This guide shows how to use a D5 Render a free live-sync plugin to improve SketchUp workflow.

Hãhãwpuá is the name used by the Pataxó Indigenous people of Brazil to refer to the land, the soil, or, more precisely, the territory that after colonization became known as Brazil, though it has had—and still has—many other names. Amidst all these “Brazils,” Brazil as Indigenous land is the focus of the country's pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale 2024, which has consequently been renamed the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion.

The images in this exhibition seek to create a space for reflection on a condition that can be extrapolated to the current state of the city of Concepción, Chile. They offer a simultaneous view of architectural works related by technique, scale, or construction period, capturing the distinctive identity that defined the city over the last 100 years—one that is currently threatened by an urban renewal process far removed from the motivations that gave rise to its heritage legacy.

As of this writing, the death toll exceeds 130, with over 15,000 homes affected by the megafires in Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, and Quilpué, which struck Chile in early February 2024. Above all, this tragedy forces us to once again confront the lack of urban planning and to continue improving prevention, evacuation, and warning systems. These events also demand—once again—that we outline a diagnosis and concrete courses of action toward necessary adaptation.

Founded in Shanghai in 2002 by a group of architects with academic backgrounds from China and abroad, Verse Design currently operates offices in Shanghai and Los Angeles. For over two decades, Verse Design has been deeply engaged in multi-scale practices across urban design, architectural design, community making, and residential product systems, developing a systematic and coherent design logic and methodology. From master planning and urban design to schematic design and detail control, a "craftsman's spirit" underpins every phase of their work.

Cultural and tourism resort towns, neighborhood communities, civic spaces, and community retail form the core of the firm's spatial typologies and research. Over the past decade, Verse Design has master-planned and fully designed a series of resort towns for the renowned lifestyle brand Aranya, including projects in Qinhuangdao, Jinshanling, Wuling Mountain, Sanya, and Jiulong Lake in Guangzhou. Additionally, the firm has been deeply involved in the master planning and architectural design of prominent projects such as Jiangshan Wanli, Prolo Utopia, and Shanghai Vanke's Ideal Land.

Verse Design maintains a boutique team size and a flat management structure, offering architects a highly autonomous working environment. Here, team members engage in multi-dimensional, full-phase projects ranging from early-stage programming and urban design to architectural design and detail execution. We welcome talented, like-minded architects to join us and grow alongside the firm. The office is located in a historic garden villa at the intersection of Zhaojiabang Road and Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai, just 50 meters from the Zhaojiabang Road Metro Station (Lines 7 and 9), offering easy accessibility and a comfortable working environment.

Conceived during the Fall Residency Program for Independent Projects at the IPA – Institute for Public Architecture, the project “The other of the other” (2023) was developed through visits to and research in a series of institutional sites and archives in New York City—resources that have influenced Talles Lopes's work since 2018. These primarily include spaces and archives related to the dissemination of Brazilian modernist architecture in the Global North from a New York perspective, specifically the MoMA archives in Manhattan.

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OUTIN.DESIGN was founded in 2014 by Chen Wang and Shajun Jiang. Based in China, it is an award-winning, multidisciplinary design firm with international recognition.

OUTIN.DESIGN's creative process begins with the observation of the self, daily life, nature, humanity, art, and the world itself. The studio seeks to gather and translate these impressions, reflecting ideas, objects, and moments through an experimental, functional, and forward-looking design language.

Our practice comprises four interdisciplinary design teams—R.E.C, WMT, SIBAN, and JEDI 404—which operate both independently and collaboratively across boundaries. Their exploration spans a comprehensive range of design scales, including architecture, community interaction, innovative retail spaces, exhibition design, co-working offices, boutique hotels, residential and lifestyle environments, interior styling and sourcing, as well as product design and prop development.

Each team brings a distinct design language and expertise to the table, enabling us to provide clients with comprehensive support across highly specialized, intersecting domains. This structure fosters diversity and pluralism within creative communities and technical innovation, while ensuring the streamlined operation of OUTIN.DESIGN as a cohesive, collective practice.

Some lessons, however simple, can resonate lastingly within our personal practice. This is the case with a specific memory from my undergraduate years in the Architecture and Urbanism program at Escola da Cidade, where, during a second-year technical drawing class, the professors suggested we retrace the floor plans of the Butantã House, designed by architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. My recollection is that, immediately, some of the students found the activity uninspired or even irrelevant—which is understandable—while for others it was certainly enjoyable and fruitful, even if they might not recall this specific episode more than a decade later, as is the case here. The value of being exposed to different activities within a course—from the most to the least conventional, from the simplest to the most elaborate—is that each individual will utilize different tools and knowledge in unique ways. Hence the importance of a wide range of experiences, even within the seemingly rigid instruction of technical drawing. What is trivial for some can be instrumental for others, whether momentarily or over the long term.

Concrete, in its various facets, exhibits an interesting duality thanks to its aesthetic and technical qualities, which have been explored by architects and designers in different typologies and contexts. On the one hand, reinforced concrete displays the strength and durability required for large-scale construction, efficiently withstanding adverse weather conditions. On the other hand, the malleability of stamped concrete allows it to elegantly adapt to complex shapes and imprint patterns on the surface, utilizing texture and pattern to cultivate a distinct atmosphere within the built environment.

Stamped concrete has gained prominence due to its durability and versatility, offering options and designs that adapt to different architectural styles. However, while we are familiar with its use and applications, specifying it requires a meticulous approach to ensure optimal results. Below is a practical guide covering the essential considerations from Melón Hormigones for specifying this innovative material, from pattern selection to proper care and maintenance.

The architectural heritage established by the early settlers of the Aysén region—initially a minimal expression of dwelling designed to protect inhabitants from the elements, which later evolved intrinsically alongside the changing needs of its residents—symbolically represents a vernacular architectural identity in wood.

Today, with few exceptions, the remaining houses from the early years of spontaneous settlement in the region show advanced signs of decay. They are often repurposed as storage sheds or outbuildings next to the main house due to degraded materials, a lack of basic utilities, or precarious thermal insulation. 

Similarly, although the vast majority of larger and more complex homes from a more recent period—built primarily in urban areas—remain inhabited, the structural decay of these buildings is increasingly evident. This precarious condition is closely linked to their occupants, who are mostly older adults lacking the financial resources or physical capability to undertake necessary repairs.

The craft of architecture is, fundamentally, a practice of approaching the other. While the product expected of the architect is a physical object, it must respond with the utmost sensitivity to the people who will use it—that is, those who will inhabit the space. 

During the 1980s and 1990s, a paradigm shift occurred in how the social sciences understood certain social phenomena. Spatiality became a key concept for grounding social phenomena in physical space, giving rise to a new research perspective known as the "spatial turn in the social sciences." This approach aims to anchor social phenomena, such as dwelling, in concrete material spaces, acknowledging that physical space exerts agency over human social life, and vice versa.

*This article was submitted by Andrea Henríquez through our call for architectural research submissions.

Walking through rural communities in Chile today, it is clear that from a pedestrian perspective, these areas are growing through the application of urban design elements. There is a clash between two realities: on one hand, the historical practices of the residents themselves, and on the other, the introduction of standardized urban development.

Alongside their own ways of life, local residents have been forced to adapt to standardized territorial growth, excluded from decision-making processes regarding interventions in their pedestrian environment. Regulatory frameworks are the tools used by direct operators to intervene in the rural sphere. Generally, the resident—the central subject of social policies—remains a passive and uninformed actor regarding these regulatory frameworks (Tapia, 2007).

*This article was submitted by Felipe Aguilera through our call for submissions for architectural research.

Large-scale urban facilities (GEUs) are generally buildings or complexes of buildings—whether public or private—and spaces where activities complementary to habitability take place. As such, this term refers to those buildings whose function, use, and location impact the development of new centralities. Due to their scope and strategic positioning, they can be identified as urban landmarks within a network of symbolic buildings that characterize globalized cities.

The city of Rosario has a strong track record of urban planning, starting with the 1935 Regulatory Plan by Ángel Guido, Carlos Della Paolera, and Adolfo Farengo, and continuing with Oscar Mongsfeld's 1968 Regulatory Plan. Following the return of democracy in 1983, successive municipal administrations ensured continuity in territorial planning by adhering to the main guidelines of these plans and formalizing others, such as the Master Plan (1991), the Rosario Master Plan (2001), and the Rosario Urban Plan (PUR) 2007/2017, along with its updates.

*This article was submitted by Mauro Latour and Pablo Mazzaro through our call for architectural research submissions.

Wild City Studio was founded in Paris in 2010, and established in Beijing in 2015 as Wild City Factory. An innovative and experimental interdisciplinary architectural practice, its research and practice span architecture, urbanism, landscape, interior and exhibition design, art curation, event planning, content production, the integration of technology and art, and metaverse development.

Founder and principal architect Ye Cheng graduated from the Department of Earth Sciences at Nanjing University before studying in France at the École Spéciale d'Architecture (ESA) in Paris, where his thesis project won the ESA Annual Award. He is the first Chinese recipient of the "Prix des Jeunes Artistes" (Young Artist Award) from the Institut de France. Having lived and worked in France for over a decade, Ye Cheng possesses a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural background spanning science, architecture, and art, making him a representative figure among China's young interdisciplinary pioneers. He has curated major domestic and international exhibitions, including five editions of the "Reconstructing Utopia" architecture and art exhibition, the "Urban Interconnection" Sino-French Contemporary Architecture Exhibition series celebrating the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France, the "Unknown City" Chinese Contemporary Architecture Installation and Video Exhibition, the main exhibition of Beijing Design Week 2015, the inaugural 2019 Nanjing Youth Olympic Art Light Festival, the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival 3.0" Digital Art Exhibition in Hong Kong, and the "Emotional Architecture" exhibition at the Laboratoire d'Exposition in Paris. His large-scale spatial art installations—such as Huntian City, Void Shanshui, Net City, Super-Axis, Ecological Mandala, and Wormhole City—merge Eastern philosophy and aesthetics with modern technology, proposing a poetic vision of "Eastern Urban Shanshui" for future urban spaces and social structures. Furthermore, he independently produced the sci-fi short film Interstellar Folding, which uses cinematic language to explore his "Interstellar Great Bay Area" space city concept. In 2022, serving as the master planner of the "Meta City" metaverse, Ye Cheng collaborated with Meta Media and Baidu to develop and launch this internationally leading metaverse application, pioneering the "Eastern Futurism" metaverse school that integrates Eastern and Western philosophies with urban theory.

Design Philosophy
Wild City Factory has consistently adhered to a design philosophy centered on "spatial ontology." From the spiritual to the material, the individual to the world, and reality to the virtual, all questions are fundamentally spatial. Everything begins with space, rooted in the present while spanning the three dimensions of time: past, present, and future. Space is not merely a container, but a connector—linking people to people, space to space, and humanity to space. Space exists in a fleeting moment of time, yet resides in its eternity. In this sense, from architecture to art, exhibition to writing, and observation to criticism, the work of Wild City Factory always revolves around spatial inquiries. Space, ultimately, is the root of all questions.

Externally, our work explores, perceives, imagines, constructs, dissolves, abolishes, and regenerates space within its limitations. Internally, we continuously traverse the "in-between" (jian) within the infinity of space, drawing infinitely closer to its "void" (kong)—the very ontology of space.

Believing that "design is problem-solving," Wild City Factory champions a trinity spatial strategy of "Space-Content-Event." By conducting in-depth research and analysis of project contexts, we integrate this spatial philosophy and methodology into innovative designs. This approach embodies the diverse, multi-directional, and cross-border interdisciplinary nature of our practice.

Derived from the capstone project for the Specialization in Architecture for Education, this analysis addresses the intriguing potential of idle spaces within the educational realm. Titled "Idle Spaces for Placeless Education," this study investigates how disused architectural heritage can be transformed to meet the demand for dedicated infrastructure by educational institutions. 

Developed at FADU - UNL, this article explores the revitalization of heritage to meet contemporary educational needs.

*This article was submitted by Bruno Mercado through our call for architectural research submissions.

Applying ground cover in gardens is essential for several reasons. It helps conserve soil moisture, reducing the need for frequent irrigation, while controlling weed growth by blocking the sunlight necessary for germination. It also helps regulate soil temperature, keeping it warmer in winter and cooler in summer, and prevents erosion caused by wind and rain. In addition, it reduces soil compaction, facilitates root growth, improves water infiltration, and provides an aesthetic finish to the landscape.

In Renca, a municipality of Santiago characterized by an arid climate, finding ways to combat soil aridity is crucial for urban renovations aimed at improving thermal comfort in streets and public spaces. To address this, Cerámica Santiago, in collaboration with the Municipality of Renca, has developed a pioneering project to revitalize urban spaces using clay brick gravel. This material, called Princesa Brick Gravel, is a byproduct of brick manufacturing and has proven to be an effective solution for creating low-water gardens, transforming degraded sites into sustainable green spaces.

Nicolás Valencia speaks this week on the TERRAZA podcast with Chilean researcher Luis Darmendrail about his book ⁠Concepción 1930⁠, published by dostercios editorial in 2023.

Concepción 1930 is a compelling study of a pivotal decade in the architectural history of the Chilean city of Concepción: the 1930s are presented as a turbulent period of change and new beginnings, where culture, commerce, the media, and institutions serve as the pillars of an urban life that flows alongside the narrative, revealing a city at the turn of the century.

This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia talks with Chilean architect Andrea Ortega about her book “Rieles que unen. Patrimonio ferroviario entre Estación Central y San Bernardo” (Rails that Unite: Railway Heritage between Estación Central and San Bernardo), published by the National Cultural Heritage Service in 2022.

“Rieles que unen” is a critical account of the configuration and development of the heritage surrounding the initial urban stretch of the only active passenger and freight railway line currently operating in Santiago, Chile. The research approaches the understanding of railway heritage by integrating tangible and intangible elements, considering its urban-territorial scale and the valuation processes driven by organized communities at local levels.

This week on the podcast TERRAZA, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean researcher Nicolás Valenzuela Levi, editor of the book “⁠Alimentando la ciudad. Diálogos sobre infraestructura alimentaria urbana⁠”, published by Editorial ARQ in 2024.

“⁠Alimentando la ciudad. Diálogos sobre infraestructura alimentaria urbana⁠” is a collection of research on a type of infrastructure that we often fail to notice until it breaks down. The pandemic, followed by food price inflation, has heightened food insecurity, which manifests on the ground through examples such as the price of cooking oil at a neighborhood store or community kitchens as a local response. This book brings together an international, multidisciplinary group of researchers addressing these issues.

This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean architect Sofía Montealegre, author of the book “Capas de memoria,” published by LOCAL ediciones in 2024.

Montealegre writes about a giant that has changed both its name and its appearance over the last 50 years. Inaugurated in 1972, the UNCTAD III building was an emblem of the Unidad Popular, only to be transformed into the Diego Portales building during the dictatorship, and later reopened as the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral (GAM)—standing as a testament to our complex history.

In the field of architecture, there is growing client interest in integrated solutions that offer comprehensive support across all stages of a project, simplifying and optimizing each phase of the construction lifecycle to deliver greater efficiency and precision. This spans stages such as budgeting, construction planning and management, resource and procurement management, materials purchasing, and ultimately, real estate sales. 

Based in Chongqing, We Live Architects is a pioneering, research-oriented design practice. The firm boasts a highly creative international design team whose principals are alumni of top-tier global and domestic institutions, including the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), the School of Architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Goldsmiths, University of London, the University of Nottingham, and the University of New South Wales.

Blending humanistic and technological thinking, the practice centers its work on the tripartite relationship between humans and environment, society, and self. Using space as a medium, the studio approaches design through the three dimensions of form, morphology, and concept, aiming to generate distinctive spatial experiences for urban environments.

The firm's portfolio spans urban regeneration, public architecture, cultural tourism planning, and commercial spaces. Its notable projects include high-quality architectural designs and spatial transformations such as the Liziba Yellow Building, Jiangxiaobai's One-Acre-and-Three-Fifths Field (Yimusanfendi), the Luxe Lakes Curator District, and the Jialing Bridge East Village.

Design Philosophy
We Live Architects is both pioneering and pragmatic. Beginning with imagination and a commitment to originality, we seek a unique soul for every project. Guided by responsibility, we manage the entire process to guarantee high-quality execution. Grounded in our ecological and temporal contexts, we navigate the space between “the reasonable and the forbidden,” embrace challenging yet intriguing design constraints, and maintain an authentic, if sometimes unconventional, attitude. We focus on the threefold relationship between humanity and the environment, society, and self. Using space as our canvas, we engage with design through form, morphology, and concept to foster unique behaviors and experiences, encouraging people to embrace new ideas and perspectives.

How we perceive space is a crucial aspect of architecture and interior design, profoundly influencing our interaction with the environment. Consequently, spatial perception is shaped by elements such as furniture arrangement, lighting, color usage, and selected materials. The latter is particularly significant, as the same material can be employed in various ways, resulting in atmospheres with distinct characteristics.

An example of the potential variations in material use is fluted cladding. These are milled MDF surfaces with a linear pattern designed to decorate interior walls and ceilings. They can be applied to a variety of surfaces, though they should only be used in areas not exposed to humidity. The system is notable for its ability to accentuate space through different configurations. Depending on their arrangement and type of ripple, these configurations can modify the spatial experience by highlighting, directing, enveloping, and achieving visual balance in homes, offices, commercial spaces, and more.

This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia talks with José Luis Uribe, author of the book “Viaje a Paraguay,” published by Arquine in 2023.

In “Viaje a Paraguay,” Uribe approaches the work of Gabinete de Arquitectura, Lukas Fuster, Estudio Elgué, José Cubilla, and Javier Corvalán and the Laboratorio de Arquitectura, drawing from three expeditions conducted between 2017 and 2019 to reflect on Paraguay’s contribution to the contemporary state of architecture.

This week on the TERRAZA podcast, Nicolás Valencia speaks with Marie Combette and Daniel Moreno, the French-Ecuadorian duo behind La Cabina de la Curiosidad and the book “Los caminos del agua,” published by Arquine in 2023.

In “Los caminos del agua,” a series of journeys across different scales unfolds, providing objective, compelling, and detailed insights into the origins of water flows within Latin American geography. The slow, patient, and rigorous hand-drawing of watersheds proposes a conscious assimilation of the natural wealth of this territory.