, and representation. The selection not only recognizes those projects that delivered the best possible architecture through simple design suited to their context, program, and users, but also highlights those showing a strong commitment to human scale, mediation, transition, and new ways of approaching urban architecture. This edition's jury was composed of Fabian Dejtiar, Managing Editor of ArchDaily en Español; Mónica Arellano, Editor of ArchDaily México; and Delia Bayona, Editor of ArchDaily Perú.

Read on to explore the selected projects in detail.

In this installment, as part of the series of articles by Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy, and Ernesto Philibert-Petit, we examine the importance of design sequences and generative codes in social housing in Latin America. Explore all previous publications and the new article below.

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Mexico City’s vecindades (traditional tenement housing) are urban settlements located primarily in the downtown area. According to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), these buildings first emerged in the late 18th century, though their peak occurred during the 19th century as a result of rapid population growth, serving to provide affordable housing for the city's most marginalized sectors.

Few may have heard of Hermosillo, a Mexican city of 850,000 inhabitants located in the middle of the desert, just 280 kilometers south of the United States border. It is a city of great strengths, but also immense challenges. In an increasingly urbanized world, cities have become platforms for innovation and change, particularly in developing countries. While megacities like Bogotá, Lima, and Mexico City struggle to distribute goods and services to their sprawling populations, intermediate cities like Hermosillo have the potential to offer a more sustainable alternative.

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Construcciones Modernas, S.A. is a series comprising an album of popular, remembered, and forgotten buildings in Mexico City—a record and the beginning of an atlas. It is a subway line featuring all the architectural icons missing from the train cars, a tribute to the city, its modernity, and its decay.

Alberto Cruz, one of the Chilean architects who re-founded the School of Architecture of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso and founder of Amereida and the subsequent Open City, left behind more than 2,200 notebooks and folders, 200 drawings in various techniques, formats, and mediums, and around a thousand documents when he passed away in 2013.

Five years earlier, his granddaughter, historian Sara Browne, began working with Cruz to catalog his private output. Today, this entire archive is part of the Alberto Cruz Covarrubias Foundation, a space dedicated to honoring the memory of the 1975 National Architecture Award recipient.

In this email conversation with Browne, the historian examines the challenges of conserving and digitizing this historic archive, while also reflecting on Cruz Covarrubias's legacy.

CityMakers is working with ArchDaily to publish a series of articles, conversations, and interviews with various actors in city co-production, who are behind the Barcelona CityMakers Lab 2019, an event taking place from October 14 to 20.

On this occasion, we feature Oriol Estela Barnet, general coordinator of the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan, who will give a MasterClass at the Barcelona CityMakers Lab 2019 addressing the concept of “a third generation of strategic urban plans: the case of Barcelona.”

According to the executive branch's plans, more than 500 schools will be built in Peru this year to close the infrastructure gap affecting the sector. This represents an investment of 30 billion soles, which also serves as an incentive for the construction industry across the country's various regions.

Earthen construction remains highly relevant today, spanning the preservation of architectural heritage, new projects seeking sustainable horizons, and numerous training programs offered by institutes and universities. Yet we cannot overlook one of the major driving forces behind this building material: self-construction. Thanks to its technical advantages and accessibility, communities worldwide have chosen to build their settlements with earth. Consequently, construction becomes a collective exercise where every individual can contribute to shaping a shared future.

In this article, we look at how the NGO Terrachidia works with the community of Mhamid in Morocco to rehabilitate public spaces chosen by local residents. Supported by volunteers, they rescue regional building traditions, successfully preserving and highlighting the local knowledge embedded in places where the pursuit of modernity has led to abandonment, but which remain deeply valued by those who inhabit them.

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Alexandra Cohen presents her master's thesis on the systematic cartographic analysis of the morphological intersection between the Cerdà urban plan and pre-existing urban structures in Barcelona, Spain. Through her cartographic work, she aims to demonstrate how two highly distinct urban forms can integrate to bring immense value to the city, preserving history within a modern plan.

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As part of the Abierto Mexicano de Diseño 2019 (AMD2019), Jumbo, an international company focused on the development of urban spaces and furniture, presented the play sculpture “Infinito,” designed by Ariel Rojo. The project stems from the desire to design a line of urban elements that stimulate a sense of adventure and play through a range of play sculptures. These address not only an aesthetic responsibility to users, the city, its parks, and playgrounds, but also introduce an original approach to how children play and learn.

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As part of the design program at AGO Projects—a multidisciplinary space focused on promoting design, photography, and architecture, based in New York, which opened its doors in Mexico City just a few weeks ago—the exhibition "Otro Reino" has opened. The showcase features previously unseen and well-known pieces by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo's architecture studio, LANZA Atelier, and is complemented by "Neo-neo," a collection of ceramics based on urban concrete accidents by MT Objects.