The 13th São Paulo International Architecture Biennale and the Vitruvius portal have launched Preâmbulo, an open call for articles, essays, drawings, and projects reflecting on the central theme of the 13th Biennale—Reconstruction—and its five thematic axes: democracy, bodies, memory, information, and ecology. Submissions are open until June 30.

Conceived by IABsp, the 13th edition of the Biennale, scheduled for 2022, uses the idea of Reconstruction to spark debates addressing the challenges arising from the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. It considers reflections and proposals pointing toward innovative social practices and urban-architectural arrangements, as well as the possibilities that emerge in this new scenario.

Applications are now open for the National Wood Architecture Award, PNAM’21. Submissions for this prestigious Portuguese architecture award are open until June 30, 2021. Held biennially, PNAM aims to encourage and promote Portuguese forest reserves through innovation, enhancement, circularity, and the promotion and use of wood and wood-derived products in buildings.

Videos

“If you gave me your shoe, I could tell you with about 90% accuracy the city in the world from which you came,” says Christopher Mason, Ph.D., a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, NY, co-author of the first global atlas of urban microorganisms. The study, carried out by the international Metagenomics and Metadesign of Subways and Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) consortium, creates a map of the microbiome of some of the largest cities in the world.

In Conflict, the Portuguese Official Representation at the 17th Architecture International Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2021, is co-curated by Carlos Azevedo, João Crisóstomo, and Luís Sobral of depA architects, and Miguel Santos. The exhibition addresses public spaces as arenas of conflict, understood as the action of opposing forces translated as dissension. In Conflict responds directly to the question 'How will we live together?' posed by Hashim Sarkis, curator of the Biennale Architettura, and is based on seven architectural processes involving collective dwellings that were the subjects of broad media coverage and public involvement.

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Known for projects situated at the intersection of research, design, biomimicry, and sustainability, Atelier Marko Brajovic recently developed a proposal for the Amazon Creative Laboratories, a series of biospheres composed of geodesic structures inspired by the internal geometry of the cacao fruit. The project aligns with the premises and goals of the Amazon 4.0 initiative, which aims to combine the economic potential of Amazonian socio-biodiversity with the new technologies and opportunities emerging from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

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With over 56 million inhabitants spread across nine states, Brazil's Northeast region features a coastline of approximately three thousand kilometers, stretching from the Parnaíba Delta in Piauí to the south of Bahia. Internationally renowned for its beaches—which truly live up to their reputation—the region is as culturally diverse as it is geographically vast, showcasing rich cultural expressions, of which architecture is an integral part.

In this article, we celebrate the most ubiquitous of architectural typologies—the house—through examples built in the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, and Sergipe. These projects demonstrate exquisite care regarding their surroundings and material choices, while also defying stereotypes and clichés often associated with architecture in northeastern Brazil. 

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When selected by the Biennale di Venezia to direct the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, Hashim Sarkis challenged national curators to answer an urgent and far from easy question: how will we live together? Neither he, nor the curators, nor indeed anyone, expected what was to come. After a year and a half of a global pandemic, the question takes on new meanings, opening up further implications that far exceed anything the organizers could have previously envisioned.

Against this backdrop of global uncertainty, and informed by a country deeply marked by social inequality, Utopias of Common Life – the title of the Brazilian contribution developed by Arquitetos Associados in collaboration with visual designer Henrique Penha – seeks to establish a dialogue between the modern past and a possible (and better) future for Brazilian cities. We had the opportunity to speak with architect Carlos Alberto Maciel about the exhibition that will occupy the Brazilian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Read the interview below:

Groups and collectives working on the fringes of the architectural discipline are, fortunately, increasingly common. However, few strive to expand the boundaries of the profession across as many different fronts as Goma Oficina, from São Paulo, currently composed of Ana David, André Stefanini, André Bonani, Christian Salmeron, João Wallig, Fernando Banzi, Guilherme Tanaka, Lauro Rocha, Maria Cau Levy, Paula Marujo, Victoria Braga, and Vitor Pena.

Understanding architecture as culture in its broadest sense, Goma has been working since 2010 on projects located in a loosely defined territory, characterized by transdisciplinarity and overlaps between different fields. Their most recent work includes exhibitions, books, research, debates, installations, and models spanning the areas of architecture, graphic design, photography, and art.

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No País dos Arquitectos is a podcast created by Sara Nunes, who is also responsible for the architectural film production company Building Pictures. The podcast aims to profile the professionals, projects, and stories behind leading contemporary Portuguese architecture. With just over 10 million inhabitants, Portugal is a highly fascinating country in this professional field, and its architectural production far outstrips its population or territorial scale.

In its first episode, Sara spoke with architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça about his Lisbon Cruise Terminal, and then welcomed João Mendes Ribeiro for a conversation on heritage, adaptive reuse, and landscape architecture, centered on the rehabilitation of the Coimbra Botanical Garden greenhouse. The third episode featured architect Inês Lobo and focused on the Public Library and Regional Archive of Angra do Heroísmo. Below, you can listen to and read the conversation from the fourth episode, with Carlos Castanheira about the Treetop Walk project.

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No País dos Arquitectos is a podcast created by Sara Nunes, who also runs the architectural film production company Building Pictures. The podcast aims to profile the professionals, projects, and stories behind leading contemporary Portuguese architecture. With just over 10 million inhabitants, Portugal is a fascinating country when it comes to this professional field, boasting an architectural output that punches far above its population or territorial scale.

In this week's episode, Sara talks with architect Nuno Valentim about the rehabilitation of the Bolhão Market. Listen to the interview and read the transcript of the conversation below:

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The International Union of Architects (UIA) has announced the UIA Gold Medal and Prizes winners. The UIA Gold Medal is awarded to Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, president of the 27th UIA World Congress of Architects — UIA2021RIO Honour Committee. The architect will also participate in a keynote speakers session programmed for July.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha, now 92 years old, has been honored with important awards, such as the Pritzker Prize in 2006, considered to be one of the world's premier architecture prizes, and the Venice Biennale Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, in 2016. Mendes da Rocha was the first Brazilian to be awarded this prize.

With the goal of discovering the architects, projects, and stories behind landmark Portuguese architecture, Sara Nunes, of the architectural film production company Building Pictures, launched the podcast No País dos Arquitectos, where she talks with key figures of contemporary Portuguese architecture.

In its first episóde, Sara spoke with architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça about his Lisbon Cruise Terminal, and then welcomed João Mendes Ribeiro for a conversation on heritage, the reuse of old structures, and landscape architecture, based on the rehabilitation project of the Coimbra Botanical Garden greenhouse. In this third episode, Sara talks with architect Inês Lobo about the Public Library and Regional Archive of Angra do Heroísmo. Read the full interview or listen to the podcast below.

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Rare are the fields, from arts and culture, that have so many things in common with architecture, as film does. Acknowledging that this is far from new, this topic has been debated by theorists and authors from both fields ever since the beginning of the 20th century. Architecture has been trying to embody subtle and poetical features from film while cinema has historically served as a means to discuss, represent, and denounce topics tightly related to architecture and cities.

An interesting example of this overlapping can be found in the contemporary production of French-Italian film company Bêka & Lemoine, whose works show a sensible look towards the details and the simplicity of the architecture and urban spaces. Currently encompassing thirty feature films, Ila Bêka's and Louise Lemoine's portfolio casts light on the everyday life of different cities around the world, revealing an attentive gaze to the most trivial aspects of human existence in the urban realm.

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Entitled utopias of common life, Brazil's official participation in the 17th Bienalle Architettura 2021 is curated by the collaborative studio Arquitetos Associados and the visual designer Henrique Penha. The exhibition at the Brazilian Pavilion in the Giardini, in Venice, begins by mapping utopias that exist on Brazilian soil, from the Guarani world vision of a Land Without Evil to contemporary times, highlighting a few singular moments among them.

Conceived before the Covid-19 pandemic, which has temporarily suspended the possibility of physical proximity in a large part of the world, the proposal gains new meanings in the current context and dialogues with the overall theme, by curator Hashim Sarkis: How Will We Live Together?

With the goal of getting to know the architects, projects, and stories behind landmark Portuguese architecture, Sara Nunes, from the architectural film production company Building Pictures, launched the podcast No País dos Arquitectos, where she talks with leading names in contemporary Portuguese architecture.

In this week's episode, Sara talks with Tiago de Mota Saraiva, from ateliermob, about the rebuilding of seven homes affected by the 2017 Pedrógão Grande wildfire. Catch up on previous interviews from the podcast No País dos Arquitectos and read the transcript of the interview with Saraiva below:

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In this visual essay, Paulo Tavares intervenes in Habitat, an arts and design magazine edited by architect Lina Bo Bardi in the 1950s. Habitat disseminated not only images of modern art and architecture but also images of Indigenous artifacts. In doing so, it simultaneously presented its audience with the vocabulary of modernism and native forms of cultural expression, aligning itself with the primitivist imaginaries of the avant-garde.

By re-signifying dominant images and imaginaries, Des-Habitat guides us through a visual narrative on the coloniality of modern architecture and its media, opening a horizon for the potential decolonization of its legacies.

On May 8, Casa da Arquitectura opens the exhibition Radar Venice – Portuguese Architects at the Biennale 1975-2021, which offers a critical analysis of the many ways in which democratic Portugal exhibited and exposed itself at the world's most prestigious Architecture Biennale.

Curated by Joaquim Moreno and Alexandra Areia, Radar Venice reveals the objects that were part of each Portuguese participation and discusses the very concept of national and/or official “representation.” The documentation for each edition is complemented by socio-political information, while also highlighting the oral memory associated with the construction of the Portuguese participation. 

Few public figures were more deeply Brazilian than the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi. Arriving in Brazil shortly after World War II, she grew so attached to Brazilian culture that she became one of its main interpreters, capable of an understanding of local traditions that was both rigorous and comprehensive.

Architecture critic and essayist Francesco Perrotta-Bosch examines the trajectory of this brilliant artist in light of the following question: how was a foreigner able to see so much of a country that was not her own, to the point of translating it for Brazilians themselves?