We are pleased to present the finalist projects for the 2020 Building of the Year Award (ODA20). After two weeks of nominations, the favorite projects have been chosen from among hundreds of built works in Portuguese-speaking countries. Our jury of experts, made up of our own readers, has once again done an outstanding job in selecting these 15 projects. The finalists span a remarkable diversity of programs, ranging from cultural and educational projects and public spaces to high-end residences and temporary installations.

A glimpse of hope emerged from the endless loop of COVID-19 news this week when China announced the closure of their last temporary hospital in Wuhan due to their stabilization of the pandemic that has now taken the world by storm. Western countries have been enforcing more restrictive measures aiming to stop the spread of the virus, including mandating shelter-in-place orders and forcing any business deemed non-essential to close. Due to the quarantine and isolation politics imposed by the authorities around the globe, we asked you, our readers, how the coronavirus is affecting your daily life as architects and designers. These answers allowed us to compose an overall picture of the atmosphere established by the pandemic – and the way we are adapting to it.

The São Paulo Department of the Institute of Architects of Brazil (IABsp) has made a series of videos of lectures, classes, and debates available on its YouTube channel. The videos cover topics such as urban mobility, architectural heritage, design competitions, urban policy, housing, environmental sanitation, and exhibition design.

The recent success of Parasite, the award winning film directed by South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, has created a conversation around the emphasis of architecture and interior spaces in movies. This particular film does an excellent job of blurring the boundaries between the two disciplinary fields, to the point where the architecture is not just the background of the set, but it has been placed at the forefront of the storyline, and takes on the leading role in many scenes.

In an interview with ArchDaily, architect Gui Mattos discusses the beginning of his career in Ubatuba, on the northern coast of São Paulo, and his current projects across various scales, ranging from high-rise buildings to product design. Best known for his residential designs, Mattos heads his namesake firm, which features a team of over 25 architects.

We invite you to participate in the 2020 Obra do Ano Award. In its fourth edition, we are giving our readers the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that have made the greatest impact on the profession. By voting, you become part of an unbiased network of jurors recognizing the most significant projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries over the past year. There are only a few days left in the nomination stage, which will select the 15 finalists from over a thousand projects.

Remember, registered users can nominate their favorite project once per day. The nomination stage ends on Tuesday, March 24 at 11:59 PM (Brasilia time, GMT-3). Thank you once again for helping us democratize architecture.

In an interview with ArchDaily, Rio de Janeiro-born architect Thiago Bernardes, founder of the firm Bernardes Arquitetura, discusses his projects in Brazil and Portugal, as well as the complexities of leading a practice with offices in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Lisbon.

Mulher, Mujer, Woman, or simply MMW, is an online platform dedicated to architectural representations, whose objective is to spread the women's production within our professional field. Created by the Brazilian architects Carol Vasques and Débora Boniatti as a reaction to the still scarce diffusion of female references, the platform seeks to "highlight the importance and relevance of women in the past, present and future of the profession."

Users now can virtually visit museums all over the world thanks to Google Arts & Culture. The project offers 360 ° views of places that can often be inaccessible due to financial costs or distance.

São Paulo-based firm SIAA Arquitetos has been named the winner of the national competition organized by AESabesp for the new São Paulo Water Museum, which involves the restoration and expansion of the former water and sewage department (RAE), currently the França Pinto reservation center.

Below, discover the winning proposal, accompanied by the project description written by the SIAA Arquitetos team.

The growing global coronavirus pandemic will leave profound marks on society. Perhaps not so much due to fatalities, but certainly in the way people relate to each other and to public spaces. In an attempt to reduce the rate of transmission of the disease, governments and authorities around the world have instructed people to stay at home, in the safety and hygiene of their domestic environment, and to avoid any unnecessary contact with other spaces, objects, and people.

Founded in 1997 by Marcelo Morettin and Vinicius Andrade, the São Paulo-based practice Andrade Morettin Arquitetos Associados now features a vast portfolio of projects across a wide range of scales and programs. Ranging from large-scale works, such as the São Paulo headquarters of the Instituto Moreira Salles, to exhibition designs, like the 34th Bienal de Arte de São Paulo, their work is largely characterized by the use of industrialized and prefabricated components which, beyond their well-known technical advantages, bring key aesthetic qualities to the reading of the projects.

From March 12 to 21, 2020, architects from across the country may register for the national public competition, which will select two preliminary architectural, urban, and landscape design proposals for the Parque da Cidade in Belém. The competition is an initiative of the Government of the State of Pará, through the State Secretariat of Culture (Secult), and is organized by the Foundation for Research Support and Development (Fadesp).

Submissions are now open for the selection of 20 Brazilian projects eligible to compete in the Third Oscar Niemeyer Award for Latin American Architecture. The selection will be conducted by a committee appointed by the Institute of Architects of Brazil, composed of architects and urban planners from various regions of the country. The deadline for submissions is June 15.

In its 6th edition, Open House Porto (OHP) welcomes the city of Maia, which joins Matosinhos, Porto, and Vila Nova de Gaia for the major annual architecture festival organized by Casa da Arquitectura – Portuguese Centre for Architecture. To inform and guide visitors, applications to recruit 400 volunteers are open until April 20.

With a vast built heritage, Lisbon's contemporary architectural production is rich in rehabilitation projects. Lacking space for new buildings - unless one is willing to pay for the land's high market price - Lisbon's current architecture prescinds tabula rasa and faces the challenge of working with what already exists - often limiting itself to design only interior spaces. 

For the fourth time, we are giving our readers the responsibility of recognizing and awarding the projects that have made the greatest impact on the profession through the 2020 ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year Award. By voting, you become part of an impartial network of jurors recognizing the most relevant projects of the past year.

Over the next three weeks, the collective intelligence of our readers will filter through hundreds of projects from Portuguese-speaking countries—Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Macau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe—published in 2019, selecting the best built works in the Portuguese-speaking world.

From a pool of hundreds of projects published in 2019, readers will choose their favorites, with the 15 most voted advancing to the second stage of voting.

The Garagem Sul at the Centro Cultural de Belém—an exhibition space dedicated to architecture—will open the exhibition The Sea is Our Land: The Sensitive Construction of the Coastline on March 10. The exhibition invites us to invert our usual point of view and think about the land from the perspective of the sea. What can we learn from this shift in perspective?