On this occasion, Camila Costa Curta shares her experience with the Proyecto Habitar (PH) collective alongside Julian Salvarredy and Clara Mansueto, addressing the housing crisis in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires and the teaching and learning processes in contexts of inequality through the 'Primary Habitat Care Clinics' project. Read the full story below.

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.

This chapter of the article series by Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy, and Ernesto Philibert-Petit—which examines social housing in Latin America—presents recommendations for the sequence of actions required to generate housing in both rural and urban contexts. Review the previous installments and the new article below.

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The International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale opened its 58th edition on May 11, 2019, at the Sale d'Armi in the Arsenale in Venice, and will run through November 24. At this world-renowned event, Mexico presented its contribution to the national pavilions with Acts of God by artist Pablo Vargas Lugo. Curated by Magalí Arriola, the project seeks to establish a dialogue with the curatorial concept of the Biennale Arte 2019, May You Live in Interesting Times, to examine how we value our actions, the connections we establish between the natural world and geological time, and to question the origins of our moral choices and inherited values, such as the idea of redemption.

Through elements that once served a functional purpose in architecture—such as door frames, scaffolding, wheelbarrows, planters, or chairs—Colombian artist Sebastián Dávila assigns them a sculptural use, transmuting this obsolescence into the foundation for creating new scaled spatialities in cast concrete. In conversation with ArchDaily, the artist, sculptor, and near-architect explains how merging art and architecture transcends the stereotomic quality of concrete-generated space.

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.

The Chilean city of Valparaíso is comprised of 42 hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Its unique topography has prompted—or forced—residents to build a creative network of elevators, staircases, and alleys, connecting every corner of the city despite its rugged terrain.

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The Mexican state of Oaxaca is one of the most visited destinations in the country, drawing travelers from around the globe with its rich culinary, cultural, and architectural heritage. Located in the southeastern region of the country, it spans 93,757 km² and is divided into 570 municipalities, making it the fifth-largest state in Mexico.

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.

In 1986, an urban design competition was held in Argentina titled “Ideas Urbano-Arquitectónicas para Buenos Aires” (Urban-Architectural Ideas for Buenos Aires), more commonly known as “Las Veinte Ideas” (The Twenty Ideas). Organized as part of a cooperation program between the Community of Madrid and the Municipality of Buenos Aires during the mayoral administration of Facundo Suárez Lastra, this call for entries generated a high concentration of design concepts. With the participation of more than 400 architects, it yielded a total of 120 proposals for the city. Although unbuilt, these ideas hold significant theoretical and historical relevance; in many cases, they served as the seed or starting point for the development of subsequent urban projects.

In Bogotá, a third of all households live in gated communities. This phenomenon is a misguided application of the model idealized by post-war American suburbs, which projected an idyllic, safe, happy, and perfect life—a life where mobility prioritizes motorized vehicles, utilizing simple, replicable, and, of course, highly profitable construction models.

Ciudad Isla is an exhibition by architects and professors at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Ramón Bermúdez and Sebastián Serna, in collaboration with the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) at ETH Zurich, which brings this issue to light. It presents a collective research project on gated housing complexes and their relationship with public space in the city of Bogotá.

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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.”

One of the first things I hear upon arrival is that the sixth edition of the Academic Event of the School of Architecture (EARQ) was not only organized by students, but is also part of the graduation requirements to become an architect at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE-SI). This management work, without a doubt, carries conditions that closely align with what we recognize as necessary in our discipline today.

The National Architecture and Urbanism Award, presented by the Colombian Society of Architects (SCA), recognizes projects that outstandingly showcase the finest contributions to Colombian architecture.

The new edition of the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (XI BIAU) poses a different challenge. This time, along the shores of the peaceful Paraguay River, the Ricardo Brugada neighborhood, known as La Chacarita—one of the oldest in Asunción's historic center—takes center stage.

Together with the residents—who also exhibited the biennial's award-winning projects in their own private homes—national curators led 13 working groups to develop proposals for the improvement and transformation of a sector historically overlooked by the city, often associated with crime and unemployment. Some of these initiatives have already been put into practice.

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

In this edition, we feature Salvador Rueda, director of the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona, who will give a Masterclass at the Barcelona CityMakers Lab 2019 addressing concepts of "Ecosystemic Urbanism," the foundation of a new urban model for the city of Barcelona.

Continuing the series of articles by Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy, and Ernesto Philibert-Petit on social housing in Latin America, this installment explores economic alternatives to address construction costs. Review all previous publications and the new article below.

Oneblock proposes a record that not only investigates the uses and potential of everyday objects—and their resulting actions or spaces—but presents drawing as a tool "requiring constant updating to represent, at all times and with the utmost clarity, what it truly aims to convey, responding to the needs of society at every point along the unstoppable timeline." Read below for an in-depth look at the work in the authors' own words.

Global South, resilience, buildtech, and new materials: as 2019 comes to a close, we look back on a year rich in research and reflection, approaching architecture from different perspectives to support the millions of readers worldwide who visit ArchDaily every day.

Aiming to offer inspiration, knowledge, and tools, we have published hundreds of articles on topics as diverse as your views on the built environment. With this in mind, read on for our selection of the year. Goodbye 2019, hello 2020!