For the first time in Bolivia, the city of Santa Cruz will host the XXXIII ELEA—Latin American Architecture Students Meeting—an annual event organized by the Latin American Coordinator of Architecture Students (CLEA) in conjunction with IBEA (Bolivian Integration of Architecture Students). ArchDaily will be there to cover it on the ground!

Under the theme "Identity Crisis?", Santa Cruz will welcome architecture students from across Latin America from October 21 to 29, 2018. Participants will engage in workshops, lectures, discussions, and cultural activities at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism of the Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra (UPSA), fostering a generation committed to "solving the social problems of our region through our profession."

Keynote speakers at the XXXIII ELEA will include Jorge Lobos (Chile/Denmark), Carlos García Vázquez (Spain), Iván Cartes (Chile), Víctor Hugo Limpias (Bolivia), Ariel Jacubovich (Argentina), Roberto Ameneiro (Spain), Susana López (Mexico), Colectivo MU (Colombia), Colectivo Arrabal (Mexico), Néstor Ortega Méndez (Mexico), Lilian Roig (Bolivia), Irma Quiroz (Bolivia), Jorge López (Mexico), and Federico Escobar (Bolivia), among others.

It is a truism to say that doctors do not constantly question their discipline or organize large events to debate what medicine is. Yet, architects do. And we never reach an agreement.

This reflection, in the words of Mario Marchant—director of the Chilean journal Materia Arquitectura—is doubly relevant when it comes to architectural theory, the central theme of the 16th edition of the biannual print publication from the Universidad San Sebastián School of Architecture.

In this issue, guest editor Gabriela García de Cortázar has chosen to sidestep the cliché ("what is theory?") and centers the articles on the question "where is theory?"—a less open-ended inquiry that nonetheless invites multiple responses depending on the interpretation: where it is practiced, where it is published, and where it finds its space within architecture.

Today, October 1st, marks World Architecture Day. To celebrate in style, ArchDaily invites you to tune in to our live broadcasts of our special programming.

Seven architects from Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela will visit our offices in Santiago and Mexico City to discuss their key projects and share their architectural vision. Follow the live broadcasts on the Instagram accounts of Plataforma Arquitectura and ArchDaily México.

Our guests will be:

We invite you to participate in the first National Meeting of Future Urbanists (ENUM), to be held on October 8 and 9 at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Chile. This meeting is organized by graduates of the Master of Urbanism program and sponsored by the Postgraduate Department and the Postgraduate School of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the same institution.

The Municipality of Quito, through the Metropolitan Institute of Urban Planning (IMPU) and the Pichincha Architects Association (CAE-P), invites architects, urban planners, and other professionals to participate in a competition aimed at the urban renewal of the railway corridor in southern Quito.

This competition seeks to reimagine the corridor, which currently only serves the tourist train, and whose spatial, environmental, economic, and social potential remains untapped. Consequently, the competition encourages the development of proposals that integrate and acknowledge this historic infrastructure within the city, highlighting its potential as an inclusive and connective public space. The goal is to create gathering spaces and incorporate facilities, retail, and services that enhance the current use and character of each sector. Participants may even rethink the role of this corridor for various urban functions, regardless of whether the train remains in operation. The corridor spans approximately 13 kilometers and traverses areas with a significant diversity of dynamics, land uses, and levels of urban consolidation.

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The Madrid City Council, in collaboration with the Official College of Architects of Madrid (COAM), has launched a competition for the adaptation and rehabilitation of the historic Beti Jai fronton (always party in Basque) in the Spanish capital.

This former sports facility for Basque pelota, which seats 4,000 spectators, was designed by Joaquín de Rucoba and inaugurated in 1894. It served various purposes after 1918, when it ceased to function exclusively as a sports venue, until it was completely abandoned in 1989. In 2015, the Madrid City Council acquired the site, following concerns over its uncertain future raised by local organizations such as Madrid, Ciudadanía y Patrimonio.

The 2018 AA Visiting School in Santiago will study and challenge the conditions for architectural and urban design within this neoliberal context. Through design projects, it will speculate on new artifacts derived from the spatial and functional decompression of the shopping mall, understood as a series of strategic interventions and operations within the city that ultimately aim to rethink the relationship between housing, infrastructure, and urban design.

The Norman Foster Foundation is offering students from around the world the opportunity to participate in the upcoming Urban Mobility workshop, which will take place at the Foundation's headquarters in Madrid, Spain, from September 17 to 21, 2018.

Since the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, the monorail has been a staple of science fiction's visions of the urban future. Beyond the Space Age aesthetic, its implementation is relatively affordable and rapid when compared to the cost, time, and impact of underground subway systems. Surprisingly, there are few operational examples, and those currently in use are often conceived in isolation from other urban needs.

For its fourth exhibition cycle, Espacio Odeón has invited Alejandro Martín Maldonado and Estudio Altiplano to serve as curators. They have chosen to launch an architecture competition that examines the spatial conditions of Odeón, along with its history, present, and future.

This competition invites any individual or collective—regardless of age, discipline, nationality, gender, or political affiliation—to submit architectural proposals. We are seeking submissions that consider the building's current state in programmatic, heritage, urban, and economic terms. We invite you to envision alternative futures and new directions, and to submit proposals that radically question the spatial condition of Odeón, the contingency of the void, and the potential of its ruins.

Following the confirmation that the Architecture and Urbanism Biennial will return to Santiago after two editions in Valparaíso, the countdown has begun for the close of the call for applications to select the next curator and their team, who will define the conceptual and curatorial framework for the upcoming edition of the event.

While the 2017 edition, "Diálogos impostergables" (Unpostponable Dialogues), addressed national issues that the discipline needed to confront beyond design itself, for the upcoming edition, the Colegio de Arquitectos de Chile is seeking a curatorial team to address the processes of urban renewal, heritage conservation, and densification currently shaping Chilean cities. In this context, the XXI Biennial will be held in Santiago's Barrio Biobío, a historic commercial district in the Chilean capital currently undergoing simultaneous processes of conservation, gentrification, and real estate speculation.

The Pritzker Prize is the most important award in the field of architecture, awarded to a living architect whose built work "has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity through the art of architecture." The Prize rewards individuals, not offices, as happened in 2000 (when the jury selected Rem Koolhaas instead of his firm OMA) or in 2016 (with Alejandro Aravena selected instead of ELEMENTAL); however, the Prize can also be awarded to multiple individuals working together, as was the case in 2001 (Herzog & de Meuron), 2010 (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa from SANAA), and 2017 (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, and Ramon Vilalta from RCR Arquitectes).

Humanity has become obsessed with breaking its limits, creating new records only to break them again and again. In fact, our cities’ skylines have always been defined by those in power during every period in history. At one point churches left their mark, followed by public institutions and in the last few decades, it's commercial skyscrapers that continue to stretch taller and taller. 

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has developed its own system for classifying tall buildings, stating that the Burj Khalifa (828 m.) is the world’s tallest building right now. Read on for the 25 tallest buildings in the world today.

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Recognized as the UK’s highest honor for architecture, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture is approved personally by Her Majesty The Queen and is given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence "either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture.", according to the organization. In 2024, the recognition was awarded for the first time to an African Woman, to the Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and curator Lesley Lokko.

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In 2022, a wider audience gained access to unexpectedly powerful AI tools, including Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E 2 for text-to-image generation, as well as the human-like chatbot OpenGPT.

One year later, pundits, organizations, and governments have stated these technologies will pose profound risks to society and humanity—from automation-spurred job loss to disrupting democratic processes to the automatization of weapons.

In 1999, Birgit Lohmann and Massimo Mini co-founded designboom, self-proclaimed as the "first online architecture and design magazine." Seven years later, Facebook transitioned from Ivy League universities to massive audiences, while the first tweet was posted on formerly-known Twitter. Sixteen years have passed since these milestones.

While 16 years may be a short period in architecture, digital media and social networks are far from being considered emergent in the history of the internet. In fact, they form the core of the current Web 2.0 model, characterized by a dual interaction between content producers and consumers: sharing, liking, remixing, and reposting.

Indeed, the speed and magnitude of the transformations that digital media have undergone, and in turn, driven, provide the opportunity to begin documenting the history of the digital era and its impact on architecture.

Italian architect and architecture historian Paolo Portoghesi, the first director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, passed away at the age of 92 in Calcata, Italy, as reported by the organization today, Tuesday, May 30.

The Graham Foundation has announced the award of 64 new grants to individuals exploring innovative and interdisciplinary ideas that contribute critical perspectives on architecture and design in 2023.

Titled The Laboratory of the Future and curated by Lesley Lokko, the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale will be holding the 18° International Architecture Exhibition from May 20 to November 26, 2023.

The 2023 edition of the Biennale will include 63 national participants allocated in the Giardini, at the Arsenale, and in the historic city center of Venice, Italy. Additionally, the exhibition will welcome Niger for the first time, along with Panama, which will have its own pavilion. The Holy See will also return to the Biennale Architettura with a pavilion on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

Please find below the full list of national participants at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.