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.

Today, Bustamante Park is one of the most frequented urban spaces in the municipality of Providencia. Completed in 1946, its design arose from the redevelopment of the former railway lines that once connected the old Pirque Station—the square that serves as our meeting point today—with the town of Puente Alto.

As one of the city's many linear parks, it is worth asking which qualities have turned Bustamante Park into a landmark in Santiago.

Some projects demand a clean aesthetic, free of ornament or striking features. When it comes to windows, exterior views can be completely unobstructed by minimizing their constituent components—frames, handles, or railings—without compromising strength or safety. Here are three products that reduce these elements to their simplest expression.

The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photographic essays, has been documented in various books, magazines, and photobooks of the era, as well as in images from public and private archives across the city. These images reveal a deliberate, and even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers and integrated new buildings and urban spaces with the existing cityscape.

To analyze the impact of photojournalism in this era, one must look to Sady González, Manuel H., and Daniel Rodríguez. Architecture and the city serve as the backdrop for scenes of urban life, characters, events, and daily activities, making their photographs an essential visual record for understanding the city's transformation and its historical context.

In this edition of Bogotá in the Eyes of 10 Photographers, we explore the legacy of Daniel Rodríguez:

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After analyzing 94 undergraduate student projects from 20 architecture schools across 8 regions in Chile, the jury of the 2018 Arquitectura Caliente Competition has announced the winning projects of its latest edition.

These projects span the entire country and encompass a wide range of typologies, from urban planning to student housing, alongside landscape architecture projects and structural initiatives for emergencies.

Below, we present the award-winning fourth and fifth-year projects:

The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photo essays, has been documented in various books, magazines, and photobooks of the era, as well as in images from the city's public and private archives. These images reveal an intentional, and even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers and positioned new buildings and urban spaces in relation to the existing urban landscape.

In analyzing the impact of aerial photography, Saúl Orduz and Rudolf Schrimpff are essential figures. While the subjects captured through the lenses of these two pilot-photographers were vast and varied, their aerial views of the city are highly numerous. Together, they form a consistent body of work documenting a modern city in transformation, offering insight into its urban development, as well as how different modern buildings and urban spaces were integrated into their surroundings.

In this edition of Bogotá through the Eyes of 10 Photographers, we explore the legacy of Saúl Orduz:

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On the occasion of the third edition of the EA USS Workshop, of which ArchDaily is a media partner, Ernesto Silva, Director of the School of Architecture at Universidad San Sebastián, reflects on the origins of this initiative, which held its first session in 2016 with the international participation of Juan Herreros, and a year later with Alberto Veiga, founding partner of Estudio Barozzi Veiga.

During a meeting with Juan Herreros in 2015, the idea of hosting a workshop in Chile first emerged. While initially it seemed like an extremely difficult initiative to realize, the project soon began to take shape after Enrique Walker joined the conversation. The workshop finally came to fruition in October 2016 thanks to the support and generosity of the Faculty of Architecture at Universidad San Sebastián, when Juan Herreros and Enrique Walker led the first workshop of this series at EAUSS: Typological Corrections.

Elsa Mäkiniemi – Elissa Aalto was a Finnish architect who worked alongside her husband, Alvar Aalto, from 1949 onward. Following Alvar's passing, she directed the firm Alvar Aalto & Co. until her own death in 1994. 

She completed Alvar Aalto's unfinished projects and defended his completed works against unwarranted alterations.

The Civic Center in Boca Sur, designed by Smiljan Radic, functions as a framework for public programs. It houses the Fourth Fire Station of San Pedro de la Paz, multipurpose rooms, a strip of small commercial shops, a library, a footbridge that serves as bleachers over the sports court, an alarm tower with a clock, sand pits, and trees, among other elements.

Framed within the *‘Quiero Mi Barrio’* (2008) community development program, the project sought to revitalize degraded and highly vulnerable areas, addressing the relationship between the immediate context and the activities occurring within it. To this end, the design process was informed by working sessions and an ongoing dialogue with the community.

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Today, 470 cities across 36 countries identify as educating cities and are networked through the International Association of Educating Cities (IAEC), which, in its founding charter, argues that cities possess a raw educational potential waiting to be unlocked. Beyond the IAEC, other municipalities have also taken on the challenge of connecting spaces, people, and actions around learning processes that prioritize the holistic development of their inhabitants.

Around one in the morning in Cairo, despite the darkness of the night, everything feels yellow. Arriving in a city of 9 million people, with an airport that handles 3 million daily, is overwhelming, staggering—or, as Lovecraft might describe those lurking in the dark, indescribable and unnameable. In the gloom of a hotel room that saw its glory days long ago, I can see the Great Pyramid of Giza in the distance, shrouded behind the ever-present haze.

The relentless city devours almost everything in its path; the desert resists, tourism does its part, and, for now, the Sphinx simply watches. Restoration and archaeological work are always underway around the historic sites; you brush the dust off your feet only to uncover ancient remains. Saqqara—the Step Pyramid—is perpetually draped in massive scaffolding of dry wood, weathered from years of waiting for the next discovery that might finally let each prop rest. The heat in Cairo is stifling, and while collective memory associates the city with the pyramids and the Sphinx, its daily life breathes desert, diversity, tourism, commerce, and religion.

At more than 3,800 meters above sea level and on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the city of Puno stands as the folklore capital of Peru, where architecture, archaeology, and dance intersect. It is not only home to the Candelaria festival—declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2014—but also sits just a few kilometers from the vast archaeological legacy of the Pucará and Tiwanaku cultures. Additionally, visitors can travel to the floating islands of Uros, Amantaní, and Taquile on the world's highest navigable lake.

Before going any further, if you are not accustomed to this altitude, we recommend drinking coca tea regularly or chewing coca leaves, which can be purchased at any local store. Furthermore, the weather can be highly unpredictable; a single day can bring sun, rain, and hail, so keep this in mind when choosing what to wear. Lastly, in Peru, streets that are at least ten blocks long, narrow, and usually one-way are called jirones (abbreviated as Jr.).

The LIMPAR SANTANA project involves constructing a sustainable basic sanitation system to clean up the waterways of Quilombo de Santana, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, aiming to improve the quality of drinking water in local homes.

Based on an assessment of the area's topography, geotechnics, and geography, the proposal suggests using evapotranspiration basins—a system that treats effluent through natural filtration and evaporation via banana leaves—and biodigester tank systems that convert wastewater into a usable byproduct for agriculture.

What happens when we juxtapose two works by two renowned architects, Mies van der Rohe and Rem Koolhaas, completed twenty-five years apart? We find the answer in the following article by the Arkrit Collective.

“A thesis is like a pig; everything in it can be put to use,” concluded Umberto Eco in his book How to Write a Thesis. Indeed, these research projects, developed through four or five years of intense effort and sacrifice, become extraordinary tools and inexhaustible sources of information for both students and professionals looking to delve into a specific topic within their field of knowledge.

In Spain, the 2008 economic crisis triggered a notable increase in the number of architects who chose to pursue a doctoral thesis as a way to continue their academic training and expand their career options. Coupled with the rigorous training that Spanish architects typically receive, this has led to a vast body of exceptionally high-quality research, serving as an invaluable reference resource for both students and practitioners.

This article compiles 10 doctoral theses focused on major Spanish architects whose careers spanned the 20th century and who, for various reasons, left an indelible mark on the history of Spanish architecture during this period.

After receiving more than 70 submissions from various Argentine universities and cities, our editorial team selected 10 of them, focusing on projects that demonstrated critical thinking regarding contemporary issues, formal execution, and representation. The selection not only highlights projects that delivered the best possible architecture through simple design tailored to their context, program, and users, but also those showing significant attention to human scale, mediation, transition, and new ways of approaching urban architecture.

Discover our 10 highlighted projects below.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD AS A CULTURAL CENTER: Alejandro Asens - Victoria Carbonin - Juan Cardozo Sánchez - Italo Parietti

Alô, alô, W/Brasil… Alô, alô, W/Brasil… / Jacarezinho! Avião! Jacarezinho! Avião! / Cuidado com o disco voador / Tira essa escada daí / Essa escada é pra ficar aqui fora / Eu vou chamar o síndico / Tim Maia! Tim Maia! Tim Maia! Tim Maia!

Upon entering one of these modern gated communities, designed with the latest urban planning engineering, one experiences a calming sense of having finally found order and security. We quickly realize that this is a way of life in which precariousness, risk, and uncertainty have seemingly been abolished. The space is homogeneous, governed by specific stylistic rules. Inside, locations are well-distributed, and positions are comfortably occupied. Security forces feel genuinely present, albeit private. The streets are well-paved and signposted, despite a slight excess of signs dictating directions and rules of use. The houses display their inevitable front lawns, without fences. Everything else is functional, managed, and clean. The image of this island of serenity captures the illusions of the average Brazilian consumer dream: a region insulated from the rest of the world, where one can freely cultivate a sense of community among equals. It offers a return to nature, a worry-free life, abundant in leisure and the company of peers—a shared destiny manifesting in countless variations: vertical, horizontal, residential, commercial, private, and even public.

Every Sunday morning, 120 kilometers of Bogotá are transformed into an extensive cycling circuit. This is La Ciclovía, a cultural and recreational initiative in which some of the Colombian capital's streets are designated as wide bike paths, allowing both residents and tourists to travel across Bogotá by bicycle.

In a radio interview broadcast by RCN, architect Jaime Ortiz recalls the origins of the ciclovía in the 1970s, when it emerged as a proposal developed alongside other architects to open up major avenues as cycling spaces every Sunday.

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Barcelona is an ideal city, boasting a surprisingly rich cultural scene, vibrant neighborhoods full of life, miles of beaches, and an idyllic year-round climate. Yet, without a doubt, it is its architecture that stands as a must-see for visitors and residents alike. The Sagrada Família, Park Güell, and Casa Milà are some of the most famous architectural landmarks and, consequently, the most visited by the tourists arriving daily in this magnificent city.

While there is growing interest in exploring the architecture that lies beyond the city's major icons and symbols, many tourists still bypass—or are simply unaware of—brilliant contemporary works such as Jordi Badia's Can Framis Museum, or the recent restoration of Sala Beckett by architects Flores & Prats, which received a jury mention in the 2017 Spanish Architecture Awards.

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Videos

Over the last twenty years, the world has never been so connected. At the turn of the century, the digital realm seems to have invaded analogue layers, redefining standards, lifestyles, interactions, and the way we connect and use spaces. This social redefinition is strongly attributed to Generation Z—the cohort born during the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, between the 1990s and 2010s. But do you know the defining characteristics of this group?

Dear readers,

As the end of the year approaches, we would like to thank you all once again for making 2018 our best year yet. Thanks to your continuous support and our close connection with our readers, we now reach far more architects around the world, inspiring them to create better urban environments.

The Ruin Experience project, developed by architect Sergio Navarro García, proposes an intervention in the ruined buildings scattered across the countryside of Lorca, Murcia (Spain), where the local population gradually abandoned these robust houses to move to the city. The project offers an alternative approach to intervention, engaging directly with the environment and leveraging its resources to create sensory complexes where people interact with nature through architecture.

El Mesillo, the site selected for the intervention, is a unique, hidden enclave in the municipality of Lorca, defined by a direct and deep-seated relationship between its inhabitants and nature through agriculture. Historically, this bond was even closer, giving rise to the creation and use of entirely natural creams and treatments. Water, soil, air, sun, essential oils, homemade lotions and concoctions, fruits, vegetables, and, of course, a proper siesta, served as home remedies for minor ailments and daily stress.

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Writing for the ARKRIT Collective, architect Carmen Espegel presents an article that exemplifies how the home can serve as a simple refuge for the essence of life—defined by the survivor's austerity, voluntary renunciation, and a rejection of the bourgeois lifestyle.

Originally published as Collaborative Design of Public Space: The Triple Dimension, this new collaboration by Paisaje Transversal proposes a specific methodology for both evaluating the quality of public space and facilitating urban design "if we want to transform public space into a living fabric," the authors explain.

Public space is the fluid that unifies the city, the fabric that stitches buildings together and weaves social, economic, and environmental relationships. It shapes issues as crucial as mobility, coexistence, and a community's cultural exchange, as well as the environmental quality that directly impacts everyone's health.

Public space shapes our daily lives, either offering or depriving us of spaces for socialization. Consequently, it is a priority, both for the sustainability of the city and the lives of its inhabitants—a matter that demands the involvement of not only urban design professionals but also the general public. To achieve this, citizens must understand the factors that determine the livability and functionality of public space, just as they recognize the characteristics of decent housing.

How many children do we see daily playing in the streets, interacting with elements of urban spaces, running in parks or plazas, or riding their bikes? These scenes can say a lot about a city—not only about how it is caring for its younger generations, but also about the quality of life it offers families; which is to say, for everyone.