Ideasforward aims to provide young creatives worldwide with the opportunity to express their perspectives on the future of society through innovative and visionary proposals. We are an experimental platform seeking progressive ideas that reflect on emerging issues.
The Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) Conference Series, founded and organized by the international organizations iiSBE, CIB, UN Environment, and FIDIC, is one of the world's most significant international conference programs concerning sustainability, the environment, and construction.
New design competition on Desall.com: MetaFin and Desall invite you to propose a new concept for a green recreational area to be built in the near future, conceived as a gathering space for families, a playground for children, and an area dedicated to sports, culture, activities, and community events.
New industrial design competition on Desall.com: IRSAP and Desall invite you to design a family of electric radiators with a modern, minimalist aesthetic that can be perceived as decorative elements within their environments.
This edition of the Pan-American Biennial of Architecture of Quito (BAQ) proposes a discussion on architecture centered on the notion of transformation. Through a critical analysis of projects that achieve such interventions, the focus will be on studying the transformative capacity of architecture—from the discipline itself toward the environment and the city—questioning existing systems of relationships and exploring new approaches that bridge the gap between the ideal and the real.
Designated a National Monument in 2010, the National Headquarters of the Chilean Association of Architects (Colegio de Arquitectos de Chile) is a 1920 masterpiece by the prominent architect Luciano Kulczewski García. This Art Nouveau icon originally comprised two residences, each featuring a grand double-height hall illuminated by large windows, with five commercial spaces on the first floor.
Choosing high-performance BIM software is key to developing efficient projects by automating tasks that traditionally consumed time in conventional design workflows—such as documentation, calculations, analyses, and other repetitive processes.
This book presents a meticulous investigation into the architecture of the Ferias del Campo (Country Fairs), which developed between the 1950s and 1970s, creating what can now be understood as a true exhibition landscape. The complex holds immense value, both for its careful landscape design—perfectly integrated into the Casa de Campo—and for its unique buildings, which served as a true experimental laboratory for modern architecture. Architects such as Cabrero and Ruiz, along with Sota, Fisac, Aburto, Romaní, and many others, brilliantly managed to combine the bold stylistic and constructive renewal that the country required at the time with a desire to maintain a degree of continuity with vernacular architecture.
This essay examines the role of the architect in contemporary society, aiming to be critical and, even more so, combative. Grounded in a deep understanding of the profession's history, the author seeks lessons from the past to illuminate paths for the architect of the future. It addresses not only the individual but also the collective, operating on the belief that opportunities for professional corporatism still remain.
Since the turn of the century, the discipline of architecture has focused its attention intently on documenting the contemporary urban condition. Each city has been examined as a repository of architectural concepts, interrogated as an urban manifesto, and recorded as a series of found objects.
In defense of Modernity and against all robotic classicism and buffoonish romanticism, Miranda has always been an uncomfortable presence—a resistor who understands the value of the sedimentation of structured thought and knows that one must preach constantly. A committed intellectual during cloying times when the most pedestrian discipline took over the classrooms, his voice has been beloved by students and scorned by many of his colleagues in an Academy he has always questioned. This doubt has become an instrument for transforming his thinking; we know that doubting is dangerous, as those in power have always fed us certainties that allow for unceasing adoration, yet never for progress or change.
El Lissitzky (1890–1941) was undoubtedly one of the most significant and multifaceted artists of the Russian avant-garde era, and perhaps the one who exerted the greatest influence on the subsequent evolution of various fields of artistic language and audiovisual communication. At the same time, however, he remains a relatively unknown and mysterious figure.
Description via Amazon. Estudios Patrimoniales presents the current state of the debate regarding intellectual production within the multidisciplinary field of our local heritage. Its authors understand heritage as a phenomenon far more complex than a mere topic or discipline. It is a relational phenomenon that occurs in specific cases, requiring reflective practices for a cross-disciplinary discussion that engages the professional responsibility of academic knowledge. Today, when the word "heritage" is hijacked by the common sense of political correctness, activist voluntarism, and the demands of various sectors, this toolkit becomes necessary. It allows us to rethink heritage by understanding its conceptual evolution, thereby promoting new research, referencing intervention projects, and inspiring public policy, so that the term "heritage" can expand its meaning to encompass what our future generations deserve.
From 1978 to 1993, young Soviet architects Aleksandr Brodsky and Ilya Utkin created an extraordinary series of etchings featuring strange, and at times impossible, buildings and urban landscapes based on a variety of architectural, literary, and visual sources, ranging from classical mythology to science fiction. The drawings present absurd proposals and fictional cityscapes in eclectic mixtures of ancient mausoleums, industrial buildings, neoclassical utopias, and constructivist towers. Some depict an oppressive and alienating modern metropolis, reflecting the experience of living under a totalitarian regime, while others feature strange, cerebral, and human elements layered with historical precedents—from Piranesi to Le Corbusier—that remain breathtakingly complex and beautiful.
Philip Ursprung, Dean of the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, presents two essays in this Docs: "Representation of Work" discusses, through authors such as Harun Farocki and Guy Debord, the invisibilization of alienated labor at the foundation of the current economic model, arguing that the discussion regarding the representation of work must also be a discussion about the role of architects in society.
The writings collected here—concluded with a dialogue with Kenneth Frampton on the intensity of architecture—are the result of classes taught by Campo Baeza at ETSAM, his beloved Madrid School of Architecture, and many other schools around the world, following a period of quiet maturation over the last few years. "The intention of these Principia is to develop a foundational text, a summary and synthesis of the key themes with which we continue to work and which we understand, with increasing clarity each day, as central to architecture. These are not so much personal discoveries as they are essential themes of architecture itself."
This publication gathers a collection of texts by Santiago Cirugeda and Alice Attout, focusing on the most defining projects in the long-standing career of their studio, Recetas Urbanas. Deliberately resistant to the development of a theoretical and analytical discourse—which would inevitably be aseptic and abstract—these texts adopt the narrative form of the anecdote. This approach allows for the recounting of real, concrete "architectural actions," thereby highlighting the uniqueness of each case study and the centrality of human life in every transformation process, including those of an architectural nature.
Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza (1918–2000) was one of the most significant Spanish architects of the second half of the 20th century. He built such important works as the Aránzazu Basilica, the Banco de Bilbao and Torres Blancas buildings in Madrid, and the Palacio de Festivales in Santander.