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.

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Sala Roxy is a historic venue located at 80 Mezquitán Street in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. For years, this space served as a local symbol of freedom, bringing together alternative artistic and cultural expressions. First opening its doors in 1937, it operated for several decades as Cine Roxy; built in the Art Deco style, it became one of the first theaters dedicated to film screenings in Guadalajara.

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.

'Silogismos' is an architecture and illustration project that bases its research on archives, publications, and photographs tracing the history of modern construction in Mexico. It offers a graphic narrative on the continuity and transformation of seminal 20th-century works through the synthesis, interpretation, and juxtaposition of their ideals. These paired concepts confront thought and form through deductive inference. Ultimately, the sum of these parts reveals critical architectural meanings and motives for future reconstruction.

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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.

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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.”

The architecture industry is a shadow of its former self. In a world where most services are acquired online, architects who ignore digital marketing are digging their own graves. Those who thrive leverage technology and digital marketing tools effectively, establishing a stronger online presence and securing more potential leads—opportunities that will surely pass you by if you are making the following six mistakes:

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.

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Malaquita is a project located on the terrace of the Hotel City Center in the heart of the Historic Center. Its design is conceived as an escape from the bustle of Mexico City, a place where the passage of time across the different eras that shape the territory is palpable: pre-Hispanic, colonial, modern, and postmodern coexisting in constant resilience. 

In the article "trends that will influence architecture in 2019," we identified a digital future for the construction sector. Growing search volumes for both BIM systems, modular and prefabricated systems, as well as 3D Printing, Automation and Artificial Intelligence point to upcoming shifts in construction methods. Is architectural academia preparing for this future of human-free construction?

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

For this installment, we have compiled excerpts from a conversation with architect and urban planner Victor Torres, Creative Director of CityMakers, who invites us to reflect on the need to rethink traditional models of making and learning to build cities, and on CityMakers, a community that seeks to inspire change through on-site knowledge transfer in exemplary cities around the world.

The Spanish Architecture Prize (Premio de Arquitectura Española) has been awarded biennially by the Higher Council of the Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) since 1993 to promote the quality of architectural works built across Spain.

The award has recognized built works by architects such as Enric Miralles, Mansilla y Tuñón, Sara de Giles, and Francisco Mangado Beloqui, among others, with projects including the Royal Collections Museum and the Palma Convention Center and Hotel. Explore all the winning projects below.

Videos

It is true that designers, architects, and the general public share an endless fascination with abandoned architecture. Throughout history, shifting economies, disasters, regime changes, and sheer incompetence have forced the evacuation of striking architectural structures, which today serve as curious—and even haunting—monuments to bygone eras.

This fascination has led to the publication of several articles on our site exploring the mysteries of some of the most famous sites through text and photography. Yet, this curiosity has also driven individuals to venture out and document their experiences firsthand. Such is the case of Mike Corey, a YouTuber who, through his channel Fearless & Far, has dedicated himself (among other pursuits) to exploring some of Mexico's most famous abandoned buildings.

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The Forêt Monumentale is a sustainable art and architecture exhibition featuring temporary works and pavilions designed as "site-specific" installations, created especially for a 4-kilometer trail in the Green Forest of Rouen, Normandy.

The family of José Antonio Coderch [1913-1984] has handed over the Catalan architect's significant archive to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. With this acquisition, the renowned Madrid museum seeks to follow the path forged by other contemporary art institutions, such as the MoMA in New York or the Pompidou in Paris. Because these institutions already feature dedicated architecture departments, the Reina Sofía aims to expand its own holdings, incorporating both architectural movements and the individual professionals who shaped the art of building. This initiative has been promoted for several years under the leadership of the museum's director, Manuel Borja-Villel.

The archive, which was stored in a utility room at the home of one of Coderch's children, consists of 9,800 documents organized across 875 folders and dating from 1941 to 1978. It includes plans and sketches of his architectural projects; designs, photographs, and negatives of his works, alongside family photos; professional correspondence; invoices and receipts for each project; as well as magazines, books, publications, and scale models; portraits of the architect, several of his numerous awards, and personal belongings. 

Since the mid-twentieth century, Latin American cities have undergone metropolization processes in which transportation has been heavily impacted by the exponential growth of private vehicle use. This is driven by rapid, unregulated urban sprawl that causes cities to spread extensively across the territory. This physical expansion is compounded by deficient public transit management and weak domestic socioeconomic conditions, both of which severely constrain the development of transportation systems.

Córdoba, Argentina's most populous city after Buenos Aires, is a prime example of this paradigm, featuring one of the largest urban footprints in the world at 576 square kilometers (excluding its metropolitan area). Its physical structure is radiocentric, with transport corridors converging in the city center, creating a dense core where services are concentrated and an ever-expanding periphery.

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.

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.

Concéntrico is an International Architecture and Design Festival that, through a democratic approach open to all citizens and visitors, aims to reflect on the urban environment and the city.

Videos

Mares is an urban transformation and social economy project developed by estudio SIC, VIC (Vivero de iniciativas ciudadanas) and TXP (Todo por praxis) in Madrid, Spain. The project reclaims four former buildings across four different districts of the city, converting them into innovation hubs. Each hub is linked to key urban challenges: Mobility, Food, Recycling, Energy, and Care.

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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Pirwi, the leading national design editor, recently presented new collections featuring collaborations with Mexican artists and designers, including Daniel Pouzet, Joel Escalona, Moisés Hernández, Pablo Herrera, Sebastián Ángeles, Sergio Morales, and Mario García Torres. These collaborations range from small objects such as shelves and furniture to design pieces that offer a critique and reflection on the era we inhabit. Some of the pieces shown below come together as a complete range of daily-life objects designed by Pirwi, reflecting the brand's aspiration to reach a more inclusive audience and refresh its image with materials and finishes not previously explored.

Curious, inquisitive, and tenacious, Miguel Fisac [1913–2006] learned by doing. Fascinated by technology and construction, his direct on-site experience made up for everything that neither university nor books could teach or convey to him. Although his early work could be described as "academicist," within a few years the architect from Ciudad Real managed to shed this approach, turning instead to organic-patterned masonry and beams with bone-like logic. All of this was rooted in an intrinsic, personal commitment to creating a humanized architecture aligned with technical precision.