A massive fire caused the collapse of a 22-story skyscraper in downtown São Paulo overnight. Located at the intersection of Avenida Rio Branco and Largo Paissandu, near Vale do Anhangabaú, the building previously served as the headquarters of the Federal Police and was occupied by about 90 families from a housing movement.

According to residents, the fire started around 1:30 a.m. following an explosion on the fifth floor and quickly spread throughout the structure, also affecting neighboring buildings, such as the Martin Luther Church located on the square and another high-rise facing the collapsed structure.

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The open course Arquitetura Paulistana, organized by Marco Artigas, took students to visit the Congonhas Airport Pedestrian Bridge project, designed by Estúdio Artigas in partnership with the firm H2C Arquitetura. Begun in 2014, the project took four years to complete and featured the participation of Nitsche Arquitetos, who were responsible for the project's visual communication.

As the end of the year approaches, we would like to thank our readers and contributors once again for making 2018 such a rich year for architecture. With your continued support, we are reaching more architects, students, and those outside the architectural community worldwide, inspiring them to build a better environment for everyone.

In an interview with El País, Bjarke Ingels discusses with architecture journalist Anatxu Zabalbeascoa the motivations behind his work and the factors that have made him one of the most prominent figures in global architecture.

Moving between the formal concepts that give his buildings their names—such as "snowflake" or "labyrinth"—and the competitive nature of the architecture world (his proposal replaced Norman Foster's for Two World Trade Center in New York), Zabalbeascoa questions Ingels more sharply than might be expected, at one point asking if "architecture can turn into a joke." 

Works designed by renowned architects have always drawn attention, especially from tourists who, passing through new cities, seek to catch a quick glimpse of the best those places have to offer. While this phenomenon is not new, services like Airbnb, which allow short stays in rented homes, have given it a new dimension.

This is currently the case in the Bouça Neighborhood in Porto, designed by Álvaro Siza Vieira. Conceived in the 1970s as a social housing project promoted by the Local Support Ambulatory Service (SAAL), the complex—originally built as permanent housing for workers—has always attracted architecture enthusiasts and fans of Siza's work. In recent years, however, it has also begun attracting temporary residents to units listed for rent.

The History Channel has released its first entirely Brazilian production. Titled Mil Dias - A Saga da Construção de Brasília, the series tells the story of the construction of the new capital from the perspective of four characters who built the city in the cerrado: a surveyor, an engineer, an architect, and a construction worker.

The famous and widely published Pink House, designed by Mezzo Atelier, has won the Paulo Gouveia Architecture Prize, a regional award from the Azores, Portugal, which recognizes "restoration, rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reinterpretation works whose design stands out for respecting the built heritage and prioritizing the use of local materials, without excluding the use of a contemporary language."

The website Mobilize, Brazil's first platform dedicated exclusively to sustainable urban mobility, has published a list of 30 must-see documentaries on the subject. Divided into feature and medium-length films, the selected titles address urban mobility from various perspectives, ranging from mass transit and non-motorized personal transport to urban culture and the June 2013 protests in Brazil.

The NGO Soluções Urbanas launched a crowdfunding platform earlier this month to enable technical assistance, the purchase of materials, and renovation work in precarious housing. Named Arquiteto de Família, the tool was developed with sponsorship from CAU/RJ.

The platform's goal is to facilitate access to better housing conditions, and the funds raised through the tool can be combined with resources from other sources, such as microcredit and barter fairs.

The *Geography, City, and Architecture* graduate program at Escola da Cidade invited architect Mario Figueroa to deliver a lecture on Chilean architecture, where he discusses the so-called “Generation of the '90s” and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights.

The deck is finished, the beams and columns have already been painted, and construction is moving forward at a good pace at the Guarda Housing Complex in Perafita, Matosinhos, Portugal, which will very soon see the completion of Uma Casa de Brincar e Não Só… / Not Only a Playhouse, built as part of the second edition of “O Lugar de Partilha.” At the end of the first week on-site, there is still much work to be done for this Self-Construction Laboratory organized by Casa da Arquitectura (CA) – Portuguese Center for Architecture and curated by Roberto Cremascoli, but spirits are high, and by August 10th, everything will be ready for the local community to enjoy.

As Europe's second most visited built heritage site, behind only the Colosseum in Rome, St. Mark's Basilica in Venice receives over 5 million visitors annually. Yet, under the strain of this massive influx, the 11th-century Byzantine mosaic floors seem to be succumbing to the effects of the floating city's tides.

The undulations in the basilica's floor are visible to the naked eye—feet have not touched them for a decade, as visitors are only allowed to walk on synthetic carpet runners—and they have even cracked at the most critical points, especially in the center of the building. Currently, only 20% of the geometric marble and stone patterns are original; the rest has been restored over the last ten centuries by the artisans of the St. Mark's Workshop.

UPDATE:  This article has generated a much larger response than expected, and we feel it is our duty to clarify the situation. At no point does the article suggest that the project in Artur Nogueira is a plagiarism of the French project. Plagiarism, by definition, is presenting someone else's intellectual work as one's own, and this article makes no such claim. What it does state is that the project in Brazil is a copy of the French one, without accusing anyone of plagiarism or clarifying whether or not permission was granted to copy the design. We were contacted by the owner of Colégio Futura Plus, who informed us that during the design process, French architect Raphaelle Hondelatte was contacted and authorized the use of the elements mentioned in the text—specifically, the yellow giraffe and the cantilevered white volume. As soon as we receive new information, we will update the article again.

To what extent can architecture draw inspiration from references without being considered a copy of another building? This discussion raises diverse and controversial opinions that prompt us to reflect on the issue of architectural copyright and recall the infamous architectural replicas produced in recent years in China, which mimic everything from iconic buildings to the French capital itself.

Architecture is perhaps the built heritage that best expresses a city's history, highlighting major cultural figures whose work enriches the history of its people. The Porto Architecture Guide 1942-2017 follows the Lisbon Architecture Guide 1948-2013; together, they are the first two volumes in the Cities collection published by A+A Books.

Portuguese architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça has been unanimously selected as the winner of the inaugural Leon Battista Alberti Architecture Prize, awarded by the Leon Battista Alberti Center for Studies Foundation, named after the prominent Renaissance architect and art theorist.

Carrilho da Graça, who heads the eponymous firm Carrilho da Graça Arquitectos, is known for major projects in Portugal and other European countries, such as the Lisbon Cruise Terminal, the Theater in Poitiers, and the Orient Museum.

Originally published in 1995, Registro de uma vivência is an autobiography by Lucio Costa (1902–1998) composed of critical essays, memoirs, plans, projects, photographs, and drawings specifically selected and arranged by the author.

Out of print for nearly 20 years, the book has been reissued by Editora 34 in partnership with Edições Sesc SP. Fully preserving the original graphic design, this new edition features an introduction by Maria Elisa Costa, Lucio’s daughter, an index of names, and an essay by Sophia da Silva Telles, which seeks to decipher the significance of the work of this great architect and urban planner, who was also one of the most important Brazilian intellectuals of the 20th century.

Seu Acervo, a platform for architecture final graduation projects, has released the results of the "Most Popular Project of 2017" open call, launched last November. The goal of the call is to expand the reach of the material available on the platform and encourage recent graduates to engage with digital publishing media. 

The winners of this first edition of the award are Rogério Oliveira da Costa, from the Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo; Nayara de Paula, from the Universidade Anhembi Morumbi; and Hugo Rossini, from the Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie. See the winning projects below.

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Designed by the offices Flock design arquitetura e cidades and Okna arquitetura and built in the Pinheiros neighborhood of São Paulo, the Circular House is a building designed for the circular economy and inspired by cradle-to-cradle design. There are many differences between this type of construction and the traditional one, but what definitively separates these models is the question: “what happens next?”

In a circular economy, buildings are understood as material banks that can be reused for future cycles of use: whether in other constructions (assembly and disassembly), in expansions or reductions, or by dismantling and transforming their materials into new products with new uses.