2018 has been a special year for ArchDaily in Colombia: not only did we celebrate the first three years of our local site in Bogotá alongside prominent architects, and are now poised to set a new annual traffic record, but we also launched ArchDaily Colombia's Instagram account—which, thanks to you, has already reached 10,000 followers in just six months.

To wrap up this great year, we have selected the most popular projects—measured by total engagement, excluding reposts—on @archdailyco:

One of the most traditional festivals in Brazil's South region, Oktoberfest has launched a sustainability-focused initiative. In addition to serving thousands of liters of draft beer, the event's 2018 edition will support the environment by transforming plastic cups used during the 19-day festival into bricks and furniture for community gardens.

Dubbed "Oktober Consciente" (Conscious Oktoberfest), the initiative was created by the Instituto Gigantes da Ecologia (IGE), a non-profit civil association based in Blumenau, Santa Catarina. The project aims to raise awareness and promote environmental best practices among attendees of what is considered one of the largest German festivals in the world.

The Municipal Cultural Foundation of Belo Horizonte has launched a call for proposals to occupy the Casa do Baile, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in Pampulha. Submitted proposals must address the themes of architecture, urbanism, and design.

Fundación Arquia has published a new issue of its digital magazine Arquetipos, featuring an interview with sculptor and artist David Bestué, conducted by architect Moisés Puente with photography by José Hevia. The issue also includes articles on Olympic urban planning, the relationship between architecture and sculpture in the work of Chillida, Enric Miralles, Sert, Kiesler, and much more.

In the interview, titled "Language as Object," David Bestué (Barcelona, 1980) discusses how he approaches architectural space in his work, the influence of artists such as Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Juan Muñoz, and his interest in the formal qualities of work by architects Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós (the "local modern").

+ 2

More than 50,000 people visited the Casa da Arquitectura – Portuguese Center for Architecture during its first year in the rehabilitated Real Vinícola block, in Matosinhos. To celebrate this first anniversary, the institution is organizing three days of free activities for everyone on November 16, 17, and 18.

Featuring guided tours, conferences, talks, presentations, book launches, and concerts, Casa da Arquitectura's anniversary program offers about 30 events for all audiences, including families and children. The block's outdoor space will also host various artistic performances. 

+ 16

Lake Verea is composed of Francisca Rivero-Lake Cortina (Mexico City, 1973) and Carla Verea Hernández (Mexico City, 1978). They have worked as a duo since 2005. Their practice focuses on experimenting with photographic techniques and formats to achieve a personal and intimate perspective. They live and work in Mexico City and around the world. Their research interests center on the portraiture of architecture and the architecture of portraiture, the search for modern ruins, and the emotional interpretation of the spatial journey.

Their latest contribution is a series commissioned by Gabriela Etchegaray for the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Featured in the Mexican Pavilion, “Echoes of a Land,” they conceive architectural portraits through an intimate approach, using fragments to compose a narrative where the architectural subject is personally reinterpreted.

Bamboo construction—locally known as guadua—is, without a doubt, one of the regional techniques that defines contemporary Colombian architecture. As an environmentally friendly resource, it serves as a highly functional and practical building material, easily sourced in Colombia due to its rapid growth.

Farmers, architects, and builders have adopted this "vegetable steel" in many of their projects, which blend seamlessly into the landscape. With proper treatment, it performs exceptionally well across the South American country's diverse altitudinal zones. In addition, it offers varying textures and color tones, bringing a brilliant yet subtle aesthetic to these buildings.

For this feature, the Fundación Arquia Blog, alongside architect Sabrina Gaudino Di Meo, brings us a conversation with architect Nerea Calvillo on how the project "In the Air" came to be. This multidisciplinary work, bridging data and ecology, visualizes urban air components to understand the behavior of microscopic agents and the implications of their concentrations for navigating the city.

Videos

Olivia de Oliveira completed her doctoral thesis on architect Lina Bo Bardi at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB) and is the author of the book "Lina Bo Bardi. Built Works," which grew out of a 2002 visit to Lina's constructed buildings alongside photographer Nelson Kon. In this work, she presents the full architectural complexity and the cultural, political, and social visions of the architect. The book has just been re-released in Brazil in Portuguese by Editora Gustavo Gili.

In the following interview, we delve deeper into the story behind the book and into Lina Bo Bardi's legacy through the author's perspective. Oliveira touches on crucial topics such as the construction site, the surrealism present in the architect's work, and the ongoing preservation of her buildings.

Videos

Like any port city, Barranquilla, Colombia, has historically turned its back on the Magdalena River, a waterway of over 1,500 kilometers flowing down from the Andes Mountains to empty into the Caribbean Sea. Although its urban fabric overlooks the river, the road known as Vía 40 has been the city's true boundary. Between this highway and the river, industrial zones and vacant lots serve as buffers.

"For many years we had a wall blocking this view for 70 years," said Barranquilla Mayor Alejandro Char last February during the inauguration of the second section of the River Boardwalk, an urban project that seeks to restore the city's relationship with the river, which runs through 11 of Colombia's departments.

It is not common to speak extensively about these ideas in architecture, even if we have fallen back on them more than once. Diagnosis, happiness, rehabilitation, void, sadness, fear, health, patient, save... words repeated over and over, integrating ever more coherently as you read, transforming into a discourse that convinces us of these architectural utopias. It is not about who is behind this proposal, but rather about what they achieve for architecture and society through this multidisciplinary union forged from different approaches—be it philosophy, sculpture, or illustration—all of them medicine for the soul. Ultimately, they are a critique wrapped in the high spirits of the 1950s.

Dialogues of space and time converge in these projects: that a building can move from one place to another, that its atmosphere can evoke another era. It is a philosophy based on healing cities through detachment and happiness. No building belongs entirely to a territory; no spirit is inherent to an era in itself. Much like their sculptural projects, one is born in New York, another remains in Peru, and another ends up in Brazil. All of this is delivered with the cheerful 1950s aesthetic they seek to bring back and popularize through their contemporary illustrations. Here, we present DAD's philosophy and three projects that put their principles into practice.

Without further ado, they happily share the details with us.

+ 88

A Portuguese architect from a traditional aristocratic family, Fernando Távora's education was shaped by a profound discursive shift upon coming into contact with modernism. He often said that he "entered university in love with the Venus de Milo and left in love with Picasso," reflecting his intellectual brilliance in recognizing modernist initiatives as something with which he had to establish a dialogue. In 1945, he wrote for the first time about a "third way" for Portuguese architecture, a contribution that resonated both in his teaching—closely tied to the Porto School—and in his practice, finding direct and striking expression in several of his projects.

With more than 350 Colombian projects now published on ArchDaily, we celebrate this milestone with a curated selection that highlights the value of drawings in conceptualizing, designing, and constructing contemporary Colombian architecture.

While drawing is often associated with a project's earliest conceptual stages, Colombian architects continue to use sketching to explain structure, program, and even construction details in an era otherwise dominated by the efficiency of 3D modeling and rendering.

This selection ranges from single-family homes to public parks, including mixed-use facilities, kindergartens, and university buildings across Colombia.

+ 36

Prix Versailles is an international recognition promoted by UNESCO that addresses architecture and design—both interior and exterior—of commercial projects across four categories: shops, shopping malls, hotels, and restaurants. Its goal is to foster a better interaction between commercial and cultural spaces, highlighting the few examples that successfully achieve this.

This year, competing against numerous finalist projects from six major continental regions, the Porcelanosa Grupo showroom in Santiago, Chile, by Gonzalo Mardones V Arquitectos received the special prize for its exterior design in the shops category.

Discover the project in detail and read the architect's thoughts below.

Located on São Paulo's most iconic avenue, after eight years of construction, the new Sesc São Paulo unit will open its doors on April 29. With programming based on the triad of “Art, Body, and Technology,” the institution expects to welcome approximately 18,000 visitors per week.

On October 22, the winning design of the 1st Public Design Competition of Conde was announced. A total of 32 proposals were submitted from 11 states, featuring intervention plans for an area of approximately 14,266 m², with projects covering landscaping, urban planning, urban infrastructure, public facilities, and street furniture. The area designated for the competition contains the highest concentration of open spaces and public facilities within Conde's urban perimeter, such as a market, schools, plazas, churches, an open-air market, transit services, and public offices. Among these, the Pedro Alves and Antônio de Sousa Santos plazas, along with Domingos Maranhão and Nossa Senhora da Conceição streets, hold significant urban potential and host major social events in the city.

The jury comprised architecture and urban planning professionals, as well as a local representative. The winning proposal came from Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul) and met several key requirements, including local economic development, commerce, and the creation of public spaces for community gathering. The team consists of Bruno de Moraes Britto, Camila Bellver Alberti, Douglas Silveira Martini, Jean Michel Forte dos Anjos, and Mariana Mocellin Mincarone. See the winning entries below:

In this piece, Daniel Morales Escudero offers a reflection on the Terminal 2 project in Valparaíso, addressing the proposal through the lens of Chile's three legal grounds for abortion.

The ATRIO Towers —the tallest project in Colombia— reached a new milestone in Bogotá with the structural completion of its North Tower, the first of the development's skyscrapers, which has topped out at 201.6 meters and 46 stories.

During a ceremony held on Friday, August 24, on the rooftop of the North Tower, the final two steel beams—each 10 meters long and weighing 3.3 tons—were installed. The event symbolically marked the completion of 20 months of construction for the first phase of the skyscraper complex.

In an interview with the newspaper El Colombiano, designer and mobility expert Mikael Colville-Andersen analyzed the current state of mobility in Medellín, one of Colombia's largest and most influential cities. “Walking or riding a bike in Medellín is like a video game,” the Danish expert explained.

Major Colombian cities face numerous questions surrounding the relationship between mobility, culture, politics, and society. The capital of Antioquia is no exception, according to the cycling and urban planning expert, who was visiting the city for the second time after a previous trip in 2016.

The Chilean City in the Press is a new section on ArchDaily en Español where we cover the key urban issues facing Chilean cities across the country. This is our editorial roundup of everything you need to stay up to date.

In this first edition, we cover the University of Chile's proposal to rehabilitate the Villavicencio Tower in Santiago, the National Monuments Council's interest in preserving the birthplace of the late poet Nicanor Parra, and urban news from Valparaíso, Concepción, and Valdivia.

"True love is a span, extending infinitely,
An immense monolith, our architecture."
- Gilberto Gil, Drão

Just over two years ago, the Casa da Arquitectura - Portuguese Centre for Architecture began a major effort to assemble a collection of significant works from the last 90 years of Brazilian architectural history. In addition to expanding the institution's already impressive archive—which includes, among other items, hundreds of original scale models by Souto de Moura—this collection of more than eight thousand documents of Brazilian architecture will form the core of the exhibition Infinito Vão, curated by Guilherme Wisnik and Fernando Serapião.

The Council for Architecture and Urbanism of Tocantins – CAU/TO has launched a design competition to select the best proposal for the construction of its headquarters in the city of Palmas. 

The team comprising Giovani Valeria, Nitzy Vera, Sofía Vargas, and Stefanía Ruiz (Universidad San Sebastián) has been awarded third place in the XXXII CAP Chile Competition. Designed for Teja Island in Valdivia, the competition jury praised the greenhouse system's "innovative and well-thought-out steel structure, with exterior and interior pathways that highlight the flora. It must, however, pay close attention to the scale of the structural elements in the smaller spaces."

On Wednesday, November 21, the verdict of the competition of the XXI Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito - BAQ 2018 was announced.

Divided into six categories, the various juries selected projects and publications that stand out for making a significant contribution to their respective fields, offering relevant lessons for the discipline.

Below, we present the winners in Category (E) Theory, History, and Criticism of Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape, and Category (F) Specialized Periodical Publications.