In celebration of its 75th anniversary, the Institute of Architects of Brazil – São Paulo Department (IABsp) is launching, on May 14, 2018, an unprecedented competition for curatorial proposals for the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, which will take place from September to December 2019.

Videos

"Repression is a horrible thing. A horrible dimension, still untold. One where even the idea of revenge is out of place. The idea is to imagine building a world where this is impossible." This powerful statement by Paulo Mendes da Rocha is part of a testimonial given to the group Arquitetxs pela Democracia. This group also features testimonials from key figures such as Angelo Bucci, Guilherme Wisnik, Marcelo Rosenbaum, Márcio Kogan, Ermínia Maricato, Guto Requena, and Stephanie Ribeiro.

The eighth edition of the 2018 Premios Mayor in Chile has awarded its top prize to Chilean architect Teodoro Fernández, designer of metropolitan projects such as Bicentenario Park in Santiago and the Kaukari Urban Park in Copiapó. 

During the ceremony held at the Universidad Mayor School of Architecture in Santiago on November 8, the 2014 National Architecture Prize winner reflected specifically on open space. "Projects undergo processes of growth and decay that are much longer and deeper than in other fields. Understanding this is fundamental, and there are examples in art, such as when Marcel Duchamp allowed dust—which is ultimately the passage of time—to become part of his work *The Large Glass*. That is the balance of ideas we must find space for in cities," Fernández commented.

The proposal Temporary Activation Circuit was awarded third place in the Pasarelas San Borja competition in Chile. The main objective of the competition was to recognize "the best urban design ideas that contribute to defining intervention criteria and generating proposals for the San Borja neighborhood."

As the authors explain, the third-place-winning proposal offers "a mutable and flexible system that reflects contemporary times."

Crucial for ensuring that urban planning fosters prosperity and quality of life for all residents, public participation must be integrated into decision-making processes. Every citizen deserves a space to contribute new ideas, establish priorities, and track the progress of municipal projects. To facilitate this exchange, Consul—a platform developed by the city of Madrid—is being made available free of charge to cities worldwide. In Brazil, a workshop hosted by WRI Brasil introduced the tool to interested municipalities that are already working to implement it.

+ 8

The second edition of Living Places - Simon Architecture Prize is a competition organized in collaboration with prestigious international architecture firms, featuring 145 projects from 12 European countries and Mexico. Although European in scope, this edition of the prize includes Mexico as a special guest. The award is presented in two categories: Personal Places and Collective Places, with a €10,000 prize for the winner of each.

The jury comprised various professionals, including renowned Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, founder of her eponymous studio, the youngest designer of a Serpentine Pavilion and recently awarded a RIBA International Fellowship; Davide Rapp (Milan), an architect and filmmaker who created the film “Elements” for the 2014 Venice Biennale as the introductory video to the central exhibition; Cecilia Tham (Hong Kong, Barcelona), founder of the creative community MOB Makers of Barcelona; and Ricardo Flores (Buenos Aires, Barcelona) of Flores & Prats Arquitectos, one of the winners of the prize's previous edition.

The Council for Architecture and Urbanism of Brazil is issuing a public statement to clarify its opposition to Bill (PL) No. 9818/2018 and Legislative Decree Project (PDC) No. 901/2018, currently before the Chamber of Deputies. These proposals compromise the regulation of the architecture and urban planning profession and jeopardize crucial public safeguards regarding health, safety, and the environment.

Out of 47 submitted proposals, the firm Amann-Cánovas-Maruri has been selected as the winner of the competition to design the Spanish Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020.

According to the public agency Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the competition organizer, the project titled People and Places "was particularly valued for its iconic strength, its sustainability criteria, and a design based on the idea of total recycling of its materials," in line with the principles of the circular economy.

The Habitação e Cidade (Housing and City) graduate program at Escola da Cidade invited architect Luis Kehl to speak about the growth of favelas. Characterizing the favela as an “urban fossil”—a centuries-old form of spatial occupation through irregular housing clusters—the lecture offers a chronological overview of informal occupations across different geographical and historical contexts.

+ 11

Located in The Forks, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 'Golden Bison' is a 12.60 m2 sculpture designed by the Mexican firm David Alberto Arroyo Tafolla and built in 2018. Read on to learn more about this project.

In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, more than 150 students from 15 countries kicked off the 2018 Latin American Encounter of Architecture Students (ELEA), organized by the Latin American Coordinator of Architecture Students (CLEA) together with IBEA (Bolivian Integration of Architecture Students). As is now tradition, they joined forces with various public and private entities, architecture collectives, workshop leaders, educators, and members of civil society to think, design, and build across different points of the city under the theme "identity crisis?". 

Over four days, the public space of Pontevedra, Spain, was transformed by urban interventions designed to foster imagination and play. This marked the inaugural edition of Experimenta Pontevedra, held from June 21 to 24, 2018, in the Spanish city.

Pontevedra, which received the UN-Habitat Award for its pedestrian-friendly urban model, has become a benchmark for many cities in recent years, having achieved a milestone where over 70% of urban trips are made on foot or by bicycle within a 15-year period. Accordingly, as the organizers explain, Experimenta Pontevedra is part of this urban development strategy. With the pedestrianization of the city center now fully established, the initiative seeks to foster public spaces that stimulate the imagination and playfulness of their users.

Sometimes, we cover projects so innovative and futuristic that they seem unlikely to ever leave the drawing board. Fortunately, we are occasionally proven wrong. This is the case with Ecocapsule, a micro-home that generates all the energy it needs and can be taken anywhere in the world, which has just made its international debut.

An initial run of 50 units has been launched for clients in the United States, Japan, Australia, and the European Union. From the outside, one would never guess that these tiny homes pack so many features: the exterior is covered in photovoltaic panels, equipped with a small wind turbine, and capable of collecting and filtering its own water.

Late last November, we published the winners of the second open call for graduation projects in Colombia, also known as theses, receiving 70 entries from 14 cities and 29 universities. Ultimately, nine projects passed the three stages of evaluation, standing out for addressing pressing systemic issues, developing deep research analyses, and posing both urban and rural challenges, just like in 2016.

In this feature, we take an in-depth look at "BHP: Bioclimatic Multi-Family Housing Prototype," developed by Natalia Carrero and Juan Celis (Universidad Santo Tomás, Bucaramanga campus) and selected for the 2017 edition of Archiprix International.

Eduardo Souto de Moura, the 2011 Pritzker Prize laureate, is perhaps, alongside Álvaro Siza, the most influential Portuguese architect today, with a consistent body of work marked by projects that demonstrate an impressive attention to local specificity.

Few names fit the label of “cult writer” as perfectly as Raymond Queneau, who boasts a fanatical following of near-militant devotees of the cause: literature as a very serious game. From the outset, and even upon the most cursory reading, Exercises in Style, written by the French author in 1949, is radically different from conventional literature. The book positions itself—or pretends to—in a kind of no-man's-land between literary theory and practice, giving the impression of having been crafted based on the chapters of a style manual. Queneau rejects any preconceived schema that might have grouped the “exercises” by theme, gradual complexity, or simple alphabetical order. He does not even work from a single baseline text. At times, he opts for a purely mechanical game of textual transformation to produce a sense of sheer nonsense.

It is no wonder that this seven-decade-old book still feels revolutionary and remains an essential manual in literary programs. What Queneau showed us then—that playful, mocking creative freedom—remains difficult to match today. For this reason, such an exercise in variation, of refusing to set limits on the imagination, is and must be compatible with the craft of architectural model-making. What Queneau demonstrated, starting with an unremarkable text and transforming it 99 times, is precisely what any architect should attempt to translate into their model-making. It is the art of variation and accumulation—“difference and repetition,” as Gilles Deleuze would say. It means working 99 times on the same idea, watching it transform until, at some point, we are able to recognize its ultimate synthesis.

A Point of View

This text was written for the French edition of the exhibition catalog The Universalists: 50 Years of Portuguese Architecture, an event organized in Paris by the Delegation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to mark its 50th anniversary, in co-production with the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine. The exhibition is now being presented in Portugal, in 2018, at the Casa da Arquitectura in Matosinhos.

For ease of reading, the text has been divided into two parts. The first part was published yesterday.

'Territories and Housing' is a project by architects Alberto Kalach and Carlos Zedillo that explores large-scale visions for different regions of the country, such as Yucatan, the Oaxaca Valley, the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and the Basin of Mexico, proposing to organize the national territory into just three zones: natural, agricultural, and urban.

+ 6

The curatorial proposal for the Mexican Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale emphasizes the geographical, imaginary, and cultural weight of Mexican architecture. The pavilion responds to the theme Freespace—set by the Biennale's Artistic Directors, Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara—and establishes the connections expressed through interaction with the intangible and the integration of cultural heritage in
architecture.

The Mexican Pavilion in Venice not only highlights the echoes between the territory and architectural thought of 21 participants, but also the voice and vision of those whose careers have listened to and captured the understanding and vulnerability currently represented by the morphology of a challenging territory for architecture.

On October 20, 2017, KAR Properties LLC—a New York-based real estate investment and development firm—celebrated the opening of the showroom for the new 2000 Ocean residential development.

The private event was hosted by developer Shahab Karmely and the marketing team from Douglas Elliman Development who fielded questions and discussed the amenities, vision, and design of the project.

Guests included world-renowned architect Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos, who is responsible for the design of 2000 Ocean; international representatives from Minotti; Howard M. Lorber, President of Douglas Elliman Realty LLC; Jay Phillip Parker, CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida; as well as prospective buyers, real estate brokers, and the press.

+ 9

The Open Museum is a project designed by Mexican architect Fernanda Canales as part of the Arch Days CDMX and Design Week 2018 activities. It consists of three courtyards of different sizes that extend the museum into the park, creating a new meeting point alongside the Tamayo Museum. The pavilion's shape follows the natural flow of pedestrian paths in the area, introducing a new experience based on linked spaces that frame the existing trees, the sky, and the museum's sloped side wall, which is transformed into a new agora.

At the center of a dispute since the early 2000s, the land adjacent to Teatro Oficina, in São Paulo's Bixiga neighborhood, drew media attention again late last year when CONEPHAAT approved the construction of high-rise residential towers on the plot owned by Grupo Silvio Santos, located on the floodplain of the Bexiga Creek.

In response, and coinciding with the 464th anniversary of the city of São Paulo, the offices Brasil Arquitetura and Urbeflux Engenharia Consultiva released an open letter to the city of São Paulo. The letter outlines guidelines for a "necessary change of direction in the management of urban waters," aiming to resolve the impasse over the land's future "for the greater benefit of its citizens and Brazilian culture."

“The Place of Sharing” is already taking shape on site. On the third day of work, foundations are being prepared and steel structures installed to support the Casa de Brincar e Não Só – Not Only a Playhouse, which is being built through August 10 at the Guarda Housing Complex (CHG) in Perafita, Matosinhos, Portugal. The initiative is part of the Self-Construction Laboratory organized by Casa da Arquitectura – Portuguese Center for Architecture.

Today, Bustamante Park is one of the most frequented urban spaces in the municipality of Providencia. Completed in 1946, its design arose from the redevelopment of the former railway lines that once connected the old Pirque Station—the square that serves as our meeting point today—with the town of Puente Alto.

As one of the city's many linear parks, it is worth asking which qualities have turned Bustamante Park into a landmark in Santiago.