The winners of the design competition for the Madrid Metropolitan Forest have been announced. Coordinated by the Vice-Mayor's Office and promoted by the Urban Development Department, the initiative invited architects to develop natural infrastructure to drive green growth and sustainable development in the city. Located in Madrid, Spain, the Forest will span 75 kilometers, contributing to the area's ecological rebalancing, carbon emission reductions, the fight against climate change, and the environmental and landscape restoration of degraded areas.

This article is part of a collaboration with the website coolhuntermx, and was originally published under the title "La Bauhaus Tapatía."

"A sort of Bauhaus" is how Mathias Goeritz, in short, tried to convince Italian architect and theorist Alberto Sartoris to come to Mexico. In 1950, through letters, he invited him to teach at the very project that had drawn Goeritz in and excited him so much: the first School of Architecture of Guadalajara, founded in 1948 by Ignacio Díaz Morales.

The Brooklyn-based design firm Territorial Empathy, which has Colombian roots, presented a proposal for the UN-Habitat Global Public Space Programme, rethinking the temporary nature of aid for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia by utilizing the capital district of Bogotá's most iconic public space.

As part of our ongoing effort to highlight the outstanding academic work being produced in universities, we launched an open call last January, inviting Mexican architects to share their graduation projects. We sought theses and academic research addressing critical issues in the Mexican context—projects that typically remain on paper but deserve national recognition.

Children are often overlooked or entirely deprioritized in urban planning. Globally, it is estimated that up to 500 children die every day in traffic accidents. Thousands of others are injured in collisions or develop psychological trauma that can last for years. Whether on the streets or in public spaces, feelings of insecurity or discomfort discourage children from physical activity outdoors—at a time when 80% of children between the ages of 11 and 17 are not physically active, and another 38 million under the age of five are overweight or obese.

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During a live-streamed event on an exclusive microsite created for the XXII Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito, organizers presented the schedule for this year's online BAQ 2020, along with the participating jurors and speakers.

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The lobby, also known as the entrance hall or vestibule, is a reception space adjacent to the entrance of a residential building or private home, serving as a transition zone between the public urban environment and the private program.

Typically located on the ground floor of buildings and closely linked to the street, the lobby acts as the project's "public face" to the outside world. Consequently, its design, material qualities, aesthetics, and component elements are of great significance. Its function remains highly flexible, serving as a space for gatherings, receptions, or waiting.

Winner of the 2018 National Ideas Competition promoted by the City of Fortaleza, the project presents the requalification of public spaces dating from the early 20th century. The goal is to make them inviting and establish a contemporary urban heritage park in the city center, with a special emphasis on the social dimension, the memory of Liberdade Park as the "Children's City" (Cidade das Crianças), and its connection with Sagrado Coração de Jesus Square.

The quality of streets and sidewalks is a widely debated topic in Brazil, and the coronavirus pandemic has added another layer of complexity—public health—prompting us to question whether it is actually possible for pedestrians to practice social distancing. This concern led architecture student Conrado Freire to develop a map of sidewalk widths in São Paulo.

Adapted from Meli Harvey's Sidewalk Widths NYC project on New York City sidewalks, Largura do Passeio uses sidewalk data provided by the GeoSampa portal to visually synthesize information about São Paulo's pedestrian pathways that is not typically accessible to the general public. Based on the open-source code released by Harvey—which has also been adapted for cities like Toronto, Washington, Berlin, and Milan—Freire creates a visual mapping of what is often only felt by pedestrians moving through São Paulo's urban space.

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On June 17, Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) issued a landmark ruling ordering the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) to generate disaggregated statistical data on populations in informal or precarious settlements across the country. This resolution brings to the forefront the discussion on the role that judges can and should play when making decisions that directly impact urban planning, land management, our cities, and our housing.

Rarely do we encounter an open-air fine arts museum like the Garden of Fine Arts, designed by Tadao Ando in 1994 for the city of Kyoto, Japan. Reproductions at various scales of renowned masterpieces appear among concrete columns, beams, and walls, along with ramps and glass bridges, interacting with cascading waterfalls and the background vegetation from the adjacent Botanical Gardens.

Pancho Gallardo, the Chilean architectural photographer now based in Madrid, has long admired the Japanese architect's work, particularly for, as he explains, "the use of concrete as an element that creates spaces, textures, angles, and shadows which, above all, in spaces like this open-air museum, establish a direct relationship with sunlight, where every corner becomes a dramatic composition of visual angles."

Below, he shares a series of photographs taken on-site, accompanied by more of his thoughts.

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In Mexico, the official Jornada de Sana Distancia (National Social Distancing Campaign) began on March 23, 2020. During this period, various firms, businesses, and universities reached a turning point where it became necessary to discuss the present and future impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on operations at different levels. A few weeks ago, ArchDaily launched a series of interviews with Mexican firms reflecting on their organizational and operational experiences when transitioning from in-person to remote work. But what about universities? What happens to the new generations experiencing this shift in their schools? How is spatial thinking affected after nearly two months of social distancing? What lies ahead for educational models, and especially for university spaces?

The global pandemic caused by the coronavirus has demanded emergency actions to save lives, which, in turn, require complementary measures to preserve jobs and income, especially for the most vulnerable segment of the population. The field of architecture and urbanism is no exception: the precarity facing a significant portion of professionals is worsening due to social isolation measures, which are absolutely essential to combat the pandemic. Left without financial reserves to guarantee basic survival, many architects are left with no alternatives. Emergency measures currently being discussed in Congress, such as a basic income, are urgent. While they rightly focus on low-income populations, the scale of the crisis demands additional actions.

Residents of the city of Punta Arenas collectively developed—in collaboration with writer Víctor Hernández and architect Alejandro Parada—a literary and graphic reconstruction documenting the heritage icons that represent the founding and evolution of the 18 de Septiembre neighborhood. The project, titled "Rutas Patrimoniales Barrio 18 de Septiembre, Punta Arenas", is framed within the Regional Cultural Identity Strengthening program of the Magallanes Region's Regional Ministerial Secretariat of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage, and is part of the 2017-2022 Public Policies for Cultural Promotion.

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“Alternative Utility Platforms” is a project that seeks to generate spaces for social innovation in the integrated management of urban waste. According to Giulia Bianchi and Luis Morillo, the authors of the proposal, the city of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, currently generates approximately 21,147 tons of solid waste per month. Only 61.79% of this waste ends up in landfills, meaning the remaining 33.25% winds up on streets, in informal dumps, rivers, and streams, improperly disposed of. Out of this total, ultimately only 4.97% is processed by recycling companies, and the majority of that volume is sorted and supplied by street waste collectors. For this reason, and through their thesis project developed at the Central University of Venezuela, the authors propose to generate new employment models for the collection and treatment of municipal solid waste through an urban and architectural intervention.

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The Eco Pavilion 2020 is the tenth edition of this competition, which, since 2010, has served as a space for reflection on architecture through temporary installations in the courtyard of the Museo Experimental el Eco. This year's edition was structured around Mathias Goeritz's idea of "the serpent," based on a concept proposed by architect Javier Senosiain.

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In light of recent statements by the Federal Government and the new programs announced by institutions involved in housing production in Mexico, we believe it is essential to open a dialogue and exchange ideas to better understand the concepts of self-construction, self-production, and the “Social Production and Management of Habitat” [SPMH], as well as the role of architecture in these social processes.

Electric scooters represent a significant opportunity to reduce transportation-related carbon emissions by bridging the "first and last mile" connections that people often make by car to access public transit systems during urban trips.

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With traditional access to information restricted due to social distancing measures implemented worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and with many unable to access physical architecture media like magazines, books, and other print publications, Summa+ has decided to release nearly 100 digital issues of its magazine, making its content available for free to readers around the world.

As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han states: every age has its signature afflictions. These illnesses have represented some of the most significant challenges in human history, bringing drastic changes not only to the healthcare sector but also to economic and political spheres, revealing humanity as a complex network negotiating its daily existence through actions that have reshaped our ways of living and relating to one another.

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Mexico's National Social Distancing Campaign began on March 23, 2020. However, a couple of weeks prior—even in the face of the federal government's recommendation to continue normal activities—social media users were already opting to mirror the European model and self-isolate. Architecture firms immediately began closing their physical spaces to transition to remote work, though for others, the shift took several weeks. Yet, this period of social and physical (spatial) distancing is experienced differently in every household. Over the months of this pandemic, we have witnessed not only the inequities in access to basic needs in dense urban areas, but also the fragility of the social order itself. Whether at a macro or micro scale, all of these experiences occur within and are shaped by the built environment, positioning architecture as both an active participant and a critical arbiter in this equation. 

For the third time since its founding in 2002, Mexico will host the Latin American Social Workshop of Architecture Students (TSL Mexico 2020). This edition is organized by the Latin American Coordinator of Architecture Students (CLEA Latin America), alongside CONEA Mexico and the Municipality of San Felipe del Progreso.

This article by Felipe Samarán Saló was originally published in the 11th issue of rita_ magazine under the title "Inhabited Renders and Deserted Architecture. The Hidden Message of Architecture Revealed by Photography" and is part of a joint dissemination collaboration. Below, we present a study on how the focus of architecture has shifted from "serving the person by addressing all their dimensions" to "generating a universe of surprising, beautiful, and photogenic forms and spaces," relegating the end-user to the background or into oblivion.

The Superintendency of Industry and Commerce has granted a utility patent for the invention "Multifunctional Self-Supporting Modular Roof System" to professors Camilo Ayala García and Christiaan Job Nieman Janssen, from the design department, and Diego Alejandro Velándia Rayo, from the architecture department, at the Faculty of Architecture and Design of the Universidad de los Andes.