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.

Ten years after a destructive earthquake rocked Italy's central Abruzzo region, many students still attend class in temporary modules similar to containers. Named winners of an international competition, SET Architects’ design for the new “Sassa School Complex” proposes reconstructing a place for students and the community to learn, gather, and grow. Inspired by the modularity and essential nature of climbing frame play structures, the architects describe the design as a metaphor for “freedom and social aggregation as a fundamental value for dynamic and innovative teaching.”

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I was part of the last generation of architectural students who didn't use computers (we’re only talking the early 1990’s here; there was electricity, color TV’s, rockets, just no renderings.) In my final year at college I miscalculated how long it would take me to finish my thesis project. As the deadline approached, I realized it was too late for me to match my fellow students’ presentations. At the time Zaha Hadid, and her deconstructivist paintings, set the style for architectural illustration. That meant many student projects being rendered in oil paints on large canvases.

Improving public transit requires close attention not only to vehicles and routes, but to how people access and exit them. All too often, urban planning fails to account for the diverse needs of all individuals and how they navigate a transit system.

The implementation of a Complete Street is something to be celebrated. A Complete Street initiative is a clear indication that a city is striving for urban mobility and seeking a more democratic and safer use of space. Nevertheless, it is vital to measure the impact of these interventions when implementing future actions.

Joel Carlos Borges Street, the first Complete Street in São Paulo, underwent an evaluation two months after it was completed. The study revealed that 92% of its users approved of the project and believed that the changes were beneficial.

Today, when it comes to urban planning, the design and pursuit of inclusive cities is generally promoted. That is, fostering collective environments where all sectors of society can thrive.

How much easier would this task be if spaces were created where different segments of society could express their needs regarding how they live?

“Leo Leo! Que Ves? La ciudad contada por los niños y las niñas” is a project that originated in the city of Córdoba in 2017, within the framework of the artistic and cultural activities program of the Undersecretariat of Culture at the National University of Córdoba. It continues to develop activities such as “Ciudad niñez-ca,” led by Paola Antonietti and workshop facilitators Camila García Reyna, María Paz Pérez Roque, Rocío Maldonado, Gabriela Soto, and Matias Zanetti, alongside FAUD's Urbanism 1A department and the City and Territory Studies Workshop.

We explore this project through the words of its creators.

Automation has become a major talking point—not only for its potential to replace countless low-income or low-skilled jobs, but also for its capacity to render entire professional careers obsolete through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

At ArchDaily, we opened the floor to this discussion in 2017 with an in-depth report on the subject, and we recently turned to our Instagram audience to ask what they think about automation. Do they believe it will affect them? Our readers seem confident: some argue that architecture is an art—or rather, a discipline centered on emotions—even if they overlook the standardization and modulation processes already established in the real estate market. According to those who responded to our poll, this emotional dimension inherent to architecture is precisely what makes it harder to automate.

In 2018, anyone who passed by an empty lot in the heart of Paraisópolis—São Paulo's second-largest community—on Mondays and Thursdays encountered children with dirt-dusted knees, playing with objects like tires, paper boats, and twigs in endless games. This was the Brincreto project, an initiative by the Coletivo LUB – Laboratório de Urbano de Brincadeiras.

This guide is not a catalog. It is an open invitation to walk around the city and learn more about the architecture in Guatemala City.

The Guide to Modern Architecture in Guatemala City was written by Raúl Monterroso, Gemma Gil, and photographed by Andrés Asturias. In partnership with The Cultural Center of Spain in Guatemala, the guide addresses a descriptive analysis of 35 buildings, structured in five different routes, with the aim of not only synthesizing a series of physical characteristics but to provoke a reflexive, analytical and critical observation of the environment.

As Raúl Monterroso points out, while he shares five sites that every architect must visit, the goal is to introduce people to Guatemala's modern movement. It is an invitation to walk through the city and identify it with a different built heritage, however one that also shapes the landscape and fits into the urban context. Learn more about modern architecture in Latin America, below.

On December 4, the opening of the Provincial Preliminary Design Competition for Cultural Spaces in Villa Carlos Paz took place. 

The format involved intervening in three emblematic urban spaces under a single competition, but with individual prizes awarded for each site. The goal was for participants to achieve aesthetic and architectural proposals that would transform each space into a city landmark.

These are the three winning projects:

Zinc is a natural element extracted from ores. Its symbol, which appears in the dreaded Periodic Table, is Zn. Through a metallurgical process of burning its impurities (reducing zinc oxide and refining), it assumes a much more friendly appearance, and later becomes the sheets, coils, and rollers used in construction. The main characteristic of this material is its malleability, which allows it to be worked easily, allowing to cover complex forms in facades and roofs of buildings.

Sustainability awards and standards touted by professional architecture organizations often stop at opening day, failing to take into account the day-to-day energy use of a building. With the current format unlikely to change, how can we rethink the way what sustainability means in architecture today? The first step might be to stop rewarding purpose-built architecture, and look instead to the buildings we already have. This article was originally published on CommonEdge as"Why Reusing Buildings Should be the Next Big Thing."

At the inaugural Rio Conference on the Global Environment in 1992, three facts became abundantly clear: the earth was indeed warming; fossil fuels were no longer a viable source of energy; the built environment would have to adapt to this new reality. That year I published an essay in the Journal of Architectural Education called “Architecture for a Contingent Environment” suggesting that architects join with both naturalists and preservationists to confront this situation.

Much has been said since the then-new minister of economy, Paulo Guedes, stated that it was necessary to “take a knife” to the S System. However, these discussions have focused almost exclusively on the financial aspects of the system. To truly understand the relevance of the S System to Brazilian society—whose flagship organizations include SENAC (National Service for Commercial Apprenticeship), SESC (Social Service of Commerce), SENAI (National Service for Industrial Apprenticeship), SESI (Social Service of Industry), and SEBRAE (Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service)—it is far more instructive to examine the original motivations behind this vocational education system, the pedagogical and political project that drove its creation, the role of architecture in its facilities to achieve its goals, and its ongoing relevance in the fields of education and culture.

It's common sense: a good design is based on people and what they really need. As architects, are we deepening enough to give the correct answers to the requirements we face in each project?

Herman Miller is a great example of this understanding. Founded in 1905 by Dirk Jan De Pree, the American company produces equipment and furnishings for offices and housing, including a high level of research to understand the human body and the way we inhabit our daily spaces. These investigations, supported by usability testing and multidisciplinary work, results in a large number of furniture pieces and spatial designs that are now used by people around the world.

We had the opportunity to visit their headquarters in Zeeland, Michigan to understand how these studies have been carried out for several decades.

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One of the most important factors when designing is the specific climate of the site. This can often present challenges when dealing with extreme climates and it is necessary to use insulating materials that adapt to changing conditions. However, Mexico and its privileged climate can be in an architect's favor. Here, architects can create microclimates and spaces that blur the transition of inside and outside.

© Annie Spratt. Image Courtesy of Architect-US

Looking for a job isn’t fun. It’s nerve-wracking for the applicant and it’s often time-consuming for the potential employer as well. It can be even worse if you’re job-seeking internationally, hoping for a position with a top firm in the United States. For an applicant from another country hoping to make the move to an architecture career in the US, the process can seem overwhelming: rules and regulations, visa issuance processes, and loads of supplementary documentation necessary for immigration.

Top Architecture Firms enrolled in the Architect-US Programs. Image courtesy of Architect-US. 

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Saving space, reducing costs and a pleasant user experience – parking doesn’t get much better than this.

Cityscapes around the world are changing, architects face the constant challenge of integrating parking space into new or existing real estate in densely built-up urban environments. While there is a growing ambition to replace cars as a prime mobility tool, we’re far from realizing this goal. Most downtown revitalizations today require structured parking. Where space is tight, access ramp or radius of a conventional parking garage may be hard to fit. Because robotic parking systems require neither these nor access for pedestrians, they can place up to 60% more cars in the same space – increasing the RoI on parking spaces Alternatively, the same number of cars can be parked in 60% of the space of a conventional parking garage, creating significant cost savings in the construction phase. In either case, the user experience in robotic parking systems – brightly lit entrance areas, safe vehicle retrieval processes and reduced car fumes as the search for parking is effectively eliminated – is second to none.

Architects are often bound by the will of their client, reluctantly sacrificing and compromising design choices in order to suit their needs. But what happens when architects become their own clients? When architects design for themselves, they have the potential to test their ideas freely, explore without creative restriction, and create spaces which wholly define who they are, how they design, and what they stand for. From iconic architect houses like the Gehry Residence in Santa Monica to private houses that double as a public-entry museum, here are 9 fascinating examples of how architects design when they only have themselves to answer to.

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Online courses have gained more and more recognition in the past couple of years. In addition to the flexibility and convenience of learning wherever and whenever you want, they provide access to content from well-respected professors and colleges. In the field of architecture and construction, online courses have grown exponentially. Last year, we compiled a list that focused mainly on constructive and material techniques. This time we selected 15 online courses covering a range of subjects. We hope this selection of courses can help you with your next project.

We find ourselves in the Madrid of the 1980s. Specifically at the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid [E.T.S.A.M.], a school in the shadow of the one in Barcelona, a city optimistic about its urban transformations. The latter was a city that trusted its architects, pushing them to participate in the reconstruction of its identity. Meanwhile, Madrid seemed to come alive through other avenues. The city championed other artistic sectors, leaving young architects with few opportunities to express their shared enthusiasm. Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros belonged to this Madrilenian generation. They, like many others, had to wait and devise intellectual strategies to define the new professional and territorial boundaries that would reconstruct the Madrid of the future.

The work of Ábalos & Herreros is not only a virtuous exercise in surfaces and construction techniques; it also establishes mixtures, connections, and spatial relationships. It establishes links that foster a dialogue between all parts: the existing and the new, people and objects, building and landscape, and so on. Their architecture inherits the legacy of Modernism to translate its gestures into something that, while perhaps appearing new and innovative to a less attentive observer, is intrinsically charged with the accumulated technological experience of the 20th century. They do all of this in an illustratively modest way, seeking to solve age-old problems in a different manner. Theirs is not a revolutionary or radical architecture—understanding the latter term as a desire to dismantle a totality. There are no origins, only discoveries along their path. Established tropes are reconsidered, employing technologies, materials, gestures, and forms that, for various reasons, remain stored in the conceptual archives of many who have not yet figured out how to implement them in an ingenious and creative way.

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Some architects love color, some are unmoved by it, some hate it, and some love to dismiss it as too whimsical or non-serious for architecture. In an essay on the subject, Timothy Brittain-Catlin mentions the “innate puritanism among clients of architecture,” architects and their “embarrassment of confronting color,” and how “Modernism tried to ‘educate out’ bright colors.” So, while the debate on color in architecture is far from being a new one, it is not finished, and probably never will be.

In today’s world where the exhausted stereotype of the no-nonsense architect clad in black still persists, and while we quietly mull over the strange pull of the Cosmic Latte, there are some architects who haven’t been afraid of using broad swathes of color in their work at all. Read on for a list of 7 such exemplary architects both from the past and the present.

For as much as we regard technology as a panacea to heal the world, design is probably the most formidable tool we have in addressing the challenges of the 21st century. Its relationship with technology is often symbiotic, but just as common are the strange contradictions that emerge at the intersection of design, technology, and humanity.

This project is the concept competition for the world’s only WorldSkills Museum. The goal is to renovate and renew an old warehouse on the banks of the Huangpu River, transforming it into a venue dedicated to skills competitions and vocational education for youth, while creating a vibrant urban public space.

Hans Scharoun [1893-1972] drew from this language. Along with many of his contemporaries—Mies, Taut, Mendelsohn, and Häring himself—he was shaped by the expressionist milieu of postwar Germany, studying under Poelzig at his Breslau School. This expressionism first appeared in a series of watercolors he contributed to the *“Gläserne Kette” (“Glass Chain”)*, the famous correspondence network among architects and artists in Germany at the time. Conceived by Bruno Taut, this chain of letters served as a medium of communication among the group's members. In these letters, liberated from the constraints of feasibility, the members outlined their visions of an ideal society and a benevolent architecture.

By the 1920s, however, on the cusp of another conflict, a culture of resourcefulness and efficiency took root once again globally. Economic recovery demanded austerity, a trend reflected not only in household management but across many artistic avant-gardes of the period—a collective quest for material, formal, and, consequently, economic efficiency. Rationalism emerged as the dominant trend, championed by architects like Hannes Meyer and André Lurçat, who sought to strip the communicative attributes of architectural language down to zero in favor of addressing the organizational tasks demanded by technological and political developments.

Cities are hotter than surrounding areas because of a climate phenomena that is known as the urban heat island (UHI). While scientists have studied this effect for decades, new information has recently come to light that points to the way we arrange our cities as a key contributor to raised temperatures. The results could help city planners build our future cities better.