On the night of April 15 in Paris, television networks, social media—the entire planet, in fact—watched as the Notre-Dame Cathedral burned. Tears, horror, and shock gripped the world at the prospect of seeing the most visited monument on Earth reduced to ashes; yet, after a long night, the city preserved Notre-Dame.
The Municipality of León, through the León Municipal Housing Institute (IMUVI) and the León Municipal Planning Institute (IMPLAN), invites students, faculty, and professionals to participate in the Second National Ideas Competition: Intra-urban Housing and Park Solution. The goal is to develop a conceptual design proposal for a high-density social housing complex and a neighborhood public park within a consolidated urban area in the city of León.
Driven by the vision of redirecting how we plan and manage cities, we invite you to participate in this rethinking process by submitting conceptual proposals for intra-urban social housing. These proposals should integrate public and green spaces, utilizing best practices in architectural design, innovation, and sustainability to ensure healthy neighborhood coexistence, equal access and opportunity, freedom from discrimination, and safe, affordable, and accessible housing for lower-income groups in society.
Letters are everywhere, yet we rarely stop to consider their forms or the complexity they conceal. This book serves as a gateway to the fascinating world of typography, offering readers an understanding of the scope and variety of letterforms, the creative challenge involved in their design, and the magic of composing them into a text.
Because architecture is essentially space, the language employed by architects organizes and relates it, defining its boundaries and characterizing the space itself. Interior spatial organization follows diverse patterns: sometimes emphasizing compactness, while at other times expanding or wrapping around a central void, reviving traditions, or initiating new interpretations to bring the building's massing to life. It challenges conventional functional approaches, pursues the poetics of circulation, and incorporates elements of surprise. Depending on the site, the massing may be compact or extended, adapting to the topography and either blending into or contrasting with its surroundings, yet it never ignores the landscape. Within the urban fabric, architecture may turn inward, becoming abstract, or it may strengthen its relationship with the street, seeking continuity and fostering social interaction. Light is treated beyond its functional capacity to highlight boundaries, forms, materials, textures, and colors—whether through dramatic plays of light and shadow or by filtering it indirectly to create subtle spatial atmospheres. The use of materials—particularly brick, the protagonist of these works—creatively explores their expressive and structural qualities. The goal is for architecture to maximize resources by leveraging site conditions, ensuring sustainability, utilizing new technologies, reusing materials, or prefabricating components, all while maintaining a lasting architectural language that serves as a witness to its time.
This catalog focuses on the theme of the "Mediterranean house," investigating its operational presence within a specific historical context: the 1950s. This period is characterized by the decisive influence in Spain of two masters of international architecture—Gio Ponti and Alberto Sartoris—whose ideology is rooted in a balanced mediation between tradition and modernity.
It is impossible to grasp the significance of architectural masterpieces built throughout history without first understanding what it meant to "be an architect" in each era and how that profession was practiced.
Description via Amazon. Through the sketches that make up this book, its author, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, not only teaches us to look at the city of Valparaíso with fresh eyes but also reveals his affection for the port. His obsession and dedication to exploring the buildings, plazas, and hills are captured in strokes that, in sum, compose the author's perspective and the critical lens he applies to them in his annotations. Ultimately, drawing is presented as a tool for observation. With a record dating back to the early 1970s, the representation and analysis of this critical survey of Valparaíso have continued to deepen and expand. Furthermore, the book presents projects completed by the author in collaboration with other architects, serving as evidence of the strong bond between Rodrigo Pérez de Arce and Valparaíso—a bond this book aims to convey faithfully.
While the first issue of VAD. veredes, arquitectura y divulgación focused on "the beginnings"—those origins and principles that provide, tangibly or symbolically, what seeks to exist—this issue aims to broadly explore the parameters belonging to those origins.
The Lo Contador Campus, home to the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, is a repository of historical traces, urban imprints, and artistic and architectural manifestations that have been layered and deposited in this heritage enclave in Santiago since the late 17th century.
Arquitectura Viva has released its latest monograph. This edition is dedicated to the Chilean firm Undurraga Devés, the architects behind projects such as the Palacio La Moneda Cultural Center (2004-2005), the Ministry of Social Development (2011-2014), and the Expo Milan Pavilion (2013-2015).
"The interest in the urban condition of thirty-eight small- and medium-scale residential buildings located in the Providencia district—which form a detailed catalog of works completed between 1930 and 1970—demonstrates how significant the architectural proposals of this period were in the creation and formation of the modern city project in Santiago, Chile.
Description via Amazon. We live in an era where design and innovation are at the forefront of conversation, and users are increasingly critical and active participants in decision-making. Design and innovation serve as the primary drivers of organizational change, but what theories underpin their solutions? Users are viewed as the center of the process, but what methodologies are used to incorporate their behaviors and beliefs in a rigorous and dynamic way?
The book series 'Plan para Chile', by prominent Chilean architect Raúl Irarrázabal, consists of three volumes that invite the reader to envision a new urban planning scheme for Chile through an avant-garde, bold, and inclusive lens.
The digital version of the catalog for the XI Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (XI BIAU) is now available. It includes documentation regarding the XI BIAU Ibero-American Prize awarded to César Ortiz-Echagüe Rubio (Madrid, 1927) and Jorge Enrique Scrimaglio (Rosario, 1937).
Light plays a decisive role in the execution of architectural and interior design projects. However, most literature on the subject consists primarily of catalogs from light source and lighting equipment manufacturers. Until now, with the publication of Manual de Iluminación, there has been no single document consolidating all the information necessary for approaching a lighting project. The author drew from a wide range of sources, including books, catalogs, and manuals from international organizations and renowned manufacturers such as Philips, Osram, General Electric, Erco, Iguzzini, Lamp, Flos, Zumtobel, Westinghouse, Deltalight, Targetti, and Reggiani, among others. This information is synthesized into tables, charts, and practical recommendations, serving as an essential guide for students and professionals in the field.
Just as the city of Barcelona cannot be understood without its coastline and its port origins, its future will be defined by its ability to manage the unpredictable effects of climate change on this unique space. The coastal front stretching between Barceloneta, the city's beaches, and the surroundings of the Besòs River is the most iconic stretch of coastline and the one with the highest intensity of use. Although scenarios regarding the effects of climate change on this maritime front by the year 2100 are not conclusive—as they are subject to global dynamics related to global warming mitigation—various studies indicate that intense changes in climate-related marine phenomena will occur in the coming years. Far from viewing these climatic dynamics as a risk, the proposal is to use them as an opportunity to reconcile the relationship between the city, its inhabitants, and the sea.
We live in a globalized world where, due to hyperconnectivity, information is stored and accumulated online without filter. But can there be something more behind an image than mere visual information? What distinguishes an image from a memory or a postcard? What can we convey through a graphic document? MOMENTUM emerges as a response to an atmosphere in which the image is reduced to a swift, ethereal tool that transmits superficial information. Conceived as a reaction to the incredible amount of unfiltered input and imagery we access online with a single click, it proposes opening a new dialogue and returning, for a moment, to carefully chosen personal references that allow for the illustration of an opinion on a specific subject, uncovering new conversations, viewpoints, or ways of thinking.
Ediciones Pichoncito and the real estate firm Morada present their latest publication, titled David Mutal Arquitecto. The book features a photographic compendium of the work of one of the most prominent contemporary Peruvian architects, who has been recognized, among other honors, with the 2012 Hexágono de Plata for the Hotel B project and the 2015 Premio Casas from Grupo Editorial Cosas for the Residencial Santa Rosa project. The architect also received First Place in the Commercial Category at the Peruvian Architecture Biennial (2018).