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As a tribute to Mexico's rich and diverse chromatic palette, the Museo del Objeto del Objeto (MODO) presents its new temporary exhibition: “Mexico in Color,” curated by Ana Elena Mallet and Mariano Marroquín. The exhibition offers a cultural review of color perception in Mexico and its impact on art and design. One of the first experiences visitors will encounter is the conceptualization of color in folk art to forge identity. Subsequently, this element is adopted as a defining feature in the arts and, ultimately, as a driving force for the country's modernization.

In this installment, as part of the series of articles by Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy, and Ernesto Philibert-Petit, we examine the importance of design sequences and generative codes in social housing in Latin America. Explore all previous publications and the new article below.

According to the executive branch's plans, more than 500 schools will be built in Peru this year to close the infrastructure gap affecting the sector. This represents an investment of 30 billion soles, which also serves as an incentive for the construction industry across the country's various regions.

From September 30 to October 7, Madrid will be the featured capital of the 16th Architecture Week 2019, organized by the Official Association of Architects of Madrid (COAM) through the COAM Architecture Foundation.

This second year of the pandemic offered a tremendous opportunity to continue reflecting on and debating the most urgent issues in architecture. To this end, we wanted our readers to actively participate by contributing their experiences and knowledge. Throughout the year, we invited them each month to share their comments and insights on a wide range of topics—from the future of cities, automation, and multidisciplinary design, to green infrastructure, adaptive reuse, migration, equity, and well-being.

After reading and compiling all the submissions received—from construction professionals and students to architecture enthusiasts—it is now time to present the key perspectives. Thank you very much for sharing your opinions! 

Through IMPSOL (Metropolitan Institute for Land Development and Property Management), the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) has begun construction on a new series of social housing (VPO) units on Anselm Clavé Street in Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain). Project design and construction management are led by Guillermo López of MAIO Architects.

The archive of more than 40 years of professional activity by architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça will be integrated into Casa da Arquitectura, reinforcing the national scope of the institution's collection. The signing ceremony will take place this Saturday, February 15, at 3:30 p.m., at the CA Archive premises.

This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

Before architecture students become authors of space, they are subjected to one. For years, they work inside a building that teaches without announcing itself as a teacher. It organizes their exhaustion, their ambition, their visibility, their solitude, their friendships, their sense of scale, and their relationship to judgment. Long before a student can articulate a position on architecture, the school has already offered one in its implicit built environment.

This is not to suggest that buildings determine architects. The influence is slower and less complete than that. A school building operates more like a hidden curriculum: a spatial discipline that works alongside faculty, syllabi, institutional culture, and student life. It teaches through access and obstruction, program adjacencies, daylight exposures, and scale. It produces habits of attention before it produces explicit beliefs.

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As part of a new collaboration between Mexican firms Dellekamp Arquitectos and Rojkind Arquitectos, Casa Roca is presented in Puerto Los Cabos, San José del Cabo, Mexico. Inspired by the rock formations at the site's summit, the project features a radial layout carefully organized in response to its topography. Sited on a 5,000 m² lot, the 1,200 m² house organizes its program along the natural landscape, minimizing its footprint and establishing a close relationship with nature as the core living experience.

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Historically, architecture is a discipline that for many years was a male-dominated territory, until in 1939, María Luisa Dehesa became the first Mexican female architect. Yet, despite the perception that gender parity has been achieved in the education of architects in Mexico, the concept of masculinity (which can be exercised by both men and women) continues to permeate architecture. This is reflected in design processes, in the figure of the "unreachable architect," in a sense of competitiveness, in hierarchical structures, and, in the most unfortunate cases, in the notion that women design interiors while men design *real* architecture.

Fernando Guerra, one of the most prolific photographers in the field of architecture, is set to be the subject of a documentary directed by Sara Nunes and produced by Portugal's Building Pictures. The Flying Photographer, the film's working title, is drawn from a dedication by Álvaro Siza, an architect whose works and life Guerra has been extensively documenting.

Based on the Urban Design Planning and Implementation Scheme for Banxuegang High-Tech City, this international competition was launched to implement the phase results of the implementation scheme through four sub-projects. The project evaluation meeting has been successfully concluded. Following the competition rules (the jury has provided evaluation opinions on the top two winning agencies of each project and recommended them to the host; the host will further study and determine the final ranking of the top two winning agencies based on full respect for the expert evaluation opinions, and the top two winning agencies will receive different bonuses and undertake corresponding follow-up work), the host has decided to launch a public consultation based on these results to widely collect opinions and suggestions as an important reference for the final ranking and subsequent design refinement. The competition consists of four sub-projects, covering planning, architecture, landscape, and art, with two winners selected for each category.

Winners of the International Competition for the Architectural Conceptual Design of Banxuegang Art Center and Surrounding Plots: URBANUS Architecture & Design, Architectural Design & Research Institute of South China University of Technology & Shenzhen WAAO Architects (Consortium)
Winners of the International Competition for the Conceptual Design of the Integrated Connectivity of Characteristic (Country) Parks Around "Bantian in the Forest": Guangzhou Landscape Architecture Design and Research Institute, MLA+ B.V.
Winners of the International Competition for the Landscape and Greenery Enhancement of Urban Streets and Nodes in Banxuegang High-Tech City: Shenzhen Meidao Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning Design Institute Co., Ltd. & Beijing Vision 4D Directional System Planning & Design Co., Ltd. (Consortium), Beijing Zhonghai Huayi Urban Planning & Design Co., Ltd. & Shenzhen Gardens Co., Ltd. (Consortium)
Winners of the International Competition for the Visual Identity (VI) and Application Design of Banxuegang High-Tech City: Shenzhen Shida Creative Design Co., Ltd., Thonik Design Studio

On Friday, December 22, 2017, the inaugural MUGAK Basque Country International Architecture Biennial opened the exhibition "The City We Lost: Urban Heritage Management in San Sebastián, 1950-2017" at the Santa Teresa Convent in San Sebastián, Spain. The exhibition showcases recognizable local buildings that have disappeared over the last few decades. 

Curated by the Áncora association, the exhibition traverses San Sebastián's neighborhoods to examine a city that now exists only in collective memory—specifically, buildings lost over the past seven decades. Stretching from Martutene to Igeldo, and including Alza, Amara, El Antiguo, and Ibaeta, the survey goes beyond the city's iconic heritage, looking past San Sebastián's most prominent areas to highlight other architectural works.

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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.

Born in Artigas, Uruguay, in the second decade of the twentieth century, Eladio Dieste became an exceptional builder, with most of his work located in Montevideo, the capital of his home country, and its adjacent cities. However, his work gained broader international recognition posthumously, after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) celebrated it in 2005 through the theoretical work of Stanford Anderson. Trained as an engineer, his relationship with the construction site and in situ experimentation allowed him to push materiality and structural possibilities to their absolute limits.

With a practice deeply connected to the relationship between materiality and the construction site, he developed a rich architectural output based on studies of thin ceramic shells, which he termed reinforced ceramics. Alongside this construction technique, Dieste found that ceramic bricks offered the essential structural resolution he sought. The material possessed excellent structural properties—highly resistant to compression, quick to build with, and easy for local labor to handle—while the addition of steel reinforcement allowed it to resist tension and bending. Consequently, he found in brick the ideal medium for the plasticity and structural design he envisioned, enabling him to span large distances with slender self-supporting structures anchored only at their ends. Free of central supports, these structures unified walls, floors, and ceilings into a single cohesive body.

But what makes Eladio Dieste such a remarkable builder?

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Santiago Arau is a renowned photographer whose work focuses on aerial shots of the Mexican territory. His lens travels from Ciudad Juárez to Cancún and Holbox, from the northern border to the Mexican southeast, spanning from 5,500 to minus five meters above sea level, from minus 15 to 45 degrees, and covering over 5,000 kilometers. Arau defines this approach as "a different perspective than what we are used to, since seeing things from above situates where we stand; it is a way to calibrate the human, urban, and geographical scale within a territory. The framing possibilities a drone offers are infinite; you can choose the height, framing, and technique to photograph an object, maximizing the power of a camera."

Possibly the largest exhibition dedicated to Brazilian architecture held outside the country since Brazil Builds, shown in 1943 at MoMA, opens today at Casa da Arquitectura in Matosinhos, Portugal. The Portuguese Centre for Architecture is also presenting the exhibition "Duas Casas" (Two Houses) by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, who will receive the title of Honorary Member of Casa da Arquitectura at a ceremony on September 30. This exhibition will feature the Gerassi House and the House on Rua do Quelhas in Lisbon, which was co-designed with Portuguese architect Inês Lobo.

Since the mid-20th century, the Castagnino Museum has established itself as one of Argentina's most important cultural spaces. The historic building by the architectural firm Hérnandez Larguía-Newton (1937) was built in a privileged setting, conceived as the gateway to the city—a condition that will be further emphasized by the new intervention.

There is nothing personal against the color yellow, but let us be honest: we were saturated by the monotony.

We love yellow, but not when it is used tastelessly and to mask corruption. We like the yellow that is natural to Lima, like the one in the header image—that earthy tone, the tone of every sunset, the one that shines like the sun. In recent years, our city has been forcibly invaded by this color: yellow staircases, yellow bridges, yellow walls, yellow railings... perhaps too much. And even if certain works were not yellow themselves, the intentions behind them carried a distinct whiff of that hue.

Architect Antonio Miranda, writing for the ARKRIT Collective, invites us to reflect in this article on romantic subjectivism in criticism, presenting a simple example in defense of the objective criticism of the object, which speaks to us much more honestly and sincerely than the author of the work themselves. He puts this assertion to the test by comparing two famous buildings in Madrid's Plaza de España: the Edificio España and the Torre de Madrid.

The Infonavit Cuauhtémoc Neighborhood Library is the latest project by Proyecto Reacciona A.C. located in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. Led by architect Antonio Garza Ferrigno in collaboration with muralist Juan Alcocer Zúñiga, the project spans 135 m² (1,453 sq ft) and was completed on a budget of 120,000 Mexican pesos. Read on to learn more about the project:

Whenever I cross the imaginary line on the Monumental Axis connecting the National Congress to the Itamaraty Palace, catching a glimpse of the Three Powers Plaza from the top of the ramp leading into it, I am overcome by a genuine emotion that never fades with repetition. This privileged view of the plaza as a whole, flanked by its three main buildings and framed by the perspective of the Itamaraty Palace on the right, is an image comparable only to the great iconic urban spaces of the world.

The Three Powers Plaza is a contemporary construction that evokes classical urban planning tradition, whether that of the "people's Versailles," as Lucio Costa envisioned, or the ancient Greek agora. Yet, there are also references to the "plazas mayores" or "plazas de armas" of Iberian and Spanish-American cities, as well as the plazas of the Brazilian colonial period. This mix of influences could have resulted in a postmodern pastiche of styles were it not for Lucio Costa's genius in translating it into the clear, elegant synthesis of a modernist design, complemented by Niemeyer's architecture, which has already been so widely discussed and praised. 

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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.

Today in Brazil, there are several groups spearheading initiatives aimed at improving our living environment. Unfortunately, many face difficulties in getting their ideas off the ground, primarily due to a lack of financial resources, as shown by data gathered by the Como Anda Project.

The Fenômenos Foundation sees this demand as an opportunity: through the Fenômenos Challenge, the organization supported the implementation of three ideas with great transformative potential in the city of São Paulo. The challenge's premise was to select initiatives promoting physical activity and sustainability in vulnerable areas, offering solutions to local issues. The selected groups were: Cidade Ativa, Canto da Arte Jaguaré, and the Dente de Leão Collective. The selection process considered criteria such as impact, feasibility, and how the program could help boost the projects.